***The Official Affiliate Marketing/Make Money Online Thread Part 6***

[UniversityMisc]

The Official Affiliate Marketing/Make Money Online Thread Part 6





History (required reading)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Resources for Beginners and Advanced Members

Wicked fire
Digital Point
Black Hat World
Warrior Forum
Noob Make Money
AffBuzz
Nicky Cakes
Affilorama

If you can't get started with the above reading and resources provided, then this is not for you. Do not quit your day job, because if you aren't willing to put in the time and effort to learn, then you'll never put in the time and effort to be successful. This OP is not about holding new members hands and walking them through everything step by step. It is focusing on what member have accomplished and their success stories.

Websites Owned and Ran by Miscers


TOFitness | TotallyAlpha.com
MinusP | ThatsDominican.Com
Motocross18 | MuscleChronicle.com
Laxmatt | D3conomy.com
Joey2506 | MuscleMayhem.com.au
OKPump | GeneticWar.com
SeizeTheWeight | FreeSEOCoach.com
Fire8085 | LaptopsForCollegeStudents.com
ThaifooN90 | KratosGuide.com
AZJ0SH | AverageGamer.net
jvinci | VodkaOnly.com
pvpaymon | BF3Media.com
mfux | VitaThemes.com
TheFatMan | [TheCologneReview.com
Rothstein | SupplementAdvisory.com
michaelquinlan | SuppSamples.com


AM Miscer Success Stories

If you would like your success story featured here, PM it to me.

Iron_And_Sweat

I made my first website before every knowing about affiliate marketing or the ability to make money online. My first site started out as a vision I had after a friend of mine throwing up on a girl from several stories high (she was on the ground). Around that time A popular term was "Party Foul", and thus my first true site Party-fouls.com was born.

I had learned HTML previously from working with Myspace, Xanga, and things of that nature. I ended up getting some very good connections within the "College / Humor" niche from the site, and learned quite a bit from them, however it still ended up failing.

Being able to make money online is not just about having the skills, it's about networking and being able to hire specialized people within a set budget. For instance, I had a vision, but I had no clue how to make it live. I ended up contacting a similar site owner and got him to do the graphic design for me, and custom code modifications to an FML script. At this point I began learning about search engine optimization and ended up ranking for some decent terms.

After this site I moved onto another niche, and ended up in spots 1 & 2 for a 300,000 and 200,000 searched keyword. Traffic was awesome, revenue was awesome, then I was penalized by google. My couple hundred a day was suddenly down to ZERO, and thus I learned about google penalties the hard way.

Since then I've owned a fairly successful web hosting company, outsourcing company with 22 full time staff members based in Bangladesh/India/Pakistan, Google News websites, and an offline business, plus a slew of microniche sites and adsense/amazon niche sites.

Currently, I maintain 2 authority websites within 2 pretty big niches, have a couple automated adsense sites, and do offline work for various businesses. Everything for me started out with a stupid idea, ~$600, and a failed website, but I've not regretted a single move. I would advise people to do, and not waste your time reading unless it is small details about specific laws or something to that extent, because everything I've accomplished has been me entering into the market clueless and being forced to survive otherwise I failed (which I've done TONS of times).

Another tip, don't be a cheap ass - you need to spend money to make money.

[UniversityMisc]

AM Miscer Success Stories (Continued)

If you would like your success story featured here, PM it to me.

Motocross18

I was born in a small town where I spent the first 19 years of my life. Motocross, surfing and skiing consumed most of my time growing up. I built my first website at the age of 9 using tripod.com/html and have been bringing my ideas to life ever since. At age 11 I opened a paintball eBay store and it actually did quite well despite not knowing much about business. I really started focusing on web design and affiliate marketing when I got into 11th grade. By the time I graduated high school I was making more money than most of my teachers. My main focus is school at this point, but I still operate my main business and other small affiliate sites which has led to being worry free financially which is a great feeling. With a host, text editor, and an idea you have something that might impact a million people tomorrow.

88crxsi

I started off roughly year to year and half ago? I started out trying everything under the sun. I would do cpa, clickbank, adsense,and CJ. I was fascinated with anything I could get my hands on. After a while I did pretty good, but my income was up and down. I started getting better and better with affiliate, but the whole time I wanted to try offline. So I took a gamble and pretty much sold off all my sites but a select few and went in full throttle.

I started out in offline by hustling free sites with hosting, from there I did $500-1k, and now I can sell sites up to $4k (that's a rare one, but Iv'e done it.) The key was sticking through until I seen success. I was first concerned about a steady recurring income so that's why I went with free sites and hosting. Now I have my foot in everything from SEO, Web design, Mobile design, and social media.

