Interview: Alexander Tsatkin

Alexander Tsatkin is a full time affiliate and part time awesome. His company FlipSite Media has been dominating the intrawebs for 3 years. Why should you care what he has to say? Because he’s not a guru and has nothing to gain!

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I’m from the Ukraine and moved to the US at the ripe ‘ol age of 8. Currently living in San Francisco (Bay Area Represent)! I’m turning 26 this month and have been involved in marketing for 5 years and as a full time affiliate over 2 years.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
Buying my scooter with cash, 5Gs that’s how we ballers roll, then having the self control NOT to kill Feldo after he got it stolen (no insurance).

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I learned about Affiliate Marketing while taking a dump at my full time job. I worked as an SEO at an agency that kept their trade magazines in the bathroom. One of my early PPC campaigns made me 200 dollars profit in 4 hours, which was more than I was getting paid full time, so I quit a few weeks later. I’ve hit it big and lost it all so many times that I don’t even pay attention to it anymore.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Balls! Honestly if you are extremely risk averse this business is not for you. Your income will be a rollercoaster, you can either stomach the ride or you can’t.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Not being more proactive during the good times. Like most people I know if something is working I tend to slack or work on projects that don’t generate immediate revenue. This leaves me scratching my head every time there is a policy update, offer going down, ad network ban, etc.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
Prolonged dry months have been really tough. I took 3 to work as an affiliate manager letting my campaigns die. When I went back to being an affiliate I couldn’t get anything to work or scale for almost 4 months. Only thing that got me through those times were the relationships with other affiliates I had built over the years. Shout outs: Justin, Big Alex, Jonny D, Silver, Lorenzo, Wass, Brooks, Bahler, Nana, and Roland.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Setting up pixels, testing tags, signing/faxing IOs, uploading ads etc. Anything that takes 0 creativity typically bores me.

What is the future of marketing?
The future for online marketing is the continued blurring between advertiser, affiliate, and traffic source. Technology will continue to allow us to better target consumers and the easy arbitrage opportunities will shrink. Affiliates will have to adapt and it will be harder for n00bs to get started with limited budgets.

If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
Loving mobile currently, but lead gen can be good too if you find a nice stable offer.

What niche has worked best for you?
Back in the day I rocked wrinkle cream rebills, I researched the hell out of that market. To this day I can probably tell you more about aging creams than most chicks working at the MAC counter.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
Started in search, moved to social FB/MyAds, currently favoring media buying. Never got heavy into PPV.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
Talk to your reps. Every traffic source I make sure to get on the horn with my rep at least once every few weeks to see what changes are being rolled out or ask about trends they are seeing. Often times they will flat out tell you how to game their system.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Trying to create my own offer. Besides that I want to build out SEO properties to stabilize my income or to sell in the future.

What problems have you had with those new projects?
They do not realize revenue immediately which makes it hard when you have bills to pay. Working on reducing my living costs to help manage that better.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Ever since high school I’ve been hustler, whether I was peddling subscriptions door to door, selling high powered green lasers (WickedLasers.com), or running a power washing business, I knew a regular job wasn’t for me.

What are your greatest strengths?
Creativity.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
Motivation to keep going when times get tough.

What motivates you?
Staying out of corporate America as long as possible.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
The best advice I ever got was from my father. Just a lot of life lessons including value of patience, knowing when things are too good to be true, and to question peoples motives.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
A lot of guys have had a big impact on my career. If I was to pick the first person it would be Wes Mahler of 202 fame. I still remember the first Meetup202 in that hot cramped coffee shop. I met a lot of great people there over some Thai iced teas. I still talk to and work most of those people to this day.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
I can’t work with pathological liars. Most pathological liars I know do well by deceiving those around them. Usually I can see through those people, but once in a while I get fooled and feel like I was taken for a ride. No names but I’m sure most of you seen this hunchback troll looking fool walk around in his grimey flip flops drinking 5 sodas at the same time.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
Long term goal is to own my own online publishing empire. It will be enough when I can buy my own private island.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Somewhere warm.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I like to play basketball, ride my bicycle, get drinks with my friends, go to the park, walk my dog, hang out with my girlfriend, cook something new, and spin on my head. I work pretty sporadically and I love what I do so it doesn’t feel like work.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would skip college. 4 years and a lot of money wasted just to get a cubicle job.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Getting a rescue dog. My dream is to own a self-sustained farm.

See the video interview:
http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/2810335/