Mark Bishop Interview

Editor:

Today we're joined by a marketer and entrepreneur with a rich background stretching back to a keen interest in direct marketing that goes back to the 1980s. Over the years, Mark Bishop has spearheaded successful launches, including Niche Synergy. With his latest endeavor BLOX, he's set to guide aspiring entrepreneurs through the intricacies of affiliate marketing. And from his home base in Bristol Mark balances family and a thriving online career. So let's dive into the journey and insights of Mark Bishop. Welcome, Mark. It's great to meet you.

Mark Bishop:

Thanks for having me.

Editor:

Well, as I mentioned, your interest in marketing goes maybe all the way back to the 1980s.

Mark Bishop:

Yeah, shows my age. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, back then it was direct mail, it was mail order. I was just fascinated by the whole concept really.

Editor:

And what made you get an interest in that? Was it just like letters you'd received through the door?

Mark Bishop:

Yeah, well, everything really, I mean, it was a lot of people would call it junk mail. I used to term it as being gold. I collect it, I still collect it, now I have sales letters going back maybe 10, 20 years. I just find it fascinating that the written words, a sales page could inspire you to buy something.

Editor:

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark Bishop:

Yeah, it does go all the way back to the 80s and yeah, it was just fascinating stuff really.

Editor:

Do you use that, all the letters you've received over the years, do you use that as inspiration now for your own product launches?

Mark Bishop:

I do, yes. Like I say, I did collect a lot of it and I still refer to it. You can find a lot of it online now. But yeah, I still refer to it. It's just fascinating stuff.

Editor:

Really, and who would you say has influenced you the most from the letters that you received? Any names stand out?

Mark Bishop:

There were some, I mean, I don't really fixate on particular copywriters, but I can remember signing up to a newsletter, and it was a company called Streetwise Marketing. I think they're still going, actually. And some of their sales letters were just great. I even bought some of their products.

Editor:

So they actually encouraged you to actually put your hand in your pocket as well. You know it's a success when that happens.

Mark Bishop:

Yeah, absolutely.

Editor:

So we mentioned that this interest goes all the way back to the 1980s, but when did you start online? When did you start your own business?

Mark Bishop:

Well, I kind of fell into it. I mean, I was interested, like we've already discussed in direct marketing, but for most of my working life, I worked in the construction industry. So I've been a painter, a decorator, I've been a plumber. And I'm not an academic, in fact, I'm dyslexic. But as the internet took off, and I guess I was just starting off late to the internet, really, I didn't really get into it until around 2010.

Mark Bishop:

And I can remember being interested in it being on the Warrior forum, and forums like that. And just seeing what other people were doing and just thinking to myself, well, this looks very much like the direct marketing of the 80s. And I bought products, like a lot of people probably listening. I bought products, I tried them and I didn't get anywhere, made lots of mistakes. But then I bought a couple of products by, let's see, I think one of the vendors was Mark Ling, another was Roy Carter.

Mark Bishop:

Both of these were products about niche marketing. Now, what appealed to me about niche marketing was the fact that you didn't have to do the kind of stuff that we're doing here. You didn't have to be on video, you didn't even have to use your own name and pictures and that, you could just use a different persona. So I had a go with that, and at the time, I had a skin condition and I'd learn to manage it with natural products. And what I did was I documented that, how I coped with that skin condition, and I put together, it was about 40 page PDF and managed to get it onto ClickBank. And I've got no technical skills at all, so that was a bit of a tall order in itself, but I managed to get it onto ClickBank.

Mark Bishop:

And I didn't know how to drive traffic so I used Google Ads at the time, and I was just amazed. It was just a crazy thing. But I made $120 the first night. So I was sat there watching TV, I checked my laptop, $120 at night, and I didn't really know what I was doing. But from that point onwards, I just scaled the niche marketing. I did that while I was still working as a plumber. I did that part-time, and it was crazy. I got to a point where I had that site and I built another one in a different niche, sorry. And I sold the two. I sold one for $37,000 and I sold another for $77,000. And that was really my gateway into the internet marketing space.

Editor:

That must have been a bit of a game changer for you as well.

Mark Bishop:

Yeah, it allowed me to give up the day job, as it were, and concentrate on the internet marketing space full time.

