Interview: Rob Craven

Rob Craven is a multi-million dollar per year affiliate and successful direct marketer. He also has great hair.

Driving over 3200 leads and customers per day to direct relationships in multiple verticals as well as his own consumer offers, Rob’s performance based companies use innovative and outside the box advertising strategies in daily customer acquisition in addition to more traditional media buying and planning both online and offline.

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 live in Connecticut so I can be close to Martha Stewart and Michael Bolton, I’m 30 years old but continue to tell people 29 and will do so for at least the next 6 years, and I’ve been in the industry full time for about 6 years, part time doesn’t count.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
Well the fact that I’m not managing a car wash or adult video store given my limited education and poor work ethic is pretty amazing in itself.

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?”
I actually first learned about the industry in the old AOL chat rooms maybe ten years ago trying to pick up local chicks before we had myspace, people kept spamming porn links and I ended up instant messaging one of them asking how he got his own porn site (because I wanted one to) and he was cool enough to tell me he was an affiliate making $1.25 per click on those links. Fascinating shit. I had played around with affiliate marketing a little bit for a few years without a ton of success but it took doing some freelance sales work with an internet marketing company which allowed me to do a lot of research on the industry and I made the decision that I was just going to go for it with basically no money and no real experience. My first month I did about $14,000 which at the time was life changing cash for me to have that quickly, I think it was really more that I had my first daughter on the way and no current income that made me figure it out real fast, the prospect of being homeless and shamed as a man is a pretty good motivator to make it happen.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Honestly I think a big part of it is being deathly allergic to a normal life. Everyone I’ve either met personally or read about in this industry with any measurable success all have in common that they absolutely could never have a real job, live life on anyone else’s terms or be poor. Given those three prerequisites, becoming a successful affiliate is pretty standard.

If you really look at the world, you realize that the majority of people are more than comfortable in their current existence regardless of how much they complain. Sure they want to be rich, they want to be their own man (or woman), they want to have an amazing life, but that doesn’t stop them from plopping down on the couch every night and watching American Idol while shoveling doritos into their mouths instead of trying to pursue something better with every free moment they have. Most affiliates I talk to would rather buy the new call of duty with their extra $70 than spend that same money on advertising. If you have no real need to change your life, you won’t.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
I don’t know that anything really stands out, failing is kind of what I have to do every day to figure out how not to and very few days go buy when I’m not frustrated by something, marketing is a frustrating field. I think the fact that failure and frustration only motivates me more to prove to myself I can cut it is the deciding factor in what kinds of people make it and what kinds of people don’t.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
Well like most in the industry, I really hate to work, yet I love what I do, it’s an interesting dynamic. I’ve never gotten through it, as a lot of people who read this blog know or may come to know, it’s never harder to get out of bed in the morning than when you don’t have to. When bills and lifestyle aren’t affected if you take the next ____ days/months off you really have to dig deep for something else to put you in front of this fucking computer all day.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
I’d die of dehydration before being able to finish typing that list.

What is the future of marketing?
I’m not qualified to answer that but I do know that the playing field has never been level like it is today and there’s a better chance it will all go away than it staying forever so you better in the game now and stop being a spectator. Nothing infuriates me more than people who make excuses as to why they haven’t been successful. Name another time in history that someone with no education, no money, no friends, and no skills could go on to make millions inside of a year.

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?
Thin, Rich, and Popular. That’s what everyone wants to be and those are the markets that the biggest fortunes are made of. If you don’t like slinging diet fads, financial freedom, how to get laid, etc type of products, that’s totally cool, but unless you can invent, patent and sell time travel, you’d be hard pressed to make more money than those segments of the industry and it’s an evergreen market.

