Featured Money Maker Of The Month:
Learn the techniques I used to make over $4,000,000 in affiliate commissions! Check out my Free Affiliate Marketing Guide and learn the "how to" for Facebook Ads, PPC Affiliate Marketing, PPV / CPV Affiliate Marketing, And Media Buying!
Since we didn't post one on Christmas, this is last week's Friday Affiliate Interview, even though today is Tuesday. Below is an interview with affiliate marketer Nick Throlson of NickThrolson.com. We'll also be uploading another interview this Friday as well and on every Friday from here on out until we run out of interviews!
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 am Nick Throlson, 21 year old affiliate marketer born and raised in Southern California. I have been doing affiliate marketing for about 6 years. I found Shoemoney’s website by doing a search on Adsense and the rest is history.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
My proudest accomplishment is my personal vanity website www.NickThrolson.com. On my site, I try to give as much helpful information to my readers. I give them a way to contact me and try to answer as many questions of newbies trying to learn the ropes of affiliate marketing.
When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I first realized the potential of affiliate marketing when my money from the internet was much more than the money I was earning as a manager at McDonald’s. I “hit the big time” when I began setting up domains and attracting thousands and thousands of visitors to my websites.
What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
My biggest failures have been when I started a social network www.yourcribsite.com and I had thousands of members. I did not back up the website and cancelled my hosting and deleted my database. I lost all the information from the website. It was very difficult and frustrating for me but it taught me the importance of paying attention to details.
What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
My single toughest problem has been my writing skills. I often find difficulty with expressing my thoughts and ideas on my sites. I got through this by taking English classes and learning to tackle my weaknesses.
What’s the best advice you could give to someone starting out in Internet marketing? Any pro tips you feel like disclosing?
The best advice I can give to somebody starting new in affiliate marketing is to quickly put to action what you read. Many times people get stuck in the habit of buying ebooks and spending too much time and money. Instead, as you read you must at the same time put to action what you read about. If you have an idea, come up with a plan and tackle it. Furthermore, be imaginative and creative. Affiliate marketing requires thinking outside the box and being innovative. This is what attracted me to this industry. It rewards creativity and gives you freedom to approach a task in any way that you may desire.
What is the future of marketing?
The future of marketing I believe is going to be more and more competition. There are new people entering the space everyday and the piece of the pie gets divided more and more. Therefore, it is only going to get more difficult. However, this means that marketers must get more creative and innovative in their ideas.
I also see more stringent laws from government agencies such as the FTC. Due to the bombardment of flogs and farticles, the industry will need to adapt and make changes as the mainstream is becoming aware of some of the dark sides of affiliate marketing.
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?
A niche that I am finding success is education offers. The key to affiliate marketing is to be with the trends. In this difficult recession, education is what people jump to for safety. Therefore, entering a niche such as education makes sense as the pool of interested people has increased dramatically over the last year or two.
What are your greatest strengths?
My strength is my ability to test, test, and test. Every marketer needs to learn this. There is always going to be a better way to do something. Do not get satisfied and even if you think you have come up with the best ad, you haven't and there is always going to be even a better way to do it. What I love about this industry is that everything is limitless and you can become a multi millionaire very quickly.
Do you have any role models or people that you look up to?
My biggest role model is my grandfather who sparked my interest in computers. Another person who has impacted my career is Dr. Rajan Chopra who is my best friend. He taught me the strength of teamwork and the vision of staying determined and focused on my goals.
What are some of your long-term goals?
My current goals are as follows:
• Learn new methods of advertisement besides SEO and PPC. I am in the process of learning PPV and media buys.
• Bring fresh content to my readers on my various websites covering several different niches.
• Increase traffic to websites and consequently increase revenue by at least 50% in comparison to last year.
• Give my readers new content and share ideas to help generate online revenue.
Related Posts:
Cool interview. It was great learning a little bit more about Nick and how he got started. I’ve known him for a while but haven’t had the chance to meet him in person yet (which is pretty common).
That’s why I’m looking forward to ASW even more, because I will get to meet so many of the people I’ve been working with online, face to face…including you Jonathan!
Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year and see you all of you in Vegas!!
This might be the worst interview I’ve ever seen. Setting aside the fact that this scrub doesn’t even make any money himself and NEVER presents ANY useful information on his site, the entire interview is full of fluff answers like when you’re in highschool and trying to fake a test about a book you didn’t read so you just make generalizations and hope your teacher doesn’t read it.
Reading the terribad brown-nose clickbooth comment above is quite telling as well.
I love you Nicky.
