How I went from ZERO to a $2.5k day in 5 Months!!!!!! (Long Post!) (58)
How I went from ZERO to a $2.5k day in 5 Months!!!!!! (Long Post!)
THIS IS A LONG POST! I Tried to write something that I would have LOVED to read when I really started taking things serious! Hope it helps and most of all enjoy...!!
Well, where the heck do I start. Let me start by saying this hustle is real! I don’t know about anyone else who have found success big or small but this was emotionally more draining than anything else I have done!
I found success in the consulting world in Finance/IT but I have always been a sales person if anything selling myself was my thing but consulting isn’t much of a scalable business model and selling time sux. So I decided to leave it all in November when I committed to winning in this Affiliate marketing world.
I have dabbled in the affiliate marketing world before but it was on and off and after minor failure it will be "ahh forget this it doesn’t work" (maaaaan do I wish I continued then).
So November came and I was tired of selling my time for money so I fully committed to winning in the online game and if I lost I lost doing something that I loved, I signed up to this forum (STM baby!) that day and the plan was to read EVERYTHING.
I started to plan how much money I might have needed to get started & how much I could potentially loose.
At that moment all I had was drive, determination, focus and some cash stacked.
So I logged on to my computer and I joined a bunch of marketing forums, a few great forums. I started out by reading the success stories on STM to get me fired up. Man did it fire me up titles like:
• “How I made $371k in 5 months”
• “My road to $5k a day”
Serious motivation right there. I remember thinking I couldn’t make $5k a day consulting if I walked into the client's office with a 9mm...Baring in mind we don’t have those in the UK! Ha!
After reading these posts I decided the way I was going to win was to talk to people! My plan was to message 3-5 people a day for 6 weeks to build contacts.
This way I could potentially meet 3 types of people:
1. People like me that are driven and focused on their hustles.
2. People who were once noobs that made it happen
3. Experienced super affiliates who can guide me towards my success.
After about a week of sending out RELEVANT messages to individuals in the categories of people I realised I added more people on Skype in that week than I did in my last 27 years of living!
I started to get involved in highly relevant conversations which very much helped me to understand the industry in much more detail than I had previously did, but there was something missing…
Most of the people who had time to talk to me were those in the first category, people like me who were starting out. None of them could help me make the leap to the next level, to expand my knowledge and get to a green position. I had to change my strategy, so I did.
My plan going forward was to ONLY message who found success in affiliate marketing, people I could really learn from to accelerate the process. When I say ‘success’ there is only 1 type of success I was talking about: MONEY! (Obvs lol).
My goal was to understand their approach towards their success. Over the next couple of weeks I joined a few mastermind groups with people all sharing information, talking, joking, dreaming of lambo’s etc
I done a lot of listening….and joking! Ha
Masterminds are awesome! Think about it like this you have a group of say 10 people all spending on average say $400 a day sharing information, what worked, mistakes etc. That’s $4000 a day in spend in that mastermind and some very good lessons learnt and most importantly shared. (Always best when people ACTUALLY share).
Then out of the blue a guy from the mastermind Paul (who must have been bored) asked me if I wanted to jump on a Skype call, I’m a talkative person and at that moment I was currently staring into space dreaming of that Lamborghini Huracan. So I said yes!
At this point I didn’t know Paul was what I’d hoped for a SERIOUSLY SERIOUS super affiliate...a very low key one...
The First Ray Of Light
So after a few weeks of networking and attempting to understand how the industry worked, I got onto the most important calls since starting, the only thing is I didn’t know who I was about to get onto a call with.
So in that first convo that lasted around 1 hour Paul SCHOOLED ME…..HARD…
Just to paint the picture here, I was 3 weeks into affiliate marketing (for real this time lol) and at this point I thought I learnt a hell of a lot from masterminds mostly around the infrastructure and how to run campaigns. Paul on the other hand was a 10-year veteran under the radar type who knew how to get a campaign up and running and profitable in a matter of days, with his eyes closed while playing Fifa 16.
I was running mobile sweep campaigns, building my own landers and writing my own copy from scratch. That very first conversation he taught me a few basic principles of affiliate marketing which changed my thinking completely.
He basically said NO to everything I was doing then suggested a better way. He never promised me what he said will work but his suggestions brought about a new way of thinking, a new approach towards managing a campaign. I dont really need a promise before I take action.
After taking on the suggestions and making (many) changes to my campaign I went from -94% ROI days to -12% ROI in just 3 days. Not bad!
