Holy shit - My affiliate marketing journey 05 (22)
Besides learning Affiliate Marketing, I'm also running a lifestyle and self-development blog. I decided to publish a series of articles on my journey in affiliate marketing, geared towards everyone who never heard of affiliate marketing but wants a job which enables them to live a freedom lifestyle.
This is part 5 of the series, and it is all about the awesome development in February. Finally hitting some nice profit numbers, you are now able to go back and read the articles I wrote over the past months when I started out as a complete newbie. This way you will see exactly what I did and thought when I was in the same situations you are / will be facing.
I will also answer common questions and give you some more insights and advice from someone who started in mobile 11 weeks ago and now does stable XXX / day profits with occasional X.XXX days.
<-- previous chapter (02) - Six lessons worth $500
<-- previous chapter (03) - I must be mad to share those insights
<-- previous chapter (04) - Getting to $200 spent / day
HOLY SHIT - MY AFFILIATE MARKETING JOURNEY 05
Wow. Just wow—that's all I can say. At this very moment, typing in these words, I am sitting at the airport in Dubai.
After a 10 hour flight from Sydney I just logged into my tracker and checked the stats—they show me a number that seemed impossible when I wrote the last article in this series three weeks ago.
$400.
That's the profit I made while I was sleeping and reading on the 10 hour flight without internet access.
The flight almost paid for itself while I was on it—and the knowledge that I am still far below others in this industry motivates me to push myself even further. But let's clear things up and connect the dots from where I left off in the last part.
WHAT HAPPENED SINCE THE LAST CHAPTER?
While spending $200 a day and earning almost everything back in commission, I learned a lot more than I had previously. And, finally seeing the end of the tunnel, I kept pushing hard. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, as usual. And it started paying off. I started making small profits.
$20 a day.
$30 a day.
$50 a day.
Every small increase motivated me to push harder. Then things got out of hand. On the last day of January I crossed the $100 / day profit barrier.
THEN THE 1ST OF FEBRUARY 2015 CAME.
And I will never forget this day. I could not believe the statistics when I kept refreshing them over and over. The profit numbers just kept increasing. Around 6pm we crossed $1000 / day profit. And with that just one day after my first XXX / day profit in performance marketing, I hit my first X,XXX / day profit ever.
Oh, what a sweet feeling when months of hard work pay off! I had the same surreal feeling again, the one I had when I first started making some larger amounts of money at age 16 (read the story here). But there was no time for feelings—things were on fire and needed to be handled. That day, I ended up doing $1500 in total profit. The total revenue was $3000 which means I paid $1500 upfront in a single day. Fortunately, the company bank accounts can take this.
The X.XXX / day profit had been a nice spice, and the following days I managed to transform those campaigns into a stable mid/high- $XXX / day profit generator that's on close to autopilot. Now that I'm flying over to Europe I don't have much time, but luckily I’ve already planned another 3 weeks full immersion where I will be able to focus fully and take things even further.
Since having this success there have been a lot of people asking me for advice and guidance. I try my best, but keep in mind that I've been doing this for no more than 11 weeks. I knew nothing about the industry—I am simply someone who has the underlying skills to make things like this happen. That's what I can teach best, and that's what this whole website—the Secret Lifestyle Academy—is all about. I said right from the start that nobody likes to take advice from someone who is not successful.
But success takes some time. For this reason, I started the Secret Lifestyle Academy before I become hugely successful. And I’m going to keep writing about everything along the way. Right from the first moment of day one, when I had achieved nothing yet. Now that I am somewhat successful in Affiliate Marketing, you can go back and look at what I wrote and how I acted in the past, when I was in exact the same situation you are probably in now. And this way of documenting the secret sauce for success applies to all areas of life the Secret Lifestyle Academy covers.
MOST COMMON QUESTIONS
But let's get back to Affiliate Marketing. I will answer the most common questions I’ve been getting asked, and add some golden nuggets I have not told anyone else yet.
It is really simple: do not stop, keep going and going and going. 95% fail because they stop too early. And I was near the edge several times, but from experience, I know that I have to push past those phases. You have to do the same. But you can make things a little easier by adding some support layers. Here are some that helped me massively:
- Make it impossible to quit. For example, I had already booked two flights and the apartment for staying at the STM affiliate meetup in London this March. What if I would have quit? I still would have paid a couple grand for those flights, and I don't want to show up there having given up already.
- I have a lot of accountability and support. By surrounding myself with positive and encouraging people. By trying to meet successful people in real life whenever possible. By working in a co-working space where an entrepreneurial mindset and failure is encouraged instead of condemned. By writing about everything in this blog—I can't simply write "I gave up" and let that be that...
- By baby-stepping the process and developing successful patterns. If you read my follow-along in the STM forums, you will notice my goal was not to make $X.XXX in one day. The goal I started out with was to get one conversion - which at the time was as hard as getting from my last goal to making thousand bucks in one day.
The next goal was getting to -50% ROI - yes you read that right my goal was to lose money. And it took me several weeks to get there. Then it was break-even. Then a profitable campaign - then a $X / day profit campaign. Then $XX / day, then making it stable. Then $XXX / day. And so on - it's easy to see what my next goal after hitting $X,XXX a day is
I had a lot of questions concerning Decisive as a traffic source for beginners. Here is my take on it:
From the over 10 traffic sources I have tested, I would recommend everyone just starting out Decisive as a great way to learn.
