All posts in My Checks

Of course whenever someone posts a halfway decent screenshot, there’s about 15% who immediately accuse me of faking it with Photoshop. The other 85% email/IM me asking me all sorts of questions and telling me congratulations. I appreciate all the kind words and I’d like to answer everyone’s question, but it would take me forever to go through and personally respond to every single email. There are a lot of repeat questions though, so I’m going to do my best to answer as much as possible in this post.

Did I Fake My Screenshot?

Let’s just get this over with first. No, I didn’t. As stated before, I really don’t care if people believe me or not. I do love proving people wrong though, so I’ll post another screenshot of that month in Adwords. This is the Adwords account that corresponds with the Azoogle screen I posted.

On the actual main campaigns, I spend under $100k. I probably spent about $20k testing things that didn’t work. So no, it’s not $200k profit…on that account ;).

Amex points are key.

 
Popular Questions

Now I’ll search through all the emails I received and try to answer the most common asked questions.

I’m not even close to the point where you are, but I’m trying to get there. What are some realistic goals I can achieve and in what time frame?

Well as with answers to most questions – it depends. Some people get it pretty easily and learn fast, others it takes a very long time for them to get something good going. And even for others (like Shoemoney and myself a while ago), you can just stumble upon something almost by pure luck. In my first month or so of affiliate marketing I was a noobie and trying to get ringtones to work. I was testing out a bunch of random stuff and stumbled upon some pretty good keywords that had no competition. So a month into affiliate marketing I was grossing about $700-900/day, about $500 profit. Now that traffic converts like shit (like most ringtones stuff will be soon), so it’s not a money maker anymore. But for months it was great for me and was what compelled me to quit my day job. Now to get my big big campaigns running, luck isn’t involved. There’s time, research, planning, testing, losing…all of that before you can start making a decent coin. I’ll expand upon this soon with a longer article.
 

Can you by any chance share what some of your landing pages look like so I can see for an example?

Please stop asking me this one people. I’m not giving out any of my big offers or landing pages, how would that help me? Instead of being pissy about it like some of you are, think of what you would do. Sacrifice a niche making me thousands a day so I can make a few hundred a month from a blog? Nah. I’ll give tips on building successful landing pages, but I’m not giving out any of my campaign information.
 

If I pay you, will you train me in affiliate marketing?

Again, I’m sorry but no. To make it actually worth my time, I’d have to charge something ridiculous like $1,000/hour. I have SO many things going on and simply no time to personally tutor people. I’ll try to help out as much as I can in this blog.
 

Seeing your post really motivated me. I want to get started in affiliate marketing and try to make some money with it. What tips do you suggest for starters?

1) Don’t be afraid to lose money. Like I said above, I probably lost around 20 grand last month due to testing things. Sometimes you have to lose in order to gain.

2) Start off with small budgets if you need to, and test accordingly. Set a $100 daily budget let’s say. Test a bunch of things out. Once you have something that works consistently for a few days, it’s time to seriously scale it and make as much money from it as possible.

3) Yahoo is an easier engine to get started with over Google, and generally converts better. So you may find Yahoo initially a little less expensive and more profitable. Don’t forget about MSN as well.
 

How much time each day do you work?

I’m not one to come in this blog and brag about how I make insane money and work 2 hours a week. I am not the beach bum. I spend 8-10 hours/day on the computer for the most part, and usually about 5 hours on the weekends. I’m not to the point where I’m just a hermit, I do go out and workout and whatnot. I’ll also take a couple days off if I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. I absolutely love what I do and look forward to waking up every morning to work. So putting in the hours isn’t a problem. My goal is to have 15-20 million in the bank before I start to take month long vacations and really relax. So should be in the next couple months or so. Kidding.
 

Hey Paul. I’d really like to get to know you, you seem like a really neat guy………………………………….So I’m starting this campaign and bidding $0.50, you think I should direct link it and up my bids, or focus on my landing page?

Don’t IM me with the sole purpose of attempting to suck knowledge out of me. As you’ve noticed I won’t respond.

If you just said congrats or something and I didn’t respond, I was probably afk and didn’t put an away up. When I come back to 25 new IM windows, I have a tendency to rapid fire X them out.
 

You’re making $200k/month and you drive a Mazda3? Faker.

I bought that car my first decent month when I profited like $15k…that was back in July right after Affiliate Summit. So as you can tell the progress in the past 3-4 months has been pretty crazy. I attribute that to all my friends going away to school and me dropping out. I have allllll day. Anyways, I’m probably going to sell it after the summer and shop for something a little nicer. Give me some suggestions ;).
 

Congrats on your earnings. I hope to be making that much someday, thanks for the motivation!

I appreciate it. That post just goes to show that this kind of money is possible with some hard work, dedication, and capital. Keep throwing money at it (strategically) and you’ll find something.

Alright guys, have a Happy Turkey day, don’t eat too much. Food and football, can we ask for anything more?

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