Four-and-a-half years ago, at the age of 29, Cindy Battye was diagnosed with breast cancer and forced to undergo surgery and a course of chemotherapy that would interrupt her training to become a school teacher. She could have shut down mentally and emotionally, but instead Cindy sought out a new project to keep herself engaged. That project became the inspiration, for what is now, a multimillion dollar membership based empire.
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?
Everything changed for me in Feb 2006. I was 29 years old at the time, am a mother of two and my husband and I decided that it would be great for me to go to university to study to become a primary school teacher a couple of years earlier, we were BROKE as... so having a career as a teacher seemed like an excellent idea.
Anyway, back to what happened in Feb 2006! I was diagnosed with cancer. It caught us totally by surprise and the year that followed was just messy, with surgeries, chemo and radiotherapy treatments etc I had to take a break from study. I had been totally on-the-go, being a wife, mum and uni student that the step back to get better was hard... so, while I was having treatment, I decided to set myself a challenge of creating a website. It was something that I had absolutely no training in, and no experience at all, which made the challenge even more fun - and, it was something that I could do, in my own time, at my own pace - which suited me perfectly.
By the time the doc gave me the all clear (yay!!), I was earning, maybe... $100 a week, which doesn’t sound like much, but it was equal to what the government was giving me to study, so I took the risk and decided to not go back to university, becoming totally excited with the idea of working for myself and answering no no-one. I still remember the day I went into the university and told them I wouldn’t be coming back anymore - farewell hugs to all of my student friends and teachers.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
At the end of 2007 I had started working closely with Soren Jordansen and John Merrick. It turned out that through an online marketing forum I found a couple of people who got as geeky as me about membership based websites, affiliate income and so we started helping each other and then, at the start of 2008 we decided to join forces and create a company together.
Then - together with Soren and John, we launched CBPirate, which was a massive success - and it still continues to be heaps popular, even well over a year later.
We have now built a mailing list of over 320k subscribers, which now grows at a viral rate, because of a few bits and pieces that we have implemented to not just provide value, but a real reason for people to tell other people about not just CBPirate, but also all of our other websites.
CBPirate basically met a massive need - where everyone was told HOW to build a squeezepage, giveaway reports, followup email series etc. CBPirate provided the most complete plug and play system, letting our members just focus on sending traffic to the squeezepages we build for them, and then having us do all of the product creation/hosting/monetization part of list building.
Soren and I now travel the world, helping people to understand the benefits of affiliate marketing using membership websites as their base business model. In the last 12 months we have visited about 8 different countries - it really has been an incredible journey and is amazingly freeing to know that with the model we are using we have the freedom to go where we want/do what we want and allow me to give my family the lifestyle that is just crazy. One of the best things is being able to take my kids to places like Egypt, Italy, Germany, London, US etc and actually SHOW them the Statue of Liberty, or the incredibly pyramids, or Tower Bridge - rather than just reading about it in books.
It just blows my mind to think that together, Soren, John and I are running this 7 figure company, when just a few years ago, I had never heard of affiliate marketing, clickbank etc. And the coolest thing is that I haven’t done anything incredibly special to get here, just keeping a positive attitude, treating people right and putting ideas into action, which is exciting for me, ‘cause I KNOW that pretty much anyone and everyone can do this thing... sheesh... I am proof of that!! 
Other cool stuff that has happened:
In both the Apex and Premier Elite groups of Clickbank (top affiliate club and top vendors)
Featured in the Get Rich Click book, being published March ’11: Get Rich Click.
International Speaking gigs in London, Israel, Australia, Philippines, USA and many other places.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Promote good products, to people that want to buy.
The way that we do it is to create high quality membership based products, so that people can connect to our membership site, making them feel a part of what we are doing, rather than just another number on our mailing list.
By building a community/membership based list etc, you have the HUGE benefit of not having to repeat the same efforts over and over for once-off traffic to your offers. You can then put your effort into creating the product/service that is your frontend product/offer/squeezepage - which then becomes your own assets too - rather than just sending random traffic direct to an affiliate link, which may or may not convert.
Something that we have done a bit too, is to have free (great quality) products as an entry point, things like http://mobilebannercreator.com or http://dailynicheidea.com - which are great quality, useful resources and then have upsells (which also provide value - not just for the sake of us making money).
This can work for any product you have, Soren and John have one here: http://imsuccessformula.com which is basically a report, but delivered within a membership area, so that they build a list, have the options to followup, promote our other products and heaps more.