Editor:

Nice. And when was this? Which year?

Mark Bishop:

This would've been, I think I sold both of the sites... It's funny, I was looking at Flipper the other day, actually. I think I sold both of the sites in 2013.

Editor:

Okay, so you started in 2010, effectively just dabbling with-

Mark Bishop:

Yes, doing the niche marketing part-time.

Editor:

And then three years later you've got like a $100,000 payday from two of the products that you've put together, and that's where you are selling the website and the product to somebody else. You're not obviously-

Mark Bishop:

Yes, I sold both of the businesses is going concern, so I sold the Clickback accounts along with the sites, et cetera.

Editor:

Great. I mean, and that's an unusual way, most people make a product and they just try and sell it over and over and over again. What made you, first of all, aware of Flipper, the website, and also what made you want to divest of those products, those assets?

Mark Bishop:

Yeah. Well, it's a good question. I liked doing the niche marketing, and one of the reasons I continued to do the niche marketing was because I didn't want my face on camera, I didn't want people to know my name, that kind of thing. But then as I did more and more of it, and sold more and more products, I realized that within a niche, there's only so many buyers. So what I wanted to do was to broaden that spectrum and move into the IM space, make money online, software, info products, that kind of thing.

Mark Bishop:

Because one buyer in those niches will potentially buy lots and lots of different products, whereas if you're selling in a niche, they're only going to buy one product. So yeah, I mean, I pushed myself to do it. So I sold those two sites with a view to having enough money to allow me to give up the plumbing and to concentrate on IM full-time. And yeah, that was the main reason for it, moving into IM, because it's a broader audience, and it means you can sell lots more products.

Editor:

And did you do the time honored thing of, you'd sold your two businesses on Flipper, did you then put together a course on how to sell businesses on Flipper?

Mark Bishop:

Absolutely. Well, no, it wasn't so much that. What I did was I documented and detailed everything that I did in order to find these niches, to build these niche sites, build these niche products, and I put it all into a training course called Niche Synergy, which I released I think in September 2014. So from the time I sold the two sites until I launched the Synergy, I was working on it. So it was a massive product, and I think I only sold it for about $10. But even that, I can remember the first day of launch, I think within between three and five hours I've made $10,000.

Editor:

Wow.

Mark Bishop:

It was just fantastic. And from that point on, I was hooked.

Editor:

Absolutely. So when did you give up the plumbing stuff?

Mark Bishop:

2013 when I sold the two sites.

Editor:

Right.

Mark Bishop:

So prior to that I was doing everything part-time.

Editor:

Was that a life goal for you, do you think?

Mark Bishop:

Making a tonne of money has always been a life goal. I mean, you can sugarcoat it any way you like. But I always wanted to be successful, and not being an academic was a barrier. My careers officer back in the day, I mean I left school in 1983, I was told my best case scenario would be to join the Army.

Editor:

Right.

Mark Bishop:

Yeah. I wasn't going to aspire to much else, join the Army.

Editor:

And what would you say now to those people that perhaps were pointing you in that direction?

Mark Bishop:

Well, I think what I'd say to anybody listening is you can actually be whatever you want to be, and you can do whatever you want to do within reason. There are barriers that you could overcome those barriers, you just need to fix a goal in your mind and you need to work towards that.

Editor:

Well now, I mean, as we stand right now, you've got a series of successful product launches under your belt. What do you think has been, if you like, the secret to your success?

Mark Bishop:

I was thinking about this and I guess you'd ask it. I think the secret to my success is starting late, always seeing everything as a beginner, even though... So when I write copy, when I create a product, I'm always creating a product with a beginner in mind. Because I realize, coming from my background, how difficult it is. People look at products and people with a tech background seem to... They look at things different because obviously they understand tech. A lot of beginners don't understand tech, and it's a bit of an eyeopener when you first log into a product. So what I tried to do is base everything on a complete beginner looking at the product for the first time.

Editor:

Got you. And your latest initiative aims to help beginners in affiliate marketing. This is BLOX 2.0.

Mark Bishop:

BLOX, yeah.

Editor:

So there's already been BLOX 1.0. And how did that do, and what's knew about 2.0?

