Recently I noticed that I only know from very few people how (and why) they started with affiliate marketing so I thought it could be nice to hear few stories.
To set a good example I will start with my own story and I can imagine that my way into affiliate is very different from most others
For example I never planned to start affiliate marketing, actually I didn't even know what affiliate marketing is when I started with it.
Hell, I already made money from that stuff for quite some time before I even knew the most basic terms.
And with most basic terms I mean things like "affiliate marketing" or "affiliate network" so let me tell you how I still got into the game.
Spoiler: Even though I had no idea at all what I was doing I still was succesful from the very beginning.
Ok, let me start the story with a bang...
Just a few weeks before I started with affiliate marketing I didn't even have a PC or internet.
I also was never interested in such stuff.
It was 2005 and I was 24 or 25 years at that time and all I had in my mind were parties and... More parties
Computers, internet etc, there were not many things that sounded more unappealing for me.
Then one evening my best friend called me and said "Hey man, I have a PC for you. Wanna have it?".
I can't tell why I did it but I just said "Sure, why not" and went to my friends house to pick up the little machine.
It didn't take long for me to notice that the PC was not small at all.
Well, the PC itself really wasn't that big but the monitor was.
Remember, it was 2005 and flatscreens were not that common there so my monitor was a good ol' CRT monitor - with 19"
A 19" CRT monitor has a weight of at least 500Kg or so and is built like a tank.
My friend then took me back home by car and then I was at home with my newly acquired PC and had no idea what to do with it.
I had no games, I had no internet at home and to make it even worse - The PC had no drivers for sound so I couldn't even listen to music with it.
The first day with my first PC ever and I already started to hate it...
In the following days I didn't do much with the PC, I just clicked me a bit through Windows until the system crashed and I had no idea how to fix it.
With no internet and no Windows CD my options were pretty limited so that I made a big decision that should change my life forever.
I called my phone provider and requested internet at home so that I finally can use the computer.
Soon I had my 6Mbit line at home and what did I do with it?
Correct, downloading stuff.
One of my workmates told me about torrents so that was my preffered way to acquire music etc.
Internet itself was still very boring for me so apart from downloading I didn't really do anything with my PC and with my internet connection.
After 2 or 3 weeks even that got boring so that I barely used the PC anymore.
Then me and another workmate had the idea to open a forum.
It was mostly about metal music, splatter movies and lots of random stuff.
Basically it was our online playground where we hang around after work.
Our first users were also few workmates and few other people here and there.
All in all it was really funny there, there was only one issue for me.
In the end I paid €70 each month (€60 internet + €10 webhosting) for a forum that we only used to bullshit around in the internet.
That didn't sound right for me so I decided to make some money online to pay for that stuff.
I didn't know how to do it, I didn't know ANYTHING about affiliate marketing etc but I knew that I'll make it.
Remember in the beginning I told that I first only used my internet to download torrents and this becomes important now again.
On the torrent websites I always saw these "popup ads" and I knew this is making them money so my thought was "if they can make money with it I can do it as well".
I just tracked down the source of the ads and found out about layer ads.
First goal accomplished, I had an idea how to make the money but the next problem was how to get users.
But hey, I am on torrent websites, I download torrents, many others download torrents so torrents seemed to be a good way to reach users.
I checked out how to make and upload torrents, then I had to decide about what to download.
In the end I decided to go with the good ol' porn.
Images with porn pictures are small in size, that makes it easier and faster to upload.
Additionally such torrents usually got lots of downloader.
To get the downloaders to my website with the ads I just locked the porn archives with a password that users then could get from my website.
I still knew nothing about HTML or so and my first LPs looked like this
Yup, only the name of the torrent together with the password.
Doesn't look good but it worked.
Now I had everything I needed to get started so I uploaded my website to the webspace, uploaded my first torrents, had the first visitors on my website and most important - I made my first money from that stuff.
uploaded few torrents every day when I got home from my day job and so I started my affiliate marketing career
On good days I had more than 10k visitors on my website, only from port torrents.
Good thing about torrents was that the traffic added up the more torrents I uploaded.
As long as they had leechers they brought traffic.
After some time I already made few hundred Euros each month with just a few uploads per day.
For the next few years I made money only by uploading torrents and I only learned about trafficsources, affiliate networks, trackers and such stuff in 2008, few years after I started my journey
Ok, now you know my story and I hope to read about YOUR story as well.
