Sun, Mar, 6th 2016
Simon Slade on Success
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- You are the CEO and co-founder of three successful ventures. Do you ever feel overwhelmed? How do you cope with it?
Absolutely! While I love running Doubledot Media, Affilorama and SaleHoo and I wouldn’t change it for the world, there are times where I feel like I’m juggling 100 balls at once and everything seems to be going wrong. The way I cope with this is to note the things that overwhelm me and then think, “How I can stop this from happening ever again?” Then I go about putting a plan into place. This helps give closure to the problem and relaxes me at the same time. - Affilorama and SaleHoo offer over 150 free video lessons for viewers to unlock money-making tips. Do you think you would see the same traffic if the videos weren’t free? How do you think offering these free videos benefits the company?
Affilorama’s and SaleHoo’s free video lessons provide prospective customers with a taste of what they can receive by becoming paid members. If they like our free basic lessons, then they will love our premium advanced tutorials. -
Tell us a little bit about your history. How did the opportunities or ideas come about for these three companies?
SaleHoo came to fruition first. As I sold on New Zealand’s local online auction site, Trade Me, many colleagues inquired where I found my sources. The sheer volume of the questions indicated a demand for an online sales directory of verified dropshippers and wholesalers. Because I was new to the startup scene, I turned to Internet marketing entrepreneur Mark Ling to develop the company with me.SaleHoo reached 10,000 members just eight months after its launch. Fueled by its success, we next launched Doubledot Media to serve as its parent company and a catch-all for other e-commerce ventures worthy of pursuing but not vast enough to warrant an entire additional company.
However, Mark’s business concept for an affiliate marketing training portal did merit launching a separate company, so the following year, we developed Affilorama. An affiliate marketer himself, Mark received multiple requests from family and friends requesting that he teach them the profession. Mark soon realized their demand indicated a market for his services.
- What kind of life experiences do you feel are necessary to running an online business? Can you share some of yours?
Traveling and lots of short holidays allow me to step back from my businesses and into a relaxing environment. I use this time to explore new ideas or areas that I don’t get time to focus on during my day-to-day work. - Every entrepreneur has failed at one time or another – can you tell us about one instance where you found yourself questioning your goals and ambitions? How did you get yourself out of that mentality?
I visit the same 5-6 websites everyday to stay abreast of industry news, monitor the performance of my companies, and to track my fitness goals. I thought I could save time by streamlining this process through a personalized home page. We launched Zeadoo, and it’s still available today, but it’s a failure in that it lacks the proper strategy to support it and a method for monetizing it. From this experience, I’ve learned that developing an in-demand product isn’t enough. You must also devise a plan for generating revenue and a general action plan for measuring its success and planning for improvements. Failure is never enjoyable, but as long as you learn from your mistake, it’s worth it. I am proud of myself for taking a gamble. If you’ve never experienced failure in your career, then you’re not taking enough risks. - Why do you think affiliate marketing is such a crucial part of running a business?
Modern consumers have become masters of tuning out traditional advertising, but content marketing provides an effective strategy for delivering a message that consumers will actually pay attention to. The problem is content marketing is time-consuming and laborsome, but affiliate marketers will content market for you without upfront costs. Whether they make a sale or not, the business owner is not out any expenses. Affiliate marketing sales produce a smaller profit margin than direct sales, but they still produce profit. Plus, your business enjoys the benefits of an effective marketing strategy and significantly more sales leads. - Your parent company, Doubledot Media, was named the 23rd fastest-growing company in New Zealand. Are there any specific factors you can pinpoint that contributed to this rapid growth?
Rapid growth cannot be achieved alone. I hired an awesome team and gave them the resources to grow our products. You won’t be able to scale your business by yourself, so hire a team to achieve your goals together. - Do you think online retailers face more challenges and obstacles than retailers that work both online and offline?
Online retailers face the challenge of creating a viable brand with only an online presence. Your website is your storefront, making it all the more important to your business’ success. Customers may contact online businesses’ service representatives, but in many instances, their website and social media might be their only interactions. In-person salespeople can be incredibly effective, but that’s simply not an option for online retailers. That said, there are far fewer challenges overall for online retailers than those with a physical store. Traditional retailers face online obstacles in addition to maintaining a store, which includes developing in-store advertising, retaining inventory, and training, scheduling and paying salespeople, etc. - What are some of the benefits that someone can expect from using SaleHoo?
The SaleHoo Directory features only suppliers that have passed a rigorous screening process, so you know they are legitimate, trustworthy businesses. SaleHoo members also benefit from our Market Research Lab, where they can review actual sales data to determine average end prices, sell-through rates, competition level, optimal times to list, and the best sales formats. We also provide a wealth of free and premium educational resources for excelling in e-commerce. Finally, professional online sellers can take advantage of our custom online stores, complete with a range of payment options and a built-in marketing platform. - We know that success can come from many different ways, but do you think there are certain things you must do and routes you must take to become successful?
Success cannot be achieved without first building a great product. Second, you must market the product just as well. - Affilorama is obviously popular and based in New Zealand. Do you think having started overseas, that affected the company’s impact on the U.S. market and business world?
Having our headquarters in New Zealand potentially impacted our performance in the U.S., but it’s hard to know for sure. I think being based outside of the U.S. gave us a unique point of difference, which helps us stand out in a positive way. Having “boots on the ground,” however, would have been helpful in the early days and is still one area that we need to look at growing in the coming years. - If you could give one piece of advice to other entrepreneurs, what would it be?
The best business advice I ever received is to measure the metrics that matter. We started gathering data at Doubledot Media early in its existence, but we could have started even earlier. No other company is precisely like yours, so there’s no better data for planning improvements than your own. Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, is a tremendous resource for discovering which data is worth collecting and analyzing.