In my experience I found that just reading the forum and or masterminds was just enough to get my toes wet but building solid relationships with experience people was key.
Road To Making Real Money
Over the next days i took in alot of info from him.
By the end of that week sometime just after Xmas I WAS PROFITABLE! I was sitting in a comfortable 40% ROI position…..HAPPY DAYS! The only problem was that I was driving low quality traffic towards it and it probably wasn’t going to hold.
At this time Paul was firing up his Nutra campaigns for as it was new years and he said:
“Hey, Do you want to learn how to get conversions in nutra?”
I first analysed the situation. Nutra offers payouts were huge (up to $40 per conversion and if the customer opted in for the 1 click up sell that 1 conversions will bring in up to $75). I took a couple of days to think about it. I didn’t want to leave sweep un-conquered.
Now I have a finance background, we love pull our spreadsheets out to make sense of things! My calculations looked something like this:
I built in a few assumptions into this model:
1. 50% of people will opt-in to the 1 click up-sell
2. I assumed the offers I would get would be on the higher end of the payout scale.
3. That traffic number was completely made up to reflect a 100% ROI. (little did I know that was a terrible assumption!).
So this was VERY rough, pure guess work (on the cost of traffic part) but it was enough to convince me. So I joined him. Not to mention Paul just sounded like he knows what he’s talking about. So I called him up and said:
“I’m all in, teach me all”
My New Path
At this time he was already running his campaign and setting up new traffic sources making various tweeks and optimisations. We would have random conversations every day. Just to be clear this wasn’t a planned course or guide, it was an everyday conversation between 2 people.
But I made sure I had a pen handy. I took TONNES of notes and asked a lot of questions.
Every day I will put my notes together and compares notes from different days to fill in the gaps. I was lucky to meet someone so straight up, and I thank my parents for my thick skin.
For example I would put a few things together tweek a few things after reading my notes, I nailed it. I would show him and all he’d say is:
“That’s Shit”. lol 
He would point me in the right direction but I was left to work it out why on my own. Otherwise I wouldn’t learn anything right? It’s 10x scarier learning on your own dime (PS we don’t have dimes in the UK it just sounds way cooler lol).
I was lucky as a couple weeks before I randomly booked Affiliate Summit West 2016. Now it was the 8th Jan 2016 and I was flying out! The conference was on the 10th-12th Jan. This meant I got to put a face to a name, and I did. In the process I met all his VERY successful friends….VERY SUCCESSFUL FRIENDS. super motivation.
When you are surrounded by so many hustlers at any given moment your adrenaline increases and your motivation increases 100 fold.
By this time my campaign which includes my ads, my landers, my offers were set up and I was ready to press go, and I did…I was scared.
Traffic started to flow and my stomach was turning, 20 clicks to offer and no conversions! WHAT?? I didn’t get it. I couldn’t sleep or focus, I could hardly eat.
Then it happened…
A conversion!!! I remember being in my Las Vegas hotel room dancing! 1 conversion is nothing, but there is nothing like the FIRST conversion.
That was an expensive conversion! The process, the time, the effort, my campaign worked and all I had to do was find out why.
But again suttin was up..
My tracking wasn’t wired properly. This meant I didn’t know where and how my first (nutra) conversion came in. How the hell was I going to optimize? So I paused my traffic. I don’t care if I ran traffic and I spent $1 to make $10 if I cannot track the variables then I will not run traffic.
So I spent the next few days trying to figure out how to properly track. I wanted to know:
1. Which Ad converted.
2. Which placements or key words converted.
3. The budget drainers.
4. Devices
5. Locations and so on…
It took me a week but I figured it out (im a non-tech self taught type). So now I restarted Traffic. And the $$$$ were about to come rolling in.
They didn’t.
When I restarted traffic I stayed between -90% to -60% ROI day by day. I didn’t get it. What happened to all the $$$$?
Sometimes the downside of learning fast is that you miss things, sometimes very important things. For example, I didn’t rotate my offer until I spent $2k+ on traffic, although I learnt this lesson before (as this is what turned my mobile sweeps campaign green) it got lost in my head completely.
Another issue I had was that I didn’t focus on the ads that were doing well and try to tweek them for better results, instead I continued to test aimlessly. Letting my emotions get the best of me.
This mistake alone cost $5k+ DON’T DO THIS! 
I have a 10-minute cry (haha) then I got back too it.