I knew from day one I would make this my career because I fell in love with it. My goal from day one was to impress every client so they would tell their friends about me. It worked ; ) Iv'e come a long way in the last year and still a long way to go, but I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

I'm now at the point that I try to outsource most of my work to keep focusing on getting new clients. I know this probably isn't a motivating post, but I'm going to focus my efforts on telling you guys what I would do to get started.


How to start a offline marketing business:

After learning from my mistakes if I started over this is what I would do. I would first offer 5-10 clients a free website and make them beautiful. Make sure to charge them a recurring hosting and get a testimonial.

From there I would email/call/walk in until I got 1 CPA, 1 LAWYER, AND 1 PRINTING COMPANY, and I would offer them free work in return for referrals. Offer to pay them a percentage for every referral as well. These guys can blow up your business.

Now this is my favorite technique and wish I started with it earlier. Download camtasia and get the yellowpages. Start looking for people with big ads, and do research to find who isn't ranking well for their terms, see if their google places is claimed and optimized, look to see if they are using social media and would it be beneficial to them, is their website mobile friendly?

Now once you have a list of about 50 ( yeah this takes work it isn't easy like they say) start making personalized videos. In the video go over everything personally. Analyze their website and tell them what they can improve, show them google keyword tool and how many searches their terms can get, use rankchecker to show them where they rank, show them how they need to claim their google places and how their competitors claimed theirs already, and show them how their website isn't mobile friendly.

Once I'm done with these videos I also include a video about mobile web design I use with my website so they can see what the benefit is. I make a simple video showing my website normal and then the mobile friendly version so they can see why it's beneficial. (I use wptouchpro)

Now if you want to beef this method up and target a niche like plumbers then you could offer 2 plumbers a free site and mobile site with hosting. Then in your videos you show the person their competitors site in the video saying this is one of my clients I did a mobile site for(their competitor). Now this will do one of two things. It will spark their ego and they will have to have one or it will piss them off lol.

In the presentations I also include a referral letter stating that if they refer enough people their services will be free or if they don't want to use my services maybe they know someone who could and I pay a percentage for referrals. I buy cheap yellow envelopes from office depot and a red marker. On the outside I write something like "how would x amount of leads a month benefit your business?" I also put at the bottom I included a video to show you how to get more customers every month.

From here if I don't hear anything I follow up with phone call asking if they received my package ( I hand deliver) and try to strike up a conversation.


Second method: I find crappy websites and email every one of them offering them a new website and mobile site. I'm still doing this method, but now I charge $75-100 for maintenance. The key to email is personalizing everything. It can't be a copy and paste you send to everyone. I learned this quick from my mother as she saved every crappy email marketers sent her work selling page 1 listings lol. Let me tell you guys if you personalize your emails you will stand out from these losers.

Let me stress you aren't selling page 1 rankings, you aren't selling social media, you aren't selling (insert service), but you are selling leads and ROI. Owners don't give a crap about all of that. Some think it's cool, but if they are paying you $500 plus a month they want to see return on their investments. Once you learn how to talk to people you will stand out from the crowd.

Always educate never sell. I give my information away for free. In my presentations, on my blog posts, on my fan page and twitter. I tell them how to do everything. What this does is open their eyes to all the stuff they aren't doing. Most will be interested, but they don't have the time to do this themselves and want to know how much. That's the time to sell.

Practice what you preach:

If you are going to provide SEO then have a client or your own site to show them, if you are selling social media have a large following and fans, if you do mobile design have a demonstration. Always have proof because with all the scammer's people are skeptical.

What to expect?

Expect rejection and learn to grow a pair. No matter what methods you try you will get rejection, but here's the kicker. They aren't saying "NO" to you personally it just means they aren't interested or see value in your offer. Move on, these people aren't who you want to do business with anyways.

It's all in the numbers. By using multiple methods you are constantly stuffing the pipe line. Focus on building relationships and not just padding your pocket. Always respond with polite and professional emails. If they don't choose you now, maybe later they will when they need a web designer guy. When you make a decent amount don't get comfortable. Always be prospecting and thinking 2 steps ahead. If you are actually working and not dreaming you should be looking ahead. Taking action is key.

UniversityMisc

I stumbled upon this thread back in May 2009 and decided that I liked Halo, so I figured I could try and make some money since Halo is such a huge franchise and the new game (Halo Reach) was coming out. I made a site (haloreachtips.net, don't own it anymore), got it looking decent, and then completely forgot it existed. For about 2 months, it sat and I did nothing more in regards to internet marketing.

One day it clicked in my head that I owned it, and I worked to monetize it as best as possible and get it ranking high for keywords before the launch of the game. It paid off, and I made some pretty good money off of it. Once I saw that money coming in, I got excited and highly motivated. I started looking into other ventures online, other ways I could make money. I started spending nights reading forums for hours, and working tirelessly on my websites. It paid off. Currently on my hosting, I have 63 websites, and also do a variety of other things online. I've also picked up my first couple of offline clients, and hope to make that my full time gig by early next year.

