Corey Bornmann comes to Internet Marketing from a strong programming background. Born an Entrepreneur, he loves to watch anybody selling anything to anyone. Corey is the founder of AffPortal.com, an ever growing Internet Marketing toolkit that is born of tools he developed to build his own profitable campaigns. Corey also has a 1/2 stake in PPVPlaybook.com, an internet marketing forum that teaches PPV, PPC, SEO and general shop talk having to do with making money online.
Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I am originally from Doylestown Pa and now live in central Pennsylvania with my awesome wife and super good daughters. I just turned 40 years old this fall, gulp, and have been in Internet Marketing for over 4 years now.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
I am proud of three major accomplishments so far in marketing. 1. That I had made enough in affiliate commissions two years ago to allow my wife to quit her job and stay at home full time with our youngest daughter and run our home.
Second is that I kept working hard to build an income stream that allowed me to quit consulting and work from home full time.
Third is how AffPortal has grown to be a multi national presence in Internet Marketing with long term members from all over the world. When we combined with PPVPlaybook.com last year it completed us to be more than just tools but a killer community as well. I'm very proud to be part of the AffPortal.com / PPVPlaybook.com community.
How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I first learned of making money online when I purchased a book at Borders about Adsense and started down that rabbit hole. Once I gained a little traction I found my account had been closed and I was back to square one. That was the best piece of bad news I had ever received.
It was then that I really dug in and discovered the old forum at Click Consultants. Ironically Jon, you were in the same group as I was if you remember.
I realized the potential in affiliate marketing when one of my first sites started to gain some traction in the email submit realm and dishing out free baby stuff. I hit my first $30 on Superbowl Sunday night and from then I knew I could scale this to MUCH larger heights.
It was that next monday that I wrote my first tool, a keyword permutator, to help build a massive list of city relative keywords. That was the beginning of AffPortal but I didn't know it at the time.
I had initially chosen Affiliate Marketing as a second income and eventually realized with enough work I could build this into a full time income.
I "hit the big time" with a killer funnel I built for the netflix offer using PPV as a paid traffic source. The income from that far surpassed what my wife was making and it allowed her to quit her job and come home for good.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
It takes a never say die attitude to become a successful affiliate along with realistic expectations. It's not easy, won't always work, will be challenging, will keep you from sleeping your full 8 hrs and will test your creativity. But most of all it takes a Village. Seriously, if you're an island in IM, you won't reach your potential because by talking things out with others in the industry you get insights and new ideas you may not have.
What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
My biggest failures in IM has been that heart breaker of a niche, dating. I have promoted about every offer and only found one that made a profit for me. THEN, that one, mature dating, switched up their lander and never converted the same for me because I was direct linking and the automation on their new lander wouldn't get approved by my traffic source. Geeze that's a frustrating one. I'm gonna get that niche eventually though, you'll see…
What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
The single toughest problem I had to face has been when I was working full time consulting and learning Internet Marketing in the evenings and super early mornings. Up at 4am for 3 hrs of IM work then off to work at 8. Pick up the kids, make dinner, wife comes home, have dinner with the family then down to my office from 7:30 PM until at least 12 midnight or later.
I averaged about 4 hours of sleep every week day for about 2 years and the only way I got through it was with the encouragement of my wife and friends online that were doing the same darn thing… clawing forward and burning the midnight oil.
Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
I'm not crazy about writing content. I don't like to write about things that don't interest me like recently, Wedding Favors. So I have a girl in the Philippines that I outsource content writing to. She has been with me full time for a month and it's working out better than I ever could have imagined. It was hard to find someone I trust and that could deliver content that I didn't need to edit but the search was worth it.
What is the future of marketing?
Internet marketing is never going away. It grows every year and I'm looking forward to the day that we can build campaigns for automobiles. Now that would be a fattie commission.
If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
I favor niches that I see that are popular around me. I watch what my kids like, what my neighbors and friends are up to and what I see on TV. This Christmas I got into promoting popular stuffed toys because my daughters like them and there was a good search volume online for this particular toy.
I really recommend evergreen niches and to stay away from fad products if you are looking for sustainability. If you can bring traffic fast and furious for any keywords, then get into fad products but I like long term assets b/c we spend quit a bit of time on our campaigns here.
What niche has worked best for you?
My favorite niche to date has been Netflix. The checks coming in from that campaign and the dollars being spent on PPV traffic was big. I have yet to find one like that again.
Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I like a healthy balance of diversification. For affiliate products currently I am splitting my time 50/50 between SEO niche blogs and PPV traffic. However my partner and I are developing our own front end adware and private PPV network using a very interesting open source (not free) script that we are helping to expand on.
How have you made those promotion methods successful?
SEO is new to me and I love a challenge so have tried just about everything out there and let me tell you there's a lot of crap advice and techniques. So with SEO I have a back to basics approach of solid upfront research and strive for exact match domains (but not always possible). I rely HEAVILY on my google suggested keywords scraper inside of AffPortal to find kw phrases that translate into available domains in the .com, .org and .net range.
Next with SEO is consistant content creation and for back linking I employ a strategy that we discuss in length inside of PPVPlaybook lead by a long time SEO expert that goes by DanTheMan.
What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
It's no secret that I love making and selling things online to anyone and I also use PLR a lot of the time as a foundation for those products. So what I'm doing is building a searchable PLR library of all my PLR material at www.PrivateLabelRights.cc. I'm still adding content every day and it's open for foundation members for less than $10/month but it's a ways from where it will be. This is a long term project.
The key with PLR is to group several products together so you can pick and choose pieces of each to use, rewrite and combine together to make your own product or content. This site, with it's searchability will allow that once the products are all loaded.
What problems have you had with those new projects?
It takes FOREVER to go through mountains of PLR material and sort the crap from the good stuff that's going into my library. Setting up the membership system, DAP, is a little tricky too to make sure the content is locked down enough but still shows enough to get indexed well.
Also I put this on a .cc domain really as a test to see if I could get substantial rankings over time using a .cc domain. So far we have luke warm results but it's still a new site.
Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
I know being a programmer has helped me BIG time to prepare me for this career choice. Not only for myself but for my partnership with David Ford at PPVPlaybook.com as well. We compliment each other like yin and yang. I'm a stronger tech guy and he's a stronger marketer and together we are a solid one, two punch.
What are your greatest strengths?
I am not afraid to fail. This enables me to try things that some people may not try for fear they will fail. I am also naturally technical minded so the more technical aspects of this industry do not intimidate me. I see a lot of opportunity in the tech aspects of IM.
What are your greatest weaknesses?
I have general anxiety disorder so sometimes even though things are solid business wise, I find myself worrying about the future and if this or that falls apart, what will I do. This is where I try to rely on my faith.
What motivates you?
I am naturally an entrepreneur from a very early age. I used to dig through dumpsters to gather out wine bottles that my brother and mom and I would decorate and sell back to the residents at our complex when I was in 3rd grade. I made candles to sell every Christmas and I LOVE infomercials.
On top of that, my family motivates me. I want my wife to be able to spend her days with our youngest while she is still young.
What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle"…. yea Ryan!
Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My partner David Ford. He's always there to bounce ideas off of and is not afraid to tell me if an idea is good or bad. He's also not afraid to tell me when I spout off a little too hard in our forum. We're in the same phase of life, live on different ends of North America, partners to the end and have yet to shake hands in person.
What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
I can work with pretty much anybody that is genuine. I have worked with a few guru's and some are impressive and I consider friends, and some others, well… they are matchstick men.
What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My long term goals include a solid portfolio of aged niche blogs selling physical products on auto pilot using only SEO traffic that provides for all my family expenses.
I want to write a SEO Scheduler program to track an SEO project from conception to managed maintenance and all points in between.
I am building a private PPV network for myself and my partner to test out which could develop into a much larger network for PPVPlaybook down the line.
If money were no object I'd be making niche blogs and snowboarding to keep in shape at least 3 times a week.
Where do you want to be ten years from now?
I would like to be back to working 40 hours a week and get in some of those snowboarding days back into my life. Living possibly in Sedona AZ with a large portfolio of my own products and seo niche blogs.
How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
Now my free time goes to my family. My daughter Araella is 13 now and I am trying to steer her into her teen years as smoothly as possible. My youngest Greta is 5 and I'm savoring every little girl thing she does while I'm still bigger than life in her eyes. Finally I'm working on building a strong marriage stronger with my lifelong love Carrie.
If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would pursue programming and wait around for the internet to be unleashed from Arpanet.
What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
My greatest achievement outside of work was probably being an all conference center in college playing football for Shippensburg University in PA.
I have an unfulfilled dream of cruising on a power boat for a year all over North America.
What is your favorite quote?
"Look beyond the Battle"
Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
I can be reached at AffPortal.com, affportal@gmail.com and on skype at "affportal"
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