Home > Success, Wins, Achievements > Success Stories

From Newbie to 680k Profit in <9 Months (Surprise Inside!) (52)

05-26-2016 03:04 PM #1 pandabear (Member)
From Newbie to 680k Profit in <9 Months (Surprise Inside!)

I’m very excited to share our success with STM, after all it’s right here where it all started! Joined STM one year ago, started reading and taking action around 9 month ago. Followed all the advice I could get, focused on networking, got to meet my current business partner. We teamed up and everything since has been a great ride with no looking back. Ups and downs, blood, toil, tears, and sweat but we always knew we were on the right path. Fast forward to today, here are the key stats:





Here’s a screenshot of the past two months. This is just one of our Voluum accounts, we used various accounts and tracking solutions throughout the year:





Thanks to STM, to everyone who answered my newbie questions back when I had never set up a website before, motivated me when things didn’t go well. And especially for all the advice we got from here and from people we met through STM, it was invaluable.

Cya all at AWE Berlin!


P.S. *viral bonus*
A few days ago our CTO noticed a strange noise coming from inside the wall of his office room. We had already called rodent control, but yesterday it was sounding less and less like a mouse or rat but more like some muffled “meow” sound. You won’t believe what happened next Check it out:

https://youtu.be/X9Gp1r7SIcg

05-26-2016 03:09 PM #2 gijsvipresponse (Senior Member)

Congrats man!

05-26-2016 03:37 PM #3 kepe95 (Moderator)

Amazing progress and profit , congrats!!

05-26-2016 04:17 PM #4 sebastian_r (Member)

Nice one!

05-26-2016 05:31 PM #5 bdmmoreira (Member)

Congrats, mate! What's the best tips that you can share about your journey?

05-26-2016 06:22 PM #6 oleandr (Member)

Congrats man! Great numbers for the first year! And the video is super cute How did it get there?

05-26-2016 06:23 PM #7 davidep (Member)

Congratulations!!!! I hope I'll be there too someday

05-26-2016 06:34 PM #8 theeroly (Member)

Congrats!

And WTF! Why was there a cat inside your walls?

05-26-2016 07:44 PM #9 manu_adefy (Veteran Member)

Grats and cya in Berlin

05-26-2016 08:17 PM #10 hangman (Member)

Congrats! what is the process for setting up a team for affiliate marketing? are there any courses on team building for affiliates that you would recommend?

ALSO: cashflow! how did you guys solve your cash flow issue when you hit your big campaigns?

05-26-2016 09:08 PM #11 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Awesome, big congrats to you guys !!!!

05-27-2016 12:21 AM #12 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Cute kitten!

05-27-2016 12:30 AM #13 kash50 (Member)

Holy geez...congrats!

05-27-2016 03:40 AM #14 pandabear (Member)

Thank you everyone!

Quote Originally Posted by hangman View Post
Congrats! what is the process for setting up a team for affiliate marketing? are there any courses on team building for affiliates that you would recommend?

ALSO: cashflow! how did you guys solve your cash flow issue when you hit your big campaigns?
Two excellent questions.

We haven't looked into courses much, if anyone has recommendations I'm curious to check them out as well. I believe there could be a decent opportunity for someone to create courses and material for growing an affiliate marketing team, maybe something in the style of Zeno's 6WAMC but with focus on acquiring and training employees.
As for how we did it:

Phase 1)
Focused on adding people we trust, friends and business contacts with longstanding history. Don't rush this process, the first few hires can make or break your company.

Phase 2)
Very valuable advice we got from a friend who has built an incredibly successful affiliate team himself: Once the basics are set, hire an HR/Recruiter. This again will be an extremely important position, if the budget allows for it I recommend hiring top talent here. This person will be in charge of growing your company from low X to XX people. It's easy to underestimate the time needed to post jobs, screen résumés, go through interviews and manage the legal framework of hiring.


