Home > Success, Wins, Achievements > Success Stories

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As if we haven't already had enough of these threads lately.. ;) First xx,xxx month! (46)

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Well, after letting Maynzie in on what kind of success I've been having lately, he thought it might be a pretty good idea to post my success story on here and I agree with him as well. The value of this post hopefully isn't in the "OMG LOOK AT THESE NUMBERZZ", but instead to show how someone can go from emotional rock-bottom to something completely different and positive altogether. This business can be emotionally BRUTAL at times, especially depending your surroundings/peers, so I just want people to know that it can be done.

I started Affiliate Marketing in the summer of 2011 - and by "starting Affiliate Marketing" I mean I spent about a month or so Googling "How to legitimately make money online" and dicking around on newb-friendly forums. While doing so, I was working at a dairy store making minimum wage while taking classes at my local community college.

September 2011 came around and by then I had a few things figured out: affiliate marketing as a concept, how you start it, and my traffic source that I wanted to start on - Facebook. It's worth noting at this point that I also determined that I really wasn't happy in school, so I ... dropped out. Cue the pants-shitting from my parents, brother, and pretty much any extended family member who had any knowledge of it. As per suggestion of all my (fucking insane) Affiliate Managers, I started out doing dating in the US.

It bombed. Hard. I went 1100 dollars in the hole over the course of 2 months. So now here's where the crucial part pretty much came in. My girlfriend (who is a good damn angel and has supported me more than any of you would freaking believe) bought me a Stackthatmoney membership for my birthday in November of 2011. That's where things started to get better. I learned some absolutely groundbreaking information on this forum, and made some really good friends that led to my first pretty big campaign mid-November. I can say that things I learned from here (and the people I met here) literally directly contributed to my first successful campaign. So I hit a campaign where I started to make 500 dollars a day, but guess what? After two weeks the advertiser stopped paying, and because I was a dumbass and listened to Ryan Eagle telling affiliates....

"Bro... if they deny an ad... just resubmit it! It's easy! It'll get approved eventually! :inserteaglepichere:"

...BANNED.

Preface to the next part of my story: BenPOF is a cool dude and there are PLENTY of people that are doing great on POF as a traffic source. He's awesome. POF is awesome. People make bank on it. The end.

So anyway, after I was banned from Facebook, I bitched and moaned about how terrible Facebook is, had dreams about the ol' ZUCKDAWG getting crucified, yadda yadda bullshit bullshit. I decided to move on to greener pastures where affiliates were appreciated and even tailored to - POF it is!

How did it go, you ask?

Ingredients for emotional and mental assrape:
4 pounds of freshly-kneaded mind-fucking stress put on by myself to support myself and my gf
1 Tablespoon of months and months of inconsistent profit
2 cups of interrogations/questioning about how consistent this so-called internet money really was by everyone else (tip: don't ever fucking explain to anyone what you're doing or how much you're making)

Add only a tiny pinch of self-doubt to the mix and you've got yourself failure upon failure! Bon Apetit!

I spent the next god damn YEAR sucking it up on POF, and this is where the industry started to take its toll on me, clearly. I'm an extremely stubborn person, and I just refused to give up on the traffic source. I had a few 100/day campaigns here and there that kept me going, but for some reason POF just didn't make sense to me the way Facebook did. And that brings me to my next suggestion to some of you guys - jumping ship is not a good idea for the most part... unless you can honestly say you've given a traffic source your best damn effort to no avail. And honestly, with POF that was the case. My mind didn't work the way it needed to for POF, and you know what? That's completely fine. I tried my best.

So around November of this year, I wasn't working, and I was slowly draining our savings. I was starting to get depressed and my self-doubt was at an all-time high. December rolled around, and I started looking for a job. I had about 1200 dollars left in our savings. And right around then is where I did the most reckless thing I've done in my life, which I don't exactly suggest to anyone else. I spent about 850 dollars on Polarbacon's cloaker. I how to keep advertising accounts separate and how to mask what niche you're actually advertising. And so I dove in head first.

I did two critical things at this point, that I highly suggest anyone struggling to do as well:
#1. I started to develop good relationships with my AMs, instead of the usual "Hey man any good offers? How about the offer's epc/targetting info/ages/traffic sources/creatives?????????????????????"

#2. This one is more critical than you guys realize, and I think if everyone abides by this one it'll make the STM community even better. NETWORK. NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK. The STM meet-ups are a prime example of this, but you can do pretty damn well networking online too. I can't even BEGIN to explain how much help I've not only been given by some of you, but also GIVEN OUT. You get what you put out there. If you spread positivity, motivation, and good vibes, YOU'LL GET IT BACK. Take it from Zen Buddhist Master Maynzie, the guy is a shining example of it.