I took a couple of days out to look at what my data said and I told myself I wasn’t going to make any more emotional decisions. I was going to make data driven decisions. It’s very easy to make emotional decision while running traffic. My off really help me to think.
The NEXT DAY. I went from –60% ROI to -10%. I was close. A couple of simple decisions got me there. Which is translation for “I was making a couple of very silly mistakes that were costing me”.
I was now at a consistent breakeven point(ish).
This game of affiliate marketing is a roller coaster one day you’re up and the next you could be down. I was about to experience yet another downer
The Frustration
Even when you think you have all the answers that’s not usually the case. Sometimes its best not to think at all before you think yourself into another mistake!
But this time I didn’t really make a mistake, I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how to get out from under this breakeven point. I would have days of -20% ROI and then days of +20% ROI. (The positive days were fun! 
).
Overall my campaign was in the red (due to my earlier mistakes) which was ok as I put that down to the ‘cost of war’, but I needed to find a way to stay green all the time.
But at least at this point I I stopped the heavy bleeding.
While I was trying to solve the issue of consistent profitable days another popped up. I was spending all this time focusing on the campaign and optimization and I wasn’t bothered to sort out my payments from the Affiliate Networks. I just assumed this will be the easy part.
I was with a few networks which my friends (from ASW) introduced me too. So there was trust. But then there were some I found on my own.
As I was testing offers I had money sitting with different Affiliate Networks in the hope to find a booming offer (which you should be doing).
I didn’t ensure they could or would pay me when asked. There were a lot of delay tactics. I collected my money from my trusted sources fine which was around 55%% of revenue. The other 45% was sitting with 1 or 2 (very dodgy) networks who had every excuse under the sun as to why they couldn’t pay me.
Traffic always needs to keep flowing. And I didn’t think about my cash flow position as I was so focused on the campaign and getting it profitable. There are some lessons I’d rather not learn myself.
I’d rather read about it like you. Hehe
From this point on I decided to only work with networks that were recommended. This network finally paid, but I did pause traffic for a day or two due to their delays.
Profitability-ish
You could say that me pausing the traffic due to payments was a blessing in disguise as the only thing left to do when you are not running traffic is to analyse data. You never know what you might miss.
And I did miss something. Something I never would have realised I missed if I never paused the traffic. While traffic was running I was never thinking clearly. Until I paused.
1 tweek launched me into a profitable position.
When Profitability came, it wasn’t a first. I’d already had profitable days before the only question was “will it be consistent this time?”. And it was! Day by day I will be getting profitable days.
Soon it all dried up and the cashflow was shot.....round 1 really beat me up! I could have gave up and I think i did for 3 days....but then I got bored... 
CONTINUED BELOW....
CONTINUED......
Round 2 – Pay Per Call (white hat!)
At this point I felt like I lost and I thought ok well what now....So I made a phone call and went back to the consulting gig....the margins were solid so i started getting solid cash flow again. I missed the game and 2 weeks in I dusted my self off. It was round to with affiliate marketing. I committed to putting every dime in once again.
I’m so happy I started this game (committed) by networking and building great contacts, partners and friends. This meant that I will get into random convo's which will basically be potential opportunities to set up a campaign. Had a word with a friend someone who I met in Vegas in January (I met 80% of key contacts through Paul).
He mentioned something about his tech calls campaign doing well that he set up a couple of months ago, he was clearing $2k per day clean. I was in.
When ever I decided to set something up, a new campaign where I have no experience I'd contact Paul, this dude is busy but he always had time for casual (informative chats) and he'd share with me how things work. No Joke this dude knows EVERYTHING in this game he makes a killing while lazy haha (he showed me his numbers...)
He gave me the run down, I was up and running with my tech calls campaign in 24 hrs! The first day I started to run I only had an hour left to run done around $100 (20% ROI), ok promising, not to bad at all. The second day (which was a full day of running) I done $750! YESS I done it...$300 profit. I’m winning now...NOT.... Day 3 I done $600 but on day 4 I done -$500.
Day 5 - Lost $400
Day 6 - Day 13 - Lost an average of $300 a day (lol)
Finally I realised what the problem was, It was my servers. After sorting my servers in a solid way to handle the PPV traffic I went back to making good money but it wasn’t profitable. This was starting to feel like my diet campaign however the only difference was I accepted that loss making was part of the game so I continued.
Continued to network, talk to people build build build, spend spend spend spend.... Collect data!