Mark Bishop:

Well BLOX is perhaps a product that I'm most proud of. I first developed the concept in 2017, and it isn't affiliate marketing system, but it works in a very different way. I mean, both BLOX 1 and 2. What it does is, well, most people listening to this now will understand what affiliate marketing is. So most of the time, in most cases, when you are promoting a product, you create a promotion which is specific to that one product. But with BLOX, we don't do that. It's likely reverse system. So what we do is we build value-based products. We promote, we pre-sell those products, and then we send anybody that's interested in our product over to what we call a flip page. It's just another page. And on that page, we ask them to purchase a product through us, through our affiliate link in order to get our product.

Mark Bishop:

Now the way this works, and it does work, is it's mainly because we don't have to build products or we don't have to build promotion after promotion after promotion. So we just have one product. We're always promoting that one product, we're driving traffic into that one product all the time, and that allows us to provide anything. So from that flip page, we can change the name of the product that we asked the people to buy, we can change the price, we can change the affiliate link, and that takes us two or three minutes, and that's it. So we can use one system to promote unlimited digital products. You asked what the difference was between 1 and 2. 1 was basically just a video course based on what I was doing then, and some PDFs. Today we have full training. I should also mention BLOX 1 was a blog-based course, so it was all about blogs.

Mark Bishop:

Today it's using social media, it's using video platforms. That allows users to send trafficking in all different manners if you like. But we also have automation built in as well now. So BLOX 2, the front end is basically training, it teaches the whole system instructions, but we have already-made systems in the funnel, and those are complete systems, which a user can rebrand with just a couple of clicks. These are systems that are already tested, they've already made thousands of dollars, and they're ready to go. So if you are a beginner, for example, you can log in and you can use the ready-made systems in literally five minutes.

Editor:

Nice. And where do we find out more about BLOX 2.0?

Mark Bishop:

Where? You would go to bloxevo.com. So that's B-L-O-X, EVO, E-V-O.com.

Editor:

Bloxevo.com. Perfect. Now, I mentioned in the introduction that you are based in Bristol in the UK. How is it in terms of telling your family that you're giving up a career in construction, in plumbing, to move into the online space? Were there any raised eyebrows, any people concerned, any people telling you not to do it, and that you were crazy?

Mark Bishop:

Initially, yes. I can remember telling my wife that, this is when I was doing the niche marketing, "I'm going to sell PDFs," and she thought I was crazy. She said, well, nobody's going to buy a PDF. So it was kind of difficult trying to explain what I was going to do and how it would work, and the fact that it would work. I mean, most people just assumed I was mad. Most people just assumed that everything that happens online is a scam, and it doesn't really work. So there were lots of raised eyebrows, yeah. By the time I actually got to a point where I could give up the plumbing, most people had realised that yes, it did work.

Editor:

That's great. I mean, I guess even former colleagues must now almost be amazed by the success that you've had with this. Have you stayed friends with those guys?

Mark Bishop:

Yes, I have. Yeah, I still go over for the occasional curry with a guy that I was working with, another plumber and an electrician. They're still doing their things, they're still in the construction industry, and yeah, they're always amazed.

Editor:

You've not been able to turn them into the worlds of PDFs then, just yet?

Mark Bishop:

Well, they always ask me, and we sit around the table over a couple of pints and they say, "Well, how'd you do it then?" And I explain, they said, "Yeah, yeah, I can understand how that works," but it's getting your head around it to begin with.

Editor:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you do have a great track record in taking quite complex processes and simplifying them. When you sit down to create a product, or as you've done with BLOX an entire course, what's your process, Mark? How do you approach that?

Mark Bishop:

What I try to do is use the system first. So BLOX is based entirely on what I do. So everything that we show customers inside BLOX, all the instructions, we've already been through it. One of the interesting things about BLOX is, if any of your listeners go to the sales page is, we have a lot of our results actually on the sales page.

Mark Bishop:

Now, rather than just being, oh, here's X-amount of $1,000, $2,000 that I made from BLOX here and there. What we did is we made the money using the BLOX system, and then what we did is we put the posts out in public, and then we tagged the vendors, so the product owners. So that verifies that all of these results are real. So the product owners that we're targeting with BLOX, they're aware of us using the BLOX system, and then we show them the results, they check the results against their own stats, and then they just like and comment on our place. So everything on the sales page is verified. So to answer your question, I like to use everything myself before I release it.

