Judi Moore: The Leaper
By: Eric Reyes
 Judi Moore is not a super-affiliate.
She's not even sure what that is. She
doesn't see this as a detriment. Being
an affiliate is also not her first career.
In fact, at 52 years old, she's had a lifetime
of work in the corporate world – in about
three industries, she says – only to land
back in her home state of Illinois, with six
grown kids, husband No. 2, a Schnauzer
and a burgeoning affiliate business.
She is the first one to say that she hasn't
really got a plan. She's a leaper, not a looker,
even though her diminutive frame doesn't
scream out that she's a fighter. Always
ready with a quip, her independence and
voracious mind more than make up for her
stature. Her personal motto is, "Leap and
the net will appear." And that is pretty much
what she's been doing her whole life.
What makes her stand out and helped
inform her independent spirit goes all
the way back to high school. Before she
was even out of her senior year, she
received a full scholarship to Brigham
Young University in Utah back in the
early '70s. It was a long way from
where she grew up in Illinois, but she
grabbed her sweetheart, married him
and lit out for Utah in nearly the same
week. He was a farmer and followed
her out there to see what he could do.
By Christmas of that year she and her
husband were back in Illinois. Her attempt
at higher education was over. As a good
Mormon, she knew some of the expectations
– get married, have kids, be faithful to
the faith. But what she didn't count on was
living in a society that basically devalued
her studies – journalism and the fine arts.
What she also didn't count on was having
a husband that abused her and was
unfaithful. In 1981, after having three children
and moving to Montana for her husband's
job, it was clear that her marriage
was also over.
"I'm an independent sort," she says, "and
I swept up the kids and went to town. And
felt betrayed. Then he filed for divorce.
While there was domestic abuse – I was
excommunicated from the church. I was
the bad one in their eyes."
She thought it was more than odd that
when she arrived to start school, the reception
was chilly. "I never expected to be
looked at funny for being the one going to
school and my husband working." While
she looks back at that time and calls it a
"failure in my life," the experience taught
her a lot about liberty, self-determination,
the troubles with blind faith and introduced
the notion that "everything that happens to
you puts you to the path you are on."
These are all helpful pieces of life's mosaic she took
into the corporate world – with three kids and no college
degree. She started selling radio ads in Montana. It was
just a job that began as the "little girl order taker," but she
found she was good at it and moved to other kinds of
marketing. Eventually she was going to stop work to be
with family – but ended up in a small mortgage firm.
Mortgage lender Countrywide Financial recruited her
and made her an assistant manager and then regional
manager. By then she was commuting two hours each
way and decided to get back to Rockford, Ill. – where
she and her second husband have been for 20 years, with
her three kids and his three kids.
Along the way, they bought and sold a small radio
station in New Mexico. Her second husband, Dave
Moore, was known as the guy who would come into radio
stations and turn them around if they were in trouble.
Meeting him turned her around as well. She says that
he just made the cut – before her radical feminism ruled
out anything to do with marriage. "I'm not radical anymore,"
she says. "It's young blood that runs hot." And it
was her husband and his "geekiness" that first led her to
the Internet. Also, she was at Countrywide Financial as
a middle manager when the company went online, and
while she didn't know about things like eBay.com, she figured
if she could sell books about mortgages online she
could put some money away for retirement.
Moore will be the first one to tell you that she lacks
an affinity for technology. Not that she can't do it – she
says she can pretty much teach herself anything – but she
thought an easy way would be to have her husband and
stepson code Web pages for her.
So in 2004 she opened LunchBreakShopping.com,
her mall, selling everything from crafts to fashion to
movies to bridal and baby stuff. Having come from corporate
America, she knew first hand that many people shop
online while at the office. She says she built the mall with
one hand while holding the HTML book in the other and
saw a little profit in the first year she filed a tax return.
She's still not making big bucks and she knows that
a bit more care in her campaigns may get her more
notice. She's not rich and she's actually not looking to
get rich – just a little extra for her husband's retirement
would be great. He retires soon and therefore she would
love to find strategies to keep her commissions coming.
One turning point was joining ShareASale.com in
the summer of 2005. Up until then her sales were fairly
flat. "I learned from ABestWeb forums that I should
give ShareASale a shot," she said, "and kind of didn't
make a dime until that. Continued on Page 2...
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