Interview: Josh Todd of TriFoxMedia

So every Friday, I will be doing interviews with different affiliates and business owners to be able to hear and get insight from a broad spectrum of affiliates and those in the internet marketing industry. If you would like to be interviewed for these posts, please contact me.

Today I interviewed Josh Todd of Inside Affiliate!

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 26 years old, was born and raised in Denver, CO, and I’ve officially been in the affiliate marketing industry for about 2 years. I’ve been involved with the internet, web design and general marketing since I was 16 years old.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?

So far I’m the most proud of starting my own affiliate network, TriFoxMedia. I’ve wanted to start a network for a while, since I had worked as an Affiliate Manager for a couple of different networks. When I quit my last AM job, I was planning on just doing my own affiliate campaigns for a while. However, friends that I had made in the industry, readers of my blog, and affiliates that I had worked with kept telling me they still wanted to work with me, so I ended up starting the network sooner rather than later. It has been a ton of work, but it’s very rewarding to work with affiliates and help them grow their own businesses for a living. I dig it.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?

It isn’t really affiliate marketing related, but the toughest thing I’ve ever had to face was probably having brain surgery when I was 14. I seriously didn’t know if I was going to survive the operation, or if I would be blind or have memory loss. The only way I got through it was because I have an awesome family that stood by me through the whole thing. Now I have a titanium plate in my head, but it doesn’t set off any metal detectors or anything, which is a bummer. That would be fun.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?

I hate loading email creatives into our tracking system. It’s just a super boring, monotonous task that puts me to sleep every time. I know I could hire somebody to do it, but I would rather keep things small and bootstrap it as much as possible. Besides, it keeps you humble.

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 someone just starting out is not to spend too much time reading blogs (no offense) and forums, because you can easily overload yourself with information until you have no idea what to do next. The best possible thing you can do is open up an AdWords account or a Facebook Ads account and just spend some money, with the full expectation that you are going to be losing it and not making a penny. Don’t think of it as losing money, think of it as buying education, the best possible kind you can get: first-hand experience. Once you have done that, then you can absorb and appreciate more of the information that is out there and ask more pointed questions to your peers and Affiliate Managers to help you grow your business.

What is the future of marketing?

I think that we have just begun to see the impact of the internet, and of performance marketing, on advertising as a whole. It’s amazing that the industry has been around for about 15 years, and yet it is still in its infancy. In the future, I think we are going to see a lot of steps being taken to help legitimize Affiliate Marketing and take it more into the mainstream, with bigger brands getting involved. Also, there could be big changes in the different offer types that are out there. We will only be able to promote the same type of rebill and mobile offers for so long before they become too heavily regulated and something new will evolve out of that. Whatever happens, Affiliate Marketers will continue to be the innovators and be on the forefront of Marketing as a whole.

How has your education prepared you for your career?

I got all of the relevant education that I needed from experience. Some of the biggest skills that I learned were from running my dad’s Landscape & Snow Removal business. That taught me how to operate a successful business, but I was never in love with the Service Industry. There are some definite parallels though, we used Sub-Contractors to perform the lawn & grounds services, just like I have Affiliates now that promote the offers in our network.

What are your greatest weaknesses?

I am terrible at programming languages. I am fine with HTML and CSS, but I am worthless with PHP, C++ or anything like that. It’s something I would definitely like to expand my knowledge on someday when I have the time.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?

The best advice I’ve ever been given is that if everything were to fall apart and you lost it all, the only thing you can do is start over. It doesn’t do any good to sit around and whine about what might have been, just pick up the pieces and the experience that you gained and do it better the next time.

Do you try to keep current with the latest Internet marketing news at all? What or who are your main sources?

Absolutely. I think AffBuzz is a great site, and it aggregates everything together nicely so you just go to one page. I still do have my favorite blogs that I subscribe to with RSS, but I use Google Reader a lot less since AffBuzz came around. Another source that I really like and read on a daily basis is Mashable. It’s technically not an internet marketing site, it is focused on Social Media, but it often has really great insights into the internet community as a whole and how that can affect the campaigns that you are running. As far as blogs, I’m a fan of Graywolf, CDF Networks, and of course a shout out to Barman and PPC.bz.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?

My long term goals are to make enough money so that I can just invest it and spend less time working for it. I love almost all forms of entertainment, whether it be music (which is my offline passion), movies, video games, sports, etc. I have been in bands in the past, and I am in the process of getting a new one off the ground now (check out Locus), and I would love to be able to do a tour of Europe just playing music with the band. Also, I would love to be involved in some type of media creation and production, like developing iPhone Apps, Video Games, or some new form of entertainment that hasn’t been dreamed up yet. I’m not much of a programmer, but it would be awesome to be a part of it on an Executive level, overseeing the big picture.

What are your typical hours like? When do you just chill back? Do you have a usual day off?

I usually come in to the office between 9 and 10 in the morning and go home between 5 and 7 at night. Of course, when I go home, usually I just get back on the computer there or get on the laptop while I watch TV with my wife. Monday through Friday I would say I’m connected to the internet in some form for at least 12 hours a day, sometimes more. I normally try to take Saturday and Sunday off to spend with my wife, and we are expecting our first son in January (he’s due right in the middle of Affiliate Summit).

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?

To me, work-life balance means that I get enough time in working to achieve my goals in a timely fashion, but still having enough free time to enjoy the fact that I set my own schedule. For example, I usually take Saturday and Sunday off. I know that if I worked seven days a week that I could achieve my goals faster, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my social life and family time to do that. There’s a balance between how much money you can have and how much you can enjoy it. If you are a guy that makes $100 million a year but never has time to relax and enjoy it, then that’s a fail. I heard once that there is a certain point where increasing your income stops increasing your quality of life and actually starts decreasing it. I can’t remember what the dollar amount was, but I definitely believe that is true.

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

I would have gotten into Affiliate Marketing sooner! I constantly think about how much money I’ve missed out on simply by being late to the party on things like the Ringtones gold rush. But that’s the best thing about this industry, you never know when the next gold rush is around the corner!