To Sell or Not to Sell…

As webmasters and bloggers, we sometimes are fortunate enough to be given the opportunity of a merger or a buyout of one of our web sites. In most cases this raises a whole new set of questions and is usually not an easy decision to make. About a year ago I was given the opportunity to sell one of my very fast growing web sites for near seven figures and a revshare for a two year period. After the two year revshare, I would lose total ownership of the site. This was my fastest growing site, and was less than six months old at that point. What would I do?

Since the founding of MoneyReign I have always worked for myself and have never had any other staff members. Sure, I outsource some programming and web designing jobs here and there, but they would not be considered part of the company. Being president, CEO or founder of a web site that grows dramatically can be very stressful when deciding whether or nor to sell part of your company, and in essence yourself. Will the new company care as much about your web sites as you? Will they maintain the standards you have held in what gets published to the site? You will need to ask yourself many questions like these, should you be approached with the opportunity to sell.

After going over many figures associated with several offers, talking with my attorney as well as close friends who also were at some time in the position to sell, I ultimately made the decision to not go forward with the merger and keep the site in my network. Financially, the opportunity did not make total sense, as they were offering only what the site had nearly grossed already. The potential upside was in becoming part of their network and the rev share growing while cycling their own network traffic into mine, as well as being able to say I was bought out by another company!

Almost a year has passed now and this same company has gone on and partnered with several other sites, some of them fairly large. I cannot stress how happy I am that I never went forward with the acquisition. Every couple of months a new rep from their company still sends an email to me or messages me on IMer, trying to influence me again into selling. They even tried lowering their new offer for the site by 50%… not very intriguing at all. I will never work with this company in the future, just for that fact that while I was in a chat conversation with their main M&A representative (I can only assume he was frustrated by me not wanting to sell the site) he started going off on a tangent about me lying about my numbers and quickly left the chat window I thought this was hilarious and so unprofessional… further justifying that I made the right decision to not work with these guys.

Regarding other mergers/buyouts by this company, I’ve noticed skanky (almost adult) video clips added to sites they purchased (to increase click throughs).

The moral of the story is, if you are ever in the position to sell or go into a merger, don’t rush into it. Find out about the company. I know it sounds obvious, but make sure all possibilities are thought through thoroughly. Understand what you will be giving up in the process, mainly control. I would be so disappointed today if I no longer owned what remains one of my hottest sites and something I’ve put so much time and effort into, just for another company with some funding to buy and ruin it with trash ads and treat it just as another source of traffic.

My friend Jim Cramer would probably not agree with me on this, but all business decisions are not simply the bottom line when it’s your own company or web site at stake, the decision to partner or sell goes well beyond dollar and cents. I am still hopeful that at some time I will be able to sell off a web site or two for a nice profit (who doesn’t), but I feel I will know better when it is the right thing to do, based on the experience I have described here. I hope it makes you think twice before “selling out”.

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Great Friends and Money Making Blogs

I always stress how important networking is to your personal and business growth. I would not be where I am at today if I didn’t make the sporadic decision to attend CJU 2000 in California with my father. This was my first big networking event and gave me a ton of new contacts to work with. From CJU I went on to meet a lot of influential people and make some very good friends. These friends would also lead me to Affiliate Force, which would soon become Affiliate Summit… what is now one of the largest affiliate networking events. Today I wanted to make a list of some of my good friends and their blogs, along with some other great blogs that I visit daily and this you would find useful.

Affiliate Tips by Ola Edvardsson
Unfortunately Ola does not focus or update his blog site anymore, but I had to give props where due. At my first CJU event I went to talk to Ola after his presentation and he took the time to listen to a teenagers story and aspirations for making money online. Since talking with Ola that day we have been great friends since. Ola has also been a speaker at many other events as well, including Affiliate Summit. If you are starting out online are are lucky enough to find someone like Ola Edvardsson when you are starting out, you are golden!

Affiliate Tip Blog by Shawn Collins
I’ve known Shawn for a while now and even went to a bbq at his house a couple years ago. He is also lives in NJ, just like me. Shawn is one of the most well known affiliate marketers/managers in the business. After spending a lot of time working with ClubMom.com, he decided to start working on AffiliateSummit full time. On Shawn’s blog he discusses what’s new with Affiliate Summit, his visits to conferences and any other important industry news and opinions he may have to offer.

Marketing Ideas Online by Jim Kukral
I first met Jim through AffiliateForce/AffiliateSummit and we have been good friends ever since. Jim was recently awarded “Blogger of the Year” at the last Affiliate Summit West conference. Through Jim’s blog you will read about all many different web site projects and what else is going on in the industry. You may even find a few ways to cut some costs with his Web Hosting discounts and marketing ideas.

Make Money with John Chow dot Com
While I don’t know John Chow personally (yet), I wanted to make sure others knew about his site as well. John has one of the fastest growing money making blogs and has some very useful information on the site. In addition to his many reviews on web sites, best programs to make money with and cool wordpress tools, you will also find he has a quality selection of posts on fine dining and cars!