I now see it like this "Loss making in test mode is just buying data", If I said to you, bro give me $5k and I'd give you $5k worth of data, would you pay me? I would because it means I saved a hell of a lot of time setting up a campaign and optimising for myself etc. etc.
Another difference this time vs my diet campaign was GRANT CORDONE, I had this guy in my ear 24/7, if you don’t listen to him start haha...(I make no doe selling Cardone but I do anyways, but I did email him telling he should pay me for this ish! haha).
Anyways Just like diet its not like I spent $10k and made nothing, in my tech calls campaign I spent around $9k and made $5k, it wasn’t make or break but still loss making.
Now when you are surrounded by hustlers and people doing well in the game you are trying to crack you learn through bloody attrition, you hear sh*t by accident. A lot of the people I meet who are new now are not prepared to spend money to learn and network anything from tool, conferences, meetings.
If you are busy trying to save $30 a month on tools then surely your focus is off the ball mate, Id rather focus on how I can make $30 more to cover that gap.
Anyways.......
I enjoyed calls and all I knew was tech at this moment called Paul and said "hey mate what else do you know about calls, tech is inconsistent" and he broke down PPCall with various traffic sources. He introduced me to a couple of guys with great offers and I set up shop (i’m the type to take action, I don’t want to spend 8 yrs thinking and planning).
I came into affiliate marketing as a business man and I treated affiliate marketing as such. And at this point decided to build a pay per call company, with various campaigns.
Not to drag this story on for ever but the next couple of campaigns I set up done well, it was consistent and I had my first $1k day also....$600k profit! BOOM!
But the next day I killed it with a $2k day and $1.6k+ in profits!
The 7 Day position of that week looked as such.
So as I optimise and improve the quality of my campaign things are getting very consistent and the aim is to get to the $1.6k per day consistently!!!
An average day may look like this:
As far as May is concerned im on the way to doing $30k in revenue and aiming for at least 100+% ROI!
KEEEP HUSTLING PEOPLE.
(what one of my payments look like).
Winning Minds Set
There were many times in this journey I could have quit when things weren’t going my way. But if it is easy wouldn’t everyone in the world be doing it?
You need to start this journey with a winning mentality. When I decided to start in the affiliate marketing world I made a decision in that moment that I was going all the way and putting 100% into this.
There was no other way for me to become successful as I had committed all my chips to this hustle. Cash, time, mental power.
The picture below would be imprinted in my head, I said to myself “I wasn’t going to be that diamond miner who let his fortunes slip through his fingers because he gave up.
This picture flawlessly illustrates the life of a failure. Starting with high energy and then giving up when you have lost whatever it was that kept you going in the first place.
My mind set in this game was key. You will be losing REAL money and the thing about it is, at the beginning all you are doing is buying data. Data is key.
I would normally get emotional when I bought data and I had no conversions this is the norm. Its painful. But your main focus at the start isn’t about being green (sounds strange I know), its about establishing your foundations and knowing where it all comes from.
When I go to the shop I pull out my wallet and I buy something, whether its food, clothes or shoes etc. When I go to a party I get my wallet out and I get a drink and drink with my friends. I get something in return.
However, data is intangible and usually comes in the form of losses (the negative numbers you see on you tracking platform). There needs to be a shift in mentality, you need to see money that you spent on data as valuable. How else are you going to find out whats working?
You will be making decisions with this data. Do not let the fear of losing money get in between you and your cash.
Top 4 mistakes
1. I Stuck to what I liked, there is no space for this!
2. I didn’t test different traffic courses.
3. Not Seeking out a partner sooner!
4. Cancelling variable too early. Statistical significance is the word!
GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!!
I love STM, fantastic reading
I know that in order to be part of a mastermind you have to exchange valuable information (at least that's what people say), so, how did you get accepted in the group?
Hope one day I'll find a "Paul" too
I had a friend 'paul' who invited me...cool guy shout out to him for being patient with me though!! And yeah STM is great man really motivated me and helped keep me on track!
Wow Kenny that's one heck of a success story! Thanks for documenting all the lessons-learned for all of us. RESPECT!
Amy
Thank you very much!!!
glad ya liked it!
Respeck
Yeah I actually Got to know Paul one day though a Post I put up about a mastermind.
He hit me up one day and helped me out with my campaigns and as soon as he started talking, I could tell he knew his shit.
I'm really glad I have him in my circle, his knowledge is game-changing.