Here is the thing… Sure a very successful affiliate marketer is not going to get any huge revelation / illumination from some of the interviews but some of the less successful affiliates might.
The balance is trying to put up interview for both newbies and more experienced people. Some interviews might not be able to please both and so we have tried to schedule some of the bigger names and some of the less well known affiliates.
I figure if there is one good nugget that we pick up from a less known affiliate, it was worth it.
Sorry if you misunderstood my comment. The interview was in no way bad due to you or your questions. This guy simply has nothing to offer new affiliates other than duping them into signing up to networks under his referral.
Nicky’
I learn from all your feed back & proudly accept things you may say but not all is true. I have come along way and I’m pretty sure you have other better things to do then to criticize me & my work. Just to leave on good note to our success in affiliate marketing & on the web.
You are awesome Nick, keep up the good work and you’ll go far!
I’ve known Nick now for around 2 years and he has always been a great guy to chat with… He had great success with some shrewd domain buying around election time too.
Thanks for the post.
Nickycakes
Go write something useful instead of wasting time talking shit about what everybody does. Get a life, loser. Wow you are popular amongst a bunch of computer nerds.
Your site does not contain anything useful besides a few posts the rest is complete trash.
Oh yeah and you aren’t black, you are some dorky white guy who dates ugly Asian girls.
Joshy,
If you can’t find any useful information in my posts, then please unsubscribe and never visit my site again. Irony is someone trolling internet marketing blog comments to tell someone to get a life and call someone a computer nerd. In fact, as a computer nerd myself, I’m proud to be popular amongst my peers…my very, very successful peers.
As for my girlfriend, she’s about as hot as asian girls come. And, if saying “keep it real” and “yo” sometimes is what makes someone black in your world, then you can call me wesley snipes.
ps. lolumad.
For a thailand travel site, your blog has some weird stuff about this affiliate marketing thing. is it like buying cheap produce at a fish market?
More hawt thai girls plz. tks.
You’ve said it yourself in interviews that you’re a troll. Hell, most of your blog posts are you hating on someone or some other company. Is affiliate marketing your full-time job, or is hating other people? Hell, have you ever looked into the Cashtactics.net archives and seen some of the amateurish posts Ruck created? You hang from his nuts like M.J. on a rim, and NEVER say anything bad about him, yet there’s plenty to be said.
You’re the type of person who says nasty things about other people so you and your buddies can get a cheap laugh. Either that, or you’re so insecure with yourself, that you need to bring others down to make yourself feel better and receive approval from your small group of peers.
Your blog is like a bi-polar person. You post something brilliant, then a hate post, something brillant, then a hate post, something brilliant, etc, etc.
I love how you tell people to unsubscribe to your blog, yet that is very little of your social outreach….you post your hate everywhere – forums (that you happen to moderate), in other blog comments, twitter, facebook, and face-to-face at conferences. What are you so unhappy about man – especially with stuff that doesn’t affect you (or anyone else) in the least? Do you just enjoy being negative?
The only ‘angle’ you have is by saying that you’re just ‘keeping it real’ when all you’re doing is bashing people. I guess I’d be ‘keeping it real’ when I say that the people in the special olympics talk funny and suck at sports, m i rite??!?. It’s easier to hate someone and see all of the faults than it is to see the good in people…you should try the latter sometime man.
Now, go on, leave your defensive, hateful, and ‘insightful’ rebuttal to this comment from some anonymous dude on the internet. You’re the very reason I don’t create a blog or social network with others, because no matter what good I would do, you’d still find some angle to bash me and give all of your AM buddies a good laugh.
Too Long; Didn’t Read
Have to agree with Cakes here. It sounds like this dude knows nothing of value. A “small detail” he learned to pay attention to was not deleting his membership site and database??
Jah-MOO-lah! JAH-MOOOOOO-LAH!!!
Here’s my take… I’m sort of with Nickycakes on this one. Simply because of 2 reasons:
1. I see nothing of no value on his sites. Just a bunch of affiliate network reviews and some “Twilight Community” advertisement post.
2. The video he made on his thoughts on affiliate marketing. Its amateur. I’m not going to fluff or try and water down/saturate criticism that he could use.
Other then that, I don’t know enough about Nick personally to actually be able to make a general assumption of who he is. But those are two things he should provide…
1 Quality Content. Dump the affiliate network reviews and the advertising post of your Twilight Community…
and
2. Work on making better videos. Who gives a damn if your in the park dude, we’re watching to hear quality content, not see a damn park!
My rant is done. Take those into consideration though none the less.
I first read about Nick on Nickycakes’ blog (the top 10 worst post), who by the way, has some great content.
