What Stephen Messer, Founder of LinkShare told ME about Internet Marketing.

Hey Guys,

This is more related towards business in general. Just recently I had the privilege to speak to Stephen Messer, founder of Linkshare. He sold the company in 2005 for $425 million dollars. We talked about the normal "shooting the ****" business, but then I started to ask him some specifics, one of the biggest take away, especially for a lot of the newbies out there was this:

When he first started Linkshare in the late 90's the affiliate network business DID NOT even exist. So I asked him, " In the early stages how did you sell business's on the idea of expanding their business through your network... on an idea that doesn't exist"

He replied: It was all a numbers game, consistent direct marketing, in our first year we signed up 15 businesses...

Now stop for a second and let's take away something.

Raise your hand, if you personally would of quit your idea if you only made 15 sales in the first year. Just raise your hand, because I know you would.

You would jump to the next thing, but no, Stephen persisted on, eventually by the 3rd year they had 150 business's signed up into the network. It was only then, when they started to receive requests to be apart of the network.

10 years later... 10 million partnerships between publishers and advertisers... $425 million acquisition.

Persistence, Consistency, and being Hungry will all result in a very large pay day. Keep pushing on...

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I asked him, "What are your feelings about cookie dropping"... he laughed and said, "no comment".