But yeah, I think that's enough about my story. Now, the success on Facebook. Cloaking on Facebook, that's all I'll say. You don't HAVE to cloak on Facebook, I just really enjoy sticking it to those motherfuckers as hard as I can.

I'm making mid, CONSISTENT xxx/day right now, and within the next 2 days (depending on when I get my second FB account set up) I will have my first ever XXXX/day. I've been making stable money since the beginning of January, and I have been aggressively adding on new campaigns to make sure I never end up dead in the water. I have AMs that I have VERY stable, good relationships with, who always give me good info that comes to use, and I have multiple offers across different advertisers that are giving me 100%+++++++ ROI. I'm at a point where I simply can't run all of them right now because I 'blew up' too fast and not even weekly payments at this point are keeping up with how much I want to expand. And just so its clear... these campaigns are ALL on 4 to 11 million demos where I am VASTLY under-utilizing how much volume I could be truly doing every day. We are talking BROAD, bros. Be smart. Diversify your offers, and diversify your traffic sources - which I'm currently working on.



This is just from one network, and that is mainly from this month, with 7 days left in the month. My profit will be around 10k this month. Yes, the ROI is that good!

I honestly hope this motivates even ONE of you out there to get re-motivated, and hit back whatever traffic source you're working on 10x harder than you ever have.

I owe a MAJOR part of my success to my girlfriend. She was working 40 hours/week while I was literally jobless, not in school, but spending 14 hours a day doing AM and STILL losing money at the end of the day. And you know what she said to me every fucking day? "It's okay, I believe in you. I know you'll figure it out." Every. Fucking. Day. For almost 2 years. I honestly don't know if I could have done it without her emotional and financial support. I owe her everything, and she is ECSTATIC with our success lately to say the least.

I also owe it to Maynzie, and a few others I won't name in case they don't want to be called out :P Maynzie you have been a HUGE help, I have literally never in my life met someone who has such an infectious positivity to them. This guy literally wakes up in the morning, opens the toilet lid, and pisses out all his excess positivity from the day before. And by the time he's out of the bathroom he is supercharged with MORE positivity ready to take on the new day.

This forum kicks ass and a lot of the people on here kick ass. A big shout out to Mr. Green, stackman, and of course polarbacon himself, and all other big-time contributors to this forum.

(Also a bashful shout-out to dr_ngo who I've creepily stalked via wickedfire/stm/his blog/twitter because he was one of the first "big time affiliates" I was ever exposed to and he has been an inspiration ever since. I messaged him when I first started out and I asked him some of the most dumb fucking questions possible, and he still politely responded and answered my questions. I'm sorry if this blurb leads to your inbox being gangraped. You kick ass, dude.)



- George

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:') tears of joy aside, you're seriously one of the best people I've ever met.

You're a king and I don't have much more to say, you're in this game for all the right reasons and you never once thought about yourself as motivation, this dude when he waits for his campaigns to be accepted puts on his ski mask 4 layers of sweat shirts and runs in the Canadian blizzards like a fucking newborn Rocky haha!

You, your family, your girlfriend all deserve so much and they will as you're paving the way for the future my friend, legit BREAKING THE MOULD.

Wish you all the best on your future success and endeavors, and just you sticking by my words has paid me back more then anything else ever could. You're the outright f###ing man GK

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George, awesome stuff!

I remember seeing your first posts on WF a while back. Sooooo stoked to see you tearing it up now. Get that $XXXX day, then $XX,XXX! Keep it up man.

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Thanks for posting your story, it was a fantastic read and very inspiring. Well done mate.

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Wow awesome, job well done!

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Definitely agree with this 100% and it's something anyone else reading this should keep in mind as well. Cloaking is risky, as is advertising at ALL on FB these days as an affiliate. I am putting in a LOT of effort into expanding from Facebook so I can make sure to avoid exactly this!

See guys, this is exactly what I mean! The guy is a fuckin motivation machine. Love you man, thanks for everything.

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Great post and very inspirational. Hope to get where you are one day.

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Can't enough of these stories! That ecstasy feeling when everything comes together and clicks properly for the first time is just awesome.

You have earned it mate, good shit!

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Fuck yes!

I first learned about affiliate marketing in Jan 12. Your wickedfire journal was one of the first things I ever read and it gave me the inspiration to go for it and dive in myself, plus it introduced me to STM, which I joined right away.

Congrats dude.



