Pedro Sostre: Follow Your Passion
By: Lisa Picarille
Pedro Sostre is all about art and good design. And he's not afraid to voice his opinions on either subject.
"Most websites suck in terms of design," he says, though he also admits there are many design-oriented sites that are extremely well-done and that he'd be hard-pressed to single out just a handful of them.
When it comes to art, he's fond of the impressionist style of painting. He loves art with bold colors. He leans more toward more modern work and loves Piet Mondrian and his counterparts, but he's not very fond of pop artists like Andy Warhol.
A passion for art and design seems to permeate everything he does - especially his work.
Sostre, principal and creative director of Sostre & Associates, is a Miami-based affiliate who also does Web development and consulting.
He's one of Commission Junction's top performers - with a network earnings ratio of five bars. He's been a publisher with Commission Junction since 2003 and runs a number of sites, from book clubs to cosmetics to equestrian vacations, including AudioBookDeals.com, BestCreditSolutions.com, EquestrianMag.com, iTravelMag.com, Look-Your-Best.com and Tax-Stuff.com.
Sostre started his professional design career in 1998 doing identity and brand consulting along with designing logos and business cards. Around 1999, when the Internet was gaining in popularity, Sostre started to get more involved in designing websites. "I really just wanted to see what it was all about," he says. "Then I realized there was money to be made."
Like most who wanted to ride the Internet gravy train, Sostre had no formal training with computers or the Web. He came from a graphics design and visual communications background at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.
"In school we didn't have very many computers. I think I took one programming class, but there was nothing related to the Internet," he laughs.
However, after working on the design portion of several clients' websites, Sostre would often see sales jump from $5,000 to $50,000 a month. Suddenly he wondered why he wasn't doing this for himself. So in 1999 he started working on his first affiliate website and launched it in 2000. Not surprisingly, SiteDesignMagazine.com was aimed at site designers.
"I still have that site today, but now it's like a stepchild that doesn't get much attention," he says.
Sostre concedes that at the time he launched his first site, he "had no idea what was going to work" and he just "put up a bunch of stuff." The good news was that certain elements showed lots of promise.
"Affiliate marketing was not mature back then," he notes. "I just kind of did it myself and kept trying new stuff."
He didn't have anyone to look to for advice or tips when he started. BeFree was the network Sostre signed up with when he first started out. "It's not like Commission Junction is now, where they provide advice and help for publishers. It was like 'Here are the merchants' links, just grab them and go,' " he says.
And if he did come across someone willing to share online marketing war stories, they weren't really making any money anyway.
"Most affiliates were in their own little sheltered environments," he says. "The people that were doing well didn't have the time to be out and talking. They were hard at work on their sites."
Sostre took note of that. He kept his head down and mostly just figured things out for himself. He says he simply used basic principles of salesmanship and marketing. "I applied what I knew from traditional business."
During college and high school he had a variety of sales jobs - Godiva and Structure (now Men's Express) - that taught him a lot, and he says much of his early retail sales training came in handy. He's also not afraid to take risks and make mistakes.
"I spent a lot of money that I didn't need to spend, but every cent taught me something," he says.
Currently Sostre has about 20 sites that are close to done and approximately seven that are completely up and running. He also owns another 100 domains and is trying to figure out how best to use them.
"I can be very fickle and get bored easily. That's when I move on to different stuff," he says. If I'm losing on one site and then realize that there's another area where no one has done very well, then I might consider creating a site to fill that need."
Typically, like with his equestrian site, EquestrianMag.com, Sostre identifies a market or industry, looks at the existing sites and evaluates them. If there are a lot of bad sites, but he still thinks there are enough people interested in the topic, he will buy a domain name and launch a new site.
The three sites Sostre considers to be his best-performing are FreeBookClubs.com, AudioBookDeals.com and iTravelMag.com.
 He does pay per click on his own websites. He doesn't do bulk email or PPC arbitrage. Because many of his sites are online magazines, he also has to refresh content frequently. He hires freelance writers and updates the site with new articles once a month and uses free press releases. However, he refuses to use keyword articles and search engine spam.
"I know there are people out there that capitalize on that to get the traffic," he says. "I won't do that." But there are several things he has done that have helped him achieve success. "I'm doing something I love. I love designing websites and trying to find new ways to increase business using the Internet, and that's what I get to do all day long. I'm constantly trying new things. You have to try everything and don't be afraid to fail. And I'm always learning. Whether it's a new programming language or a new sales principle, I try to be in a constant state of learning."
And no matter how successful he becomes, he's never afraid to seek help or learn from someone else. Recently he considered one of his sites nearly dead. It had only a couple of sales in the last year. But he resuscitated the site by working with an affiliate manager friend. Continued on Page 2...
Tags:
design, web page, pedro sostre, commission junction, top performer, redesign, conversion, piet mondrian, andy warhol, impressionist style, bold colors, art, pop artists, creative director, permeate, leans, counterparts, handful, painting, passion,
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