Interview: Martin Osborn (Finch Sells)

Martin Osborn is a 22 year old affiliate marketer from London, England. On his blog, Finch Sells, he tries to write about what’s real and relevant to actual affiliates, and calls it his attempt to entertain and to provide perspective for real affiliates. He’s a hilarious guy and I think you’ll get a ton of laughs out of this interview.

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 22 from London, England. I must’ve had had my first taste of affiliate marketing about four years ago when I started slinging sketchy Clickbank products to anybody who’d bite the bullet.

I guess within as little as about 6 weeks of stumbling across my first profitable CPA campaign, I was dreaming up ways of becoming a full time affiliate. That’s exactly what happened. I gave up my agency job, got drunk beyond repair, and eventually settled down in to running my own business. The whole process has been a blur.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
Leaving my old job when I did, in the middle of a recession, was probably the stupidest decision I’ve ever made on paper. So my biggest accomplishment has been working hard enough to make it the right one. I’ve taken on a lot of responsibilities, and with the chaotic life I’d been living before – out most nights, hungover most mornings – I’ve had a lot of adjustments to make. I can’t live in the pub anymore.

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?
I think like many affiliate marketers, I’m too stubborn to work well under anybody else. Coming from a web based agency background, I was reading a lot of SEO blogs. I eventually stumbled across affiliate marketing and it seemed like a natural marriage of the main skills I had at the time – writing, web design and the ability to engage in a lot of bullshit without getting my conscience too muddy in the process.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
I get people asking me all the time if I’d mind showing them what I do and the simple answer is that there’d be more point in showing them my balls. I think you really need to have a solid understanding of how the web works. Not just an understanding, but a passion. If you can’t face up to the prospect of spending countless days and nights mulling over CPCs, EPCs, CPMs…then you’re not going to have the drive to succeed. It also helps to have money to invest. Not crucial, but if you’re one of those new affiliates who can’t bare to shed a dollar, you’re going nowhere anytime soon.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Initially, expecting success to last forever. You might turn on the money tap with a lucky gamble, but to keep the money pouring you’ve gotta get smart. I forgot that second part for too long and I paid for it heavily. These days, my main frustration comes from the definition of “too much skin” on Facebook Ads. I’ve already written my Christmas list for 2010 and it involves one bribable intern and a sack of common sense.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
Probably cashflow. I stumbled across a campaign – my “big one” – that was literally eating through my bank balance in the early days. I didn’t have enough money to chuck at the damn thing and I was still on monthly payments. Dealing with cashflow is a problem for many affiliates, probably less so now that the rebill thing is cooling down. I managed to counter it by borrowing money from family and stealing a LOT of free Adwords coupons from the local bookstore. It’s not classy, but this is affiliate marketing. Classy’s a distant cousin.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Every time I have to focus on SEO, my heart breaks a little bit inside. I despise the process of link building and I hate the entire concept of satisfying an algorithm somewhere in Google’s underbelly. I always try to focus my efforts on branding rather than some keyword density bollocks. I’d like to think it shines through pretty well in my blog which is all about the message, and less about the SEO All-in-One pack which I don’t even have installed.

What is the future of marketing?
Ominous for affiliates, but with hope for those willing to innovate and push the creative boundaries. I think affiliates need to be thinking long term business development over short term CPA smash and grab. Start looking at your actual business assets. Do you have email lists? Do you have free flows of traffic? If not then you better go and find them before you’re asking for your day job back.

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?
Bizopps on Mondays, dating on Sundays. If you’ve worked in either, you’ll probably know what I mean. There’s a reason all of these niches exist and that’s because there’s somebody making money from them. My personal favourites are dating, gaming and bizopp lead gen. I’m looking at moving in to the mobile market but it’s a tough act to balance all these different verticals and still do them well. Especially on top of the CPS campaigns that I consider to be a lot more important to my business.

What niche has worked best for you?
Bizopp before my conscience, and Google, caught up with me.