What niche has worked best for you?
Make money from home hands down. And that’s not just the risk free trial biz opp stuff, it’s everything that has to do with inevitably quitting a shitty day job or just making a few extra bucks to help pay the bills. Everyone, EVERYONE wants what we have as internet marketers. Not just housewives and senior citizens. I guarantee that even your doctor, who may make 200k a year probably wants out, and would kill to be able to do something like we do.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
Huge fan of offline and even traditional media. Affiliates need to smarten up and realize how much easy money is in print, direct mail, obscure offline advertising sources, even radio is a big one of us. It’s dirt cheap to test, competition is nonexistent, limited skill is needed to launch an effective campaign, response is high. It’s way harder to master PPC or CPV than it is to master offline advertising.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
I lost a shit load of money figuring it out.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Developing a lot more direct to consumer products again. The only thing I’m doing differently is attempting to build my own affiliates from the ground up and I may very well be crazy for attempting it, but I have a feeling if I target the right people and really show them the goods, they can drive me a lot of new customers.

What problems have you had with those new projects?
Well me being in charge is always a hindrance, unfortunately I can’t fire myself so we’ll make the best of it.

Tell us a little bit about your success with DominateIM.com and why you think it has done so well. Will you use a lot of the same approaches with MediaBuyingMonthly.com? That is to say, providing applicable methods that you’ve created and used to generate revenue, rather than just giving theory.
All Dominate IM really is, is my blog, the difference is I was smart enough to charge for it because I’m not a fan of doing anything with my skills for free, defeats the purpose of having them.
I think the members there who stay appreciate my style and they make their own decision if any of the content is helpful to them. The bottom line is most people aren’t going to gain anything from joining it, nor will they on any other membership site, if you’re going to succeed it will happen with or without any training product no matter how good or how shitty, all an info product can do is give you some good ideas you may not have thought of.

MediaBuyingMonthly.com is the site I’ve wanted to build for years. I’ve never seen anyone do media buying beyond the initial basics and never a site that just did case study after case study of the kind of advertising we all do as affiliates and product owners in this space. This is a very simple concept, it’s just me and a couple well respected unknown affiliates buying tens of thousands of dollars in traffic online and offline and showing the results. That fits in to my concept of hopefully getting a lot of great affiliates out of it for myself but I’m well aware I may be too idealistic in the thought process. Regardless, people have been asking for this kind of site for a long time so I guess we’ll see if I can do a good job in putting it together.

If you can say, are there any prominent examples of people you’ve coached?
I’ve never really “coached” anyone, a lot of people have read my stuff, a lot of people have gotten stuff out of me at the bar for free and while some people will say they owe a lot to me for steering them in a certain direction or concept, they did it, not me, and had I never been in the equation they’d still be just as successful. I’m not into taking credit for other people’s accomplishments because if you do that, you have to take credit for their failures and there are way more failures in marketing than winners.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Being a sales guy in a multiple industries definitely helped a lot. I hate to say you learn how to manipulate people, but that’s exactly what you learn how to do. Being a great marketer is the same thing as being a great sales person except you pitch thousands of people at once as a marketer and make a lot more money.

What are your greatest strengths?
Not caring what people think of me, that will do a lot of you. No matter what you do, you will have people that just don’t like you and seemingly make a full time job out of it. I don’t care if you’re Jon Volk, Ryan Eagle, Frank Kern, the more you are out there making moves the more detractors you will have. Given the choice between being a multi-millionaire or not having random people criticize me, I’ll take the cash, thanks.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I’m allergic to avocado.

What motivates you?
The crushing jealousy all the people who treated me badly in my life now have. I wish I could say I’ve grown as a person and moved beyond it, but it just never gets old knowing how much it kills them. Our industry is like Noah’s Ark for rejects, ADD sufferers, and loners, the best revenge is massive success.

In all reality, having three kids who’s well being depends on my success is the true motivation. While I certainly wouldn’t recommend having some kids to help your motivation, I do believe that we all have a trigger, something that can turn a lazy pile of shit into a superstar. For me it was the prospect of having another life dependent on mine, you just have to find yours.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
“The richest men have the largest libraries”. I’ve read hundreds of books on every aspect of marketing, selling, finance, mindset and the snippets of knowledge I’ve gained from even the worst of those books was life changing.

