on May 13, 2013 8:02 pm

Hey, what’s going on people? I’m Devon Dudeman and I’m going to be a regular contributor here at jamielewis.com. Today I’m going to talk to you about digital media marketing and Jamie Lewis. Before I continue, I should probably tell you a little bit about myself.

I’m a 23 year old entrepreneur who’s been involved in digital marketing since 2007. Since that time I’ve made thousands of dollars, done many incredible things, and met some awesome people. I’ve never had a real job, and I don’t think that I will ever have one.

Now, before I delve into the heart of this article, I want to talk about a few fundamental concepts that apply to having a digital media company, or what is commonly referred to as an “online business”. By the way, I will tell you that I don’t like that term, but I digress. Anyway, this whole game is about producing and distributing content, using the internet as your medium. Deejays use the radio as the medium for their content, talk show hosts use the television, and we use the internet. You know what I’m saying?

Every single person that makes any amount of money online, does so because they produce content. There is no way around this fundamental truth and you need to accept it if you plan to do anything with this internet game. I call it a game too because it is just that, a game. Or at least it helps me to think about it as a game. Anyway, let’s move on.

Another concept that you need to accept is that there are no overnight success stories in this game. Whether you’re a rapper trying to become the next best thing, or a college dropout who wants to make some serious money online, there are no shortcuts, and any examples of “overnight” success that you might think of, are actually the product of many long years working hard for it. My case in point? I have two: Eminem went serious with his rap career when he was 22 years old, but he didn’t break out and “blow up” until he was 27.

But this article isn’t about Eminem, it’s about my good friend, Jamie Lewis. I’ve had the great honor of being one of Jamie’s friends, although I haven’t always been one of his friends. Before I can talk about how I became friends with Jamie Lewis, we have to go back...way back.

In the year 2007, I was a senior in high school. Now, I always was an entrepreneur, but I had been drawn into the prospect of making huge returns on my investments, using the internet. The problem was that most people told me that this was impossible, although I didn’t believe them. If you ask an investment banker or an internet marketer if it’s possible to make a hell of a lot of money in a relatively short period of time, then they’ll tell you the truth...which is, absolutely. Now, I didn’t know any internet marketers or investment bankers back then, but I knew that the naysayers were wrong, and so I set out to prove it to them.

Anyway, I digress. Like I said, the year was 2007 and I remember searching the internet for ways to make money using my computer. Now, I’m not the smartest guy around, but I’m not an idiot. I knew that I would need to sell things in order to make money, which is apparently, a big surprise for a lot of people. Oh, and in case you don’t already know this, the only way to make money online is to sell something...which means that a transaction has to occur. A lot of people I talk to, are under the impression that there’s this magical internet money waiting to be found or something. I don’t understand some people and their line of reasoning.

Anyway, so that’s how I got my start. I wanted to produce and sell my own products, but I wasn’t confident in any of my abilities, and I didn’t think I was qualified to be an authority on any subject. After all, I was only 17, and what 17 year old is an expert on anything? Plus, I didn’t have any startup capital, so I couldn’t create a tangible product and build a business around that even if I wanted to.

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So what do you do if you want to make money online, but you don’t have any start up capital, or you aren’t an expert on anything? You sell other people’s products that they’ve already produced. In case you don’t already know, this is called being an affiliate marketer. In this business model, you can sell everything from e-books to dildos.

With this relatively basic knowledge and a burning ambition to succeed, I got to work on my first marketing project. I’m a little bit embarrassed to be sharing this, but I’ll tell you what I did first. I bought a horrible domain name, put up a silly website using Microsoft Front Page 2003, and I remember spending all day working on that damn site spending an obscene amount of time doing the most basic of tasks. After a few weeks of hard work, I had a “virtual mall” full of Clickbank products and short reviews that only an idiot would take seriously. It’s no surprise to me now, why I never sold a single thing from that website.

After that waste of time, I looked around the marketing forums for affiliate marketing tactics I could try out. I ended up coming across a method called “bum marketing”, which seemed so simple, and it was. The idea was simple enough: you would write niche articles and product review articles and then submit those articles to article directories. Now, you have to remember that the year was 2007, and these were the days where you could place a raw affiliate link inside of an article. It was also the time where articles in directories would rank in the SERP (search engine results page).

Oh, I really do miss those days! I’d write articles on a few niches and include two affiliates links within the article, with one in the body, and another in the resource box. The articles would get traffic naturally, and then I’d make affiliate commissions on the people that clicked though my affiliate links and bought the product I was promoting. This is where I first came across Jamie Lewis because I remember finding his affiliate portal, Big Billions. I liked what he had and so I promoted his products using this marketing loophole.

This worked until about 2009, if memory serves me correctly. The article directories changed their terms of service so that affiliate links were no longer allowed within the articles, and the Search Engines further solidified this change by updating their algorithms so that articles in directories would not appear in the SERP’s. Bum Marketing, had become obsolete, and so my income dried up as a result.

