Jonathan Volk vs Ryan Royal - The Interview

I have a special post for you guys today. It is a great head to head interview with someone you probably already know Jonathatn Volk and another less familiar name but definitely worth an interview Ryan Royal. I’ll start with a quick bio on each person and then we will follow with the interview.

Jonathan Volk: If you don’t know who Jonathan Volk is you definitely have not been doing your reading! He is one of the most well known affiliates on the seen and his blog www.JonathanVolk.com is definitely a must read for any aspiring affiliate marketer.

Ryan Royal: Ryan is one of my biggest influences. He was kind enough to take me and a bunch of other affiliates under his wings to teach us the ropes and much much more about affiliate marketing. He recently hit the $60,000 monthly revenue mark and has lots of great insight on all topics related to affiliate marketing. You can add him to twitter at: http://twitter.com/ryanroyal

Alright enough talk! Lets get to the interview:

Neil: First things first, What is your top niche and keywords?
Jonathan: Easy!!! Viagra. Just set the keyword Viagra to the min bid (broad match only) and you’ll be making easy money. Hahahaha…
Ryan: Sure, why not. I’m in a good mood right now. Landing Page: Bonus Ringtones - Get the Best Ringtones from Your Favorite Artists Now! and top keyword: Ringtones

Neil: Good to know! Now on a more serious note how long have you been affiliate marketing?
Jonathan: I have been an affiliate marketer full time a little over a year now. Back in March of 2007 was when I officially quit my job and made enough money online to work from home.
Ryan: I started in September ‘07, so about 7 months now.

Neil: Now that you guys are serious about affiliate marketing how much time do you spend per week doing it?
Jonathan:I spend around 12 hours a day on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday through Sunday I spend only around 4-6 hours average per day.
Ryan: It varies, of course. Some weeks I may spend 50 hours on affiliate marketing, and some I may only spend 30 minutes checking stats. I’d say that, on average, I spend closer to 20 hours per week on affiliate marketing. I’m a student right now, so I don’t do this full time. I just do it on the side.

Neil: Not to shabby but I’m sure you had to put in some longer hours when you first started. With that said how long did it take you to start having some success with affiliate marketing?
Jonathan:I felt successful right out of the gate. Making money online was something I have been trying to do since 2004 so any income was considered a success (finally) to me. I made a small profit in my first month and I have not looked back since.
Ryan: It only took me a couple weeks before I found a profitable campaign, but I was well in the red at that point. It took 2-3 months before I had recouped my initial losses and was consistently in the green. To me, consistent profits = success.

Neil: What is you main strategy to all this success, do you focus on diversifying your offers or do you like to dominate a certain niche?
Jonathan: Both. I like to dominate a niche that I know makes money first and then move to diversification.

Ryan: I *try* to diversify my offers, but I usually end up dominating a certain niche. What happens is that I’ll find something that works in a particular niche/offer, and then I’ll try to scale it through the roof. Fortunately I’ve had a lot of success doing this, but it also means that my income is very volatile. I’ve had months where my revenue jumps 500% and other months when it plummets 500%. That’s something that I still battle with. I don’t diversify as much as I would like to.

Neil: Ok, lets get into what everyone wants to know… What the most profit you have made in one day?
Jonathan: Just over $4,000 net profit (not including taxes) in one day. I probably checked my stats every 15 minutes for the entire day that day! Hahaha. I haven’t really because it was more of a one day type thing not consistent.
Ryan: I’d rather not divulge my exact numbers, but here is a screenshot from Febuary:

Neil: Wow, nice numbers! Jonathan, what was your most profitable month?
Jonathan: Last month was my highest profit month. It was more than I made working an entire year in retail sales. Enough said.
Neil: This is just depressing! Make me feel a bit better about my affiliate marketing efforts and tell us about your biggest loss in one day?
Jonathan: My biggest loss was when my HIVELOCITY servers went down (for the umpteenth time) and I lost over $450 before I could get the campaigns paused. I tried to get some sort of credit from Hivelocity because it was an issue on their end but I never got anything so I moved servers to liquid web which has been so much better for me.

Neil: Alright and what’s your biggest loss in one month?
Jonathan: In 2005 I started buying websites and one website I bought cost $1500 and ended making next to nothing. It sucked specially since I was bringing in very little. That was before my affiliate marketing days.

