Rags to Riches to Rags

[ncmedia]

Will also say great post: I'm sure many have been there before, I know I have, the cycle is horrible to go through more than once however as the old saying goes - "What doesn't kill you....". You're probably well versed with what doesn't work, and each time the cycle happens it's expensive schooling yes, but it is that defeat analysis that will bring you back stronger each time.

Never give up, always analyze your core/reset goals/and aim higher each time you fall.

This was a heartfelt read, respect to you for sharing.
Norb.

 

[ryan5billion]

Really great post.

A good lesson for all of us.

 

[tiger325]

wow that is inspiring yet it reminds us of the reality of affiliate marketing. There is alot of money to be made however you should invest back into your business and other projects. Diversify is the key.

 

[esteelim]

Wow!!

hi,

thanks for the sharing. You truly inspire me, amazing !!

Good luck to you.

 

[Niche48]

The answer is the opt in list

Great story ireef. Hope you get back on the internet marketing party real soon

The key to your post is an opt in list

It is a true saying that the money is in the list.

A lot of effort spent in building your opt in list will pay you for a long time into the future

Changing algorithms, skyrocketing bid price and all the other demons that humt internet marketers do not affect your email list. You have their emails, you contact them directly. It is as simple as that really

Good luck and happy new year

 

[tonysmillions]

Great Story!

Hey Ireef,
That was a good topic. Very useful for us newbies! Have an awesome New Year! Tonysmillions

 

[frugalwench]

I think another moral to this story is that business goes up and down, and you have to save for a rainy day. If I ever start making big money, I'll be stashing as much of it as I can, so that I can exist during downtimes. Every business owner knows this, and those who don't pay heed are those who don't survive.

Down here in FL, where business is very seasonal, I've seen businesses come and go a lot, because they start up during season, and for some stupid reason, think that's how it will be all year. Then business dies in the summer, and they end up closing their doors. It's sad that there are so many business idiots around.

 

[Dane Grey]

Yup, there is no such thing as "free money" and I think that is the point that a lot of people miss when they dive into internet marketing. There is no "easy money" and there is a huge learning curve. If you don't work hard, study and apply what you learned, then you don't see the returns. I am still working on getting all my ducks in a row, and I don't have much free time to do that, because I have a day job and 2 kids, and whatever I do on the net is on my "free" time for a couple of hours a nite.

 

[luminary]

Great post - an excellent lesson on the need for diversification of income streams/methods if you're going to rely on your affiliate income!

 

[ErikJ]

Great post!!

so you can make a quick buck watching a fad or trend as always but the true sustainabale income comes from working with consumable products that people use everyday. This is the only way to make long term sustainable income.

Because people are going to buy the things they need no matter what type pf economy or trends that are going on.

repeat purchases or consumer products is were the money is. This is a business afterall. One good day isn't going to retire you.

 

[therankdirectory]

I think that where you made a wrong turn was not building an appropriate foundation of backlinks for your website outside of the blogs. That throws flags in googles search bot when they check your PR.

 

[truballer2]

great story guys,.. i really like the things that were said

 

[jacklinrose]

I am sleeping when i read the message..

What a wonderful story......

 

[donaldd]

That's a great story - it's refreshing when people share their real and valuable experiences like this (rather than being talked at by GRQ 'gurus'). The sad thing is that because of the un-sustainability of these models, you don't really learn from your experiences - those opportunities just disappear - 'poof'!

 

[DerkThunder]

Well it sounds like you were doing everything right. But promotion can get super tricky. I simply can never get a solid hold either. One second its here the next Poof!

 

[hijinks]

Nice story and shows a great lesson in how disversifying your income is very important.

 

[JamesAndrew]

Great story! It's a good lesson to learn, some good things doesn't last forever. So while we have it, take the most of it.

 

[aksalmonfishing]

Finally an honest account of how, yes affiliate programs are not the end all be all of money making. Yes, they can fail! I appreciate the perspective you ended up with--don't quit your day job. Affiliate marketing can be a nice little (or sometimes huge) asset to your regular pay check, and like with any career, can end. To those who are able to sustain themselves exclusively with affiliate marketing, I must admit I'm a little jealous, but for the rest of us, they extra money doesn't hurt. Thanks for your honesty!

 

[newmannewy48]

good story

ITs a very good cautionary tale.. And why most people are forging towards brand, and brand recognition. If you can build a brans. instead of going poof like smoke.. you can sustain an income from word of mouth..

good story though

 

[discrat]

Hi all, I think I've got a fairly interesting story to tell and I've always liked this community, so why not here?

This is a year-long story about how I went from making zero, to $12,000 in a month, then quickly back to... well, almost zero.

I hope this proves to be both an inspirational and cautionary tale at once that really delves into the game we're in with affiliate marketing. If nothing else, if you read closely, you can find some easy, VERY UNSPOKEN ways to make money. at least for a little while...

So, it all started about a year ago. I picked up an expired domain name for fairly cheap, and it integrated well with the niche I had up to that point, reef aquarium sites. This domain was reefhq.com

It was a good name but I really didn't have any use for it, so I thought, "what the hell?" and set up a wordpress blog with affiliate links for reef sandals. (It's pretty much exactly now as it was before).

Then a couple sales came in and I was hooked. Over the next several months, I registered many domains, set up many wordpress blogs, and made a fair amount of money - to an average of a little over $100 per day. I worked my *** off learning about SEO from places like here and digitalpoint.

