Interview: Richard Bonner

This week for the Friday Affiliate Interview, we interviewed Richard Bonner blogger and affiliate marketer at richardbonner.net.

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 my names Richard Bonner, I’m 22 and from the sunny UK. I’ve been affiliate marketing for just over a year now, in fact my first day turning on a campaign was 12th August 2008 – I made $3.16 profit . I did however begin researching everything a good month or so before. Before my affiliate marketing days I did play around with adsense but I hate link building so that never went far, I think I make about $100-200/month or something from those old sites.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
How far I’ve come in my first year of affiliate marketing, I’ve managed to go full time, buy a new car & secure my future for a while. Some offers don’t last forever but I think it’s about killing them while you can and finding the next as quickly as possible.

When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I can’t really remember when I realized the potential in affiliate marketing, I guess it was in the months I was researching into it. Seeing all the other blogs making (claiming) they are making a fortune probably convinced me to dig deeper.

Looking back at my results posts on my blog I’m surprised how fast things turned out for me. I wouldn’t say I hit the big time but it only took a month or 2 and I was hitting 5 figure profits each month. Considering how much money I needed to survive I was living comfortably but I don’t class it as “hitting the big time”. Off the top of my head at the time of writing this I would like to get back to hitting 6 figures constantly a month as that’s my “big time” personally.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Keeping motivated, although I’m a very motivated person when it comes to making money but when I did see success it had a negative effect on my working schedule. I’m putting that down to a lesson learnt, to be honest it can be expected from a young guy making a good income without having to actually be at the computer.

So far I would say my biggest loss is investing in a $2,500 media buy which lost about $1,500, I jumped into it without testing everything first which looking back was a stupid idea.

My biggest frustrating is organizing my working schedule, I think of my next project, start it, then think of something else that has better prospects and begin doing that too. After a while I have loads of half ass completed projects. I’m working on that though

What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
Thinking back to when I started I had a problem I couldn’t really avoid personally, I didn’t have a nice chunk of change ready to invest into this so I took things week by week. When I saw the sudden increase in volume I was having trouble keeping my campaigns live a whole week before getting paid by the network.

The way I got through it was just investing everything I possibly could back into my business, leverage credit to your advantage if you have any credit cards but just make sure you are covering yourself and only spend what you will be able to pay off.

Other than that my biggest problem now is getting back on track after slacking off, the past few months have been bad for me in terms of profit but I have learnt more than ever. I just need to put that into my campaigns.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
At the moment I’m a one man army, I do all of my landing pages designs, copy, etc myself. I would say the worst part of a campaign for me is the copy, I never look forward to doing it but once I get started I’m fine. I used to be a part time copywriter when I had a full time job so I was used to just sitting down and typing my ass off.

I never used to like designing banners or landing page graphics but that’s changing now the more I do it.

What’s the best advice you could give to someone starting out in Internet marketing? Any pro tips you feel like disclosing?
Good question, probably a text book answer but the best thing you can do is jump in and get started. You can read all of the ebooks, blogs or whatever under the sun but the quickest/best method to learn is put $X aside and get started. Obviously you need to prepare yourself and know what you are doing but there is a point that ‘researching’ becomes overkill.

Also don’t lose faith, it’s much easier to say because I still get annoyed when I have a series of failures but if that affects your future work then it’s going to be hard to flip things around.

What is the future of marketing?
Being still new to internet marketing I have seen some changes come into place, mainly the FTC stuff about all of the flogs etc. People will always adapt and make the “new flog” which everyone will jump on and the exact same happen.

Just this time you have to be careful not to get caught up in all of the legal issues. I’m seeing new offers coming out on a regular basis which is a good sign.

Internet marketing isn’t going anywhere, although these changes do mess things up, people are coming out on top. For example when people often get banned by Google they seek alternative traffic sources and stumble across a hidden gem hardly anybodies using. You have to take the good out of the situation and keep pushing.

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?
I’m one to try any offer out there to be honest, there is a market for pretty much them all. I do try to keep in the ones that will be around for time to come, anything like dating, diet, biz op, the new e-cig, etc look pretty steady and have a good market. I do like tend to like to stick to the health niche, if you have identified their problem and have the solution, it makes it much easier to get them to convert.