Great share kenny!
Originally Posted by erikgyepes
WoW! Kenny, Nice work!!
Thanks for the share
Congrats on getting there in the end. This picture really does ring true
Great job! Love to read such stories :-)
Keep scaling to even higher numbers.
Originally Posted by bobliu
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
Great post! You had me at Lambo and Pay Per Call- my 2 fav things lol.
Keep on the hustle and success will come. You were right this is a roller coaster - and i think people give up on the downsides rather than keep pushing through.
Very motivating, especially for those who are just starting. The importang thing is to be open minded about everything. Thanks!
Great post Kenny!
Always love reading these stories
Originally Posted by RajPatel
Thanks
Kenny,
You rock!
Holy shit my blood is boiling with anticipation and desire!
Never give in to the darkness of uncertainty.
Good job Ken. You deserve it.
Nice post, its been a long time when i reached 1k a day for the first time but it was a sweet day. Now you should scale your winning campaign combinations everywhere and not try and find another winner. Thats the secret to go from 1k to 10k a day.
Originally Posted by lloydmc
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
Amazing write up mate! Good job pushing through and not giving up!
Congrats brilliant write up!
Kenny this is one of the most helpful threads i read, it brought me back on track,
thank you so much for that, i think i'm going to stick a poster in my room with that one 
I wrote a story similar to your's here hoping to help someone as you did
but it dosen't have a happy endind like yours , it is here if you want to check >> Follow Along: 8+ Stupid Mobile Mistakes That You Can Easily Make - An Italian Tale
I'm networking too now, if you want to try to became "Paul" for me i will dance in my Rome room like you did for your 1st conversion
Skype: filippo.teodoro
Thank you a lot again,
I need a "Paul" too
I think I need a "Paul" in my life too haha
But inspiring journey
I am really bad at scaling out to other sources, just rely on on, so shame on me.
Better to move on now
Glad to see you're still crushing it Ken
Originally Posted by steadfast
Thank you kenny for sharing your story! Inspiring.
Amazing story. Love it when people are real and share the downs and the push through. In an industry age of 5-step get rich Guru's around every corner, stories like these are a breath of fresh air and motivation. Really helps a break even affiliate like me keep pushing towards consistent POSITIVE. Keep it real mate!
Thanks for letting us in on your journey Kenny. Inspirational. New in the space and getting into Pay Per Call as well. Your point about connecting with people that can help guide is something that i'm looking to implement.
Very inspiring for guy that just start taking affiliate marketing seriously. :-) Thanks Kenny
thank you for sharing your inspiring journey. Keep it up!
Great post Kenny, just watched the Call Academy video too and its certainly made me think about Pay Per Call as an option moving forward. Thanks for sharing
Awesome story do you teach yourself now when you are more experinse? Thanks
Great share. Thanks Kenny!
Very inspiring! I admire your mental strength to hustle and dig. Super with you on the importance of the right relationships and connections.
Excellent Story Kenny.. Keep Rocking
Thank you for the morning motivation (:
Incredible story, looking forward to many more and even bigger future success stories from you!
Now that's one hell of a journey... motivational for newbie like me.
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks kenny. Great share man! Time to jump back on the ship.
I have never read the more inspirational story !! Great share, Thanks Kenny !!!
Cash, time, mental power. - it will be my mantra.
We all feel the same,bro)
inspiring story m8! Look up your PMs 
Long story, but very interesting. I read it from beginning to end in minutes.
thanks for that
re PPC, can you shed some light on different traffic sources? how does adwords rank on the list?
Great post, it is really inspiring and will inspire many others
Hi Kenny thanks for sharing. Can I know what traffic source is it?
Thanks for Great Post
Hi Kenny - I just joined STM (today) after doing a lot of lead gen in finance and legal here in the UK. This is pretty much the first post I've read :-) Very interested in hearing how you would suggest starting. What types of offers/model etc. I'm used to running biggish campaigns on FB (3/6K per day) so would like to start there if possible.
Anyways, any advice you have for a fellow Brit would be cool
Nice post, let's hope we will also get Paul some day.
thank you for your sharing! I think my problem are my mind always tend to do a planning and thinking instead of action.
Awesome story thanks for sharing!
Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app
Wow man! I appreciate the insight. I’m new to STM and this is my first post. But, I think I have made a great choice by being here.
Originally Posted by capstoneglobal
Great Story Kenny!
LeadCloak
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