The cash flow was never much of a problem for us. I had a successful poker career before I entered affiliate marketing, my business partner has entrepreneurial background.
That being said, I was quite surprised how much cash flow was necessary to run campaigns, even with good ROI and frequent payouts from networks and advertisers. For someone just starting out with a smaller budget, scaling fast will certainly cause cash flow issues quickly. But if the operation is solid, there is plenty of opportunity to joint venture, focus on camps with quickest payout and highest ROI and maybe even work with credit cards (only do this with money you are absolutely certain you will get paid out or can cash out from sources in a worst case scenario!).

05-27-2016 04:47 AM #15 pandabear (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by theeroly View Post
Congrats!

And WTF! Why was there a cat inside your walls?
That's what we were wondering as well It looks like outside, there's a small gap in the top of the wall from past construction work, right under the roof. Very odd, I have no idea how it slipped in there. We left it open to see if it's mom would come search for it but I don't know how it could even get in there, the gap is way too small for a grown cat. The mystery remains.

05-27-2016 05:25 AM #16 Mr Green (Administrator)

It's funny what life changing events can happen in 9 months!

Big congratulations man!

You followed the right path, put in the work, now got the payoff!

Keep it rocking!

05-27-2016 05:37 AM #17 thuglife (Member)

Do you think it's worth the extra hassle to build/manage employees with huge overhead vs staying a 1-2 people affiliate?

I mean, $75k/mo profit sounds good for one affiliate but when you have 9 employees on payroll, accounting, legal, tax and monthly office lease. It doesn't seem that good anymore.

Thoughts?

05-27-2016 05:43 AM #18 mrkash (AMC Alumnus)

Congratulations, you guys are doing nice numbers !

05-27-2016 06:25 AM #19 Mr Green (Administrator)

Quote Originally Posted by thuglife View Post
Do you think it's worth the extra hassle to build/manage employees with huge overhead vs staying a 1-2 people affiliate?

I mean, $75k/mo profit sounds good for one affiliate but when you have 9 employees on payroll, accounting, legal, tax and monthly office lease. It doesn't seem that good anymore.

Thoughts?
There's a big difference between being an affiliate and building a business.

As a standalone affiliate $75k/month profit sounds good sure, but how stable is it? You are basically just creating a high paying job for yourself. What does your year profit actually end up looking like? You don't have any assets or something to sell at the end of the day.

Pandabear is building a business, and just got started. With employees managing his work, he is able to scale, he is able to focus on growing the business. He is creating something he can sell. He is also putting himself in a position where he can go on holiday without his campaigns collapsing!

05-27-2016 06:48 AM #20 isaac86 ()

Congratulations!! You saved a cat, lovely

05-27-2016 06:52 AM #21 mitjamg ()

Amazing, congrats

05-27-2016 08:08 AM #22 thuglife (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by Mr Green View Post
There's a big difference between being an affiliate and building a business.

As a standalone affiliate $75k/month profit sounds good sure, but how stable is it? You are basically just creating a high paying job for yourself. What does your year profit actually end up looking like? You don't have any assets or something to sell at the end of the day.

Pandabear is building a business, and just got started. With employees managing his work, he is able to scale, he is able to focus on growing the business. He is creating something he can sell. He is also putting himself in a position where he can go on holiday without his campaigns collapsing!
That makes sense for a real company (e.g. an affiliate network, product owner with long term customers, traffic source, event organizer), but a strictly affiliate marketing company? When was the last time a team of media buyers got acquired for multiple of revenues?

Can affiliate marketing be a company that lasts for 100 years or just a business with short-term employees?

and what is better ROI-wise?

I just can't get my head around AM as a hustle/grind, I think it's comparable to slinging weed to college kids.

05-27-2016 08:13 AM #23 manu_adefy (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by thuglife View Post
That makes sense for a real company (e.g. an affiliate network, product owner with long term customers, traffic source, event organizer), but a strictly affiliate marketing company? When was the last time a team of media buyers got acquired for multiple of revenues?

Can affiliate marketing be a company that lasts for 100 years or just a business with short-term employees?

and what is better ROI-wise?

I just can't get my head around AM as a hustle/grind, I think it's comparable to slinging weed to college kids.
It's not black and white where you set in stone you will only do media buying forever. Plus, building a team has its own long term benefits, whether you stay an AM company or not.

