Blu Electronic Cigaretes Rock - And Affiliates are Cashing In

A couple weeks ago I was talking with my good friend Aaron Baker, EVP at Atrinsic, about him speaking at ER8. During our discussion he was telling me they were super fired up to have just become the Agency Of Record for Blu electric cigarettes affiliate program. Now for those that don't know being the AOR (Agency Of Record) for any product is a big deal. It means that if you are promoting Blu electric cigarettes you are going through them. Basically as an affilaite what this means to you is, if you are promoting an offer NOT with the AOR you are getting a network 2-3 levels below a tiered fraction of what you could be getting if you went direct. Aaron told me they have several affiliates doing tens of thousands of dollars a month through their affiliate program and they are not even pushing it yet... Now back to the Blu electric cigs- The first time I ever saw one of those Blu electric cigarettes was right after I arrived at Newark Airport for Affiliate Summit East in 2009. Eli, ( BlueHatSeo.com ) was smoking one at the airport. It was pretty sweet. When he inhaled the end of it lit up Blue. But when he exhaled it smelled and looked like cigarette smoke. For those who don't know Eli, that cat always has the latest toys... and being an SEO/Affiliate baller he can afford them. I asked Eli what was up with it... How can it be legal to fire up in the airport? Was there really nicotine in it? He told me not only was it legal to smoke in the airport but he was smoking it all the way on his 4 hour plane ride from Oregon! He also said it did contain nicotine but, you can adjust the level you want. Course he had the strongest cartridges. Now I smoked back in the day - Starting with Newports (back then we called then Newdogs ) for about 7 years then switched to Marlboro lights (1.5 packs a day) for 3 years until I met my Girlfriend (Now wife) in 2001. She wasn't putting up with no smoker, so I dumped it. Took me a year to kick nicotine completely... how I did that is a whole other post. BUT like a lot of previous smokers I am only in remission. Once I have about 4-5 drinks my willpower goes in the shitter and I spring the $10 or whatever the retarded price a pack of smokes are now a day and fire it up. The night usually consists of me smoking less than 1/4 of the pack, waking up feeling like a ashtray got dumped in my mouth, and of course my fingers a bit yellow smelling like cigs. Also, I usually give away the rest of the pack to bums (its amazing how many closet or previous smokers come out of the wood work at industry events). In vegas I smoke 2-3x more just because you can smoke everywhere. Repeat that every night of the conference I attend. So, I am relaying all this to Baker and he's like dude those guys over at Blu read your blog and want to talk with you... couple days later we got on the phone and had some interesting discussions about marketing strategies. They also demoed some cutting edge social media integration they are working on with the cigarettes (I will cover this in another post.. its pretty amazing) Then one day we got this sweeeeeeeet package from them. They sent us a starter pack + 2 singles + like every flavor they offer. I wasted no time testing it out. I threw a catridge in and gave it some old school heavy drags. HOLY COW... I coughed it up like it was some ditch weed. These things were strong. I fired up my photo booth on my computer to take a picture: Then after like 3 more tries to get the perfect shot of me doing some elite french inhaling, I realized I was buzzzzed from the hot box. Sure enough I had loaded up a medium nicotine cartridge. Here is a really cool part though. They also have non nicotine cartridges. And also flavors besides cigarettes. Cherry and other stuff. It was pretty sweet and had a lot of the non smokers in our office puffing away. I fricking love these things. They are perfect for me. When I want one, I want one but I don't really need a whole cigarette let a lone a whole pack. Then when you consider that each cartridge contains over 1200 full drags and has no expiration its like 1 of these puppies should get me by for a LONG time at conferences. PLUS my fingers wont look like I been eating cheetos all night and smelling like smoke. Not to mention the ash tray smoke breath. I almost forgot to toss this in. The Blu folks told us that almost all of their affiliates also use the product. Which makes sense. Thanks Blu!