LAS VEGAS—Nick Chrétien worked for the Canadian government, bartended, ran a nightclub and then produced raves in Quebec before launching his first website in 2004.
Today Chrétien may not be partying like it’s 1999 but he is still having a blast sitting atop his online marketing empire, CrakMedia, orchestrating the industry-leading CPA network CrakRevenue, whose slogan is “Follow the Whale.”
According to his projections, CrakRevenue will pay out upwards of $300 million to its 35,000-plus affiliates around the world—in 2018 alone. In fact Chrétien’s team is responsible for driving more than 50 billion page impressions every month.
On Monday evening at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Chrétien took the stage at Vinyl nightclub to tell his remarkable success story in an inspiring keynote address that made for a fitting closing session at the 2018 Internext Expo.
“I wish I could tell you I was there with a plan,” Chrétien said. “I wish I could say I woke up one morning and wrote a five-year plan that I’m going to own a super big network, have 100 employees, have an MBA. But that’s all bullshit. All I know is I wanted to work from the beach and enjoy life…”
He did indeed work from the beach in Mexico for a while as his company grew at a remarkable rate in the mid-to-late 2000s, but now he oversees his global operation from his headquarters in Quebec City. With additional offices in Montreal and Cyprus, Chrétien & Co. launch thousands of ads and hundreds of landing pages every month in more than 200 countries and territories. The results speak for themselves.
In the last five years CrakRevenue, whose signature color is green, has grown 950 percent and revenue has surged an astounding 2000 percent.
Under Chrétien’s leadership, CrakRevenue has become widely known for bringing emerging technologies and superior analytics into the industry.
His first site, DaNerd.com, featured jokes and videos, generating about $50 a day until what he recalled was a pivotal moment in his career.
“We all have a turning point in our life that changes everything,” Chrétien said. “Some say the butterfly effect, whatever you call it. There’s something you can pinpoint and say that that’s the day I made the right decision. Or something happened—I crossed the street and met that guy. My turning point was 30 [Japanese] girls trying to get into a phone booth naked.
“I put that video online in the ‘Sexy’ section of our site. That video became viral; every forum started to link it to our site and 50 dollars of weed money was 2000 the next day, and 35,000 by the end of the month.”
Even though his bandwidth cost him more than 50 grand, leaving him 15 in the hole that month, the seed had been planted. Chrétien started “linking all over videos,” going from 2000 to 100,000 a day in traffic.
When Chrétien started making 30 grand a month with his first two sites—DaNerd.com in 2004-05 and then DaChix.com—he soon wanted to take things to the next level.
“We ended up with like 200 sites, it was out of control,” he said, recalling a period in 2006. “We were creating many, many domains, I [employed] like 10 people at that time.”
He went on to make deals with solo girl sites such as Playboy, Penthouse and Twistys and “we started ranking for every solo girl’s name, every porn star’s name and it was really, really, really good.”
“We went from making $1000 a day to a million a month.”
A seven-time GFY Award-winner from 2011-17, Chrétien formed CrakRevenue in 2010. He had 25 employees in 2011 grossed $9 million in revenue; in 2014 CrakRevenue skyrocketed to $50 million in sales and had 115 employees.
Along the way he picked his battles. When he decided to buy out his former business partner, he likened it to a divorce where he became a single father.
“He took the IT, I took the sales and development,” Chrétien said. “Technically, he left with the money and I kept the house and the kids.”
Chrétien added, “Business was still booming and I reinvested everything I made.”
He made big decisions, opting to get rid of the software he spent millions developing and taking on a third-party software.
“It cost me a million dollars or so to change the software,” he noted.
Then he gradually learned how to move from a start-up mentality to a full-scale corporation.
“I’ve learned a lot, more than I could’ve learned at a university,” said Chrétien, who actually has a “webmaster diploma” but says he “totally failed” computer science.
He lauded his executive team that includes his former roommate Frederic Hains, his best friend and “partner in crime,” Axel Vezina, CFO Samuel Thiffault, and his wife Claudia, whom he called “my best supporter who was there from Day 1."
“I was totally broke. She was paying my bus ticket to go to see her,” he said of Claudia, who now is his "Minister of Happiness" in the company, organizing fun staff functions such as the annual golf tournament, paintball outings and yoga.
Another big moment came in 2014 when Chrétien chose to fight a patent infringement case against Essociate that spanned two years. The claim accused CrakRevenue of violating the patent on their affiliate marketing concept. The patent described a method and system for configuring an existing affiliate network to receive “virtual affiliates” from an affiliate pooling network. Essociate had sued more than 20 companies in the affiliate networking space for infringing on this patent and they all settled.
During the two years of litigation, CrakRevenue couldn’t accept new offers on its platform, so it had to invest all its time optimizing its existing portfolio of offers and white labels.
“We fought for two years," Chrétien said. "In the middle of the fight my partner decided to leave. I had to create a white label because my offer could not exist in any other company.
“... We won the right for every competitor to do the same as us. Fight for what you truly believe in. If I settle, everybody will have a thought maybe I’m guilty.”
Through it all, Chrétien said he has come to realize “the biggest challenge of all” is putting the right people in the right positions. His wisdom came through trial and error—don’t hire your friends and family to key positions if they are not qualified for the job, he said.
“Take care of your people but don’t name your friends or family in a managing role. If they’re not a good manager, find a real manager,” he added. “Don’t staff the company, build a family.”
With employee wellness as a central focus for Crak's team, Chrétien recommends “building shared memories.”
“I’m bringing all my staff to Cancun in April—100 people. We are going to create shared memories. That’s the best investment. I’m going to make my money back many times,” Chrétien said. “... You don’t quit your family, you quit a job.”
Chrétien finished his address with more words to the wise: “When you’ve figured out what you’re looking for, go full on with that. Do what you do best and trust other people to do what they do best,” he concluded.
When the keynote was over, Internext attendees headed to dinner before the annual GFY Awards party back in Vinyl. Presented by TrafficJunky, AdultForce and AgeID, Internext concludes Tuesday with the Sponsor Brunch.
Photo by Rick Garcia/IndustrybyRick
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