Having a team in place means you can pivot to more things, and if you don't, you can still own the business and make money in a more passive manner, depending on what you want.

It's not always about getting acquired, not sure why people always say it's useless if you can't be acquired by someone bigger.

05-27-2016 09:30 AM #24 bancha (Member)

With enough direct deals, you can sell it later on as a marketing/media company.

05-27-2016 10:29 AM #25 mindfume (AMC Alumnus)

Congrats to OP on both your numbers and on saving the cat!

Quote Originally Posted by thuglife View Post
Do you think it's worth the extra hassle to build/manage employees with huge overhead vs staying a 1-2 people affiliate?

I mean, $75k/mo profit sounds good for one affiliate but when you have 9 employees on payroll, accounting, legal, tax and monthly office lease. It doesn't seem that good anymore.

Thoughts?
Don't get too fixated on what other people are doing.
You might end up making more money that way, but also feeling more miserable/suffocated than ever.

Team or no team does not really matter. Personally I prefer employees. But both can work.
Just do what feels natural to you.

I think this is a good read for you: http://www.malandarras.com/doineedateam

05-27-2016 10:41 AM #26 pandabear (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by thuglife View Post
That makes sense for a real company (e.g. an affiliate network, product owner with long term customers, traffic source, event organizer), but a strictly affiliate marketing company? When was the last time a team of media buyers got acquired for multiple of revenues?

Can affiliate marketing be a company that lasts for 100 years or just a business with short-term employees?

and what is better ROI-wise?

I just can't get my head around AM as a hustle/grind, I think it's comparable to slinging weed to college kids.
It all depends on what your long term goals are. While at the moment most of our revenue comes from affiliate marketing, we're building proprietary tools, solutions and procedures, which will open up doors and opportunities down the road much bigger than what an affiliate running his own campaigns can ever reach. Building a team, if done right, is as an investment in the future.

05-29-2016 03:10 AM #27 pandabear (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by bdmmoreira View Post
Congrats, mate! What's the best tips that you can share about your journey?
Most cliché tips turned out to be spot on, e.g. networking is very important, don't frequently change direction, master one source first, keeping it simple over reinventing the wheel (especially true for angles when starting out).

One thing I personally learned is not to be afraid of sharing information. Scarcity mindset is very limiting in an industry as diverse and big as affiliate marketing, there are always a million things you don't know. Also, many of the things you think you know, turn out to be either basic to more experienced affiliates or just plain wrong. This thread wouldn't exist if it wasn't for all the help and advice I received from others throughout the journey.

05-29-2016 03:25 AM #28 bobliu (Member)

Thanks for sharing your story pandabear, here's to the next year of success!

If a kitten comes into a house , it is a lucky omen

A question that always comes to mind when reading success stories, if you could go back to the first day you learnt about affiliate marketing, what would you do differently?

05-29-2016 05:40 PM #29 pandabear (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by bobliu View Post
Thanks for sharing your story pandabear, here's to the next year of success!

If a kitten comes into a house , it is a lucky omen

A question that always comes to mind when reading success stories, if you could go back to the first day you learnt about affiliate marketing, what would you do differently?
Two things come to mind:

1) I would have hired a developer in week one of running campaigns. I had zero experience with coding and spend a lot of time reading up on how to rip/adjust and upload my first landing pages. Instead, I should have hired someone right away and have him explain the basics to me. Asking a person is much quicker than figuring things out with Google and such, especially for relatively simple things that every developer can help with.

2) Fire quicker. We had one incident of an employee who seemed quite motivated the first two weeks, and I thought he was doing great. But over time, it became clear that he had started to only do things when I was micromanaging him, had no drive to find and improve things on his own, even actively tried to avoid tasks. I should have had a very serious talk right away, and without instant improvements, fired him the next day. Instead, I didn't want to fully believe it, was over-optimistic, thinking he'd slowly turn things around. I was way too nice in our talks addressing the issues. This didn't work out at all. I was shocked, when I realized how much one unmotivated employee can emotionally drag down the entire office. I could feel the relief and change of atmosphere, when we finally laid him off 2.5 months after it should have happened. Lesson learned.

