Welcome to Week #7 of the Pepperjam Network “Meet the Affiliates” Interview Series!

This week I interview Paul Bourque, also known as “Uber Affiliate” from the popular affiliate markting blog – UberAffiliate.com.  Find out why Paul would rather be a rock star than a hollywood celebrity and learn a few tips that will make you more money.

Read on.

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 our best to ask questions that both entertain and educate!  We encourage you to comment on each 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 #7 

Paul Bourque
UberAffiliate.com / Uber Camp

Question #1

KRIS: Tell us the story of how and when your first got involved in affiliate marketing…

PAUL: I first got into the game while in college.  I was never a person for crappy part-time jobs at minimum wage or doing seemingly pointless homework every night.  I was browsing Myspace and thought there may be money in it (little did I know), so I did some searches on how to build a web page.  I came across Digital Point and made a couple contacts there, learned about affiliate marketing, and the rest is history.

Question #2

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

PAUL: I currently live near Buffalo, New York.  I’m not married but I’ve been dating my girlfriend for 2 years now, and that’s been a great experience as well.  No lil super affiliates yet, and as far as animals do I love dogs and will be getting one soon.  I just moved into a new home that I bought, so that’s been exciting as well.

Question #3

KRIS: You recently created quite a bit of buzz within the affiliate marketing community through the announcement of UberCamp.  What is UberCamp and why should affiliate marketers sign-up?

PAUL: UberCamp is a simple idea with a common goal: to put smart affiliate marketers in touch to network and brainstorm ways to make money from affiliate marketing and improve what they already have.  I’m an active member and affiliate just like they all are, and some of the conversation and discussions going on are great.  The forum isn’t for complete beginners, and that’s why I created an application process.  If you have some experience in affiliate marketing and want a place to network and brainstorm with a great group of guys, you can apply for UberCamp here.

Question #4

KRIS: What are your top five favorite musical groups of all time?

PAUL:

1) Blink 182 – cheesy and mainstream but I’m a drummer and love Travis Barker, and they’re the band I grew up to.
2) The Beatles – simply can’t beat them.
3) Angels and Airwaves/Plus 44 – Blink 182 broke up and split into these two bands.
4) John Mayer – dude has talent, his concerts are great.
5) Paramore – a new addition to my favorites list.  She’s a girl, she’s got a voice, and she’s in a rock band.  Hott!

Question #5

KRIS: What are your top three three tips to becoming a super affiliate?

PAUL:

1) Lose the fear.  I say this ALL the time in my blog; you can’t be afraid to lose money.  It’s going to happen, it’s how we learn.  I’ve lost a few thousand in the past 3 days testing out new campaigns but I’m not flipping out because I’m figuring out what works with that money.  It’s an investment, not a loss.  Don’t be afraid to invest a lot.

2) Get out there and do it.  Instead of spending 80% of your day reading, spend 10% reading and 90% testing.  You’ll never know if something odd and random works unless you test it out.

3) Understand that a lot of this game is connections and luck.  The old saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” partially stands true in affiliate marketing.  I get hookups with networks, advertisers, and other affiliates just by networking and building my list of contacts.  Part of the game is luck too…sometimes you just land on the right keywords and right offer at the right time.  But by getting out there and doing it (90% test 10% read), you increase your chances of getting lucky.

Question #6

KRIS: Share with us what a typical “Day in the Life” of Uber Affiliate (aka, Paul Bourque) is like…

PAUL: Ahh, a day in the life…

9am – wake up cupcake.

9am-2pm – eat breakfast, check emails, update campaigns, start some new stuff, clean the house, play some xbox.  I’m basically hanging out in my house working every now and then.

2pm-4:30pm – go to the gym, come home, eat dinner.5pm-8pm – talk to some affiliate networks, make a couple phone calls, and check on campaigns.

8pm-1am – hang out with my girlfriend or friends, just do something with them and relax.