Neil: Thanks for sharing your number but let’s change the subject a little so Ryan can get back into the conversation. Do you use any other traffic methods besides PPC(seo, article marketing, ect..)?
Jonathan: Article marketing on a fairly small scale.
Ryan:Nada, zilch. I’m too impatient and know nothing about that stuff.

Neil: Uggg I’m with Ryan. Article marketing seems boring lol. Anyway what makes you successful in affiliate marketing or in other words what’s your competitive advantage?
Jonathan: God. I trust in Him for everything.
Ryan: I have nothing to lose. I started in this business with about $5,000 to spend. I’m a college student, and fortunately, my parents are able (and willing) to cover all of my living expenses. This means that I had $5,000 to dedicate to this, and I didn’t have to worry about saving a portion of it to pay rent and food. Now I have much more that I’m able to spend, and I’m still in the same situation - I don’t have to use any of it for living expenses. This is something that many people struggle with. They work day jobs and must pay their mortgage, food, insurance, etc. Fortunately for me, I started early enough that I didn’t have to worry about that. Having money that I’m not afraid to lose has given me a huge advantage over many others.

Neil: And what’s your biggest weakness?
Jonathan: I suck at administrative work. I hate talking on the phone and I hate doing busy work. Thankfully my girlfriend helps to remind me of things and helps to balance me out.
Ryan: Creativity. I can tweak and optimize a campaign like you wouldn’t believe. I can be given an idea/concept for a campaign and analyze it like you wouldn’t believe. What I can’t do is come up with new, brilliant ideas myself. I have come up with a few that worked quite well, but for the most part, I always seem to get stuck coming up with different and “unique” ways to promote offers other than your traditional landing page, doorway, or comparison site. Networking with other affiliate marketers has helped in this category. I’ve built good relationships with people on my same level, and we’re able to get brain juices flowing by bouncing ideas off of each other. I highly recommend that all affiliate marketers actively network and build good relationships with their affiliate managers. I attribute a lot of my success to that.

Neil: Enough with all this affiliate marketing talk. What car do you drive?
Jonathan: Hyndai Tiburon 1998 Black. It works well and is fully paid off so I’m thankful. I don’t plan to get any new car until I buy a house. Assets first, liabilities later.
Ryan: 2000 Red Mitsubishi Eclipse GS. That’s the car I got when I turned 16. I don’t see myself buying another one any time soon, unless this car breaks down on me. I’m actually pretty frugal with my money…outside of PPC of course.

Neil:What are some of your hobbies?
Jonathan: I just bought another remote control Helicopter today. I love remote air planes and helicopters. I also drum for my church. I’ve been drumming for 7 years now and I absolutely love drumming, watching drums, etc.
Ryan: HUGE huge huge football (AMERICAN football!) fan. I also really like the outdoors (camping, hiking, skiing), but I just don’t get the opportunity to enjoy it that much.

Neil: What music do you listen to?
Jonathan: I am really into this Deluge band right now. After watching the youtube video of Britain’s Got Talent of Andrew Johnson (Youtube Video) I really want to start listening to songs like that.
Ryan:
Just the other day I was talking with some friends, and we were trying to come up with our top 5 music artists of all time. I think mine are:

Collective Soul
Bush
Bain Mattox
Three Days Grace
Hootie and the Blowfish

That should give you an idea for the type of music I listen to. I also like rap, but it wouldn’t make my top 5

Neil: What is the worst job you ever had?
Jonathan: Computer sales. It was fun at first but people are so rude that it took the joy right out of it. So please people, be nice to people… Don’t get upset if you come into a store at 6 PM asking for a sale item expecting it to still be in stock! Hahaha.
Ryan: “Busboy” at Outback Steakhouse. I did all of the grunt work…Cleaned tables, took out the trash, washed dishes, scrubbed floors, etc. The pay was actually decent at the time. With tip share and hourly rate, it probably came out to $8/hour which is a lot to a 16-17 year old, but I know better than that now.

Neil: I think that’s it! Thanks for the interview Guys. Ill give the last word to the both of you, do have any other comments?
Jonathan: Stay tuned into my blog. I’m about to write some never before seen posts which are going to cost me $3200 bucks just to be able to write. It should be pretty interesting. http://www.jonathanvolk.com
Ryan: If you’re wondering what the “secret” to my success is, there really isn’t one. I’m not some genius, and I didn’t get lucky. I’m also nowhere near “super affiliate” status. I’m only a few months into this, and I really just consider myself an amateur affiliate marketer. All it took was a lot of hard work and discipline. It’s definitely not easy, but it’s extremely rewarding.