John Lagoudakis has been a full-time internet marketer since 2008. Since then he has become one of Clickbank’s top 100 affiliates. He lives in Brisbane, Australia with his wife and three children.
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 36 years old, was born in Sydney, Australia and have been living in Brisbane for past 9 years. In 2008 I became a full-time internet marketer.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
When I first came across affiliate marketing, it made sense to me so I gave it a go and within a couple of days made my first sale. The profit was only about $1 but I was ecstatic… it really worked!
I was sick of my job so I made a goal to build up my affiliate marketing business to a point that I could quit my job by my next birthday (which was about 5 months away). After working hard for 8 months I was finally able to realize my goal and quit my job forever! What a beautiful day that was. It was my most satisfying accomplishment. Every day after that has been great.
Another significant accomplishment was becoming one of the top 100 Clickbank affiliates. I was quite surprised when that happened.
How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career?
By accident I learned about affiliate marketing. It was while I was trying to build up my network marketing business online and using traffic exchanges that I kept on coming across affiliate marketing guides. Eventually I bought one called “Two Minute Profits” by Alok Jain.
The reason why I’ve stuck with internet marketing, despite all the challenges I’ve had along the way (it hasn’t been smooth sailing!) is that I love the idea of being able to work anywhere in the world and at whatever times and whatever pace I choose.
Some days I’m motivated and work really hard. Other days I just couldn’t be bothered so I do something else. I spend a lot more time with my family. It’s great!
What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
To be a successful affiliate, you need to know and do the following things:
- Never give up. So many times I see people try something once, or maybe even a few times, and when it doesn’t work out they just give up. Nothing worthwhile is easy. My advice is to find someone that is having the success you want to have and follow their strategy completely until you have the same success
- Stay focused. Many budding affiliates make the mistake of buying every single new affiliate strategy that’s released. You’ll never have success this way. There are a kazillion different ways to make money online but if you spread yourself thin you won’t make a cent.
- Provide quality information. Whatever type of affiliate strategy you use, if you want to be successful, you need to give people what they want. Like Zig Ziglar says, “you can have everything in life that you want if you help enough people get what they want”.
What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
The internet marketing world is constantly changing. When I first started out, Google Adwords was the big thing, i.e. setting up profitable PPC campaigns. That’s how I made my big break and a lot of money.
2 years later my Adwords account was permanently suspended (along with thousands of other affiliate marketer’s accounts). My income dropped by more than 50% overnight (literally).
Fortunately, I saw the change coming and had other strategies in place.
What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
One of the strategies I already had in place before my Google Adwords account was suspended was building a list in the internet marketing niche. A big part of that list building strategy was to do adswaps with other list owners.
My biggest frustration has been the amount of scammers that are out there, that will not reciprocate a mailout or send you junk traffic. It happens too much and other list owners need to be aware. If you’re going to do an adswap (and I highly recommend that you do) make sure you get references first.
Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Writing articles about things that I’m not passionate about. If you’re going to get into a niche, make sure you either really enjoy it, or outsource the content creation. If you don’t, you’ll go crazy or just give up on it.
What is the future of marketing?
I really don’t know. I won’t pretend to be a marketing expert. :) At the moment, social media and video are super popular (e.g. Facebook and Youtube).
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 like the internet marketing/make money online niche and that’s where I’m focusing most of my attention at this stage. I also like to go into any hot niche that has recurring billing products. I love the idea of making a sale once and being paid over and over again.
Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I used to specialize in PPC but now email marketing is my main promotion method. Other methods I use are video and article marketing, Facebook and Twitter.
What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Right now I’m working on creating more online content to get more subscribers. I offer a quality free video ecourse that teaches others the methods that I currently use to make money online. This free video ecourse is available at http://makemoneyonlinewithjohn.com.
I want to get as much publicity as I can for my free video ecourse so I’m working on writing more articles for my blog and more videos to share online at Youtube, etc.
What motivates you?
My main motivation is my wife and three children. Internet marketing allows me to spend more time with them and a means to give them the things they need and want in life.
What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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 goal is to have my internet marketing business set up in such a way that I can easily outsource the tasks. Eventually I do not want to be doing any of the ‘grunt’ work myself. I’d like to be simply overseeing the work and enjoying the financial rewards. :)
Internet marketing is ideal for this. It’s very easy to outsource. My main challenge is to get a system into place that I can easily hand off to others.
Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Traveling the world with my family. :)
If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I wouldn’t change anything. I like where I am right now in my life and believe that everything I’ve been through has led me here, good and bad.
What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
I strongly believe that no other success can compensate for failure in the home. I hope that my greatest accomplishment will be the heritage I leave to my family.
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