Cameron Olthuis

I have to admit, I’m really having a lot of fun playing around in the action sports industry. Besides, my passion for action sports, one of the main reasons for starting Factive was that I knew I could come in with my audience building skills, dominate the online space, and have fun while doing it.

Our audience is growing at a very rapid pace… I couldn’t be happier. The best thing is that it’s super defensible traffic too, we get a very healthy mix of Google, direct, social, and referral traffic. We’re now at the point where we’re ready to start monetizing our sites. Exciting!

I love the fact that I’m building a company around something I love so much. I wish I would’ve done this sooner as it makes life so much more enjoyable to combine work with your passions. At that point it no longer becomes work, as big of a cliche as that is. For example, ‘board meetings’; instead of sitting in an office, I now have meetings with people while I’m surfing. I get to go hang out at cool places like the Red Bull headquarters. I can fly around the world on exotic surf vacations and call it work. And companies are backing their trucks up to my door with free products for me to review. Its got it’s perks to say the least.

My advice to you is: get into something you truly enjoy and figure out a way to make money doing it.

I have my sights on moving to Nicaragua right now. I’m trying to figure out the logistics so I can spend 2 out of the 3 months there this coming summer. Go down, check the place out, scope some real estate, surf my brains out, etc.

Consistent year-round swells, offshore winds 300+ days a year, low crowds, white sands, crystal-clear water, low cost of living…. sounds like the dream to me. I certainly can’t think of any good reasons not to move there. Seeing as all I need is an internet connection to make my living, work certainly wont be stopping me. At the very least I’ll probably be buying a second home there where I can spend 6 months a year.

All you business and website owners listen up and listen well. Avante Gardens, an Anaheim Florist, is going to school you on building loyal customers, links, and positive buzz all in one shot….

So how many of you remember my story about FTD Sucks and how they screwed me over on Valentine’s Day? If you don’t the click over and read it really quick so you can be up to speed.

So, there is this super bad-ass floral shop up in Anaheim that took notice of my post and decided they’d use my bad experience to their advantage to win over a new customer, me. Shortly after I checked into my hotel for SMX I got a knock on my door. It was a room service dude that had a bouquet of flowers for me. At first I thought maybe I had a secret admirer that wanted some lovin’ or maybe the SMX crew was just going the extra mile for their speakers. Nope, I was wrong. The following note was included in the flowers…

Dear Cameron, After reading your plight with FTD during Valentine’s Day, I just want to put in a plug for local florists. I’m looking forward to your presentation.

Wow! My heart melted. I was in love. I thought this was one of the coolest things ever and couldn’t believe someone remembered and cared about little ol’ me.

I just snapped that pic of me with the flowers. The ladies tell me that’s a super nice bouquet. Huge thank you to Avante, you effin rock and I love you.

Hope you all learned something. This would have been a great opportunity for FTD to step to the plate and make good with me… they didn’t and now they can kiss my badonkadonk. I will never order from that piece of crap company again and have told as many people as possible not to as well. They obviously don’t care about their customers. Now, on the flip-side – you all know a good florist.

Aw, the joys of running a content site. I’d almost forgotten how bad it gets with people ripping off your content and reposting it on their own sites word-for-word. This last weekend I’ve spent countless hours chasing down these villains and trying to get them to remove our original work. It gets time consuming and because we have a relatively new site that doesn’t have a ton of authority with Google, I actually do worry about it quite a bit. I’ve already noticed a few that show up above us in the SERPs and that is no-bueno.

This is something I’ve never really worried about too much with this blog. Mostly because it’s my personal blog and I don’t monetize it, nor do I have plans to ever do so. So now I have another hat to wear at my company, content police. Although I have to admit, I do slightly enjoy it when I find their phone numbers and I can actually call these people. It’s pretty funny.

I’m going to be speaking at SMX Social on April 22nd in Long Beach. I’m pretty excited to finally be going to a conference that doesn’t require much travel. It’s just a short drive up the 5 for me. It’d be a lot cooler if Danny held this conference in San Diego though. That way I could throw all the parties at my house… plus San Diego is just really cool.

I’m speaking on the topic of Linkbait which is what I usually speak about. I’m pretty excited for this session though since Linkbait strategies have changed so much recently and will continue to do so. Because of this there will be tons of new info to share so I’d encourage you all to come check it out. Plus Danny and everyone at Third Door put on the best conferences in the industry, hands down.

I’m stoked and so should you be. See you there.

I’ve never used one of the online flower delivery services before and after Valentine’s Day I know why. FTD, which is one of the larger flower sites, dropped the ball for me in a big way and basically left me with no options on getting the women in my family flowers.

So on Valentine’s morning, being the nice guy that I am and all, I decided to get online and order some flowers for my mom and both of my sisters. I checked around on all the different sites to see who could guarantee delivery on the same day I placed the order. I ended up placing four very large orders (flowers on Valentine’s Day aren’t cheap) with FTD since they were the ones that promised delivery on that same day. Yes, they promised even on Valentine’s Day. I had placed my order around 8:30 AM and had been waiting anxiously all day for that call from my mom telling me what a wonderful son I am. It never came. Instead, around 3:30 that afternoon and the emails from FTD start rolling in, one after another…

Unfortunately, at this time we do not have a florist available in your recipient’s delivery area who can deliver your product on 2/14.

Ok, so getting an email like that at 3:30 does nothing to help my cause of getting flowers to my family members on that day. By that time all the florists where way to buys to accept new orders and being hundreds of miles away from family I couldn’t just run down and get them. If FTD didn’t have the florist available in my area they should have never taken my order in the first place. Why offer something you know isn’t available in the first place. Second, they shouldn’t have waited until 3:30 in the afternoon to let me know. By that time I was basically out of options like I mentioned.

All-in-all I had placed four separate orders on Valentine’s day with FTD and not a single one of the made it to their destination. The fourth order showed up on Tuesday the 19th and the three others suffered the fate of no florists in the area. By the way, they never did alert me that the fourth order wouldn’t make it that day.

In conclusion I just want to reiterate the fact that FTD sucks and never in my life will I do business with them. If getting flowers to your loved ones on time is important to you I’d recommend you don’t use them either. I’m not one to complain about companies that screw me over, but I just can’t let this one go.

Danny Sullivan and the rest of the team at SMX continue to exceed my expectations. They definitely know how to put on a world class conference. Honestly, going into this conference my expectations weren’t very high. I was thinking that because it was such a small show that it wouldn’t be all that great. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Literally, there are no details that go unnoticed at SMX. And that’s probably why these shows are so great. It’s the small things that make a difference. Everything from the quality of speakers and presentations to the audience was better than I ever thought. I really enjoyed the show, met some great people, saw old friends, and even learned a thing or two. I am honored to be a part of this conference.

I also want to give a few shout-outs: I had three good friends that were all virgins to speaking at industry conferences. And all three did a fantastic job with their presentations. Seriously, you all spoke like seasoned pros. Chris, Brent, Tamar – Great job!!

Me presenting: