What monthly corporate salary you will not exchange for becoming affiliate? (36)
What monthly corporate salary you will not exchange for becoming affiliate?
Think question of the pool should be formulated two ways even so they are not really mirrored.
1. What monthly corporate salary you will not exchange for becoming affiliate?
2. Or for what monthly salary you will exchange being affiliate to corporate job
Both questions under corporate job imply job in online business with ≈okay attitude to the work performed.
Detailed opinions or personal stories are pretty much appreciated
Many affiliates are not only into the AM lifestyle for cash. Sure its a big part, but there is a huge amount of freedom and self-validation that comes from having control of one's own destiny that a fat paycheck simply cannot replace. If I want more money, I work smarter and harder. In the corporate world, If i want more money I have to kiss up to the manager or play stupid office politics. No Thanks.
There are about 100 other jobs I'd do BEFORE a corporate job if I weren't an affiliate.
The only way I would go back to a job would be if I was working directly under someone I admire and want to learn from.
Example: The money wouldn't matter at that point. I would give up affiliate marketing and work for free if I could learn from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc.
What is the price of freedom?
I think you need to have an option of "wouldn't accept any offer".
Originally Posted by dr_ngo
For me opposite side of the pool is even more interesting
Its like whats minimum salary should be in online corporate world to justify NOT TAKING THE RISK of jumping into building affiliate income basically from scratch
Probably pool could be reformulated like this
Freedom has no price XD
I am not sure how I am supposed to interpret the poll results.
Right now there are 33% voting for 40K and above.
Does that mean that if someone offered you a steady and low risk job that pays you $40K a month (so half a million dollars a year), 33% of you folks would not take it???
Wowsers ...
if it was a fun 9 to 5 job @ $41k a month i'd take it.. would be a win-win situation. Fun job and 4 hours per day extra for IM.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Originally Posted by angelinvest
I think a better question would be is why do people Idolize business men like this?
Ya I get that they are great business men and possibly good leaders but paying someone to work under them? Why?
Do these men put there pants on some other way than I do?
I think in this biz (and in many others) people look to false gods, like if they act like them or do what they do they will become successful like them. While in reality its the sum of the moments of their life that has taken them to that point of success
On that point here's a conundrum for you, Would google be google if it started in 2014?
Few points I am trying to make here are
1) success its partially due to timing (10%), being at the right place at the right time to deliver the right product, if you look at the maven of the tech world, you will see that pattern over and over.
2) the remaining 90% of success comes from within, and within that 90%, 90% is attributed to tenacity, 10% brain power.
What do I mean by this?
I mean as long as your stay in the game you always have a chance to win, there is always a chance. Most people who never make it, just stop playing. Its the easy way out, quitting is easy, justifying it is even easier. I have seen hundreds of guys come and go in this forum the guys who don't make it give up, stop playing, quit because its easy or some other excuse they craft to reduce damage to their ego.
and ya what about the 10% brain power, well it helps but you can overcome a lack of it with tenacity, will make the road a bit tougher but success on a grand scale is still achievable.
Now many of you are prob saying at this point "polar man thats so simple minded, do you think you have nothing to learn from people like this? Jebus bro arrogant much?"
No on the contrary I admire these men/women and learn from people like this whenever I can, reading articles they may write or memoirs of their experiences trying to incorporate aspects of their management style or methods that may help my business, but its very limited in scope.
Why? because it takes me out of the game and time is the most valuable asset we have (prob the #1 thing anyone of these idols will teach you), and I need to split my time between my family, my biz, and myself (in that order)...because just as I stated above being successful as a father/husband requires I play the game, spending time with those who I love and those who love me, keeping myself healthy requires I play the "me" game, going to the gym, etc...
ok whats the the takeaway here? or the ADHD version of my babble.....
You already have what it takes to be successful, just keep calm and carry on playing the game, stop believing that others will make you successful or more successful or whatnot...
NEVER QUIT....plain and simple...
thread hi-jack over
Originally Posted by cmdeal
For me the first thing I look for in work is what will I learn, second is pay.
SOOO many variables here.
I would potentially take a $7k/month job working some type of fancy world traveler for redbull/gopro managing professional athletes.
In short if the job offers something i love that would be very hard to achieve myself then i would consider taking it. Example above.
Originally Posted by polarbacon
Originally Posted by polarbacon
That said, there definitely is a LOT to be said for learning from other businesspeople and entrepreneurs who are truly operating at the top of their game.
There is a famous Chinese folk tale about frogs in the bottom of a well. Similarly, Plato writes about the allegory of the cave. In both cases, the point is the same: The frogs think that the bottom of the well IS the entire universe, just as the people who have grown up in Plato's cave all their lives only see shadows but they think THEIR limited experiences represent the entire world.
One of the most incredible experiences I had was working directly for a number of CEOs of Global Fortune 500 companies right after university. It was really less about learning any facts ... it was about learning how these people think, and understanding the perspectives they take. It certainly was an eye-opener for me. I can imagine that for the right person, spending a year with Peter Thiel would be an incredible and incredibly formative experience.
Originally Posted by stackman
Originally Posted by cmdeal
freedom has no price... I always know i can do better. I'm not the ass kissing type. Most of us have probably worked in a corporate environment before.... You watch your colleagues who are 50+ and busting their ass working 60 hrs a week at a corporate "management" role all for about 5-8kUSD after tax or 150k/yr and they think they are doing well for themselves, in their leased cars and mortgaged homes... For me corporate life dulls your senses, you become emotionally tied to your title, im a "product marketing manager", im a "business dev manager", blah blah blah....
Risk taking and outside the mold thinking are left for the quarterly management sound bite meetings...
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Probably some pool participants unconsciously dissemble in pool options.
Is it really more easy and more fun to make $10-$50k/mo in affiliate marketing than in corporate world?
Full-time? You'd have to be offering me either a job doing something I really want to do (and there are not a lot of those jobs around) or offering an absolutely absurd amount of money.
Part-time? I do contracting work from time to time, but I never choose the job based primarily on the pay check. I choose part-time gigs based on whether the work's interesting, and whether I'll get to work with people who are at the top of their game, and from whom I can learn things. Obviously it has to be reasonably well compensated as well, but usually if you're doing interesting things with impressive people, that's not a dealbreaker. That seems to be working out pretty well so far!
Now we know how to hire all STM leaders :-)
i make close to 100k right now and i hate my job, i hate i have no freedom, i completely HATE it. Makes me miserable, so i HAVE to make this work for me. Luckily my job is a technical one and it helped me understand linux server very well and a lot of the technical stuff linked to affiliate marking. But its time to move on for me.
Originally Posted by yohn1985
Or will try to build ≈$8k / mo affiliate income for few consecutive months at first?
As soon as i make the same which is around 6k im out. I resently got started in AM so atm i am losing money. Hopefully the tables will turn soon enough, im sure putting long days to make it happen...
Originally Posted by yohn1985
I am just as much a sinner of this principle as the next guy, but it still blows my mind how anyone really thinks that making an arbitrary *MORE* amount of money will make them any amount happier in the long run. Unless you are talking about the lowest rung of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and you have to steal food and dumpster dive every day to survive, more disposable income purely for consumption itself will pretty much never lead to happiness.
In college when you are broke, you think having ANY disposable income for beer money would make you super happy. When you get your first real job and you make more money than you know how to spend, you think you'll be happy forever, but then you get used to it and your consumption habits change. When you make 100k/year the same cycle happens. Same thing when you make a million. Millionaires are always going to be looking at billionaires wanting to get on their level. Everyone says it doesn't happen to them, like they will be the special little flower that is unlike everyone else, because everyone else is dumb and they are not.
These are the same unactualized people who also say that "advertising doesn't work on me" and "I've never clicked on an ad" while not realizing the insanity of reality that would have to happen for them to consciously say and remember "I am clicking on this ad because it is engaging me, and now I am progressing through this funnel because my interests align with the message, etc. etc" all the way until they convert.
In this day and age where employees are viewed as disposable assets/contractors who can/should be replaced as soon as possible by more efficient mechanisms, does a concept like "Job Security" for the average Joe even truly exist? Sure, your Matt Cutts or equivalent high-profile high-level employee has security because he is in high demand, but what about your average knowledge worker job? I'd argue that your average knowledge worker with the mindset that they can just coast because they have job security is going to have the same problems an affiliate marketer has who thinks he can "just coast" as well.
As so many other people have already said on this thread, I like direct response marketing because of the flexibility and freedom it gives me in my life. The money is definitely a sweet bonus, but in the end it is still just a resource that you can exchange for experiences or things.
Time is the most important asset you have every single day, and no matter what you do, you will never get a single second back. I would look long and hard at any proposition that promises to take HALF of my most valuable asset in exchange for some numbers on a bank statement.
Originally Posted by timtetra
Originally Posted by timtetra
I make $XXX,XXX a year and I will never loose my freedom even for $X,XXX,XXX a year.
I just can't to that, because doing something (even for a few hours) that I do not want to do, just make me sick !
I'm more trying to be as minimalist as I can, right now I spend only 40% of my monthly income and save the rest.
I had a +50% income in the past 3 months, that doesn't change anything in my happiness, that even worse because now, I do not want to loose that +50% income !
So I feel that if I go for the $X,XXX,XXX a year job, I will never want to get back to a $XXX,XXX income even if I want my freedom back, because loosing so much income will make me sick.
I use a simple system to manage all of these.
I've think of what I want to do with my lifestyle (for the next year) and how many income I need for that. For me, travel is where I spend the most money, I'm ok with that because it makes me happy and I can cut that if I really need without impacting my normal lifestyle.
Then, I split all of that needy income in 5 envelops :
- Income for the big travels (twice a year)
- Income for the little travel (10 weeks a year)
- Income for my wife to spend
- Income for myself to spend
- Income for normal life (house, etc)
Then each month, I add the amount of cash I have calculate in each envelope. Every additional $ I made go to a save account or is ready to invest. It prevent me to change my lifestyle each time my income change. And in AM, it can change a lot.
With that system, I can see that I have already a hard time to spend all the money in my personal envelope, so why will I want a bigger income and loose some freedom, it doesn't make any sense !
And I've plan the income I need for what I really want, so I do not want more, that's an illusion !
What I really want is :
- Be free
- Have enough income to full my envelopes each month
- Have fun in what I do every day
- See a progression in what I do every day
Short version : I see my income as a tool, like a hammer. And I do not need 10 hammers to do the job, I only need one. That's the same with my income, I just need it to be the right tool for me.
Lifestyle design is a much underrated skill.
At the end of the day, money's not terribly interesting - it's what you get to do with it that's interesting.
If you know what you want to do, there are two approaches you can take to getting to that goal: increase available funds, and reduce required spend.
Most people (outside STM, at least) tend to focus on only one of those two tools.
(Also, as Tim says, the hedonic treadmill is your enemy. )
Originally Posted by givizator
Plus add that usually there is "minimum required monthly living costs", or even its illusion of their "mandatory"
Like cmdeal mentioned its very philosophical that most of us can remember one of the happiest moments with someone while they mostly didnt have any money.
As was saying Steve Jobs :
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.”
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Originally Posted by Mr Green
Couldn't do marketing for them, rather do it for myself
..had to be some type of crazy in-field 24/7 work with pro athletes and skydive/paraglide/snowboard all the time job.
This thread keeps popping up in my mind following dr_ngo's Thought Leader thread and watching the interview.
I came out of engineering school and went in to a kick ass job. I almost wonder if I'd have been better served NOT to have found a corp job that was a great fit right out of school...
I turned down two 7-figure job offers this year. (side note: some of the skills you learn in AM are very, very valuable to large businesses)
The sense of security that would have come from either of them would have been nice, and all the soft benefits of having someone else's money to spend on the things I normally spend my own money on would have been great, but in the end the deals didn't make sense because of restrictions on my own freedoms. I couldn't continue to run my companies (understandable, but they make me more than the salary would have AND have the bonus of giving me a feeling of control in my life), I would have to dress differently and arrive in an office every day at prescribed times, I'd be forced to deal with the politics of having co-workers who'd been around longer than I had, etc.
That's not to say I'd never work a "job" -- I think at some point I would be willing to -- but it wouldn't be because I was being paid well. The amount of money you're making is not going to determine how happy or unhappy you are after ~$100k/year anyway. For me, it's more about freedom and the ability to be creative in my endeavors and live a decently nice life from it. If a company came to me and said "we'll give you $2mm/year+options, control over a $25mm yearly spend, and 5% of the upside gained from said spend" I wouldn't immediately turn the deal down, because it'd potentially open up a lot of doors -- with $25mm of someone else's money, you can create some really awesome things that way outshine anything most of us have done in affiliate marketing up to now. That's very attractive to some people, myself included.
tl;dr - I'll probably never work for a company, but I wouldn't say "no" if the stars aligned correctly. [this is a modification of my thought pattern for the majority of my life... things change in your psyche when you get married 
]
Originally Posted by joshogle
It's an interesting question, but I don't think I can put a price on it.
My life views would have to radically change for me to get the same enjoyment out of a fixed corporate salary, no matter how huge.
Even if I took the corporate salary, there's a large part of me that would still be wanting to pursue my own ideas. There's an ingrained opportunism that six years in affiliate marketing makes hard to shake.
But I guess that's not the whole story.
I would be quite happy to take on a large guaranteed salary to quit affiliate marketing. Assuming that the corporation was my own brain-child -- or something close to it.
And I think that's the appeal for a lot of affiliates:
The challenge of building their own corporations, in their own image, whilst still wrestling control of the lifestyle they want.
To be handed the salary on a platter without the lifestyle (for many of us, the very reason we avoid corporate careers) is only a half fix.
The choice to do AM is not really about the money. I gave up a $100k+ per year corporate job.
I hated it. They own you and they own your time. It sucks the life out of you after a few years.
Owning your time and freeing yourself to be creative and pursue your own ideas is priceless.
Anything you do ONLY for the money will kill you inside.
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