It is refreshing not having to go to work every day and having much more free time and money than my friends who are working their dead end retail jobs while in college. Once you start to see the profit come in, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Here are some tips for new people are to get an idea and stick with it. A huge issue with me was time management, and I would find myself wanting to do 5 different things but ultimately never getting anything done. Also, try to limit distractions. Set aside a few hours to actually get some work done. It is so easy to become distracted since you're working on the computer. No youtube, no misc, no TV, nothing. The less distractions you have, the more work you will get done. Spend 50% of your time reading, and 50% working. Seriously, if you don't just jump in and try, you will never be able to learn. Learning on the go is a lot easier, and you'll thank yourself later. $10 for a domain and $8 for hosting to start your first website is nothing, and it can really pay off if you have the motivation.

If you have any questions, you can always PM me and I will try to eventually get back with you. I won't hold your hand or give away what I do specifically, but I'm willing to guide people in the right direction.

[UniversityMisc]

AM Miscer Success Stories (Continued)

If you would like your story featured here, please PM me.

MinusP

I started this in November of last year, when UniversityMisc was promoting some cheap hosting on hostgator as a thanksgiving deal, always thought of doing a site compiling everything I do, but never got to it, so this seemed like a great in. Knowing myself, I knew I would change my mind on domain names and perhaps want to do other sites too so i opted for the plan on there that gave me that option, and glad I did, my first site was a fail. It was sheepbear.Com (It's still there you can see it), the problem with that site (so that you won't run into the same issue) was that it had no direction. when people asked "Whats your site about", the answer was "everything I enjoy", and simply put, there is just no market for "Everything I enjoy" on the net. Lesson # 1, if you have a site, make sure the site has a subject, and an audience.

From that mistake and all the time i invested into that site (November to January say in and day out took all my free time up) I realized that if I was going to make another site, it would have to be a subject I enjoyed. Many Misc'ers had small niche sites, that make some money for a few weeks, or months, then become irrelevant because of the subject matter (example, say you made a site about the iphone 2), me, I wanted something that my kids could learn from, an authority site, on a subject that I research already, enter The Dominican culture.

Since moving to this country, I miss certain parts of my youth, and Dominican Republic being a third world country basically, was not up to par with technology, so a lot of the things i lived as a youth can't be found on YouTube... Artists, commercials, shows, are all gone, and no matter how much I looked for them I was only able to find bits and pieces scattered in different sites, and the idea came in, why don't I just make a big hub that unites all this information, along with my take on it and personal knowledge on the subject? So I did it.

I would love to say the noble idea took off, and all was well, but while many people said "That's great, that's so smart", it did not reflect in my visits, until I put news of a current Dominican artist on my site, and my views went up the roof. Usually hard headed, my normal train of thought would be "I'm trying to teach you about our history, not about this newcomer", but my business side said, "Give them what they want, and within that, feed them what you want them to see", and this became the formula that has gotten me to where I am, in the span of 9 months of running ThatsDominican.Com, I've gotten acknowledged my just about the top of the top from the culture, people like Robinson Cano (Yankees), Aventura (the highest selling Bachata Group), Fernando Villalona (A legend of Merengue) and many more, all videos that can be seen on the site, I've even gotten quoted on Fox Five news Latino.

As far as what I've gotten in goods, I get free shirts from Dominican designers who send in products to be reviewed, free alcohol from Dominican manufacturers, invites to performances from artists that I already enjoy and many promotional items in between, all without selling out my original concept, rather by adjusting the way that i viewed the marketting of the site and acknowledging who my audience was.

Money wise, just with google Adsense I got the site at one point to make $50.00 per day, until Google changes their algorithm and that affected my rank, I currently make anywhere from 7-$20.00 daily and I'm quickly regaining my rank back, this again within a 9 month period of time, I won't lie, I do work hard at this, this is not a one time thing, I will be number 1 in Dominican entertainment, that you can believe, 80,000 + Fans on FB, 1,000 + twitter fans, close to 100,000 visits monthly, I aint doing too bad right now.

The Misc threads have helped me a great deal, specially in the beginning, there are a few misc members that do give a lot in terms of helping out as long as you yourself show initiative to try to figure it out on your own before just putting in any dumb question. I know know a bit, and try to retrun the favor by sharing tips and tricks that i have learned along the way.

I realize the money I am making is not much compared to the dreams some of you may have, and I realize a lot of other misc'ers are doing way better, but the acknowledgement I have gotten from the same people I idolized as a kid, the important role I am playing in the future of my society, the free stuff I get, the perks, the extra cash, and all of this within a year, only leaves me in great hopes of what else is going to come int he future for www.ThatsDominican.com and I. What better way to spend your time, than shaping the very future you want your kids to see? I am working towards making my site that very thing, strong enough to make a difference in the Dominican culture.