So don't be shy and tell us about your way into affiliate marketing as well.
To set a good example I will start with my own story and I can imagine that my way into affiliate is very different from most others
For example I never planned to start affiliate marketing, actually I didn't even know what affiliate marketing is when I started with it.
Hell, I already made money from that stuff for quite some time before I even knew the most basic terms.
And with most basic terms I mean things like "affiliate marketing" or "affiliate network" so let me tell you how I still got into the game.
Spoiler: Even though I had no idea at all what I was doing I still was succesful from the very beginning.
Ok, let me start the story with a bang...
Just a few weeks before I started with affiliate marketing I didn't even have a PC or internet.
I also was never interested in such stuff.
It was 2005 and I was 24 or 25 years at that time and all I had in my mind were parties and... More parties
Computers, internet etc, there were not many things that sounded more unappealing for me.
Then one evening my best friend called me and said "Hey man, I have a PC for you. Wanna have it?".
I can't tell why I did it but I just said "Sure, why not" and went to my friends house to pick up the little machine.
It didn't take long for me to notice that the PC was not small at all.
Well, the PC itself really wasn't that big but the monitor was.
Remember, it was 2005 and flatscreens were not that common there so my monitor was a good ol' CRT monitor - with 19"
A 19" CRT monitor has a weight of at least 500Kg or so and is built like a tank.
My friend then took me back home by car and then I was at home with my newly acquired PC and had no idea what to do with it.
I had no games, I had no internet at home and to make it even worse - The PC had no drivers for sound so I couldn't even listen to music with it.
The first day with my first PC ever and I already started to hate it...
In the following days I didn't do much with the PC, I just clicked me a bit through Windows until the system crashed and I had no idea how to fix it.
With no internet and no Windows CD my options were pretty limited so that I made a big decision that should change my life forever.
I called my phone provider and requested internet at home so that I finally can use the computer.
Soon I had my 6Mbit line at home and what did I do with it?
Correct, downloading stuff.
One of my workmates told me about torrents so that was my preffered way to acquire music etc.
Internet itself was still very boring for me so apart from downloading I didn't really do anything with my PC and with my internet connection.
After 2 or 3 weeks even that got boring so that I barely used the PC anymore.
Then me and another workmate had the idea to open a forum.
It was mostly about metal music, splatter movies and lots of random stuff.
Basically it was our online playground where we hang around after work.
Our first users were also few workmates and few other people here and there.
All in all it was really funny there, there was only one issue for me.
In the end I paid €70 each month (€60 internet + €10 webhosting) for a forum that we only used to bullshit around in the internet.
That didn't sound right for me so I decided to make some money online to pay for that stuff.
I didn't know how to do it, I didn't know ANYTHING about affiliate marketing etc but I knew that I'll make it.
Remember in the beginning I told that I first only used my internet to download torrents and this becomes important now again.
On the torrent websites I always saw these "popup ads" and I knew this is making them money so my thought was "if they can make money with it I can do it as well".
I just tracked down the source of the ads and found out about layer ads.
First goal accomplished, I had an idea how to make the money but the next problem was how to get users.
But hey, I am on torrent websites, I download torrents, many others download torrents so torrents seemed to be a good way to reach users.
I checked out how to make and upload torrents, then I had to decide about what to download.
In the end I decided to go with the good ol' porn.
Images with porn pictures are small in size, that makes it easier and faster to upload.
Additionally such torrents usually got lots of downloader.
To get the downloaders to my website with the ads I just locked the porn archives with a password that users then could get from my website.
I still knew nothing about HTML or so and my first LPs looked like this
Yup, only the name of the torrent together with the password.
Doesn't look good but it worked.
Now I had everything I needed to get started so I uploaded my website to the webspace, uploaded my first torrents, had the first visitors on my website and most important - I made my first money from that stuff.
uploaded few torrents every day when I got home from my day job and so I started my affiliate marketing career
On good days I had more than 10k visitors on my website, only from port torrents.
Good thing about torrents was that the traffic added up the more torrents I uploaded.
As long as they had leechers they brought traffic.
After some time I already made few hundred Euros each month with just a few uploads per day.
For the next few years I made money only by uploading torrents and I only learned about trafficsources, affiliate networks, trackers and such stuff in 2008, few years after I started my journey
Ok, now you know my story and I hope to read about YOUR story as well.
So don't be shy and tell us about your way into affiliate marketing as well.