I set my "quit the day job" goal at $300 per day and was well on my way to that thanks to the Digitalpoint Ad Network. Then Google dropped the hammer on sites using the ad network and it dropped pretty fast. POOF! Money was gone.

I worked even harder.. set up new sites, with more and better original content, that didn't rely on the DP co-op for SE rankings. I did well at first with every site in MSN, but after a few weeks the ranking would drop and the money would go away. POOF!

Gaming MSN for a few weeks was pretty easy... keyword in the domain name, title tag keyword only. It still works on keywords which have about 500,000 or less results in MSN... but I wanted sustainable income and this wasn't it.

So I played a bit with adwords. Why? SEO was proving way too inconsistent... spend hours setting up a site, get good rankings in 2-6 weeks, then POOF! drop like a stone. My quest for a sustainable model continues to this day, but I digress...

Around October of last year I had a couple Adwords campaigns going that were doing fairly well. Again, with lots of work, pegged at about $100 per day.

Then I saw an offer at Azoogleads for Shoebuy.com - $10 off $30 coupon with a $15.75 payout. That, my friends, was the gold. I set up adwords campaigns for Crocs, a pair of sandal/shoes hybrids thingies that were gaining popularity and cost just over $30 per pair. The money and conversions came flying in! Before I knew it I broke $500/day profit. Then $800. Then I broke $1,000 in a day. I was writing my resignation letter in my mind, believe me!

Why did this work so well? A few reasons... First, $30 is a low-involvement purchase for the consumer. Take $10, i.e. 33% off plus free shipping, and it's a no-brainer. Second, the adwords world revolves around commission-based sales. If I was going through Zappos, I would have made $4.50 per sale and barely broken even. Nobody caught this high payout on a low purchase except me (that I know of).

Then...the inevitable POOF!. If we do some simple math, we can see that the Shoebuy folks didn't think this offer through very well. On a $30 pair of shoes, they pay me $15.75, Azoogle their cut, and of course knock $10 off the consumer's price with the coupon... AND ship it free. I knew this math pretty early on, but I thought maybe Shoebuy was seeing the value in gaining a new customer (they should have) who would repeat the purchase (they did, I'm sure). Anyway, Shoebuy saw they weren't doing so well on this offer and cut the coupon to 10% off $50 instead of $10 off $30. Traffic dropped, conversions dropped, and as quickly as the money rolled in, it went away. In other words..... POOF!

After that I tried some coupon offers on shoes from CJ using the same model. It worked OK until the reversals hit. Then google dropped the hammer on landing pages. POOF! You see, all these adwords ads clicked to a landing page with a simple coupon image I created and nothing else. (Yes, this model will still work if you can figure out how to get the quality score algo to play nicely).

After about 10 months of working my *** off, learning, optimizing, failing and trying again, I decided I needed a break. This is where I'm fortunate to have a very well-paying day job... no big deal, I wasn't counting on that money from affiliate marketing, it was my retirement/corporate escape fund.

So I took a break... and the money is just flat-out gone. Why? Because none of it was sustainable. It was all subject to SE algo updates, adwords quality score updates, changes in consumer trends, etc. So as I stopped building, the money stopped coming.

The moral of this story? There are several...

• Work hard and you'll make money. Stop working and you'll stop making money.
• Don't quit your day job.
• Recognize an opportunity and capitalize on it.
• In this business, a good thing doesn't last long. You've got to keep moving.
• Most importantly.... POOF! happens. Almost without fail.

There are probably many more lessons in this story. Most important for me was making sure people who are new to the affiliate marketing industry know what they're getting into... your whole world can, and will, change in one day. You'd better be ready for it.

As for me, I'm still looking for that holy grail of sustainable income based off a model that can be repeated long-term.

Wish me luck.

T

I know this Post is quit old but it holds some valuable points here. Contray to what some of you say, I think the Author here really exhibits a few certain flaws in his rationale here. First of all , he assumes that EVERYONE who is in Affiliate MArketing has or will have their day of reckoning sooner or later where the Income will go......... POOOFF !! This is just ABSOLUTELY NOT true. I have known people in the industry for many many years and they have had their Ups and Downs but they took extreme diligence in making sure this scenario does not happen. With Diversification being one of the main ingredients to avoid this.

Second point is that he makes these Assertions based on 1 YEAR OF EXPERIENCE.
Pleazzzzze do not make generalizations on only 1 year experience. You say you worked your *** off for 10 months. I know peeps who have worked their *** off for 10 years.

Lastly, the Author says he is searching for the Holy Grail of Affiliate Marketing...............Sorry but you will be long gone before any Holy Grail is found. Why ?? Becuase there is NOT one. Its as simple as that.

Iam sorry if I seem cynical here but I just felt like some things needed to be addressed concerning this Original Post.
And my word of advice to people is to learn from this original post. Yes, Affiliate Marketing is composed of a lot of up and downs. But it can be very very extremely Rewarding too.

Just DO NOT think that you can make a go of it in just ONE YEAR !!
It will not happen. PERIOD, FINADA, END OF STORY !!!!
Let the above Post serve as a Lesson that 10 months or so is NOT gonna get you there if you want to be Suuccessful in this Industry. No easy buck HERE, Folks !!!!

Look at it as a Long Term Investement just like your 401k or IRA !! Some years your 401k will go up and then down , but if you remain patient and consistent in the end you will end up coming out ahead and reap the rewards !!

Thats the Best way to approach it , IMHO !!