After giving up on AM we just made $1MM of Profit in 53 days! (54)
After giving up on AM we just made $1MM of Profit in 53 days!
Exactly 20 months ago my partner and I gave up on Affiliate Marketing. After hitting the first 5 figure „profit“ month we got hit with the hard reality - "The advertiser won't pay" reality.
We pushed mad ad spend on a new network we worked with. As we were beginners, we literally maxed out our credit cards just to realize we won’t get paid at the end of the month.
Once we asked in our Follow Along for advice on what to do, some people recommended us to give up - and we actually did.
Lesson #1 - Always make sure you get paid weekly and never ever let some one tell you to give up - They might be wrong
Fast forward to 2016 I was unsatisfied with my other business and I started to get into Affiliate Marketing again - This time on Facebook.
It was a very long way to figure out how to even setup the infrastructure to be able to run FB. After that it took months to actually understand how to come up with proper angles and run campaigns.
I asked a guy Mr. M, which I knew from our friend circle and he was super open to share and showed us how things are actually being run. Without this guy, we probably wouldn’t be where we are now.
„In case you read this, you know who you are and I hope you know I appreciate all what you did for me and the team!“
Lesson #2 - Don’t be afraid to ask for advice
A couple month’s into the FB thing I got to work with highly successful people which luckily were my friends too. We worked out a JV together as the financial situation was not great and the network and knowledge would be very helpful to get back fast into the AM circle.
Lesson #3 - Don’t try to do everything by your self. Better share knowledge and resources with others and make more money together than you would do alone
After around 3 months we started to make $1k profit per day, which felt unreal back then. It was time to scale and hire new guys to help scaling. In retrospect we should’ve done this way earlier, but you never know until you know.
Lesson #4 - Hire a VA to help you do the small tasks as soon as you can afford it.
Fast forward to January 2017, we started to hire close friends and planned to make it big this year. Goal was to make $1MM in profits. This was the biggest challenge, as the first time you had to actually take responsibility for someone else other than your self.
There was no other option than succeeding, as people gave up their jobs and moved to another country just to be able to work with you.
A few months in, it was not clear if this was the right move as the struggle with FB was real. But patience paid off and things turned around very quickly and the bans calmed down again.
In retrospect this was probably the best decision ever, as once you get people involved you can rely on, everything is getting more smoother. You actually realize that people might do some things different and even better than you.
Through the new ideas and critical questioning, many of our processes have been improved in a way of which you never even thought about. Most important was to get actually someone technical on board. This was the most impactful addition to our team, as it opened us completely new doors of automating things. People with technical background see things, you just normally don't see as an average guy.
Lesson #5 - Get people on board you can rely and trust on. Especially if they are strong in a field that you are not in.
At AWE the bomb then actually fired. We got to know to more like minded and successful people. Some of the guys we met ran companies with 50-100 employees. They scaled the shit out of everything and this was truly inspiring.
So once back at home, we did the same.
We scaled the shit out of everything.
We hired more employees, and also focused on key positions as HR and operations manager. If you don’t come from a business background this is the shit you want to watch out for. As these people are professionals and know their stuff 100x more than you will ever do.
Fast forward after AWE we hit 500k profit in July and also just passed the 500k profit for August. In total this is 1MM profit in just 53 days!
It’s crazy how fast things can turn in this industry and you should never ever give up. The next big campaign could be right around the corner. All you need to do is to surround your self with smarter people and accept the fact that you can’t do it all alone. Put aside your ego, get help and then actually act on the advice you receive and make shit work!
Lesson #7 - Scale the shit out of everything
Very very inspiring! So happy for you guys!! And all the advice is priceless!
Thank you so much for posting about your success!
Amy
This is AWESOME!!!
Big lesson: don't listen to the naysayers.
They are usually idiots. Talk is cheap, and everyone has an opinion.
You didn't give up! Well done!
You mentioned getting the tech in order really made a big difference. Can you talk more about that?
Nice post.
Just out of curiosity, what's the point of hiding your revenue and ROI figures?
Thank you so much sharing this! I felt my motivation drop in the past few weeks and this is really inspiring!
Like Chris said^ it would be great if you can talk about how tech made a difference for you.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Once we got introduced to the beautiful world of APIs everything changed for us. Now we are looking for every little thing possible to automate, as it's fun to find the little "loopholes" that save you a couple minutes every day, haha.
Originally Posted by ivossss
Definitely inspiring stuff. Congrats on the success friend, are you running whitehat FB or mostly blackhat?
So much green in those stats, Amazing job!
Originally Posted by aaaart
I love it!
I will definitely go over your threads, and read them.
You did it with FB or Mobile (haven't read your threads yet)
How many people you are in your team?
Awesome story, thank you for sharing!
Lots of good advice for those who are struggling
Congrats, thank you for sharing, we need successful story like this 
Boom!
Loved your pin submit follow along in 2015.
Was wondering what happened to you...
This is a fantastic comeback!
Yes, thank you.
