How Much Had You LOST Before "Making It" in AM? (15)
Sup guys 
It's time to ask, isn't it? I think we've had a fair share of how much someone has EARNED in this biz. But how about how much that someone had to SACRIFICE before s/he "made it" in this AM thing?
I'm talking mainly about time and money as I think they're the most valuable resources we have to invest.
To get the ball rolling, I will start with mine.
I started as an SEO guy back in the days. And it cost me 9 months and around $300-$400 to make my first $17 with Amazon affiliate program. I was stoked at that day. September 2nd, 2011 as I still remember.
Google has always been a wild beast to tame. And I've got a fair share of scars fighting with it.
My first breakthrough happened on September 2014 (3 years after I made my first $17). That month I generated around $6,500 in pure profit from my Amazon niche sites. I'd amassed around $25,000 in revenue in 2014 by the end of September that year. And to generate that revenue, I'd invested around $3,000 into all the SEO things. So, around $22,000 in profit. Too bad, Amazon took half of it away since I violated one of their rules. Stupid mistake from me.
To sum up my SEO journey, from beginning to the end of it, I invested 4 years and around $5,000 to bring back $28,000 in revenue. Nothing impressive comparing to many other guys. But that was what it REALLY took me to reach the numbers.
I'm now no longer a 100% SEO guy. I'm still having a small site making me $100-$200/mo. But my focus now is on mobile display and CPA offers.
For this new journey, I've invested around $1,000 and got back around $40 in revenue. Deep in the red with a big -96% ROI. But I know it will take time, money, and lots of effort before I could make it. So I will keep on drilling. Hope I can find that big campaign soon 
That's it for me guy. So:
What's your story?
What are your REAL NUMBERS?
What did you have to SACRIFICE in exchange for success in this biz?
Please share with me and others. So that we all can see the COMPLETE picture of this business. Because I know this world is not all rainbows and flowers.
Cheers!
P.S: This thread is motivated by this awesome post of polarbacon: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post106177 - Thanks man for a really uplifting post!
I don't know how much I lost but i ran losses for several years. Spending money and lots of time. Actually, I spent more years losing money than making a profit. Eventually, that didn't matter because when stuff started working, I made up for losses quite fast.
Also, i don't know if i started in 2006 or 2007 but I do remember that i started without any knowledge or knowing anyone that was doing IM. Because of this, I didn't know how to properly search the internet for info. When I tried, searches only came up with that guru stuff (which I never fell for btw). Or maybe, there simply wasn't any good info.
What helped me was my offline company. I could invest my profits in losing @ internet. On the flop side, it also worked against me since I wasn't able to spend as much time on IM as I would like to.
I thought about quitting many times... only to realize that if I quit, I would never make up for losses and my spent time was really wasted.
I'm still sacrificing. Too much actually.
I got pretty lucky for two reasons.
Timing: I entered the industry at the height of the rebill boom. You'd have to be a complete tard NOT to make money in those days if you were running the right offers. It was pretty simple...a bubble of easy profit.
No Startup Cost: I used dozens and dozens of loose £50 AdWords coupons from .Net magazine to fund my campaigns. I must have had around £3000/£4000 in free ads on offers that were routinely 200/300% ROI and paying out weekly. That eased any early cashflow pains.
As for sacrifices made along the way...
I worked long hours. I balanced two jobs. I spent a lot of time in my room.
Not really a 'sacrifice' though, is it?
I think a lot of people in AM have a slightly warped opinion of what a true sacrifice is.
They struggle to differentiate between 'sacrifice' and 'free choice'.
We also tend to think we're the only people in the world that work hard, or take chances, or try to start a business. Even more absurdly, there's this belief you have to start your own business to be working the hardest.
I find that culture a bit of a turn-off, to be honest.
I think many people would like to believe the secret to success is to 'Never give up', 'Work harder', 'Work longer', 'See fewer friends'.
Well, it's easy to say that when you've made it.
And it's easy to make it when you're working in an industry that rewards some frankly dubious business models -- especially if you're willing to get dirty hands.
But it is what it is.
I don't think I sacrificed anything for my success.
They were all free choices I made to do something that I found comfortable, or something that was already making me money, or had a good chance of making me money.
I 'invested' (NOT LOST) because its an education around 24,000$ before i made a single dollar profit.
I still lose money every day on new ideas and ventures.
But I make more from the shit that stuck in the past.
I've invested about 4k before I started seeing any green campaigns.
And I consider this number to be rather conservative, because I've spent more time learning everything I can about the business, traffic sources, offers, verticals etc than taking action and spending money on campaigns.
If I were to just throw shit at the wall - probably I would need several times more money to get any meaningful results. Also conservative approach is longer - learning using real data is much faster.
This sum includes technology and services, Zeno 6wamc course - which helped a lot, this forum expenses and of course buying traffic.
I think I got pretty lucky, when I first started pretty much I hit into two profitable campaigns that funded all my other "losses".
I guess it was way easier back then to get a profitable campaig but on the other hand there was little to none info available and no tracking tools at all.
Around $700-1k in the red before I got profitable. Probably 3-5k in actual spend, though. Not including other costs like servers, STM, tracking etcetc
I have a similar story as Finch as I leveraged around 1k worth of free FB and Yahoo coupons. I kept breaking even and learning, then over time that 1k turned into 2k, and here we are today!
What did you have to SACRIFICE in exchange for success in this biz?
Time. That's it. I enjoyed testing and working on campaigns.
My spare time just transferred from playing games and watching movies over to launching and optimising campaigns...which still felt like I was playing games.
Originally Posted by Mr Green
was that after you made some profits already?
Originally Posted by guillermo
Back in the game last year, after my long journey of online and offline biz, I'm sure AM is the right one for me.
I think I'm pretty lucky, join the right mastermind who love to share and learn together. Using iAmAttila's word, I 'invested' around 2-3K cash before the greeny days.
But I think money is not the only thing needed. Many days of sleepless night, family time, making another projects as second priority are just part of the game.
I joined STM about 2-3 weeks ago (I think!) and that was the start of my AM journey. Before that, I have tried and failed to run several blogs for about 6 years.
So far in AM I have spent around $300 misc costs (STM membership, VPN etc) and around $200 in traffic. So far I've seen about $1.80 return but have learnt a hell of a lot in the time I've been here. Still lots to learn of course.
In terms of time, I've spent years learning various web skills (coding, running traffic etc) but specifically AM related, I've spent about 8 hours a day since my STM join date learning/practising. I have a good feeling that I am well on my way to start to see some -50% ROI campaigns but I may well be delusional
I've lost about 1000 so far. I've still never converted an offer. But I'm not giving up.
I hit a small profitable campaign after 2k spent and was breakeven after 8k spent. That was last May. I would have probably spent a lot more if I didn't start mobile with a mastermind group.
I havent gone out much for the past two years, but I don't feel like I sacrificed a whole lot since Im going out a lot more now. The only thing I really lost is my shitty SEO job. Haha
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