EDIT: (and I reiterate)

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I love these stories!
Each one is heart warming and motivational.
Thank you for sharing it!
How great and vindicated, hehehe, you must now feel!

Be sure and get that gal a nice car!

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Have you burned through many FB accounts grieve?

The cloaker is 100% solid its the complaints that get us.

Thank you.

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Good shit bro!

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Congrats dude.

Fuckin Zen Master Maynzie over here turnin scrubs into country clubs.... members.

Anyway cheers man!

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Not to rain on your parade, but all of AM is an arbitrage game, and if you correctly utilize tools that will help you gain an edge on other arbitragers, you will win. Is it necessary? Perhaps not, but fuck -- if ripping others landers, creatives, etc are all part of the game, you better believe that having access to things that let me do shit u can't do is part of it. How many threads are there about legit advertisers that still get banned from Facebook? I'll tell you this... the people who run cloaked for a year+ without getting banned aren't making threads posting about how they're doing it....

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Keep going strong, never give up. Congrats on your success so far and
waiting for another success story soon.
Now move your FB campaigns to PPC.

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Really fantastic man! Keep up the excellent work!

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Yeah but my main point was that EVERYTHING in AM can be shut down at any time. The offer you're promoting could die, the FTC could regulate you further, a new craze/spur of new advertisers who like losing money can drive the costs of your advertising up 50%, killing your campaign. I would wager to say that almost ANY one variable that is contributing to a successful campaign will severely dampen, if not kill it, and cloaking or not is just one more variable.

Anyway this is kinda de-railing the topic, congrats grieve. Go get yours!

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Adwords shut down most affs by simply not allowing us to bid on any trademarked product names.
FB picks winners and losers by simply bumping then banning.
IF you can rip FB Go for it.
You will lose your account either way.

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I'm afraid to answer your question out of fear of jinxing myself to be honest.. haha.

And the cloaker is definitely 100% solid!

Thanks to everyone else for the kind words and motivation.

Speaking of porting over to ppc, I've actually been looking into cloaking on Bing but based on my 2-day stint on msn adcenter I have a LOT to learn about search ppc.

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-Get a $200 coupon(there is thread here about how to get it)
-Use same Primary/Alternative page as in FB
-Tracking: &keyword=[[c1]] (for CPV Lab, im not sure about 202)
-Use same ad as in FB + create couple of others
-Add ?c1={keyword}-{QueryString}-Ad1 (or 2,3...) at the end of your destination url
-Use AdWords Keyword Tool or get SpyFu subscription
-Add 10-20 broad keywords
Thats it

From 10-20 keywords, you will start collecting many more profitable ones
from your CPV Lab stats.

{keyword}-{QueryString}-Ad1

{keyword} brings you the keyword that you used in your adgroup
{QueryString} brings you the exact keyword that was typed in the search. Collect
this profitable keywords and add them with [exact]
Ad1 is to track your ads. You can set whatever you want here.

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Awesome post! Really inspiring and motivating.

I'm planning on getting into the Facebook game soon too once I get POF down, just gotta make sure I set it up correctly.

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Is there a similar option with Prosper202?

If Google passes variables with these tokens {keyword} & {QueryString}, then that should be easy to import and use in P202 using c1 & c2. It's been a little while since I last used Adwords big time. Would love to promote on that medium again.

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Awesome post man, really inspiring stuff you got here.

I too have been grinding on POF for about a year with ups, downs, but overall limited success. The lifestyle has started to take a toll on me as well, but I can feel my skills sharpening every month that goes by.

About to expand into other traffic sources just like you. Best of luck!

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Bing tokens are same for all tracking platforms. Im not sure if {QueryString} is working on AdWords, but i think that {keyword} would show the keyword entered that generated the click.

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Wow George, That's awesome man. Congrats on your current success and hope you keep earning more

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This thread made my day! Congrats brother! Keep on trucking away

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Thanks everyone for all the support! Really appreciated. This month is coming to a close and I doubled my profit from last month, so... very happy with that and honestly pretty high on life right now. Hoping April can be even bigger. Thanks again everyone, you guys are great.

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Nice one George congrats! (George K by anychance :P?) Motivational and keep it up! I am still lower xxx, but its more the fb budget limit thats keeping me behind. One day my roi will look like yours

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I usually just browse and read the thread here but this one.. this one is really awesome! Your girlfriend is just pure awesome and I know you deserve her without a doubt. I'm really happy for your success and hope that it will continue to be.

Honestly, I got tear-eyed reading that part.

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Thanks for posting your journey. It is very inspirational. I love reading these threads on a daily basis just to remind myself that people ARE living the dream.

