“I leveraged my family (my brother and sister still work with me to this day), my time, the little capital I had, and hired the smartest people I could find.”

MO.com is proud to partner with The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC):

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The Y.E.C promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

 

A true Internet visionary with a track record for conceptualizing industry-changing innovations, Warren Jolly has an international reputation as a leader in affiliate marketing and search engine optimization.

In 2006 Warren started Affiliate Media, Inc. which provides marketing, publishing, and online advertising solutions in the United States and internationally. Their core focus is providing affiliate marketing education and training to both B2B and B2C clients.

At just 28 years old Warren has had several multi-million dollar businesses in his career and is committed and focused on helping other young entrepreneurs get started and succeed.

MO: For those of us who aren’t familiar with the concept of affiliate marketing, can you break it down? How have you made it the key to your success?

Warren: The basic explanation of affiliate marketing is the ability to earn a commission in exchange for promoting or advertising another company’s product or service. Typically affiliate marketing is an online model but some industries allow it to work offline as well. Amazon.com first pioneered the concept of affiliate marketing in the mid-90’s and now it has become a model that tens of thousands of online retailers have adopted. Affiliate marketing provides a tremendous opportunity for any individual to make a virtually unlimited income using the internet while at the same time minimizing the risks for merchants that are typically associated with other forms of paid advertising as it’s completely performance-based. It’s a true win/win model.

MO: How have you gone from an initial Capital Investment of $1000 to revenue of over $7 million? Once you’ve achieved success like this on such a large scale how do you choose what to focus on next?

Warren: The key to growing our original small investment to millions was leverage. I learned this from a very early age from a few of my mentors. I leveraged my family (my brother and sister still work with me to this day), my time, the little capital I had, and hired the smartest people I could find. I believe most business don’t reach scale because they don’t clearly understand this concept or are too afraid to take the risks associated with creating leverage. We achieve 1350% growth between 2006-2009 by applying leverage everywhere we could. Without leverage, your business will grow slowly no matter how brilliant your ideas are.

MO: You’ve won a number of awards in your industry. Was there any single award that was most meaningful for you?

Warren: Definitely. I am most proud of our two-time award from Inc 500/5000. I am hugely competitive and knowing that we’ve built a business that was in the top 500 out of 27 million businesses is a major accomplishment. It wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing team we’ve put together and I really give them credit for the award.

MO: How do you plan to revolutionize the way consumers and businesses leverage and understand affiliate marketing?

Warren: There is plenty of information on the web about “how to become an affiliate” for individuals or “how to launch an affiliate program” for online merchants. The issue is its very fragmented and there is a major lack of transparency. Our goal is to simplify this information in an easy to understand and trustworthy manner that both sides of the fence can see results from rather quickly. The growth in affiliate marketing has been remarkable, even during some of the most challenging times economically, and we believe it’s time for there to be one centralized place that people can trust.

MO: Like many successful people before you, you appear to have your own share of critics. What do you have to say to the people who question your success?

Warren: This is a great question. I started my first business at the age of 15 and have never held a corporate job in my life. I had to learn what was right and what was wrong in business on my own, and I have definitely had my share of successes and failures. I’ve also made mistakes due that were some of the best learning lessons in my life. I am a big believer that in the business world, you must allow your actions to speak more than words, so I prefer to say a little and do a lot.

MO: You’re committed and focused to helping other entrepreneur’s get started. What are you specifically doing to help start ups? Why do you think it’s so important to encourage and support new start ups?

Warren: I spend a few hours each month coaching young entrepreneurs on making the best decisions early on to ensure they are building a long-term, sustainable business. Most young entrepreneurs make 2 fatal mistakes: 1) They enter a market that is too small or 2) They create a business that does not put their customers first. I know because I’ve made these same exact mistakes and had to adapt quickly.

It’s important to encourage and support new startups because they are the future of this economy. Microsoft, Google, and Apple were startups once upon a time and now they are some of the largest corporations in the world and provide employment to hundreds of thousands of people. The only way our nation is going to get itself out of the mess it has created is through innovation and the creation of employment, which is really at the core of what startups do.