Interview: Riley Pool

Riley Pool is an avid online marketer and still holds down a full-time day job doing title work on foreclosed homes all across the United States. You can find him blogging online at RileyPool.com. If you’re just starting out as an affiliate, subscribe to his blog. He’s been known to give out some excellent tips.

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 26 years old and was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ve had a few stints over the past few winters as an affiliate. From November 2006 – January 2007 I was involved with a blackhat method that eventually died out and I tried turning whitehat without success. Then, from November 2007 – January 2008 I again tried being a legit whitehat affiliate and was unsuccessful. Finally, I again attempted affiliate marketing in December 2008 and actually had a nice chunk of change to invest this time and finally was able to find a profitable campaign.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
The thing I’m most proud of is the lifestyle change I made about three years ago, followed by graduating from college with a BBA in Finance. Of course, I’m also extremely proud that was I able to turn into a whitehat affiliate and find continued success with making money online.

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 first found out about affiliate marketing from a local friend of mine who told me that he had people offering to pay him money for a social networking account that had a really large number of friends. If it weren’t from him looking into why they wanted the account, I may never have became an affiliate. Once he told me the basics of the industry I knew I could succeed since I had so much free time and was always on the computer. Plus, I always had wanted to earn some money from working online, I just never found anything that looked legitimate. When my aforementioned friend first showed me a screenshot of his mid-5 figure earnings in less than a month, I knew I needed to give it a real shot.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
I believe if you have the drive it takes to stick with affiliate marketing after some initial failures, are determined that you will be successful and have a cash reserve to start testing out campaigns, you will have the best odds of becoming a successful affiliate.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Getting blacklisted from dating offers even though I send them the traffic they requested has been my biggest frustration so far. However, I’m also experiencing quite a bit of frustration with getting my white label dating offer accepted onto a network.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
I actually have two really tough problems. Number one is sleep. Having a day job and being an affiliate by night is really taking a toll on me. Every few weeks I will have to just check stats on my campaigns at night and then get to bed at a decent time to catch up on my sleep for a few days. The second toughest thing for me as an affiliate marketer is having to tell my closest friends that I can’t go out with them on Friday and Saturday nights because I have work to do. They always think I’m just messing around on Facebook. I try to go out with them a time or two a month, but still some of my friends have nicknamed me Grandpa because I don’t always go out with them.

Why haven’t you made the transition to a full-time affiliate?
There are actually a number of reasons. I know I will catch some heat for a few of these answers, but oh well. First and foremost, I want to be debt-free before I make the jump to a full-time affiliate. I still have student loans that I’m paying off, but those should be taken care of in the next few months. Secondly, I like the stability of receiving a salaried paycheck every week. Following that, I like having the benefits that my day job provides, such as health, dental, 401k, etc… And finally, I think I would have a problem with time management when it comes to having a full 16 hours to focus on affiliate marketing. I know I would end up slacking off for a large portion of that time, especially if I had a successful campaign running.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
The absolute worst thing I hate doing is writing content. I outsource this every chance I get, except for my blog posts of course. Believe it or not because of my blog, but I absolutely hate writing. You probably won’t find my writing style very appealing because of this. I just try to get the information out there and explained in a real simple style.

What is the future of marketing?
With the recent Bloosky and Azoogle partnerships, I wouldn’t be surprised if larger affiliate networks start cutting deals with large online advertising mediums so they can provide better deals to their internal marketing teams because both companies will be able to notice developing trends across their entire network and take advantage before most affiliates catch on.

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 absolutely love lead generation offers, specifically the dating and gaming niches. I’m working on getting involved more into the education niche. I believe all three of these niches are long-term type niches and will continue to prosper in the coming years.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
My favorite by far is advertising on social media sites, such as Facebook. I’ve been known to dabble a little in PPV. I’m also trying to move to direct site banner buys.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
You have to split test and track everything you do. You have to track by headline, description, picture, age and gender to figure out what’s making you money and what isn’t. You’ll be amazed at how some things convert in comparison to others.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
My first corporate job was as a Processing Support Analyst for Metropolitan Life. Incidentally, I worked in their Lead Generation department. I was sent raw data from companies all over the United States and turned it into a uniform format and then sent it to our representatives in the field. My BBA in Finance has also helped me to manage the income and expenses for my company.

What are your greatest strengths?
My will to be successful is my greatest strength. I have always had the mindset that I will not fail. One of my favorite quotes is, “I will not lose for even in defeat there’s a valuable lesson learned so it evens it up for me.” I’ve have come to the realization that some campaigns will be a complete failure and I’ve made a point not to let that get me down as much as it used to when I would lose money on said campaign.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I’m probably the least creative person you’ll ever meet. It’s tough for me to come up with enticing ad copy. It takes me awhile to come up with ad copy and I always do lots of testing when it comes to this. Another one of my greatest weaknesses includes becoming complacent when I find a well performing campaign.

What motivates you?
Money is my motive. Eventually, when I have a family, I want to be able to provide everything in the world to my children. And for everybody who is thinking it, I know money won’t buy happiness, but it certainly makes life a lot more enjoyable.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
My stepfather always tells me that the key to becoming rich is to make money while you sleep. Well, guess what I’m doing! This has also given me the idea that I need to have people working for me while I’m out having fun. That’s when I’ll know I’ve really become successful.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
It would probably have to be my former boss at MetLife, Ronald Hood. He would always make sure I was invited in on conference calls and meetings I had no business being in. He saw the potential in me and would always explain to me the bigger picture for the company. He gave me a great feel for how and why the company was making certain decisions. He was able to instill a great sense of business in me.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Ha! If you’ve ever outsourced work to Digital Point, you probably know how hard it is to explain to some people exactly what you want and how you want it done. You might spend 30 minutes – 2 hours making sure they know exactly what you want done before they finally understand. I even tried showed them videos of how to do exactly what I wanted done and they still didn’t get it.

What are your typical hours like? When do you just chill back? Do you have a usual day off?
Chill? Day off? You’re kidding right? I get up at 7am, at the day job by 8am, head home at 5pm and I’m back in front of a computer doing my affiliate stuff from 6pm – 12 am or so. Fridays I usually work until 2 or 3am. Saturdays I get up and around and have started my affiliate stuff by 10am and work until 8pm or so until I play my indoor soccer games. After the 45-minute game or two I come home and work until 2 or 3am, again. Sundays I take it easy, per se, but you can be guaranteed I’ll work 4-8 hours sometime during the day.

What are some of your long-term goals?
Business-wise I would like to reach 8-figures revenue within a fiscal year by 2014, employee at least 5 full-time individuals, own an office building and become a local and national authority for online advertising.

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?
I love playing soccer. I currently play for two indoor teams on Saturday night. This is usually my only time away from the computer. I sometimes go out after my soccer games with friends to the bar or whatever they’re doing that night.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I’ve made a lot of great career choices, but the one that stands out to me as being the biggest mistake was taking my job at MetLife for granted and thinking they would never fire me. There was a lot of potential there for me, especially with my degree in Finance. But I was young and got caught up with methamphetamine and eventually got fired from there because I didn’t take my job as serious as I should have.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Probably the most self-satisfying thing that ever happened to me was when a friend of mine that I grew up with called me and confessed to me that he almost committed suicide, but couldn’t bring himself to do that to his son, because he knew how rough it was for me to grow up without my father because of suicide. Just recently I’ve decided that I would like to start a charity that strictly helps children who have had a parent attempt or commit suicide.