…
Was kind of surprised to read an interview here, but I don’t personally know Nick, maybe he is successful at what he does. His site should be updated with better content, though.
I do think there is a lot of money to be made from Twilight fans (seriously, you can sell these people http://u.nu/28xd4 anything that has a screenshot from the movie on it
Nickycakes
Your very very successful successful peers? Most of them sell scams such as grants and Acai. They are not successful. Many will have cases against them. They trick people into signing up for scams and you label them successful. You my friend are confused.
I am not trolling just making observations that you bring a lot of negative comments yet contribute minimally.
” I “hit the big time” when I began setting up domains and attracting thousands and thousands of visitors to my websites ”
Now that is vague.
You think you big time? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNe4vE5Zels
I don’t agree with nicky, if Jonathan is posting his interview on his site then this guy must be providing some value on his site and has decent knowledge of affiliate marketing.
I don’t see the logic in this.
That’s like saying having Dennis Yu guest post here means he’s a stand-up guy.
Not.
I may not have taken anything good from the interview and couldn’t handle the blog but props for being successful and making money where I’ve failed.
I’m liking the interviews overall.
I’m with Cakes on this one. Even though he may come off as crass, there is merit in his words. Just check out this guys video on youtube where he refers to the CMS platform Joomla as “Ja-Moo-La.”
I live in So Cal and this guy served me a McRib last week as well as a McDouble with Big Mac Sauce.
You’re just like him if not worse. Your website, videos and everything else aren’t very convincing. What kind of idiot would call themselves “Online Cash Kid”, it makes you sound like 495843495 of the other John Chow retards.
Well you got me there. I just like others use my site as a way to attract wet behind the ears noobs like yourself. If you honestly think I would post all my secrets and techniques then you probably think I would be willing to give you the key to my chastity belt too so you can try and take advantage of my supple buns.
Wake up turd burglar, the entire “Make Money Online” arena is a vertical just like weight loss and bizz opps. The sooner you figure that out and take down your John Chow wallpaper, you might actually get somewhere.
I enjoyed reading this interview and everyone’s comments. My 2 cents: (1) Nick mentioned that writing is one of his greatest challenges so while I found the interview less exciting than the last one, I commend Nick’s effort. Also, it was good to hear of another marketer I did not know of before. (2) No matter how good/bad, I commend Nick for getting featured on Jonathan Volk’s blog. In my opinion, there is no bad marketing and Nick had a success in that respect. Overall, agree with Adam that the interviews have been very interesting and looking forward to more in the future.
Ian’
Thanks Much for your commend & to your success.
Haters gonna hate. I <3 Nick
Thanks Ryan
Jony,
My greatest challenge in starting an online marketing business, aside from being broke from unemployment, is finding integrity.
It seems this market-space attracts sharks, criminals and people with no concern for their reputation and no trace of honor or personal integrity exhibited.
Taking advantage of re-bill offers to suck $$ from unsuspecting shoppers has all of the trappings of a Western Film about cattle rustlers starring John Wayne or Randolph Scott.
I went to Affiliate Summit West last January, and discovered thankfully, that there are many more good, honest and decent Affiliates and AM companies out there than experienced in my research projects online.
For a new marketer, it is like the Wild West, and makes the achievement of success just that much more challenging.
While my online marketing efforts have all failed, due to lack of sufficient funds primarily, my video production business is experiencing some small steps towards success. I hope to interview you for ten-minutes at ASW2010 if you can break away from your fan-base!
Respectfully,
Nicholas Chase – Producer / Director
Nicholas Chase Digital Video Productions
SF Bay Area California
http://www.twitter.com/nachase
Thanks Jonathan, for introducing us to this great guy by means of this inspiring interview. I’m glad I read it!
Jonathon Volk is a noob so it makes sense that he would interview fellow noobs who claim to be pros.
[...] http://www.jonathanvolk.com/affiliate-marketers/interview-nick-throlson.html [...]
Hey Dumbass Nickycakes ,
You can’t respond because you promote scams along with your other buddies which you label successful? Then you talk about donating?
You are a fucking retard what you are doing is stealing $100 bucks and giving $1 to a bum.
Do you see the problem in your logic or the lack thereof?
Keep it Real
Quite a BIO, If I had to tell people the hardest thing to do, it would be to keep up. The industry is changing daily now and you can spend a month learning something that is beneficial for two weeks and is then outdated. I guess I’m trying to say, ” Stay ahead of the curve!” Paul
Throlson has duped everyone. He makes zero dollars online. He is a complete phony.
jam ooo la lol omg people watch his vid and you clearly see he has no dam clue at all.