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Add me on SphinnIt’s a little overdue, but my one year anniversary in affiliate marketing was four days ago, on January 20th of 2008. My first ever commission was on January 20th, 2007 with AzoogleAds. By day information isn’t available that long ago so I can’t take a screenshot, but I do have a print out of that month, and here’s what that day looked like :
January 20th 2007 – 82 clicks – 2 leads – $28.50 – Ringtones
Boy what a noob I was back then, but hey we all started somewhere. I was excited to make 28 bucks that day, it was my first ever sale. I quickly added up revenues throughout the year and threw it into a little chart for you to see.
In the first few months it looks like I stayed the same, but that’s only because the numbers eventually get really big, so the graph makes it look like no growth. Back in the first few months I was consistently doubling last months revenue. My first month was $708, and by May I did almost $11,000.
How the hell did I have that massive spike around September/October?!
That’s probably going to be the most asked question with this post. Well, I made some connections with people, found out a couple things that worked pretty cool, and then just scaled the hell out of it…scaling that’s still going on till this day. Once you hit it off with one big opportunity, more just keep coming your way. I have so many huge things going on right now, it’s literally too much for me and I’m going to have to start hiring employees. I kind of overbooked myself with projects, but I’ll get them done and things should keep increasing like they are.
Anyways, it’s more power to you guys that are fresh in the game. I did this in one year, why can’t you?
January 24th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Hi Paul,
What can I said.
The moment I read this blog, I know this is great.
The best part when i finish reading your blogpost is this : I did this in one year, why can’t you?
You are truly a uber affiliate.
In fact, I admire your initiative of motivating people.
More great things to come to you man.
Keep it up.
Cheers!
January 24th, 2008 at 9:01 am
That’s inspiring. Keep at it Paul.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:20 am
[...] Original post by UberAffiliate :: Affiliate Marketing Blog [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 9:31 am
CONGRATULATIONS PAUL!
YOU HAVE COME A LONG WAY BABY IN A VERY SHORT TIME.
I AM VERY PROUD :)
-AUDREY
January 24th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Congrats on success and all your work. I think everyone should strive to have that sort of success pattern… always going up!
hopefully i’ll run into you at ASW!
cheers
January 24th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Congrats Paul, this is freaking amazing. Im very impressed, and hope I will beat you one day :-)) For now I just need to make some startmoney, fumbling around with too many projects to clearly understand the affiliate programs and how to set them up properly in order to make money.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I wish I personally knew you back then so I could have some tips on what you did.happy anniversary and I hope you stop my blog in my signature to see me in action.
yours truly allen,
January 24th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Paul, the fact you did it in a year AND are only 19 is just amazing to me. You’ll be ready to retire by the time you’re 25 if you keep up this pace. ;-)
Hats off to the most UBER affiliate I know!
Linda
January 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
You could retire now if you wanted to
January 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Read your post on spanking facebook today, joined the feed, now seen your most recent post.
Well done mate, you give noobs something to aspire to.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Really nice chart you got there man.
What was your initial investment? Did you ever lose any money?
January 24th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Wow, mazel tov! Now that’s what they call a hockey stick!
I’m surprised to see you’ve only been at this for a year — I’ve learned a ton from your blog. Thanks!
January 24th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I remember when I started off with ppc that I was also able to double revenue the first few months but then I got stuck somehow making low $ x,xxx and wasn’t able to double my revenue anymore or to increase my traffic. Even when I set up more different campaigns or set up different accounts doing the same offer didn’t improve my situation much!
Any tips here Paul?
Thanks
January 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Now that’s what I call UBER success ;-)
Very inspiring!
January 24th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Mad congrats man. Things look good. Thanks for all the help as well.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
why can’t we do this in one year?
we have no idea what the “secrets” are here that you’re talking about for one.
we don’t have your connections and partners either.
where are you getting your traffic?
what do you look for in offers?
how do you test and decide on which one’s to scale?
these are the things you might want to reveal.
Without doing so, this is just an ego post
January 24th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Everybody knows I give all my secrets away only to those to email me and ask for them.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
thats just asking for it
March 26th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I’m curious, are you waiting for these ‘connections’ and ‘partners’ to come knocking on your door?