[hxa]

hxa, residentevil, can you guys delete your posts? ill rep you if you do. i needed 2 posts since it all wouldnt fit in 1.

Sure, sorry, didn't know there was more.

[Philip81193]

In on first page. Was subbed to last thread but never read it. Things gon' be different this time around.

[resident3vil]

sorry man

I deleted it

[flynn125]

in on 1st page, will edit this later

[RMV]

anyone doing mobile marketing? any tips ? i am trying to get into SMS marketing for small biz owners

[UniversityMisc]

Sure, sorry, didn't know there was more.

sorry man

I deleted it

Thanks guys, repped.





If anyone else wants their website or success story in the OP, you have ~24 hours before I can't edit it anymore.

[pvpaymon]

Is this real life?

I just broke 1k impressions today for the first time and its only 6:30pm. Yea yea, its no 10k or 100k but its a start With the release of BF3, ****s going to get real I hope

www.bf3media.com

[mfux]

If anyone else wants their website or success story in the OP, you have ~24 hours before I can't edit it anymore.

Hey man, my site is pretty much ready now, always editing the code and adding content to the sidebar as I type this, but it is online and has a few posts so figured I may as well share.

It is located here: http://www.vitathemes.com

[michaelquinlan]

This'll probably be a pretty pointless post, but just my thoughts:

If any of you are new to AM and are truly interested in finding a viable way to earn a little disposable income, don't let the idea of an investment get in your way.

Hosts: Hosts like 1and1 and GoDaddy often run really nice promotions for registering domains, and there actually are semi-decent free cPanel hosts out there (I've had good experience with BinHoster in the past - 1 period of downtime in a few months).

Design/Script: The WordPress CMS software is what everyone really relies on, and it's open source and has a dedicated community around it. (I wouldn't recommend WordPress.com because AdSense is currently not allowed). It's also not hard to find a free host that offers 1-click installs of various scripts (blogging, galleries, forums, etc.).

Research: There's also a ton of free programs to use for researching keywords/niches. Programs like Traffic Travis and Market Samurai and especially Google-run programs like their AdWords Keyword Tool, various Webmaster Tools (submitting an sitemap), and more. Of course you can also "test" out a program for a little before spending any money.

Paid Ads: There's often a bunch of AdSense and sometimes a few ******** voucher codes floating around for $50-$100. If you've never used either before, try them out (often dumped on WF and other AM forums) either for more difficult keywords or to gain a few fans.

But when you get down to it, it's better to spend only a few bucks trying AM out with a low-searched niche website than to drop $50 before having any experience. You might make some stupid mistakes (getting sandboxed or similar by paying for 1000's of trashy backlinks), but at least you can quickly take what you've learned and apply it to a site with greater potential. Just my take, and I'm in no way anywhere close to being an expert.

[Wolf-Baron]

http://www.islandmotivation.com

[Fire8085]

In.

Edit: For the people PMing me about the books and other things, I'll get back to you within the next day.

[wanbabeast]

Decided to start my first site after reading thread number 4 and 5, here is my site
www.muscledesire.com, let me know what you think, it my first time ever making a site.

Can some one give me some feedback? Its not completely finished, i want to add more pictures and also want some articles for the front page.

Edit, also im looking for some one to make a logo for my site, and recomendations?

[romeolol]

O hai.

[TOFitness]

in on first page!

Let's get this going!!! Finishing off September making more than August.

Edit: Great first post OP with the success stories.

[Motocross18]

So happy so happy for you.

[TheFatMan]

In on this for sure

[tonyiommi]

I bought a tablet and a new guitar wit my internet monies. It also pays my weekly movie tickets. fuk yeah.

Edit: new username now

[joey2506]

In on first

Will edit later

[usopppp]

cpa ftw

[tonyiommi]

Great site
A step by step guide from keyword research to building back links to making money.

challenge.co/training/

[jdmkris]

all 5 threads blow my mind. Got motivated and gathering info up to start a site. My only question is on the 4th thread there was a picture of people holding lots and lots of money. Story behind alllllll that money. geez

[peteyyytran]

In on this (:

[bluebeltATT]

1st page!!! ready guys for another 10k posts of success?????

[ThaifooN90]

all 5 threads blow my mind. Got motivated and gathering info up to start a site. My only question is on the 4th thread there was a picture of people holding lots and lots of money. Story behind alllllll that money. geez

Top dogs of IM:

AWWWWWW YEAHHHHH

[DerReise]

http://fitnfly.com

Sup guise.

[Davis_Ever]

Nice... Just Broke the $200 mark today and its not even 10pm yet... $250 would be awesome!

[bluebeltATT]

Wheres Biganf??? Also loking for his ******** fanpage and i cannot find it