Interview: Justin Dupre

Justin Dupre is an affiliate marketer and consultant that blogs at JustinDupre.com. Throughout his time in this industry he has worked through many different sources of traffic (SEO, Media Buys, PPC, Search, Display Networks), however, he has focused on Facebook and PPV. Lately, he’s found success with his marketplace and consulting programs.

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?
Hey Jon Volk readers. My name is Justin Dupre, and I like to think of myself as a pretty successful 22 year old affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I come from Minnesota, but I moved to Thailand about 3-4 years ago. I started blogging and freelance writing about 3 years ago. That eventually led me in to affiliate marketing where I experimented a lot with social traffic (specifically Facebook). Now I focus a lot of my attention on PPV traffic, consulting gigs, and outsourcing a lot of what I do to other affiliates and overseas.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
I think just being able to make it in this industry the amount of time I have is a big accomplishment on its own. The affiliate industry is incredibly competitive. I know people that have made 6-figures every month for 1-2 months at a time. They then spend the next year searching for something else that works once their offer or traffic dies and they never find it, quit affiliate marketing, and go back to the 9-5 office life. I’m so thankful I don’t have to do that.

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?”
Like I said before, I started out blogging. I was making a little money with Adsense (Adcents is more like it) but it just wasn’t enough to live off of. I eventually moved to freelance writing, making lower 4-figure months with that. It was enough to supplement my costs living in Thailand, as well as a little extra. Then I took a step back and thought, “If people are paying me 2-3 cents per word, they’re obviously making a decent amount of money off of it. What are they doing that I was doing wrong?” That led me to sign up with different CPA networks, Wickedfire, and I broke in to affiliate marketing on Facebook.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Innovation. Always be innovating. I see so many affiliates just copying from one another, especially in the consulting gigs I do. People come asking me, “I saw this ad and I tried running the EXACT SAME THING, but I lost a lot of money. What am I doing wrong?” Affiliates: Stop copying. Start taking unique approaches, target more niche demographics and then you’ll see better conversions in your favor.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Anything running on Google Search. I just never got it to work out. I tried content sites, CPA offers, ebooks, a lot of stuff I thought I could get to work just bombed miserably. Then Google kicked me off and that was the end of that story.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
Getting the boot from Facebook. When I was kicked off Facebook I was on track to have my first 6-figure profit month. It was painful to swallow, and being outside of the United States made things very difficult for me to try to get back up on Facebook with new IPs, a new name, credit cards, etc. I even questioned moving back to the United States just to get back up there and running. I realized I would never enjoy the States more than I love Thailand, even with 1-million dollars in my bank account versus just being able to sustain a comfortable life in Thailand.

I eventually stepped back (again), looked at my options, slowed down, found some other ways to run Facebook traffic or outsource it all and I took that path. Now I still live in Thailand, I get some traffic from Facebook and work across other platforms, as well.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Dealing with affiliate networks and affiliate managers. Some of them are clueless. Some of them never pay you out when they say they will. This is why I’m currently working on my own offers and sell it directly. No need to wait 7 – 45 days for payment, no need to worry about bad traffic, and no need to deal with other people that just don’t know what they’re talking about.

What is the future of marketing?
New traffic sources and self-serve advertising similar to what Facebook does (like how Plenty of Fish pretty much jacked their whole system). Also, we’re looking at a lot of new lead-gen offers being created and rebills won’t entirely die out, but I think you can kiss the age of fake testimonials good bye within a year or two. Eventually, I think we might turn to a near 100% CPS system. Lately, we’ve seen a lot of people go in to local lead generation for businesses and I’m telling you, if I didn’t have the language barrier here in Thailand restricting me, I would be doing that, too.

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?
Dating and Gaming seem to be the two biggest niches I get asked about. They’re easy and simple to run, but then again you’ve got a lot of competition. Attack it in a unique perspective and you can do alright. If you are just copying ads though, prepare for failure.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
I guess my need for money. I was studying at an American college in Thailand, but it was way outside of Bangkok where I didn’t really wanted to be. I didn’t have any saving to pay for college, so I had to get a loan and banks don’t give loans for Thai universities. This was the only American uni. in Thailand so I was pretty much left with there or find some other way to pay for a different university without the need for a loan. I used that for motivation and it’s taken me leaps and bounds, across borders and on business trips.

