article

make money online - documenting 10 years of failure

[WHAT]

1. ] the history of my experience trying to make money online over the past 10 years or so

[WHY]

1. ] 

[WHERE]

1. ] http://johnathanward.com/make-money-online-failure/

[WHEN]

1. ] 2015-03-20

[EXAMPLE]

1. ] site # 1 - teamtutorials.com -
1. ] started
2. ] average 80-100k pageviews a month, adsenses earnings slightly > $100 payout minimum, $7000 lifetime
3. ] first experience into SEO
4. ] 6 years of blogging and building traffic
5. ]
2. ] site # 2 - (directory for tutorials)
1. ] failed
2. ]
3. ] site # 3 - adwords to adsense arbitrage
1. ] buy cheap google keywords, SELL them to
2. ] send that traffic to pages with links to higher paying Google AdSense (the content monetization side).
3. ] So what you would have is a bunch of people bidding on 1-5 cent keywords and sending you to a page where they hoped you click on some high paying ad for a lawyer or something. I never really got into this but I heard it worked for a little while.
4. ] # 4 - affiliate marketing
1. ] Affiliate marketing is when you are paid to promote other people’s products and services. Sometimes you are paid a small percentage of sales commissions. Other times you are paid a certain amount per lead. It’s still basically arbitrage but from paid traffic to affiliate ads.
2. ] On PepperJam I applied for a bunch of different campaigns and was accepted into a few. I started testing out these offers by buying ads on the MSN and Yahoo search ad networks at the time. These networks had less traffic so there was much less competition than you would run into at Google. Which means cheaper clicks for me
3. ] On top of that they would give you crazy bonuses all the time. Things like “Sign up for a new account. Deposit $10 and we’ll give you $100 in free advertising”. I figured if I could test out these ads for free something might work. So I got as many Credit Cards as possible and made an account for each one. I got a few thousand dollars of free advertising credits.
4. ] Using those free funds and a pretty new designer fashion brand’s affiliate program. I promoted their products and started seeing a good return on investment (ROI). Once something was profitable all I had to do was scale. All it took to scale at that time was more budget. All I needed for more budget was a higher credit limit. I pushed as much a I could and got my first $8,000 check. Then I kept promoting and earned another $20,000 in a matter of months
5. ] as it turns out - Then disaster struck. I apparently was violating the terms of the affiliate agreement with my bidding strategies.  Of course they didn’t tell me I was doing something wrong until after they got their $200k+ in sales and the time came to pay me my commission. I ended up in a conference call with the network in which they told me the advertiser refused to pay and that they weren’t going to be able to pay me all of my commission. I think they paid out part of the $20k but not enough for me to turn a profit
5. ] # 5 - CPA
1. ] Even after the upset of losing what was probably $12,000 (which is known as a “shit load of money” when you are in your early 20’s) I didn’t get discouraged. I had a taste of freedom and proved that this could actually work. I kept investigating the affiliate world and eventually found a forum called WickedFire.
2. ]  ran some dating campaigns on Facebook. At the time Facebook traffic was very cheap and allowed for way better targeting than any other ad network. I made a few thousand dollars from dating offers and testing various other offers
3. ] The problem with the forums were that if someone shared something that worked then everyone would try the same thing increasing the competition to where nobody could make much of a profit. This started leading to a community of secrecy and really killed the value of forums
4. ] The biggest thing I got out of all this testing and income was that I would regularly charge thousands of dollars a month and then pay it off as soon as the bill came in. This allowed me to increase my credit limit significantly at an early age.
6. ] Affiliate marketing again
1. ]  I made something like 150k in revenue over 3-4 months
7. ] failure and the view from here
1. ] During this whole process I still had a day job. I almost quit to pursue my “business” full time but I never did. I have mixed emotions on that decision. In the end it seems like the right choice but now I wonder “what if I gave it my all?”
2. ] Now I work a consulting gig everyday that I really don’t enjoy. The money is decent (I had months better than my yearly salary in the past). I get to work from home. I get to travel and see some cool places. I get to play with some of the hottest software right now but I’m still missing something.
8. ] whats next
1. ]

[HOW-TO]

1. ]

[REFERENCE]

1. ] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9237822 
2. ]

 

Details

ID: 4415

NAME: make-money-online-documenting-10-years-of-failure

DESCRIPTION: by Jonathon Ward - ] the history of my experience trying to make money online over the past 10 years or so

AUTHOR: article.author/s

EDITOR: article.editor/s

PUBLISHER: article.publisher/s

STATUS: Write

PRIORITY: 0

OWNER ID: 75

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