Welcome to the Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series! 

Many of you may be curious where we got the idea for “Meet the Affiliates.” Well, first of all, the idea comes from the “Meet the Pepperjam Team” Video Series that Pepperjam conducted throughout 2007.

The “Meet the PJ Team” was a weekly video series featuring employees from Pepperjam - the great thing about the series was that it was super entertaining to our readers and also gave outsiders (Non-Pepperjammers) a glimpse into what it’s like to work at one of the coolest and fastest growing companies in the United States. Throughout the taping of the videos (we did over 60 employee interviews!!!) we continued to get incredibly positive feedback from members of the internet marketing community.

Here are the rules… 

The Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series will feature an original up-close interview with an affiliate marketer every Friday.  Priority will be given to Pepperjam Network affiliates, but that is not a requirement to share your story.  If you’d be interested in being interviewed please submit your request here - please make sure to tell us why you think your story is especially entertaining or educational and worth sharing with our readers.

As the series progresses we will do out best to ask questions that both entertain and educate!  We encourage you to comment on any of the interviews, as well as ask follow-up questions of the interviewee.

Lastly, if you are a blogger or just someone with a network of likeminded affiliate marketing friends, we encourage you to share our interviews series with anyone who you think may benefit. Also, since you won’t want to miss an interview once it’s published I encourage you to join the Feedburner Pepperjam Network RSS Feed, which is located at the top of this page or by clicking here.

Well…let’s get on to the interview!

Meet the Affiliates: Interview #1

Question #1

KRIS: When did you first get involved in affiliate marketing? Tell us the story of how you got started…

SAM: I initially got my start in affiliate marketing on the email and lead gen side of things. I taught 10th grade English after moving back to South Carolina from graduate school in 2002 but realized I needed a job that was closer to my home. So, I stumbled into a position with an email marketing firm in Columbia, SC. We started a CPA network (AdDrive) and that’s when I got heavily involved in the affiliate side of things.

Question #2

KRIS: Where do you live?  Are you married?  Any children? Animals?

SAM: I live in Asheville, NC (in the western part of the state in the mountains so we consider ourselves our own little state) with my wife of four years, our six month old daughter, a boston terrier, a labrador retriever, a siberian huskey and four fire bellied toads.

Question #3                         

KRIS: What are some of your favorite online resources for learning more about affiliate marketing?

SAM: My favorite place to stay in the loop on affiliate marketing is Twitter (by far). I’ve been an active user since October 2006 and have 2,000 people that follow me and that I follow. Most of the affiliates I interact with on a daily or weekly basis are active on Twitter and if there’s breaking news in the affiliate world (or in general), I usually hear about it first on Twitter. Along with Twitter, I subscribe to about 50 or so affiliate, search and performance marketing blogs that I read daily through RSS.

I’ve also become a big fan of podcasts lately, so I’m enjoying the auditory productions from people like Scott Jangro, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille.

Question #4

KRIS: Can you share a few success tips for affiliates who are new to affiliate marketing?

SAM: My biggest tip for people new to affiliate marketing comes from a big mistake I made early in my career… do what you love or are passionate about. While starting outin affiliate marketing, I went after every penny I could and viewed my time doing affiliate stuff as “work.” At the end of the day, I wasn’t happy with myself or my profession and went back to teaching. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I (and others) can and should combine interests or passions with the tools provided by affiliate marketing to find fulfillment both emotionally and financially. For instance, I love NASCAR and Science Fiction and have sites about both of them that blend my interests with affiliate marketing. Running those sites is definitely not “work.” So, follow your passions and be inventive.

Question #5

KRIS: Name your top three favorite musical groups.

SAM: In revolving order: Wilco, Ryan Adams and Willie Nelson. I’m also a big 60’s jazz and Grateful Dead fan. I tend towards the indie “alt-country” genre, but I listen to most everything (except for most contemporary mainstream music.. what happened to good music??).               

Question #7

KRIS: It is well established that over the past several years thousands of affiliates have used pay-per-click, SEO, loyalty, and coupon strategies to make a lot of money in affiliate marketing. Aside from these popular promotional methods, what other areas of affiliate marketing hold the most promise?

SAM: As the web continues to evolve (and we change our user habits along with it), affiliate marketers are going to have to engage with the new paradigms of marketing that are being created around more social sites (I’m not a big fan of the term “social media” because I think the web is inherently social). Social networks, niche community sites and highly customizable platforms like Twitter are going to demand more from marketers than just posting up a banner or bidding on a click. So, as affiliate marketers, we are going to have to engage increasingly niche and fragmented audiences in order to stay relevant and profitable. There are too many variables for both the marketer and the community to give one universal prescription for how to do this, but the days of broadcasting mass messages and expecting a decent ROI are over (thank goodness!).

Question #8

KRIS: Are you a full-time affiliate marketer?  What is a normal day in the life of Sam Harrelson like?

SAM: Yes I am a full time affiliate marketer/blogger/podcaster. Along with running the niche sites I mentioned above, I also do consulting for affiliates, networks and companies looking to move more into the social web space. On the side, I still teach a couple of classes as an adjunct professor at nearby Gardner-Webb university.

My normal day has become a lot less normal since the birth of our daughter. But roughly, the morning is spent checking stats and email and setting everything up for the afternoon. I do most of my work in the afternoon and at night since I work with a number of people on the west coast. In between all of that, I’m constantly checking my feed reader. I subscribe to about 500 feeds now, so it gets rather bloated if I don’t check in every few hours. Plus, my feed reader is my main place of news consumption as well as checking in on the outside world.

I normally post a few times a day on CostPerNews as I see things that are interesting that I need to write about. I also do a daily 22 minute podcast that I try to fit in somewhere around 2pm just before I get to my main working time. Somewhere in there, I like to get in a few minutes of jogging and playing basketball but those often get sacrificed (especially since the arrival of the baby!). My wife is a physician so her schedule is very erratic and she’s often on call or working late at night. So, the idea of me having office hours is laughable.

Thankfully, I love what I do and life/work/play all blends together pretty well!

Question #9

KRIS: Name one person in the affiliate industry you admire and tell us why?

SAM: There are so many! I’ll try to narrow it down by saying that I admire Shawn Collins for his willingness to experiment and innovate ahead of the curve while keeping one foot in the traditional space, Connie Berg for her tenacity, Brian Littleton for his humbleness and integrity, Jonathan (Trust) for his willingness to always be frank with me (even when I don’t want to hear it) and Pat Grady for his brains. 

Thanks so much to Kris and the Pepperjam team for including me in the series! SH

No - thank you Sam for your participating in the PJN “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series!

Next on deck for Meet the Affiliates: Super Affiliate and Affiliate Summit “Affiliate of the Year” Award Winner - Scott Hazard

Scott’s interview will be published here on the Pepperjam Network Blog next Friday, May 16, 2008.

Make sure you don’t miss it!  Click Here to subscribe to the PJN Blog and have each interview delivered to your e-mail box.

Affiliate Interviews affiliate marketing Meet the Affiliates Pepperjam Network Sam Harrelson TransparencyAffiliate Interviews affiliate marketing Meet the Affiliates Pepperjam Network Sam Harrelson Transparency

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Pepperjam Network, Transparency, affiliate marketing, Meet the Affiliates, Sam Harrelson, Affiliate Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.