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How I Turn From -2000 to $16,000! (56)

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I would really love to say a BIG THANK to this forum and the people here! I've been a member of STM since March/April, and at that time, I was solely focus on PPV, LeadImpact was my only choice owing to the fact that TV doesn't accept int affiliate unless you have a really good introducer.

Throughout the 6 months I was in STM, I've been spending a lot, about 2k in PPV with only 10% ROI... and I was really fed up. I actually quitted my full time job for this affiliate marketing, as I believed it would work, and it definitely would, so I never gave up!

6 months over, and it was September, I was kinda fed up as I spent all my hard earned money into PPV without a big success... until the level that my bank account left only 3 digits... At that moment, I started to recap what I have done wrong, why would other people success but not me, although many times of failure...

So, I told myself, I would launch my FINAL campaign, but this time, on Facebook. So I started to look into facebook, and done a lot of research... I also remember that I CANNOT be a copy cat that steal other people's campaigns, I have to have my very OWN angle! and BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY was what I emphasized on...

I still remember, it was 9th of October, I started 3 campaigns... and guess what?

The money just FLOW IN like PIPE water!!! Every 10 sec I refreshed my stats, I can see that there is at least $5-$10 increment in my earnings! I was really... shocked and yet excited! Let me tell you what? You really have to experience it ONCE in your life because I didn't know I've launched 3 gold campaigns with a good image that brought me 0.15%ctr!

On the first week, my ROI is as great as 180%!

It continues, until end of October... My final earning for the month of October is $16k, with ROI of 50%. I must say that I am more than happy, and really, I have to say, you have to believe in affiliate marketing. You never suck, just that you have to keep on trying and trying and trying...

I guess I already got the key to FB, it's 3th November now, and I already have $4k in my earnings for the month (50% ROI)... I hope I can be like the owners of this forum, jordan, besmir etc who are being known as "Super affiliates", as my goal is to make $300k by the age of 25. (I am 24 by the way)

Again, a big thank to this forum! Love you guys!

Updated*

I thought I would post a screen shot of my earnings to give even more motivation to the people struggling to make things work. Believe in yourself and affiliate marketing!

*Last month was $13k, but I counted in the first 8 days of November as well to conclude at $16k.



Updated* as of July 2012!
Well didn't mean to brag about my earnings but I believe it is good to post an update on my progress through out all these while being an STM member here. This is what STM has got me to up to date! Gonna thank those that helped me before and also all the awesome contests that had been organized by the Mods!



Hope this can serve as a motivational post for new people because success stories is a section that I spent a lot of my time reading to look for motivation while I was a newbie!

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Great News @kokofai it must be fabulous feeling! ihope you can now go on and really kill it!

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thanks paul! I hope for the best and of course, I will keep working harder and smarter to make the campaign yield more ROI!

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Congrats, I'm glad that you kept hitting it even when the odds looked really bad...you earned it!

Just wondering, was it really just luck with those 3 campaigns? I mean, the usual stats are like "launch 10 campaigns, one will be profitable" but 3 campaigns in a row, ALL profitable...can't be coincidence. What do you think lead to such success?

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Hey man , congrats on your success!

I remember you working hard from the start so it's not a coincidence you making money.

Now keep hustling and double that number!

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Congratulations @kokofai on Your Success.

This is GREAT inspiration for me (and for others), as I am working hard to get to the level you are at right now.

Thanks for sharing, and keep making it happen!

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Great, keep going strong

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Nice man!!

Glad to see your success, keep it up!

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Super exciting news man. I always LOVE to hear stories like this. Keep going - ever upward!!!

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Excellent story - congratulations! Facebook isn't easy, so you're clearly doing something right. All those unprofitable campaigns were great learning. There truly is a lesson in every campaign.

PT

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Congrats! I'm going through something like this now and it's beyond words. Nothing's better than working really hard on something and then seeing it succeed.

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The first time seeing yourself make big money online is the greatest feeling in the world!

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Excellent job man, can't wait to make a similar post sometime soon !

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Congrats man. It's post like this that keeps me going ..

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"and BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY was what I emphasized on... "


^This.