Really put the focus on learning, because you won't be making big profits, if any at all. Decisive has been great for me to experiment cheaply and efficiently—and the very basic flow of how to do things is the same for all traffic sources.
I would even say that 95% of what I do with this campaign now is what I did with my first profitable Decisive campaign that did $5 a day. If I had gone to the traffic sources I'm trying now on day one, I would have crashed and burned. So take a month or two, and then once you are doing alright there, definitely take a look at other traffic sources.
This being said, there is proof on STM that you can do big profits with Decisive as well—and I still have a deposit there and will test stuff there in the future. If I had to start all over again, I would choose the exact same way I took with Decisive, just with even more focus on making the most out of the data and really learning instead of making money.
If you are already doing XX / day profit I would also highly recommend getting your bank account affairs sorted. I would have never expected such a sudden increase in profits—and with it came massive fees from PayPal, bad currency exchange rates, and wire fees. In total I lost out somewhere between $500 and $1000 on those fees.
The best way to avoid most of them is sending fewer wires with bigger amounts, and most importantly having a bank account in the same currency as the traffic source and affiliate network. Bad currency conversion rates are hard to detect, but if you do the math you will be shocked how much it will cost you, especially with PayPal.
Concerning traffic sources I can not reveal anything—but this is just fine. Because if you are just starting out, even if I did tell you my traffic source, and even the kind of offer I am running, you would not be able to make it profitable. First you have to learn the underlying skillset, and it will simply take a couple of months. When I look back I thought I knew so much two months ago. Now it hurts because I know how "dumb" I was two months ago. And there is not one secret that would make you successful, but that everyone is keeping from you.
It is simply an accumulation of thousands of lessons, experiences, and small improvements you make by testing again and again. By going out there and doing what the experienced guys are recommending. But not to make profits, simply to learn so that you can make profits at some point in the future. Even my recent success was just luck—but I was just trying so much and hustling so hard that it was inevitable that luck would help me out at some point.
Resources that helped me a lot in general, and to take the step to profitability:
- IamAttilas blog
- Finch premium posts 2015 edition
- Stack That Money forum
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Concerning resources I also highly recommend looking into personal development and finding your WHY. Knowing what drives me deep down in life helped me a lot to keep going with whatever I am doing. There is some nice information about this in the BKK speeches as well, just search for "speeches" in the search bar and you will find them.
And I really have to thank everyone I met in Sydney, just being around positive people doing the same thing had a huge effect on me. I'm looking forward to catch up again in London next month! I hope I can motivate and help everyone starting out with these posts, just like I got help from so many awesome guys who commented on my follow along, answered my questions and gave me great tips!
That's some amazing progress mate!
What's even better is that you are still very young and have tons of time ahead of you to improve your skills.
I wish I started AM when I was 19 
Keep us updated when you break your next record!
Congratulations on your good work kepe!
Congrats mate, that's awesome progress. Looking forward to seeing how much further you've progressed by the time we catch up in London!
Subscribed! Love your work Kepe!
This is awesome man, thank you for your story. I was feeling kinda off the last few days but reading this really inspired me to get back and work even harder
You should write a book or something in the future lol
Awesome!
So glad for you mate!!! well done
Once again its proof that if you follow the process results will come
This is amazing. I just had my first few profitable days after a month or so in, so seeing someone else a few months ahead on their journey is amazing motivation!
Great posts Kepe, Ive read all your blog posts. Your stories and post are very helpful and inspiring for us new guys in the industry!
GmbH mit 19. Heilige Kacke, Respekt!
Originally Posted by phlong
It's more like an umbrella organization for the various business stuff I do on the internet. Once I hit a certain monthly profit area I'll get expert consultation on setting up an offshore company. The business is fully location independent, so am I, so I see a big opportunity in fully maximizing all legal opportunities to cut costs.////
I also have the honor to be nominated for the best follow along for the STM London awards
THX! You can check out my follow along here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...stering-Mobile
And vote here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12XA...ewform?c=0&w=1
Congrats man, that's some awesome progress.
Glad the Premium Posts were useful for you!
Nice job mate! I'm 24 this years
Excellent post man! It feels so good when you finally break through don't it?
But I was also surprised how quickly it became normal, and I could even catch me getting a little pissed when I just had a "bad" $300 day instead of $1K haha
Now it's just "what's next" and moving on at full speed to hit the next milestone
pretty awesome stuff Kepe! echt der Hammer alter.. hah
would have love to know how much profit you got out of the campaign sofar, out if curiosity purposes only
keep rucking
Congratz bro, I know that feeling! I'm following you since you appeared here and since the start I knew you will make it. One can tell from person's attitude. Keep up the good work on both camps and blog!
Congrats Man!!
Hey kepe, someone told me that up to a few months ago, you were homeless and sleeping in your car???
WTF? Is that really true?
Man, you have REALLY come a long way.
Yeah I was sleeping in a van all the time I was staying in Sydney, from September until the beginning of February. But it was more of a choice, I have never been what you would consider homeless. (even though I was sleeping in the co-working office and in the public park once lol)If anyone is interested in this initial phase of startign out in AM while living in a van - I wrote an article about it on my blog, and how living in a van is not bad at all if you're a young guy: https://secretlifestyleacademy.com/l...dset/live-van/
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