There are many other quality blogs online, but these have been a few of my favorites! Enjoy!

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Motivation for the New Guys

I’ve been making money online for over 10 years now, and the reason I started this blog is because I want to share valuable information with everyone so they can start doing the same. Making money online can be fun and exciting, but very intimidating in the beginning as well. For the first couple of years I was making money online without spending a dime on advertising. How is this possible? What I would do was focus on designing very high content quality celebrity sites. This was a very time consuming task as I was still fairly new and made hundreds… if not thousands of straight html pages. Where did I make money? The celebrity content was mainly made up of content from Amazon.com, as I was in their associates program. The content from the site would index so well in the search engines, that’s where I would get all of my free traffic. I ended up producing over $100,000 in sales for Amazon.com and earning at commissions at their 5%-15% rate. During this time they were only selling books, movies and music. Back then it was funny because Amazon.com sent out quarterly reports, they didn’t have the login area for you to just check stats whenever you wanted. In addition to Amazon.com sales, I was also able to place "free trial offers" on the site as well, where I would be paid a small commission per lead. I would go on with this process over the next couple years and continue tweaking my sites more and more as I learned more about making money online as well as new offer types came out.

The point of this post is to let you know that some serious money can be made online without having to spend big bucks or worry about setting up big advertising campaigns. You simply need to think of a great idea that is unique or something everyone could want and use. It also doesn’t hurt to work on something you are interested in. I’m sure if I was making a ton of pages on a boring topic I wouldn’t have been as motivated to make the pages. With celebrities you always have a cycling of new search engine activity as new movies come out and whom they star. I actually had fun working on pages and seeing all the different movies that celebrities had been in. Do what you enjoy and the money will follow… same applies for making money online!

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My Approved Money Makers List

I’ve been wanting to make this section of the site for a while now, but I finally got around to it today. Everyone has ideas and places for you to start making money online, but I wanted to make sure I had a list for you that was clean and legit. I wanted to make sure you had a list that was Zac Approved! Not only will I be listing what companies I make most of my money with, but I’ll also let you know what I like best about them and even show you a check stub to prove these guys pay! Some of the companies I work with have referral programs and some don’t. I will even list the ones that don’t, either way I still want to inform you on the best ways to start making more money! That’s what this blog is all about, helping you make more money! This section will be a continuing work in progress as I will add new companies and statements as they come up.

Take a look at my new Zac’s Approved Money Makers List section. Feel free to email me and let me know what you think or your personal experiences with these companies.

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Why Do Affiliate Networks Let Super Affiliates Leave?

Over the past several years, I have been working with a lot of affiliate networks. Personally, what matters most to me is the personal relationship and being appreciated. I would rather work with a group of people I liked, then make an extra 10% with some other company. I want to be able to talk to my affiliate manager and others in the company and share in their success. It’s nice to get a call or an email from someone saying "Wow, You had your best month yet with us! What can we do to help and make this even better?". Sometimes this is how things actually are… but sometimes they aren’t. For instance, I would be making five figures a month with a company for a while, then it slowly tapers off to a few thousand a month… or even into the hundreds. This can happen for a couple reasons, maybe I am focusing more on a new market, or simply found better advertising offers elsewhere. No matter what the size of the company, why let this type of revenue just slip away? Some of these companies that I have experienced this problem with have never made an attempt to contact me. (example: I work with both Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network. While testing different formats and ad placements, when I removed Google Adsense from the site for a few weeks, I never heard anything from them. Yahoo on the other hand had my rep contact me see what they needed to do for us to start pushing high volume again.) First impressions are important, and so are super affiliates… why let them just slip away?

Want to show some appreciation to your super affiliates? Here’s a list of some ideas:

• A lot of super affiliates invest money right back into their web sites and advertising. If you aren’t already, it’s always nice to offer faster payments and direct deposit/paypal to your top affiliates (if not all affiliates). Since we are using our own money and resources, the sooner we get our money, the sooner we can invest it to make us both more.
   
• Incentives are always appreciated. Big or small, it makes a big impression vs. a company that sends just the check. If you can offer your affiliates a prize or gift card for meeting a certain amount of sales/leads/commissions in a time period, this is a great way to motivate affiliates, while showing appreciation.
  (Example: I was the top affiliate for DeezTeez for several months in a row. The revenue made from the sales was nothing compared to the overall revenue generated from the site, but they would send a gift card each month to their top affiliate. I racked several of these up and put them toward the purchase of my new Sony Flat Screen Computer. Knowing that I would be rewarded for sending them sales, and wanting to stay in first place each month made me push this offer even more!)
   
• Another great benefit to both your company and your super affiliates would be to invite them to internet marketing expos and conferences, such as Affiliate Summit, Ad-Tech and EcomExpo. Throwing them a free conference pass will keep them motivated while giving them the opportunity to find new advertising methods and help further your relationship as business partners.

I know a lot of companies have already started with putting these benefits into play, thank you and congrats to you. As more super affiliates express their feelings and networks show appreciation towards their top earners, more networks will follow. Feel free to leave a post on your thoughts or what you would like to see from both sides.

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