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@kokofai : congrat ! what you mean by BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY

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http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/

http://depositfiles.com/files/l15q891ar

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Way to go! Congrats and keep up the good work.

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Well I guess it's because of the nature of the offers. All I did was just pure direct linking, and 3 of them yield me a CR of 10-20%. I also must say thank to one of the "gay" image that I found, which brought me really good ctr with cheap click.

I will be rotating landing pages into these and of course, not forget to mention, I did use the money I make to test new campaigns too. I told myself that I have to set up 1 campaign at least, on a daily basic in order for me to be really successful o this AM game.

Guys, if you believe you can, you can too.

I started out as nobody, even my family members, my friends, all LOOKED DOWN at me, telling me to go for a 9-5 job, and I told them that is not what I want. I told them the possibilities with affiliate marketing but NONE of them believed in me...

It has been 1.5 years now and I can now finally have my head held high in front of my family members and friends.

* Lesson - No matter how sucky or how unsupportive or how worst your environment is, BELIEVE in yourself because affiliate marketing can't get you poor, unless you are really not a marketing materials.

I wish everyone who reads my post will find your motivation here to keep on fighting!

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Rock on! Nice work!!

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Way to go. Thanks for the share, it's very encouraging!

Is this a great locker room or what???!!!!

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Great job man! I love hearing success stories like this!

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Sounds alot similiar to my story lol, i started with the same amount of money and same traffic source, went from 2k to 7k in about 8 days, got on weekly wires, and the rest was history

Your well on your way to riches my brotha!

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Also to add, unless your running something really legit on facebook, prepare for the worst, i.e. getting banned any time. It sucks, but it's not if, it's when it will happen. It's always a good move to start some back up accounts for when you get shut down. If you want to get those backup accounts nice budgets, make some legit ads for charity, or anything else legit, and spend a little bit. Even if you don't make money it should possibly get your budget bumped up high so when you lose your 2k a day account, you have another one. I'd just try to run a kosher offer that would break even, or almost break even, to get the budgets up.

Again good look on your journey bro. This should really really help you see much more possibilities for new campaigns that will work.

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Wicked news kokofai!

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@MJDUB

What kind of verticals are you seeing that kind of return in if you don't mind me asking?

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Curious how you could afford that much ad spend to generate that revenue in just a month with xxx in the bank to start?

Seems to me you would have been out of money in 3 days? That's impressive in it's own right.

Good work.

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wickeeddddd! congrats

btw if you have a 0.15% CTR, and a higher ctr is all you need to possibly push a bit more ROI, then I'd get cracking on testing some new images and titles. As long as the campaign your running on Facebook is 100% white, then from here on out it's all about split testing, because you can easily increase your ROI. congrats & scale!

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Great story and congrats. Make it Rain!

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If it's dating, copy it to POF.

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kokofai is a very helpful member and he was the one that made me focus on FB where I'm profiting quite nicely!
So thanks kokofai and look forward to meeting you at ASW (if you're going)

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Mate, that is a great story... and congratulations.

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Yeap man I will be going to ASW. See you there then!

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haha kokofai when you quote disruptivetech's words, I thought you're going to say yes "I'm a very helpful member." lol

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A.W.E.S.O.M.E man!

I'm really happy for you!!

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Bit late to the party but thanks for the great post and hope you are still doing well.

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Awesome stories, its pretty crazy you quit your job and setting your goal that you can be success on AM. not all have that bravery

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Well done kokofai - inspirational!

What 3 tips would you give to guys who haven't made it yet?

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1. be focus, focus on 1 single offer and 1 traffic source. Make it work before you look at other offers. I know many new affiliates would start pushing a lot of offers and end up not making money. It's a mistake that most people make.

2. The fear of losing money - you must not fear and back off when you are not making money initially. Treat them as a "cost" to buy data. the more data you have, the better you can optimize, and the better chance you can turn the campaign into a profitable one.

3. Mindset - Have faith in this game. It has been proven that affiliate marketing can turn someone from a nobody to a superstar within the shortest period of time. However, losing money and not hitting any profitable campaign can be frustrated. The key is, never quit, keep on testing, and you'll find something that work for you. Thomas Edison wouldn't have created light bulb if he quitted on the 999th time!