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They really are bro, there are many many people in this industry making a really good living online enjoying the freedom they have too

Make sure you're gonna join them in the future buddy, nothing holds you back but yourself!

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Excellent post man, reinventing your approach after getting hit so hard is a key component in this business.

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Just a little update - steadily improving. 30k profit was hit for April. Gunning for a 100k month more than ever. Thank you to everyone for the kind words and support.

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Smashing it!!

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So inspirational man!

This guy is the real deal, Everyone. My noob ass hit him up on Skype after reading his wickedfire thread and he's been putting up with my idiotic questions for days. Thanks to him I joined this forum and I've learned some things that would have 100% caused me to fail if I hadn't known them. I mean, I'm still failing, but my pof campaigns are still waiting on approval so I'll have to wait and see if this stuff works!

I'm also quite tempted to look into this FB cloaker, since I'm now banned on running ads on my 10 year old legit account. Like someone else said, you'll be banned either way so why not? Debating whether the $850 is justifiable. If I can run ads with dem bewbies then it probably is.

Thanks again George! Hope to be in your shoes some day.

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Really inspirational! Good job, hope i get there soon enough

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Loved reading this.

My wife was lamenting just how hard it has been for us lately to keep plodding on in search of some kind of significant success. She's been a rock for years as we've tried over time to turn what began as a little hobby/project into a business. It's been hard, but as I said to her last night, success will be all the sweeter when it comes.

I'm going to read this thread to her when she returns from getting the weekly groceries.

As a newcomer to STM, this has given some top inspiration!!

Thank you.

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This is the first post I read on this forum, since joining! Pretty good motivation to start with. I can only dream of making such amount of money at the moment, but I'm sure with enough dedication and work I will get there.

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Anyone can do this man, its just about truly putting in your best efforts and controlling your emotions. Grieve fully took it all the way to it was either bust or success. Just keep at it, eventually it will all be worth it but as long as you're making 1 step forward everyday whether it be a new skill, a new contact, more profit, a realisation whatever it is one step forward a day you will make it in this industry as there is PLENTY of money still to be made

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Don't worry. I'm fully persuaded and fully committed. We're making low $x,xxx/month online, but we've hit a wall.

Now that my wife has her own product, it's now about doing all we can to take that into at least five figures/month. I absolutely KNOW it can be done. It's just a matter of working at our offer and learning how to drive traffic profitably. We WILL get there and I make no apology for saying that I signed up here for one purpose... to make it happen faster than I could on my own.

P.S. I have Australia to thank for this. If we had never left the UK for Australia in 2007 to live there for two years, my wife would never have started writing online and we'd never have learned it was truly possible to make a living online.

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Just joined the forum, read this thread and am totally pumped! Grieve, great job, you're an inspiration man. Hope to make it to your and Maynzies level in a few months. Maynzie you're a champ for helping members out and leading them to success. Lots of forums have filler content to keep members busy but the big dogs keep the real knowledge to themselves, glad to see you're really helping people out here (as I'm sure the other top dogs are as well).

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As a person who has been dabbling with internet marketing in order to promote my offline business.. Im astounded by this story in particular.... and frankly my brick and mortar business which costed 200k+ (in debt) doesnt bring nearly that kind of ROI (30-100k??) per month. In fact...things arent looking on the up and up at all the last couple years and for the past year I have actually been putting in "some" effort to promote affiliate related products...but the minute I hit a brick wall I get frustrated to the point I feel its just not possible unless Im a "programmer" or something... atleast to me it seems that 99% of the "super affiliates" are very tech savvy. Reading this post.. this post really gave me a wake up call..never give up. Never. Time to ramp this thing up. I even bought into the same cloaker MONTHS ago and havent even used the thing consistently (and still paying) cuz of lack of time/motivation/tech skills.... however its becoming clear to me that most of the problem is.. motivation. Thanks for such an uplifting story.. you truly have done something that can only be achieved by consistency & trial and error.. the fact that you invested most of your savings...and you KNEW there was NO Plan B.... thats the difference. The other take-away from this post is that I need to network more, and stop feeling like I cant ask people for help. Thanks for this post, and I really needed this shift of the mindset. Oh. and umm... that girlfriend of yours.. I hope you'll let us know when you are engaged to be married...she's a keeper fo sho.... keep us in the loop!

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You really don't have to be tech-savvy to be a super-affiliate. Some are, but there are far more important skills to grow your business to that level.

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Thats true caurmen. Business skills is the key

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There is never enough of these threads

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^^ amen to that!

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