About 75% of my work is related to dating campaigns these days. Short and long term.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I started with SEO when I was broke. Once I had to cash to invest, I made good returns with PPC until the big three platforms decided to make life harder on affiliates. Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of social traffic and also getting to grips with PPV. I have a select few alternative traffic sources that are extremely effective but it wouldn’t be in my interest, or those of anybody using them, to talk about them.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
Testing, looking for loopholes and giving each campaign long enough to succeed or fail with a fair chance. Many people fail because they give up right before they’re about to hit success. You’ve gotta have the balls to trust in a good idea when your ROI is hitting the skids.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
It definitely helps to be able to crack open Photoshop or to be able to understand the way the search engines work. My education was bollocks. I’m self taught from the ground up. Nothing could have prepared me for the number of liars, con-artists and self-driven egomaniacs I’ve encountered. I guess with a blog, people will call me one of them.

What are your greatest strengths?
Being able to fall back on solid writing skills. Whether you’re developing landing page copy, coming up with witty ads or just trying to communicate with your target market – to be able to use language to your advantage, it’s a massive boost. I think every successful affiliate out there shares the ability of being able to think outside the box, because it’s necessary to survive. You have to be able to see opportunities where other marketers see a bunch of pixels.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I have way too many websites online that I developed with the intention of turning in to big moneymakers. I laid them out, designed them, added the content and finally uploaded them thinking “yeah, that looks really good”. Then I have this habit of just forgetting about them.

Too many concepts, too many ideas…I don’t know what you’d call it. One of the reasons I like CPA is because it’s often just one moment of brilliance and you’re in the money.

What motivates you?
The fear of losing what I’ve worked so hard for. I left school at 16, dropped out of college and quit my job in the middle of a recession. The only motivation I need is the knowledge that if I don’t make this work, somehow…I’ve hammered the nail in my own coffin. Money doesn’t inspire me. I’ve lost things far greater that didn’t cost a penny.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and tried to apply to your life?
“Procrastination is masturbation, you’re only ever screwing yourself.” – I don’t know who said that, or why he said that. But the dude had a point.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
I have to thank the guys who’ve been blogging about the industry. As bloggers, we take a lot of fire for being filled with useless information and self-driven agendas. Sometimes it’s true. But without blogs like this, and for me personally Nicky Cakes – which introduced me to the industry – I wouldn’t be here now. Just hearing these crazy rags to riches tales was enough to have an impact on me.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Well this is a lonely job. And you’ve always got the chance to avoid people that you don’t want to work with. I’ve never had any real difficulties. Other than the odd Skype phone call at god knows o’clock in the morning from affiliate managers unfamiliar with the concept of timezones. I really enjoy the freedom of working without politics.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
All affiliates need to be visualizing, dare I say it, a regular business that isn’t floating in some surreal virtual space. The rest of the marketing world will catch up on what we as affiliates have been taking advantage of, so it’s important to develop assets. If I didn’t have to worry about that, god knows what I’d be doing…

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
I don’t really care as long as I’ve taken a road that I’m happy with. There’s no point in sipping a cocktail on a Caribbean beach if you hate yourself and hate the steps you’ve taken to earn that right. I’d like to do something I have more respect for than affiliate marketing.

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?
I live a pretty unhealthy lifestyle where if I’m not working, I’m probably sat in a pub fishing my way through Vodka or falling off some dance-floor in a pile of drunken shame.

I don’t know how to unwind. It’s caused a lot of problems for me in the past. I always say to friends that I’m working hard now so I don’t have to in the future…but I know I’ll never be able to live with the void of not having to work.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
If I could go back to being 18, I’d have got naked, smothered myself in acai berries and ran across North America with a donations pot before Google had the chance to slap me.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
I don’t know about achievements, but I have a lot of dreams. I want to be a published writer and earn the respect of the people I work with. Beyond that, it’s a little too personal for anybody other than me to worry about.