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Thank you kokofai for this super inspirational thread! How long do you keep working on one offer before you decide you can't make it work? What's your rule of thumb?

Moreover, do you think that promoting 2-3 offers at once is really that bad? I mean, if you're running only one offer, you still have to wait for data and in the meantime you can work on another campaign. One offer can be your priority offer and another one can be something you work on in the meantime.

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I don't think he means pick an offer and brute-force it into profitability. He most likely means stick to it after you have found it as the winner in initial testing... don't stray too soon... smash it for all it's worth. Too many times I've had a good offer and I didn't do everything I can to "kill it" before the advertiser pulled it... you need to focus your life on that offer and MILK it.

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Thanks. I was asking because I'm not sure when to stop testing an offer. Spending only 5x payout won't say a lot if you have an offer with a $0.5 payout and sometimes you can start with -100% ROI and turn it into positive ROI after spending like 50x payout.

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^^ what redrummr says!

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Focusing on one offer was what helped me out a lot. I was doing 10-30k combined between 6 offers and 4 networks. I focused on one offer from one direct advertiser and did a 60k rev month. Everyone always preaches about "diversity" and spread out across a few traffic sources / offers and I think that strategy confuses low volume affiliates. The diversification is for affiliates doing x,xxx - xx,xxx+ / day, if you're still doing xx-low x,xxx, focusing on one offer is probably ok for the time being to build cash flow and a solid base.

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keepitsimple - what if you want to focus on international offers? Most countries other than US, UK, etc. don't have a lot of impressions (at least for mobile) and it's just not possible to get more than maybe 1000 clicks a day (I'm talking about sensible CPC, not setting very high CPC which requires 10% conversion just to break even) with one traffic source which combined with low payouts result maybe in low xx revenue. Should people diversifying their offers because of low volume forget about it and just find one offer for a huge market such as US, UK or some other major European countries?

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it depends what you're going for. There's no right or wrong way per se, I was just sharing what made a huge difference for me. I have a few small campaigns and the $50 / day campaign takes as much or more time to manage as the $1000/day one does and it's also less stable due to the lower volume. You have limited time in the day, you can spend it focusing on $25 - $50 spend / day if that's where your budget is, but if you have a bigger budget, it may make sense to try to use your time wiser.

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Thanks for your opinion. I'm just a little bit confused what to do. I have several offers but most of them target countries for which I can get maybe 1000 clicks a day if I bid high. I have limited budget (up to $100, maybe $150 per day is okay) so I'll probably try with one offer as my main offer and maybe run some offers from time to time just to test things out in the meantime.

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if my budget was $100 / day, I would probably be focusing on lower volume / less competitive markets to try to get some base return coming in and then once I had snowballed that, I'd try the more competitive countries / higher volume. When I was getting started, I did focus on very tight niche / low spend campaigns similar to what you're describing. My post was more-so if you had a larger budget / decent bit of experience and were looking to take things to the next level. Whatever you do decide on, just become a master at it. Charles Ngo has a great post(s) on this, and I agree very strongly with what he says about working 10x harder than everyone else to absolutely dominate whatever it is that you're doing. Keep at it and remember even the big experienced affiliates fail many times every single day.

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Read this 25 times. This is so important.

I've kicked myself 5-6 times. There's been deals that I could have made millions with and just didn't go big enough. Don't make that mistake anymore :P

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Are you still advertising on Facebook? If yes, do you have as much success as before? Thanks.

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This is pretty much the most important lesson i've learned in affiliate marketing:

It's a 2 part lesson:
STICK to 1 thing, and when it's working SCALE it endlessly. There is never an end to scaling even if you think there is.

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Awesome bro. Keep the inspiration going

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New to here,, just read this and get confused.
Do you all think $100/day is a small number?? That means $3000/mo!!
I can now afford $1200/mo. It's scary to hear $3K/mo is small.... lol.

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There are quite a lot of people on STM who do $100/hour.

There are also a very very small handful of people on STM that do $100/minute.

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Yeah,, I see.
So it comes out that I should start looking for a very specific niche.
Or maybe to think a very creative angle to laser target something.
Am I right?

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I think if you are starting out, you should focus first and foremost on learning the fundamentals of conversion based marketing ...

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