What do you currently do?
I am the Managing Director of Paydot which is a multi-niche affiliate network built on transparency and trust to help affiliates, advertisers and partners increase their income from sales/leads generated online. We attract advertisers and affiliates from all over the word and have grown massively throughout the 2014 which has put us in a good position to continue reinvesting on further improvements – making sure that both publishers and advertisers, including partners have eventually everything they need to run a modest and successful affiliate/referral campaign through the use of an affiliate platform. Our current focus lies around launching a partner platform which is scheduled in to go live in February. This will allow online businesses and individual people refer clients to Paydot and in return earn a lifetime kick-back from override we as a network generate from the partner referrals. We work closely with Twist360 Client Services team to ensure our partners receive same level of support we provide on our premium sister networks as MoreNiche, ImpactFive and PetOffers. My main duties include working with advertisers – to make sure they have everything they need to get their campaign going, working with publishers – to make sure they have the right offers and tools on the network and of course work with our internal team, including developers to complement existing features as well as release new ones.
What is your inspiration in business?
I absolutely love everything related to income generation online and it’s been a passion of mine since 2006. Joining MoreNiche in 2007 helped me to continue do what I enjoy the most, and after trying most of the roles in MoreNiche, I was fortunate enough to finally start my own project and been focusing on it since then. We opened our platform to the first advertiser in 2013 February and have grown organically since then. As we have other niche specific networks and existing teams, it puts us in a good position to launch new projects, with Paydot being one of them. I enjoy improving things and providing advertisers, publishers and partners with the features or reporting they need to complement their existing system. Although there’s still many new features that we have in the pipeline to be released, the feeling when you give something very useful to others which then makes things easier for others is indescribable.
Who do you admire?
I could mention many names including Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder and CEO of the social-networking website Facebook), but to me the person I admire the most has to be my business partner Andrew Slack. If you’d knew the whole story of how Andy started as well as all his proposed ideas, many of them being live today including Twist360, and the chain our affiliate networks (MoreNiche, ImpactFive, Paydot and PetOffers) and affiliate portals, there is not a better person I would look up to. Andy likes taking risks, he is a great boss, colleague and a good friend who always thinks about long-term benefits both from a business point of view to staff management, which has proven to work very well for us.
Looking back, would you have done things differently?
Yes of course! But sometimes the only way to learn is from actually making those mistakes. Sometimes I even feel that they are necessary, this often opens different aspects of the same idea and lets us see it from a different angle allowing us to deliver a better final product. This is just how it is. It’s why we beta test, sometimes it’s that one person’s opinion/feedback that changes things completely. Sometimes we simply miss something, we are human and nobody is perfect. The main thing is to get up and keep moving forward whilst thinking of the long-term success.
What defines your way of doing business?
Long term vision! Before I started working on Paydot, there were more projects I could choose from, both internally and externally and most of them with better short term rewords, yet I made the decision to work on something bigger that takes longer to build, something that I can cherish from the very baby steps and create into something nice and memorable, a long-lasting project.
I always try to keep a positive attitude and have respect for others which I believe is the only way how people should be doing the business. We have very staff friendly working hours with flexi-time on hand, and always look at what’s best not only for the main company but for people who are working in it too.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Follow your dreams, passion, work hard, think long-term and never give up! I am lucky to be in a position where my job is my hobby. There are not many people who could say the same and when it comes to delivering results, it’s important that you enjoy what you are doing to get that bit of the confidence boost from the satisfaction you get once you achieve something. You have to take risks, if you have a brilliant idea and do not know how to best execute it, or simply need resources, consult with others and pitch your idea to seek investors and partnerships.
When we are talking more about affiliate marketing, then always put customers/publishers first. If you do it the right way, it can cost you more in the short term but will pay off in the long-run. Always evolve your products or services, choose quality over quantity and deliver on your promises.