Editor:

Got you. Yeah. And it seems like the social element now is perhaps kind of critical to the way that the process unravels as you go through the BLOX course. You mentioned earlier, mark, that when you first started, you were reluctant to use your name on your image.

Mark Bishop:

Yes.

Editor:

When did that change? When did you decide, actually this is, I'm okay to do this now?

Mark Bishop:

It was, yeah. I mean, I made that decision to get out of the niche marketing industry to sell the sites with a view to doing what I now do. So yeah, I mean, it was a conscious decision, and I knew that I would have to have my face out there. I knew that I would have to be on camera, which was scary, terrifying, in fact.

Editor:

I think that puts a lot of people off, doesn't it? That's-

Mark Bishop:

It put me off, yes. One of the reasons for getting into niche marketing in the first place, but yeah.

Editor:

How did you overcome that?

Mark Bishop:

I think I just had to grin and bear it, to be honest.

Editor:

Right.

Mark Bishop:

I can remember one of my early products, I hired somebody to do the video sales letter, so like an actor, and I spoke to a colleague and he said, "No, no, you can't do that. You need to have your face on there. It needs to be you, because it's a product that you put together, and you need your persona there as well." So yeah, I'd already paid this guy to make the videos, and then I had to make my own versions of them. Which were bad, they really were bad. But yeah, it's just an ongoing process, really.

Editor:

Yeah. And when you started it, has it become easier since you started?

Mark Bishop:

I'm not really an outgoing person, so it does get easier, but I would say that I'm still not really 100% comfortable with it.

Editor:

Do you think you ever will be, or is it just one of those things that, as you say, you just grin and bear it, just get through it?

Mark Bishop:

I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with it because it's not in my makeup really. But I've learned to do it, I've learned to live with it, because obviously it pays the bills.

Editor:

I was going to say, it's serving you well, so more power to you. I think a lot of people are just reluctant to take that initial step, but it's good that you felt the fear, but you did it anyway. And I think there's a lot to be said for people like tha., and that can be mission critical, as you say, for the type of business that you are now running. For those people that are interested in venturing into affiliate marketing, have you got any quick tips? As well as using BLOX, any other tips that you could share?

Mark Bishop:

Yes. Well, one of the main things is, like I said, you can do and you can be whatever you want. I mean, if you want to be an affiliate marketer or if you want to launch your own products, or if you just want to make a nice amount of money online, you can do it. But you need to set goals. You need to find something that you're comfortable doing, you need to find a product that works. There's a tonne of products out there. There's products launching all the time, and I'm not here to dis some, but some of them are great, some of them are not so great. So you need to look for something that works.

Mark Bishop:

A lot of pages will have ridiculous claims, they'll promise the earth. That should be a red flag. You should look for proof, verified proof, if you can. Find something that works and then work at it. The real important thing is to work at it. I mean, if I go back to where I started with niche marketing, prior to that, I bought lots of products and I hadn't really bothered with them. I looked at them, I was hoping to push a button and get rich, and that doesn't happen. So what I would say is by a product, find something that works, concentrate on it, focus on it, and put some time in.

Editor:

Yeah, good advice. Good advice. What else are you working on at the moment, Mark? Is there anything that's burning away in the background that we should be aware of?

Mark Bishop:

Yes, I mean our main focus is BLOX now. So we're working on an additional BLOX module, which is called BLOX CPS that will be added into the BLOX platform. So it's on the cards to release this year. It may run into early January, but we'll see where we are. We're working on it at the moment.

Editor:

Great stuff. And anybody that's interested in finding out more about you or wants to connect with you and learn more about your work, where do we need to go to do that?

Mark Bishop:

Well, as we've already mentioned, bloxevo.com, you can also catch me on Facebook. And it's also a Facebook mastermind group is private, but if you'd like to join it's Mark Bishop Mastermind on Facebook.

Editor:

Excellent. Mark, listen, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure to meet you and to find out more about you and also your burgeoning business empire. So thank you again for your time.

Mark Bishop:

Thank you.