Interview: Nick Foley (RevenueStreet)

We're very excited to present our 12th interview with Nick Foley of RevenueStreet. Nick Foley is the Founder & CEO of TheMediaCrew an Inc.500 Florida based company. Nick founded the company 11 years ago in his one bedroom apartment on Indian Rock Beach Florida. Since then, the company has grown significantly and employees some of the best people in our industry. Nick holds a BA in Business Administration from The University of Maryland. 1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? I'm 36 years old. I grew up in the Washington DC metro area. After high school I moved to Florida to play college baseball after two years I moved back up to DC and finished school at the university of Maryland. after college I moved down to key largo in the Florida keys. after a fun experience in the keys I relocated to Indian rock beach (outside of Tampa). I started EmailMaestro.com and was a full time emailer. I self taught myself how to mail and I'm still earning new ways to mail. I also started an online casino which did very well until we had to close it down for obvious reasons. In the 5th year of EmailMaestro we changed the DBA to TheMediaCrew because our industry was evolving and our company was evolving as well so the name change was perfect timing. 2. How long have you been in affiliate marketing and how did you get involved? I started RevenueStreet.com in 2004. We started it because we noticed the CPM and CPC models were slowly starting to die off. Additionally we retained almost 90% of our clients on the CPA/CPL model. This year we launched our propitiatory affiliate marketing tracking software EFFECTUS (www.effectus-software.com). We started to license it out and so far everything is working out great. 3. How long was it before you realized you could live off your affiliate income? My first year. It was just me and I was a mailer (still am) I pushed out millions a days from 11 PM to 6 AM monday thru friday. my over head was almost nothing so I could live off my income the first year. That was the scariest and most exciting year for me. 4. What is the biggest mistake you made when you first started doing Affiliate Marketing? Not fully understating the scrubbing process. 5. What was your biggest success to date? We've made the Inc500 in 2009 & 2010. We made mThink.com Top 20 Affiliate Networks in the world # 19 and we made Florida Trend Magazine 2010 Best Companies to work for under 49 employees. Of all the awards I would say the Florida Trend Magazine award means the most. 6. Tell us a little bit about RevenueStreet and what you do over there? RevenueStreet is our affiliate network. It runs on EFFECTUS our proprietary affiliate marketing tracking software. We have a great RevenueStreet team. Ross Moore is our network director. Rustam Irani (COO) and myself work with Ross to run the in's and out;s of RevenueStreet. Ross does a fantastic job but we work well as a team. My main position is to make sure we grow in the right direction. To make sure we evolve with our industry. I'm always thinking on new ways in which revenuestreet can grow. 7. There are already so many CPA affiliate networks out there. What makes RevenueStreet different? Our people! We have a great revenuestreet team. 8. I see you are using your own affiliate network software named Effectus. What made you build yourself, instead of choosing HasOffers, LinkTrust, DirectTrack and HitPath, etc? CONTROL! I came up with the idea a few years ago to develop our own software. We had no control over the software we were using and the support we received was horrible. We saw so much room for improvement. We basically took all the standard features we liked plus added a ton of our own ideas and put them all into one software. The great thing about EFFECTUS is we will add features on the fly for our users. It an open source way of thinking. We want to have the best software out there and the best way to do that is by being open minded and added the features your users want and provide GREAT SUPPORT! Support is so important and it seems gets under valued. 9. Which offers are performing well on your network? Education is our top vertical. We also do well with biz opp, travel, debt, and insurance & consumer products 10. Which traffic sources prove to be the most effective for your top earning affiliates - E-mail, PPC, PPV, Facebook, Media Buying or any others? Email, Display, Search and Social Media is starting to pick up. 11. What are the criteria for a marketer to be accepted at RevenueStreet? Once an application is submitted. Our client relationship manager, Susie Bordner contacts them and goes through a series of qualifying questions. 12. For those who are interested in working with you and your affiliate network - What's the best way/time to reach you? RevenueStreet.com 13. What are the best places for the newbie to learn affiliate marketing? What advice would you give for them? Read the blogs out there, talk to people and ask a lot of questions. Affiliate marketing is a great business but it takes time to learn and most importantly to control. 14. In your experience, what are the three most critical elements of run a successful campaign. Support & communication with all parties involved, proven traffic sources, and accurate tracking. 15. What's the difference between a Super affiliate and an Average affiliate? For us, its the volume they can produce on a consistent basis. They don't have to drive the highest amount of traffic but drive it on a consistent basis. Our goal is to have all our affiliate become super affiliates. 16. What are the keys to building successful relationships between Affiliates and Affiliate Networks? What are some of the challenges of being an Affiliate Manager/Owner? Communication. Establishing a solid line of communication and building that relationship will help forge long term business relationships. Being able to problem solve on a day to day basis is key. Our industry is young, fast and intelligent. When problem occur (and they do often) you need to be able to solve them quickly, fairly and make sure all parties are satisfied with the outcome. 17. If you could change one thing about the affiliate industry, what would it be? The amount of fraud going on. 18. What do you think about where the industry is going? Where RevenueStreet may be going? What advice would you give to affiliates to keep up the pace. I think our industry is still in its beginning stages. I see great thing for our industry but I also see a lot of companies dying off. Its survival of the fittest. The company who will survive are companies to practice good business, start a head of the curve and evolve with online marketing. 19. What are your goals in 2010? Increase our annual revenue by 50%. 20. What's your favorite movie and why? Oh man, I'm a huge movie guy. I love them all .. but if I had to name one .. would be a comedy .. maybe animal house or superbad and tommy boy. 21. Give us a little glimpse into what a typical day in your life looks like. Wake up take kids to school with my wife (sometimes) gym at 8:30, office around 10, home around 3 or 5 .. play with my kids and wife .. i enjoy just hanging with my family. Many thanks to Nick for allowing this interview! If you have any experience with RevenueStreet Affiliate Network, please write a review for them on the RevenueStreet review page. Ps. If you are an affiliate marketer, AM or Network owner and are interested in answering a few questions about you, your network and affiliate marketing, please drop us a message.