If I had to pick one it would be learning the overall thought process of the truly wealthy which in a nutshell just boils down to buy only appreciating assets, fuck depreciating assets. You’d have to pay me to drive a ferrari, just because you can buy one, doesn’t mean you should. That same 300k can make me close to a million dollars spent intelligently. Whenever I get the urge to turn heads, I can rent one from my buddy at exotic motor sports for less than 2 grand on a sunny weekend. I see a lot of guys in this industry spending all their money to prove to a bunch of losers that they’ve made it. Your watch doesn’t impress anybody, what is impressive is if you haven’t pawned it in 12 months and are back living with your parents.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
Everyone. If you open your eyes and ears you can learn something from just about everyone that you can apply in your marketing. One great piece of advice I learned years ago is to never let personal feelings impact education. There are guys I absolutely can’t stand in this business but the fact is they are smart and I would be stupid to not open myself to learning from them regardless of how douchebagian they are.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Other marketers. Best thing you can do for yourself, don’t partner and don’t joint venture on anything you can do yourself or pay someone else to do. None of those stories are any good… at least not for me and I don’t have enough vodka on hand at the moment to nurse me back to health from talking about them.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
Diversification is a big one. So far I’ve taken the common journey from affiliate to merchant which is definitely a must if you want longevity, but really it goes way beyond that if you want staying power as a top earner. I’m going to start buying a lot of apartments and just renting them out. Real estate, specifically rentals seem to be the best long term investment when you don’t need the income to live on. I can’t think of anything better than someone else paying your entire home value off for you while the worth goes up and up every five years. There is no amount of money that’s enough, it’s just a way of keeping score at some point, if money is the driving factor it will be hard to succeed since it takes a surprisingly low amount of money in the bank for most people (say $50,000) to completely take away their motivation to hustle as if it were only $50 and rent was due in three days. I’ll always be a direct marketer, money isn’t the motivator. Advertising just fascinates me, it’s like a game of chess (but actually fun and worth your time)

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
I’m actually really happy where I am, I have a nice house that’s all mine, I could manage a taco bell and afford to live here just paying property taxes and utilities, a beautiful family, a career I love. Tony Robbins who I can take or leave sometimes does make a great point, who wants to play a game when the target is moved every time you take your shot? I learned quickly that a bigger house and fancier car and more money were not going to make me any happier than I am right now. I have friends with 200k a month overhead for their fancy houses and ten cars and they are miserable chasing the money to cover that. Freedom is all I focus on and the less money I spend on flash the faster I can spend my days walking around town in a bathrobe and top hat.

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?
I wish I had a work life balance, I’m happy that I get to work here at the house so that I do get to see my kids a lot more than the average American dad probably does but I definitely spend way too much time locked down here on my own floor of the house when I should be taking a lot more time with them and really anything else that’s not this.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
Nothing. I say a lot that I’m a big believer in butterfly effect, any one seemingly insignificant change can send your life on a totally different path. Outliers is a fantastic book, we all want to believe that we control our destiny but to say I would be a direct response marketer today if I change any single part of my past life would be crazy, I could just as well be an accountant. This reality is a lot better and even if there was a good chance I could have been a movie star or had oprah money, I’ll stick with what I ended up with to be safe.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
That’s a really depressing question because I don’t know of any. Of course I could say my kids but really, any moron can have kids who turn out to be great. They’re good looking because my fiancée is so pretty and she raises them all day while I stare at all these screens so I can’t take much credit in how great they are. I do get to do quite a bit for charity each year but I think someone with the kind of knowledge we have for marketing can do a lot more to help those less fortunate than slinging diet pills or how to cheat on your wife sites.

I’m really into the concept of building charter schools where I can control the education of the kids. That sounds frightening to a lot of people that know me but I feel I was very lucky to get this far in life with hating school as I did. A lot of brilliant kids get left in the dust just because they don’t think reading a chapter of bullshit history and answering five questions at the end is worth spending their time on.