Aff-Reincarnated (25)
Once upon a time, there was a kid from Singapore who went through his usual bouts of opportunity seeking and trying out of different businesses; he finally stumbled upon affiliate marketing. He went through the usual trials by fire, doing SEO, PPC, PPV, and eventually found a Nirvana with a funky name: "Stack That Money". It was an exciting place that provided the kid with landing pages, campaign ideas, creativity and tools that seemed to churn out profitable campaigns by the truckloads, and the kid devoured it all.
That kid was me.
As the forum evolved, I grew as an affiliate marketer and I worked with some awesome guys in this forum like kokofai, maynzie and a few others I know would rather remain low-profile. I picked polarbacon's brain when he came to Singapore, and it was really mind-blowing how nice and humble he was, as he was one of the first persons I've met whom I knew WAS a super-duper affiliate.
Long story short, affiliate marketing was so easy back then.
I even joked in random blog posts that I was wasting my time not building campaigns as I could throw up a random PoF campaign direct-linking to a random dating offer and almost immediately have created a $100/day income stream. Skimming through network newsletters gave me campaign ideas that were so easy I could execute them in like 30 minutes.
I was making $X,XXX a day and didn't really think much about it. I was banking with credit reports on PPV, dating on Facebook and PoF, I had tons of accounts, juggling a bunch of easy campaigns, and life was good.
It was great money, and I was thrilled about the possibilities in this industry.
Life was good..
[Success Story circa 2012]
.... Until it wasn't.
I didn't treasure my success because I didn't need to work hard to get it.
Fortunately, being a sensible and rather ambitious Asian, I didn't go blow it off on luxurious stuff etc, and carried on living a normal life and wanted to hustle harder to make more money from other businesses instead of scaling as hard as I could on affiliate marketing.
And then an opportunity came up in my country and it seemed like a great chance for me to build a "real business". I took that opportunity and have been hustling at it for the past 2 years. I went through the usual trials and tribulations building that business and I've certainly grown as a human being, going through betrayals and hirings and firings and office dramas.
While I was going through these, not everything was sunshine and rainbows in the affiliate marketing part of my business.
In addition to the awesome guys I met, I also JV-ed with a couple guys that turned out to be complete shits. One was apparently raided by
the FBI and is now in jail, and another guy ran $80,000 worth of traffic to MY CREDIT and disappeared without a trace. (This is a story for another day but Darvin Legaspi, wherever you are in this world, I hope you're down and out because you don't deserve a single good thing coming into your life, you worthless piece of shit.)
Things started going downhill. My affiliate marketing campaigns died. I lost that $80,000 for something that I didn't do. Local business was doing alright but I figured affiliate marketing could have made me much more money.
Early on this year (2015), I decided it's time to "get back into affiliate marketing."
I was officially a newbie all over again. I started reading success stories and got inspired by them all over again, just like in the wild and naive days. I wrote down my goals, and grew excited about what was to come. I started hitting up people to learn and network from each other. I contacted my old AM's and promised them I was back for real, and will do whatever it takes to drive volume to their networks.
The most inspiring threads seem to come the ones where the OP bounced back from $XXX in their bank accounts and while I'm fortunately not
anywhere near that stage yet, I do want to cultivate the fire in me to make things happen!
Since coming back into the scene I've met new people who've come onto the scene like supeyrio who are now kicking my ass! People like hlyghst who has really inspired me with his story as well, and how motivated he was to make things happen.
For the past 6 months or so I've been sort of half-hearted, putting up a campaign here and there and stopping if it doesn't go into profit
immediately, "like it always had".
This isn't going to be easy and I'm going to give it all I've got to make it happen.
And man, was it HARD.
After countless attempts and $X,XXX thrown into "trying out" campaigns, I was at my wit's end.
This was HARD! Really, really HARD!
I have funds I could invest into testing etc, but I really wanted to make sure I was learning from the right guys.
And then I heard that in the month of April, someone was coming in to Singapore to conduct a workshop. This guy was someone I've known about since the "wickedfire days" and I knew he was the shit. I've seen video interviews of him, he's now an internet celebrity, and very very famous.
His name is Charles Ngo.
The workshop wasn't cheap, and a couple friends in the industry were shocked that I was ATTENDING a workshop. "Bro, you could be CONDUCTING workshops if you wanted, why are you even ATTENDING one?!"
But deep inside I knew otherwise. I'm really treating myself like a newbie all over again, because perhaps I really am. I needed a competitive advantage, and I'll do whatever I need to get it.
A month ago, I attended the AFFcelerator workshop.
I sorted out my Skype contact list, and "starred" all my AM's and partners I knew I should be talking to on a daily basis.
I re-scheduled my daily program such that I'll be woking late into the night as that is about the only time I could really talk to my AM's.