Yeah I remember you guys too...
Nice to see you ended up fighting the big blue monster.
I love a happy ending.
totally inspiring story guys heads up! never stop exploring.
What a story, really inspiring stuff!
Originally Posted by aaaart
Congrats, did you hire everyone locally? We have a bunch of VA type employees but im guessing we'll need to start going local if we want to scale a lot higher.
Great Thanks for this inspiring post, hope to read more from you.
Amazing. Thank you for documenting these golden lessons
Excellent work! Congrats and here's to hearing of much more in the following months!
Congrats, and great tips!
Automation really is remarkably powerful - even, or perhaps especially, if you're just automating small tasks one at a time.
Congrats!
Very inspiring, thanks for sharing this!
Keep rockin !!
Congratulations!
One more story proving how important is to never give up
Truly amazing! This industry is life changing. Do you have staff in-house or all remotely? If the latter, how do you manage everything?
Wow congrats. If I could do I all over again, I would have jumped on FB at the beginning.
That's great.
I remember you from here and also another private forum, great progress guys ,truly inspiring!
Erik
Congrats dude!
Congrats on your success! I guess the biggest lesson to be learned here is to never surrender.
congrats!
May i ask which verticals worked best for you?
Highly inspirational post!
I have been in a very similar situation about a year ago.
We came across a highly converting offer and decided to push it hard. In the first few weeks the advertiser paid on time, and we scaled hard.
At some point we started experiencing delays with the payouts, but were assured by the advertiser that they are happy with the traffic and guaranteed to pay while encouraging us to push more traffic.
Then suddenly they decided not to pay, and we lost more money than we could afford. It caused huge frustration, and took us months to fully recover (both financially and morally). But we never gave up.
It cost us a lot, but we learned a very valuable lesson - never to place all eggs in one basket, and take payment delays very seriously (seems obvious, but when you're "making" more money in a day than you did in a month just a few weeks before.. It can make you forget all of the risks.)
I can't speak for everyone, but i think most affiliate marketers experienced huge blows to their businesses at one point or another. It's how we learn and make sure to prevent that from happening in the future.
If we give up when 90% of the rest would, we will never reach the 10%
Thanks a lot for all the props guys, really appreciate it!
Originally Posted by ivossss
Managing is in the hand of 2 managers thats mainly handle the day to day things. We systemize as much as possible in our business. Through a great recommendation of a friend, we setup our business based on the book "work the System" by Sam carpenter. I highly recommend to treat this as your bible of your business.
For each process we have a video and a written document. In case something "routine like" needs to get done, we refer to the documents for this process.
Originally Posted by mation
Congrats on your success ! Everything is possible here in AM space if we put work and take action.
Wow just reading this amazing.
How I would love to be in your position one day making that type of coin. Maybe I will re-post here in 1 year
Congratulations on your success and not giving up! Very inspiring!
Congrats
If you are still mad, think on this: Ryan Eagle still owes me $50k
Hey man, so inspiring.
You mentioned a team of 10 people, how is the structure like? How many media buyers, coders, designers? Bit more info would be so helpful for people like us thinking about expanding from a one man army.
Also, I'm guessing this was mainly BH right? Thanks!
Hey, how's it going these days?
Can you give us an update?
Originally Posted by pavel_apostolov87
Basically you should only report and meet with your managers, and the managers have weekly meetings with the VAs below them to track KPIs, perfomance feedback, brainstorming and what the company should keep doing and especially should stop doing. A constant flow of feedback and communication is the most important thing and makes people realize that they are an important part of this "organism". The quality of the output will skyrocket if they understand what they do is important for the company.
Originally Posted by bbrock32
PS: if you are looking forward to take it to the next level, I can highly recommend the book called "scaling Up by Verne Harnish. Currently working on implementing all of what is taught in this book. It really helps to shape your company culture tremendously!
This is awesome! Congrats on your success!
Great story, thank you for sharing! Congrats!!!
Nicely done, what niche/vertical did you find success in? I've been trying to find it but can't seem to.
Congratulations and thank you for your inspiring story!
1,885,813 clicks / 2,817,075 visits = 67% CTR
Wow, I mean, what kind of traffic is that? Thanks!
This is amazing, on the fact of hiring friends and scaling, how salary/equity works. I've been having hard time on sharing the financial part of the business with my main guys.
@aaaart It was a pleasure meeting you at AWE! Thanks for stopping by the STM booth!
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
Originally Posted by aaaart
Originally Posted by kjrocker
Originally Posted by aaaart
What a amazing story, never give up and never let others tell you what you can do. Way to push through it all. I've noticed a lot of people have partners in AM that work just as hard as they do. That is fantastic
Congrats man! This is an absolutely inspiring and amazing read!!
What a great story.
"Lesson #1 - Always make sure you get paid weekly and never ever let some one tell you to give up - They might be wrong" I like that.
Thanks for sharing. This is great motivation.
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Thanks for sharing. This is great motivation.
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