There is quite an important lesson to be learned here: it is better to base your business efforts on reliable foundations, rather than on what loophole or gimmick is working at the time. Bum marketing was a classic example of a internet loophole that only worked for a short period of time. No business will survive if it is based on such fleeting shortcuts, and so I deserved what had happened to me. Although at the time, I was pissed off, and it was a bit of a wakeup call for me when I lost my primary income stream. I also learned that will never again base my business on something I had absolutely no control over.

After this defeat, I decided that I needed to focus on long term projects, and not waste time with fleeting shortcuts and gimmicks that could end at a moment’s notice. I began building my email lists and promoted products by creating sales funnels. Sales funnels exist in every business both online and offline, and are the engineered experience of a customer from prospect to buyer.

When it comes to digital marketing, you drive suspects to a piece of content such as an article or video. The suspect then clicks on a link and goes to a squeeze page, opts into the list, and becomes a prospect. The prospect will then receive a “freemium” in the form of some incentive product such as a discount code, e-book, video, or email series. The prospect is then given a series of newsletters to their inbox that develop a relationship between you and them. Once the prospect trusts you, they will buy from you, and become a customer. This is grossly oversimplified of course, but you should get the idea on how this works.

Since I was in college, this worked out pretty well for me. I produced content and funneled people into my lists, who would then receive my email newsletters that included affiliate promotions in them every so often. I kept promoting Jamie’s products because they converted pretty well and made good money as a result. I started paying more and more attention to Jamie around this point because I knew that this guy knew what he was doing. Other products I had promoted had really bad conversion rates, but Jamie’s converted really well for my subscribers.

I also started studying what he was doing. I knew he was a producer and that’s exactly what I wanted to do, except that I didn’t consider myself qualified in anything. I would watch his videos on his Youtube channel, go to a few webinars, and became more familiar with who he was and what he did. I considered myself pretty knowledgeable when it came to affiliate marketing, but I was unfamiliar with producing my own products.

Here was this guy, all of 33 years old, who made millions of dollars producing his own digital products. I found myself connected to his story since he was the only vendor that I consistently promoted, and promoted well. I started learning more about him and how he grew up in the ghetto. He didn’t even start his business until he was 27, and here he was, a self-made multimillionaire who started from the bottom.

Sometime in 2011, I found out that Jamie lived in the exact same state that I did, and so I told myself that I wanted to meet this guy. I had been promoting his products for almost four years now, and had done pretty well for myself. He also seemed like a wicked chill dude, and so I decided that I should try networking with him.

The thing that bothered me the most was that I knew that Jamie had plenty of people that tried networking with him so that they could get something out of him, and so I’d have a hard time showing him that I wasn’t just trying to use him. It’s expected when you’re rich: everyone wants something from you, and they want it for free.

So I had to take a careful approach with him, and I knew that the odds were that nothing would come of it, but I decided to try anyway. I kept on promoting his products and I started engaging with him by leaving comments on his videos and such. I then decided to reach out to him over email, and he was cool enough to respond. The funny thing was, as soon as I established contact, I wasn’t sure how to go about it. I actually thought about Benjamin Franklin and what he said about making people like him. He used the concept of reciprocity when meeting people by asking them to do favors for him.

Since I had been a pretty decent affiliate for Jamie over the past few years, I decided to take that approach. I knew this might have been a bad idea, but I didn’t want to come across as a kiss-ass...but I didn’t want to come across as an entitled leech either. I wanted to get into product production myself, and had been working on a Joint Venture over the past few months.

So, I told him how I had been an affiliate for him, and I decided to ask him to be one of my affiliates. To my amazement, Jamie was like, “You’re a friggin’ cool dude, Dudeman. I’ll send you some traffic, bro!”. From that point on, my business relationship with Jamie grew and grew.

It wasn’t that long after that I finally got to meet the man in person. Hanging out with Jamie is like hanging out with a rockstar: you’re always having a good time, and you’re always causing some sort of mischief. I felt like I was Eminem who finally got to befriend Dr. Dre. It really is incredible, and I’ve forever grateful for that.

Partying with Jamie is always a bad ass time since he knows how to entertain his guests. Apart from that, we’ve made some really funny satirical videos, and we’ll make some more. If you haven’t seen those videos, then I’d suggest going over to the multimedia page after you’re done reading this article. My personal favorite is the Scam Universe video, where we make fun of Empower Network. I’ve also had the honor of being a special guest on Jamie’s internet marketing classes, and I’ve loved sharing my knowledge and experience with his students there.

Over the past year, I’ve had the great honor of developing a friendship with Jamie, rather than just a business relationship. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but that has not been my experience as one of Jamie’s friends. This guy has a lot of love for his customers, his family, his country, and for people in general. I’m a bit surprised that this is even possible, considering that most people with a background similar to his, would grow up to be bitter individuals. I have a lot of respect for Jamie Lewis, and I’m proud to call myself one of his best friends.

If you’re not familiar with Jamie Lewis, then get familiar. If you’re already a customer, then let us know what you think in the comments below. Also, share this website with your friends, and subscribe to it so you can stay up to date with what’s going on here....and trust me, you won’t want to miss what’s in the works here.