It re-ignited the fire in me and in the 5 weeks that have gone by.
I taught my VA how to do translations for me, as that was one of the most mundane and annoying jobs I had but didn't want to do (I learn this from Charles' workshop).
I've regrouped my life, re-implementing the GTD methodology via the Omnifocus iPhone app, and I've started a practice of writing in this "Affiliate Marketing Book" everyday where I record just the important figures: revenues, spend, profit, and a last section for writing what I learnt from that day.
I re-devoured threads by thought leaders and was inspired and amazed by people like Attila, cmdeal, Tim Tetra, zeno, and of course not forgetting lorenzo, stackman and besmir.
I was so used to CPVLab but forced myself to re-learn
I would love to say that the workshop immediately changed my life but..
As of right now, I'm still losing $XXX daily.
However I KNOW I'll get there. I have the roadmap to make thing happen.
And I'm posting here so that it would be such an embarrassment if I fail.
I've scheduled coaching calls with Charles, and I'll be working harder than ever with my partners in crime to drill down into campaigns.
I've invented spreadsheets and experiments and workflows with
I'm printing out top offer emails from networks and setting them as homework. I've printed out inventories with CPM rates from traffic sources.
These are the milestones I've set for myself:
1) $100 profit/day
2) $500 profit/day
3) $1,000 profit/day
4) When I manage to hit all of the above, I'm going on a sabbatical to BKK for a break and to meet up with the successful affiliates from Singapore who have all seemed to prefer BKK.
The goal is to hit all these by the end of the year.
Now, it would be very embarrassing for me to come up and say all these things and then not have any updates in the next couple weeks. And
that's the whole point.
So here we go.
Clicking "Submit New Thread" now and "may the rest be history."
Update: 18 June 2015
Revenue: $144.50
Spend: $34.25
Profit: $110.25
It's taken wayyy longer than I hoped (>2 weeks) but between managing the other business and affiliate marketing, as well as fussing over my upcoming wedding I guess I'll have to make do.
I was reading a few follow-along and success threads and was especially pumped by kokofai's (yes, AGAIN!) and decided to do a follow-along of my own, modeling after kepe95 and MrHardwork because those were really good IMO!
Looking forward to turning the heat up and making better use of the resources I have at my disposal!
I wanted this thread to serve the purpose of marking my milestones, and I'll leave more of the journey to another thread I just started.
If this positively affects just a handful of people it would have served its purpose 
==
Update: 18 Nov 2015
I'd like to close off this thread with a parting screenshot from a unicorn campaign from 2 days ago; I have about 20 campaigns going on right now, and this is the best-performing one on that day.
(Emphasis on the ROI.. Kinda happy with that.)
I'm at a stage where I'm pretty happy with my results, so I'd like to close this thread; longer finale post here!
Awesome post, I'm sure you'll hit your goals sooner than you think. Great inspiration reading stuff like this!
Goodluck Man!
Originally Posted by willatc
Originally Posted by peterpan
Smash it Kang!
This is really great. Start with small goals and build up from there ... exactly the way you should do it!
Nice one! Looks like your pointed in the right direction 
thank you for sharing your business experience openly. i think its very helpful to those who experience the same issues, who might not feel like sharing, and gives the encouragement to take one step further. i believe your efforts and determination will pay off very soon =D
Great story.
You can definitely do it!
Fingers crossed.
Originally Posted by Mr Green
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Originally Posted by aushustler87
Originally Posted by xavierfok
Originally Posted by erikgyepes
Your blog looks interesting, and I shall take a page from how you benefited from a good mastermind group!
Bro Affecelerator started already? Didn't know. Even though I signed up to mailing list.
yo bro!
I hope affcelerator was worth your while like i mentioned!
good luck in your journey to success! i know you will make it!!! see you back in singapore!
@wangyalun yep first batch was in April.
@supeyrio bro you were one of the reasons I decided to go for Affcelerator! But you ended up now showing up lol!! Yeah man see you either in SG or BKK 
Great story! I wish you all the best and it's nice to see you are already in the green
Good luck!
Awesome post! No doubt you'll make it!
I also attended Charles' workshop, Im not a beginner, and I got incredible value/roi from it.
How did you let someone rack up an $80,000 debt with you in the first place?
@laurencestanley been consistently in the green over the past 2 weeks, looking forward to getting to 4 figures!
@cmdeal thanks! And look forward to meeting you on Saturday!
@andrius thank you!
@johnaff It's a long story and on hindsight I could probably have totally avoided it but it was one of the first times I was working with someone on a large deal and I didn't want to seem noobish by being too "careful" and calculating over trust issues. Big big mistake, but that's life I guess.
Home > Success, Wins, Achievements > Success Stories