January 24th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Great post and one that will keep me motivated. I have jumped in to the affiliate marketing arena at the start of the year and if I can achieve half of what you have by this time next year I will be completely happy with what I accomplished. Congrats on your current and future success.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
congratulations on all your success. it is very inspiring.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Nice escalation… What was your starting capital?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Paul,
Congratulations! I would say your first year as an affiliate marketer was a success!
Do you do search, mail, web or all of the above?
Good luck with your projects that you have planned. A post like this inspires the small affiliate marketers, so keep ‘em coming!
~Debby
January 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Paul:
WOW! I’m starting SEM in the next few weeks and hope to be as successful as you in one year’s time.
Keep it up!
January 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Congrats are in order.
Indeed, you have come a long way.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I agree jl……theres no beef in this post. On the verge of unsubscribing.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Perhaps you missed the in depth keyword research article I posted 2 days ago?
January 24th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I recommend that all unsubscribe. This could be a board where Paul and I just chat. :) Once I get on his level in AM we can just compare checks. Of course I am being sarcastic. I feel it is a great board and the fewer readers the are, the better for me.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
In your post you reffered to hitting it big with a few opportunities that worked do you mean
1) getting better deals with advertisers through your network
or
2)improved tactics/techniques?
Great job!
January 24th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Lol..its like what they say. Its not always what you know….but who you know…that can help get you to higher positions.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
$500,000. You are amazing. :) Nice job.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
You guys want to know the secret to success? Keep trying. No really keep trying, never give up. I’m only in my third month and have managed to crack into the $2k bracket last week. It feels good, damn good.
If you want to be good at AM, you have to be able to know a lot of things. You gotta know some html, php, photoshop, gotta know how to “talk” to people through your computer and you gotta have passion to sit their for hours on end figuring everything out.
I can’t tell you how much Ubs blog has helped me, when I first started I had no clue what he was talking about regarding landing pages and keywords. But now I find myself going back to his posts and having “ah hah” moments, that have got me on the right track to becoming an Uber.
Also you’ll be surprised at what converts and what doesn’t, I’m totally amazed at what makes money and what doesn’t. This means you’ve gotta try different things out and spend money. Your not going to start off with $1 and make millions. But you can start of with a $10 domain and some $3 dollar montlhy hosting and make $Gs. I did.
Also for those starting out, make a site on something you like, so you can learn the ins and outs of site making and getting visitors. After that focus on making affiliate sites, because afterall your going to need a base “white hat” site to show off to the networks so they accept you in the first place.
Whoa, this should be a guest post.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Congrats. Nice that gives some people some hope. Are you doing mostly AM to get there or straight site stuff?
January 24th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
i was going to ask the same
January 24th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Nice!
If this is the gross revenue what are the net margins that you are aiming for? 60%?
January 24th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I know you operate this blog at a loss, and I respect that… but this blog is skimmming more and more on the info.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Congrats, looks like your scaling efforts have paid off…
:)
January 24th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
82 clicks and $28.50, did u make -$100 profit?
January 24th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I think back then I only did 10 cents a click, so I probably paid around $12 to make the $28.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
It’s a good thing you didn’t quit after your 8th month :)
Nice work, thanks for the motivation!
January 24th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Great job in the last few months. The challenge now is going to be keeping that going for the long term.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
[...] you believe me? Sadly, I’m not telling my story but the tale of an UberAffiliate who used determination, testing , adaptation, & networking to do exactly what I just [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Your a beast dude, if your at ASW i will have to chat with you! hahahaha
January 24th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
[...] 3) Paul Bourque- My One Year Anniversary [...]
January 25th, 2008 at 2:42 am
holy cow!
i’m depressed. makes my lousy $1900/mo seem completely irrrelevant.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:43 am
how much tax do you owe for last year?
January 25th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Yeah so come on, great graph but how much was profit?
Revenue was a cool half mill, but if outgoings were $550,000 then you still lost $50,000.
I’m guessing $300,000 was spent on Ads making $200,000 profit, am i close?
January 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Must you ask for profit? Revenue is good profit is good so beat it! lol
January 25th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Beat what?
Like i said, if revenue is $10,000,000 but costs are $11,000,000 then you still lose $1,000,000.
If thats the case, then im already beating him by staying on zero – at least im not 1 mill down!
Still impressive spending that blatently returns good profit otherwise the graph wouldn’t be here.