05-29-2016 06:33 PM #30 oliver977 (AMC Alumnus)

Congrats with your success

05-29-2016 08:20 PM #31 citecoil (Member)

Great post and....Wow! This cat is gorgeous and beautiful.. You should definetly keep it!

05-30-2016 12:37 AM #32 bobliu (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by pandabear View Post
Two things come to mind:

1) I would have hired a developer in week one of running campaigns. I had zero experience with coding and spend a lot of time reading up on how to rip/adjust and upload my first landing pages. Instead, I should have hired someone right away and have him explain the basics to me. Asking a person is much quicker than figuring things out with Google and such, especially for relatively simple things that every developer can help with.

2) Fire quicker. We had one incident of an employee who seemed quite motivated the first two weeks, and I thought he was doing great. But over time, it became clear that he had started to only do things when I was micromanaging him, had no drive to find and improve things on his own, even actively tried to avoid tasks. I should have had a very serious talk right away, and without instant improvements, fired him the next day. Instead, I didn't want to fully believe it, was over-optimistic, thinking he'd slowly turn things around. I was way too nice in our talks addressing the issues. This didn't work out at all. I was shocked, when I realized how much one unmotivated employee can emotionally drag down the entire office. I could feel the relief and change of atmosphere, when we finally laid him off 2.5 months after it should have happened. Lesson learned.
Great advice, thanks for sharing. Did you teach the guys you hired from the ground up, or were they previously experienced with AM? How did you find the self-driven employees?

I must know, what happened to the office cat?

05-30-2016 02:00 AM #33 paras57 (AMC Alumnus)

Very inspiring!

05-30-2016 06:26 AM #34 pandabear (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by bobliu View Post
Great advice, thanks for sharing. Did you teach the guys you hired from the ground up, or were they previously experienced with AM? How did you find the self-driven employees?
Almost half of our team consists of developers, we have decided to focus more on the technical possibilities moving forward. Trying to keep the team compact (<20) and build long term assets with high scalability. We're currently developing a proprietary tracker, optimizer and fraud detection tool.

Our media buyers were taught from ground up, trust being the most important objective. We looked for people from our friend and professional circles with high drive and autonomous working style, people with sales background for example.

Quote Originally Posted by bobliu View Post
I must know, what happened to the office cat?
Haha, we kept the office cat for two more days, seeing if it's mom would find it. Didn't happen, it's now in good hands of a friend, who already had four other cats.. she's super excited about this one (her husband less so ).

05-30-2016 10:39 AM #35 hangman (Member)

Awesome hustle!

How long did it take you to get traction and start making big profits from when you started?

05-30-2016 12:18 PM #36 asknopt (Member)

Congrats!!

I'm curious, how many campaigns and how much time until you made your first campaign successful?

05-30-2016 02:07 PM #37 cbrughmans (Member)

Amazing story Pandabear! Keep it up

05-30-2016 04:28 PM #38 pandabear (Member)

Thanks for all the love, guys
Maybe this motivates some stackers who're just starting out, can't wait to read their success stories in a few months from now!

Quote Originally Posted by asknopt View Post
Congrats!!

I'm curious, how many campaigns and how much time until you made your first campaign successful?
Quote Originally Posted by hangman View Post
Awesome hustle!

How long did it take you to get traction and start making big profits from when you started?
It took a bit under two months before I got to see green numbers for the first time. This was working on AM full time, 14 hours a day. Had tried around 10 different offers and a handful of sources. Then in January, things really started taking off.

05-30-2016 04:58 PM #39 mehdi (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by pandabear View Post
Maybe this motivates some stackers who're just starting out ..
If this doesn't I don't know what would !

Great job panda, cheers on your succes



Mehdi

05-30-2016 09:13 PM #40 oleandr (Member)

Panda..... bbrrrrrrrraaaaa

05-31-2016 03:34 AM #41 asknopt (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by pandabear View Post
Thanks for all the love, guys
Maybe this motivates some stackers who're just starting out, can't wait to read their success stories in a few months from now!