What are your greatest strengths? Weaknesses?
I think I’ve got a very creative mind. I can target demographics in ways others just don’t think to do. My biggest weakness is my ability to procrastinate. Sometimes all I want to do is play games all day… the work will finish itself. I really feel I need to work on my time management.

What motivates you?
“Money, Hoes, Cars, Clothes” – You can thank Ryan Eagle for that one (ewanetwork.com). But in all seriousness it is enjoying life. Work can put a real stress on you, but when you’ve got a goal, even a daily goal and you reward yourself for that, its good motivation. For example, I’ll set my goal to test out 2 new campaigns on PPV today. If I setup tracking, LPs, targets and submit it to the PPV network in time, I’ll reward myself by going out to the club and enjoy being with friends. If not, I’ve got to stay inside until it gets done.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Don’t overthink things. Use calculated risk and enter the situation if you think its worth the possible loss you might incur. Also, rotate. Always be rotating everything, even once you’ve optimized everything down to the last period on your landing pages, keep split testing with a smaller piece of your traffic. I guess you can use this with life too… optimize your openers until you can get a girl to give you her number. Haha.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
Without a doubt, my parents. They’ve helped manage my bank accounts, send me updates and they’ve mostly all worked in small businesses themselves. Before I moved to Thailand I worked at a Roly Poly franchise store my dad operated. It ended up going under, so he’s always got a lot to tell me about failure. I think learning from your failures can really help you succeed in the future, and learning from my dad, I’ve picked up some good advice that’s relevant to affiliate marketing.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Affiliate managers that don’t have a clue. I’ll get emails about offers I should send PPV traffic to. I then check out the offer terms (ALWAYS CHECK YOUR OFFER TERMS BEFORE RUNNING!). “No pop-ups generated by downloaded software may be used in the advertising of this offer, or any of our other offers…” Most affiliate managers are nice, but haven’t ever run any traffic themselves. That’d be like me trying to continue consulting without any affiliate marketing experience. This is why I love established affiliate networks that use affiliates/ex-affiliates as account managers. Who cares if they can see my offer statistics and data? If anyone else really wanted it, they could probably trace it down 100 other ways.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
Number 1 is to build an established business. I’m hoping my consulting business will continue to grow and can eventually help small local businesses with their advertising and marketing needs. I’d also like to launch some kind of physical product, although I’m not sure. I might open a clothing store in Thailand, too. Lots of little plans here… I just need to connect the dots to make it work.

You can never have enough, but I guess once it starts interfering with how much you can enjoy life, then you can probably say that’s enough. There can be troubles with having too much money, too!

And if I could do anything with Bill Gates style of wealth, I suppose I’d just travel a lot more, especially through Asia. I’d also eat… I love to eat new foods. Thailand cuisine is some of the best in the world.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
In ten years? Hard to say. Hopefully managing a team of others to do everything for me, while I’m at the sideline screaming demands from them and profiting a ridiculous amount.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I’ll usually just go to clubs at night. With most of my consulting taking place at night now though (to compensate for most of my clients that live in America), I don’t have too much time to go out now. I’ll usually work about 10 – 12 hours a day, play a game or two (right now I’m addicted to Flight Simulator for some reason), order some food or walk around the corner to a bunch of the awesome Japanese and Thai places around here, and sleep. No time for cleaning though! My room is an absolute mess.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
When I was 18, I just became an exchange student doing a gap year in Thailand after graduating from high school in the states. Honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Coming to Thailand would be number 1. Doing new things I had never done before is always pretty big for me. I had a short stint as a model. I dated one of Thailand’s biggest super stars. I started renting an amazing condo. I built my first gaming computer. I even tried eating bugs (really did taste like chicken).

Some things I want to do in the coming year is definitely visit a few more countries in Asia like Singapore, S. Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam. I’d love to go back to Japan, as well. I want to blow up my consulting business to the point where I can’t accept anymore new clients, and I’d like to help a few small businesses manage their advertising budget. I’m also looking to make one niche site where I can just dominate everyone else like the Facebook of affiliate marketing or weight loss or Asian dating. Something big and profitable.

I’d also like to start flying lessons this year, as well. Funny how that all stemmed from a computer simulation game.