I live on a pretty relaxed schedule that fluctuates…some days I spend more time working, some days I don’t work at all.

Question #7

KRIS: Would you rather be a rock star or a movie celebrity? If a rock star, who would you be and why (i.e. Slash)?  If a celebrity, who would you want to be most like and why (i.e. Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights)

PAUL: I’d be Travis Barker, ex drummer of Blink 182.  I LOVE playing the drums and I’m actually pretty good at it…just being able to play in front of thousands of people would be awesome.  I think I’m going to buy a new drum set and set up a little recording studio in my basement and post some stuff up online.

Question #8

KRIS: One of the ways that super affiliates like you make a ton of affiliate revenue is through the use of tools.  Can you share with us your three favorite money making tools (i.e. KeyCompete) and what they can do to help other affiliates make more money?

PAUL:

1) Networking.  Networking isn’t a “tangible” tool, but it’s definitely the best tool you can have.  I call on people all the time for help with things or hook ups on an offer.

2) Prosper202 (Find it here).  I use the Adwords pixel to track, but I also set a lot of stuff up in Prosper202.  It’s 100% free self-hosted affiliate tracking.  I know the creator and he’s an awesome guy, he really made a tool that’s helping the community tremendously.

3) As far as other paid tools go, I really don’t use any.  For my higher volume campaigns, most of the keywords come of short tails that come from my mind coupled with a little bit of Google’s keyword suggestion tool.  I’m sure there are other tools out there that could help speed up the campaign building process, but my tool is either my mind, or internal tools/systems built by my programmer that are completely custom.

Question #9

KRIS: In my opinion (and in the opinion of many people here at Pepperjam Network), your blog is one of the most informative blogs in affiliate marketing. It’s no wonder why you have thousands of reads.  Can you share some tips for fellow bloggers on what makes a successful blog?  Are there any specific suggestions you can make that other bloggers can use to increase readership and reader participation?

PAUL: To a certain extent there is a strategy in blogging.  I started off with a guest post on Shoemoney detailing exactly how I cashed in on Facebook Ads back when they were brand new.  I got a ton of people telling me how stupid I was for not just keeping it a secret.  So there we had an initial article posted on a blog with mega traffic, and the article gave out more information than anybody else in my position would have given out.  I got a few hundred readers from that post alone, and then started writing good content.  I kept writing good content, and then added in some earnings screenshots.  They’re motivational to affiliates and great link bait to be honest.  So with a little strategy and a lot of quality content, anybody out there can have a successful blog.  You just have to have the motivation to write, and that’s what it comes down to.

Question #10

KRIS: What is the future of affiliate marketing?  What does it look like and what opportunities will exist for affiliates to become super affiliates?

PAUL: The hierarchy of affiliate marketing won’t change.  You’ll have a very few number of affiliates making the majority of revenue.  Over time affiliates will become smarter and competition will continue to rise.  Search engines will continue to update their quality score standards, and the better affiliates will win.  “Super affiliates” will continue to use out of the box promotion and brute force/capital to dominate over 99% of newbie affiliates who are afraid to lose money.  Every affiliate has an opportunity to be an affiliate, what it comes down to is how much they’re willing to put on the line for the prize of potential riches.

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Next on deck for Meet the Affiliates: John Chow from JohnChow.com

John’s exclusive interview will be published here on the Pepperjam Network Blog next Friday, June 27, 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.

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Read Previous “Meet the Affiliates” Interviews:

Week #1 – Sam Harrelson
Week #2 – Scott Hazard
Week #3 – Rosalind Gardner
Week #4 – Colin McDougal
Week #5 – Zac Johnson
Week #6 – Harrison Gevirtz

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under John Chow, Meet the Affiliates, Next Generation Affiliate Marketing, Paul Bourque, Pepperjam Chat, Pepperjam Network, Transparency, Uber Affiliate, affiliate marketing, pepperjam, pepperjamADS. 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.