It took a bit under two months before I got to see green numbers for the first time. This was working on AM full time, 14 hours a day. Had tried around 10 different offers and a handful of sources. Then in January, things really started taking off.
When you say greens you mean seeing a green day but not green campaign right?
How many campaigns were you launched in that period? And how much you spent until you had your first profitable stable campaign?

I'm just wondering all these questions because I'm launching on my own and sometimes I'm not sure about the amount of work/budget I should put in each campaign, and how many I should be launching per month.

Anyways, really good stuff!

Cheers

05-31-2016 04:41 AM #42 nickwilson (Member)

Good for you and your team! Thank you for sharing, this is a good read before I go to bed for the night!

Keep rocking!

05-31-2016 02:53 PM #43 luker_ge (Member)

Great job guys!!!!!

Really you are an example, especially because me and my business partner have started the same journey into the affiliate world a month ago =)!

We are pushing hard and we are having the first good results. Of course we are still far from you but we hope to reach the same goals!
Our story is constantly updated in our follow along that you can find in my signature!

See you in Berlin =)

P.S.
Would be great to have some numbers of your revenue/profit from the beginning month by month to compare with ours (even in a private message, but I think everybody could appreciate =) )!!

05-31-2016 08:33 PM #44 mindfulness (Member)

Nice man! Also from Munich? hit me up on skype alexme97

06-01-2016 03:41 AM #45 pandabear (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by asknopt View Post
When you say greens you mean seeing a green day but not green campaign right?
How many campaigns were you launched in that period? And how much you spent until you had your first profitable stable campaign?

I'm just wondering all these questions because I'm launching on my own and sometimes I'm not sure about the amount of work/budget I should put in each campaign, and how many I should be launching per month.

Anyways, really good stuff!

Cheers
Both, green campaign and green day. Hard to say how many camps exactly. Anywhere from 20-100 camps, depending on how you count it. But I don't think this should play a big role in your thinking, there are many other important factors. How many camps should you launch per month when starting out? I'd say as many as you can, with offers and landers that you know work for others (-> Spy tools). Don't rush the process, aim to make each and every one work. If they have -95% ROI, sure, it's time to move on, but if it's -70% then you can try to improve it by testing other landers/angles and cutting zones. Once you found the perfect angle, try other sources as well, as the last step to maybe get it from -30% to break-even. At break-even, you can talk to your AM about increasing the payout and voilà: profitable camp!

06-24-2016 02:20 PM #46 pandabear (Member)

I'm stoked to announce that my partner Saber will be speaking at AWE Berlin.

He will be going deeper into the topic of why and how we built a business vs. being a one man army. Your questions and the conversations that came out of this thread fueled the outline of the presentation. If you have anything you need and want to know - ask away. We'll try our best to dial in on your questions.


06-24-2016 06:45 PM #47 grandslam ()

AMAZING! Congrats on your success You should write up a follow along or a tutorial to this It would be nice to newbies to see how to do have a successful campaign! We'll be in Berlin as well so drop by our booth and say hi!

Also that's the cutest little cat I've ever seen!

06-24-2016 09:48 PM #48 azureus (Member)

Congratulations! Incredibly impressive for just 9 months!

Hiring and building your team couldn't have been easy. I wonder how you educate and motivate your employees.

06-24-2016 09:52 PM #49 mrbraun (Moderator)

big congrats to you!

06-25-2016 12:58 AM #50 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by pandabear View Post
I'm stoked to announce that my partner Saber will be speaking at AWE Berlin.

He will be going deeper into the topic of why and how we built a business vs. being a one man army. Your questions and the conversations that came out of this thread fueled the outline of the presentation. If you have anything you need and want to know - ask away. We'll try our best to dial in on your questions.


Really looking forward to this!

06-28-2016 02:54 PM #51 affpayinggao (Veteran Member)

Congratulations pandabear! Very inspiring.

07-03-2016 12:04 PM #52 dr_doom098 (Member)

Awesome, and congrats for the success! This is really inspiring.
Looking forward to see you at AWE Berlin.

Home > Success, Wins, Achievements > Success Stories