It’s a bit more work to set up your own website etc, but if you break it down it is manageable and even if it takes you a month or two to get it set up - you will have an asset that is yours and that you can keep building in the future!
What is the single toughest issue you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
Well, probably the cancer... of course... I had loads of support through that though, which was just amazing. After that though, the most difficult thing that I had to face when getting started online was the fact that I had such a crappy mindset. What we expect, truly expect for ourselves, is what we will accomplish. That isn’t just ‘hoping that things will get better’ self-talk blah blah. For me, it became an assumed knowledge, that I will get to $xxx a month, then... reset the goal posts. Once you set smaller goals and see that those ones are easily accomplished, it gives you the encouragement to dream bigger, slightly crazier goals so you can see them come true too.
Something else that helped me break out of the yucky mindset was to surround myself with positivity, talk to successful people, start listening to what the people that you envision are massively successful people are saying - and then emulate that. I truly believe that everyone has everything they need within themselves to become a successful entrepreneur, and that more often than not, it’s just an ingrained subconscious belief that holds people back.
Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
Oooh, I have a LIST of things that I don’t like working on.... haha. The beauty of the internet and entrepreneurialism in general is that you need to know that you don’t have to do it all yourself. There isn’t a shortage of people who can do great programming, excellent design work, content creation etc - but.. the real shortage online are people who can manage those people successfully.
If you are just starting out and can’t afford to outsource every part of the product development, marketing, traffic generation that is ok too - but, have a look at your time investment. Is it going to take you 3 weeks of your time to work out how to make a banner in photoshop? Is that better outsourced to someone at http://fiverr.com etc - like.. 5 bucks!
The most important thing that you can do for your online business is to invest the time in planning out what needs to be done, then... work out what you are able to comfortably and, for the most part, enjoyably do - and what totally boggles your mind, you can find someone else to do it.
Some of the places that we get super cheap work done are:
http://fiverr.com
http://odesk.com
http://vworker.com
http://www.v7n.com/forums/ is a great place to find designers and
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ is another good forum to find people to do pretty much anything, really cheap, like software/script installs for a few bucks, cheap banners, cheap content etc.
Of course, you get what you pay for, so be careful especially on the forums, but I have found some great people who still do work for us from time to time.
Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I totally love anything that is viral and/or can be automated. Most internet marketers will pitch it at you, telling you that you should do this so that you can spend the time lazing on a beach, or whatever... lol. I think the main benefit to automation is that once I have a website set up, with an affiliate program in place (so that other people do the bulk of traffic generation for me) and all of the integration points set up (placing ads within the members area/website/download pages etc), you are then free to start creation of another project, while the one you just completed can keep bringing in leads and earning you money.
This way, it is completely scalable - I am *slightly* competitive... yes, I like the ‘lay on the beach’ thing, but I really like the overall business plan of being able to, one day... have a completely self-sufficient income generating system - which you can add to any time you want an additional income boost.
Every kind of promotion that we do, we try and think with long term goals. Making $50 by the end of the weekend might be fun, but it’s no way to build something that you can build on in the future, add to and expand. I would suggest that if you want to set yourself goals, set it like... try to get 20 leads on your list. Long term goals lead to long term financial security.
And.. while I have a soapbox (lol), I would also say that you should make sure that whatever promotion you do, make sure that you keep your long term goals in mind. Set yourself goals, break them down to manageable chunks and then go for it. It is inevitable that you will face distractions, whether it’s on youtube, or your email in box telling you of the hottest, latest, greatest invention to make you mega bucks. Ignore it all!!! If it isn’t going to be something getting you closer to your main goal, ditch it.
If, however, something else that is inevitable, is that if you set your goal, break it down and chip away at it one bit at a time, you will get there. Just plan to accomplish one or two things each day that are going to get you closer to what you want to achieve and it’s yours!
How can we keep in touch with what you are doing?
Sure, my main blog is here: http://cindybattye.com
If you want to keep in touch via facebook you can do that here:
http://cindybattye.com/facebook - I am over my 5k friends limit, but you can reach me via the ‘like’ page.
http://twitter.com/cindybattye is my twitter - if you want me to see your message, please write @cindybattye and I’ll respond 
Thank you for the opportunity to share with you and your readers Jonathan.
are things that you’ll have heard of many times if you’ve be following along and some are new to me although a few of you might have heard of them before.
Posts