How has your education prepared you for your career?
To be honest everything I know is pretty much self taught, back in school we did do web design in IT but our teacher pretty much told us to browse the internet and teach ourselves HTML, from there I went onto learning to use photoshop and what not. During college I did IT too but it was pretty basic stuff so I dropped out and continued teaching myself what I needed to know.

What are your greatest strengths?
I do like researching into new niches and have (hopefully) a good process to it, I’m just in the process of getting some campaigns up and running so fingers crossed that all works out well. It really pays to sometimes take a step back and rethink what you need to do and how you are going to do it. Obviously if you have a proven method then you don’t need to.

I am fairly creative too when it comes to thinking outside of the box for ideas.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I don’t think I use my time well enough, I seem to take too long on some tasks so it can take a while to get a campaign cranked out and ready to go. I think that’s because I’m always thinking one step ahead of myself then I get confused or side tracked.

I have a more methodical process I try to stick to so I know what I should be doing each step.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
I can’t actually recall any advice other than to stay focused and motivated which you hear all over the place but it does help. It’s not so much advice but I like speaking to people about their success, that always gives me a motivation boost and to get my ass into gear.

Do you have any role models or people that you look up to?
Not really no, I do read a few blogs of successful people (can’t think of any to list at the moment jk) so I guess they're my role models in a sense. I look up to anybody doing well in life and try to get their vibe and follow in their footsteps.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
I guess it would be Derek Salyers and the Click Consultants forum members, I joined there in the beginning and that was the place I would get any help or information I needed. It does seem to be a little inactive, to be honest I have been busy myself so haven’t been there in a while but the things I’ve learnt there has helped me get where I have today.

Do you try to keep current with the latest Internet marketing news at all?
What or who are your main sources?
I do have a few other blogs on my reader so I do get the update on igoogle when there are new posts, I do keep an eye on affbuzz too every now and then when I need a break so I can find all of the latest news.

I try not to spend too much time reading blogs because I want to improve my productivity as much as possible.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Touch wood, I haven’t have any bad experiences working with anybody else at the moment. Saying that, I haven’t had any joint ventures as of yet.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
I do have various goals but mainly short term, I want to get a house next year and then the usual financially secure. I would like to build out my business in the future and employ a couple of people to automate the whole process allowing me to concentrate keeping the ball rolling than doing every step myself.

I don’t think I can put a number on how much is enough just yet, there is plenty I have on my to-buy list.

If money wasn’t an issue I definitely would be out of this cold weather, not sure where but I’ve always wanted to go to Australia so that would be a start.

What are your typical hours like? When do you just chill back? Do you have a usual day off?
I don’t really operate like a business as such, I don’t set my alarm to get up and work a schedule. Recently I’ve been working pretty long hours through the night and sleeping in later until 10-11am. Although people all call me lazy and lucky for being able to, they don’t realise that I went to sleep about 5-6am so it makes no difference. I tend to work better at night for some reason so it’s a preference.

I chill back if I get bored or frustrated for half hour and just read some blogs or whatever, I don’t tend to work Fridays or the weekend because I like to start my weekend pretty early and love my social drink (getting shit faced).

Unfortunately it takes until about Tuesday to get back on track and by that time it’s almost time to start again.

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?
With my family and friends doing whatever, tend to go out Friday and Saturday nights to chill out and catch up on my social life. Sundays are usually spent feeling sorry for myself trying piece the previous events together.

I think it’s important that work doesn’t take over your life, I am obsessed with working but I know that it’s important to keep a social life too and take time off each week.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?

I wouldn’t change anything other than getting into this much earlier

If your Kindergarten teacher saw you now, what would surprise him/her about how you turned out?
Probably that I didn’t end up going to college (and sticking it) and university etc, I wasn’t bothered about school or education when I was younger but I did well in all of my exams and just got on with it.

What would you like to change about yourself?
I would have liked to get in this at a much younger age, not just because everything wasn’t as saturated as it is now but I can’t wait to see where I am in 5 years time.

I need to try and manage my time better so that I get the most out of each day.

Cheers for doing the interview, it’s getting pretty late here as you can tell with the answers in the last few