I just think a percentage of profit in there would make it more of a rounder picture thats all.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
You don’t really think
he did 500 in gross and 550 in cost, and just lets it go negative 50k a month.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Congrats to you paul, great job
January 25th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Congrats!
Affiliates, as a AM myself, I will say that the future of affiliate marketing is going to be more on the SEO side, and the PPC opportunities will continue to dwindle.
Why? Because as Adwords gets more competitive (and it will), affiliates can’t competete on such low margins compared to the companies that work off the full profit margin.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Not to mention the restrictions on some of the links/ads.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Sorry Jason you’re wrong here. Adwords is not purely about how much you pay, its how well your ads perform – and it will always stay that way! Advertisers have ALWAYS had more to play with and they CONTINUE to loose to their affilates. Which is one of the reasons they put in all those kw restrictions. Ultimately restricting affilates hurts their sales/leads and allows their competitors to steal marketshare. Why? Because most advertisers don’t have the slightest idea how to properly manage paid search – and i can guarantee 90% of them NEVER will.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I’ll second that, a ton of our affiliates that used to make alot of money promoting our stuff on PPC have seen traffic go down as the number of competitors and PPC costs skyrocket, but the guys who focused on an SEO angle from early on are making more than ever. PPC is a great way to get an affiliate campaign off the ground quickly and test things, but the SEO side is the more profitable long term play.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Nice Job man! just keep your Exponential math going in 08!
January 25th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Very nice!!! Great job!!! Congrats to you!!! Way to exceed your goals.
Connecting dots and figuring out how things and what things work is key. Scaling is another MAJOR key. Can’t give away those secrets though, right? ;)
January 25th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Wow, just noticed you’re over the 1,000 reader mark. Obviously I haven’t checked the blog in awhile, been super busy with some new projects as well, and can hardly keep them straight. Congrats though!
January 25th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Good job man
January 26th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Like other commentors, I want to know what how much this was profit vs gross and what were the exact figures of each month?
Would you be willing to do two graphs, one like the above graph only with figures attached to it and then another graph with net profit attached to it?
January 29th, 2008 at 1:03 am
I think the trade secret is in the profit margin.
January 26th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Paul:
I just discovered your blog a couple of days ago. Great Stuff!! I am looking forward to reading your past posts and learning as much from you as I can.
Your success has inspired me tremendously. I wish you all the best.
January 27th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
[...] and Paul both celebrate the 1-year anniversary of their blogs and on this occasion, I would like to wish [...]
February 9th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
WOW. That’s a quality spike there Paul. Good job man!
February 18th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Good job Pualie. Found you site from Wes’s page and loving it. I’m spanking new to this aff thing and from what most tell, me they lose money. Not sure how you did it, you shared some of your tactics but really not enough to help the rest of us newbs. We, of course are envy so a bow is in order.
BOW
February 21st, 2008 at 3:44 am
[...] Take a look at Paul from UberAffiliate. He grew his CPA/affiliate commissions from $40/day in Jan 2007 to $500,000 in Dec 2007. Read his post: My 1 year anniversary. [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 4:42 am
You really did wonderful in such a short period of time. Way to go! Keep it up!
February 24th, 2008 at 9:33 am
[...] with PPC that I was receiving low $ x,xxx within 6 months from my affiliate network. Paul of UberAffiliate did the same, started with a very small amount of money and look where is today after doing PPC for [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Makes me want to stop procrastinating so much. I’m in my own way too much of the time, haha. But I know its possible, so I’m encouraging to start getting more focus and taking more action. Cool post!
February 26th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
This is great stuff! Just wondering where you will be one year from now. I am looking forward to see your 2 years anniversary post!
March 16th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
[...] “How did your earnings shoot up so much over just one year?” If you remember, I posted My One Year Anniversary in affiliate marketing. I did have some pretty awesome growth in my first year in this industry, [...]
March 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am
[...] affiliate that went from $0 to around $500,000 a month income in one year. Yes, ONE YEAR! (This screenshot shows Azoogle stats that hit $500K, but I assume he was running other networks too, so that may [...]
April 1st, 2008 at 9:41 am
That is really awesome. I often wonder if super affiliates like yourself would ever take on a protege and see what happens.
August 12th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
[...] & the mystery connection he networked with: If you review Paul’s 1 Year Anniversary post, he offers a pretty amazing graph of his profits. The big increase in October of 2007, when he [...]