My One Year Anniversary
It’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?
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!
That’s inspiring. Keep at it Paul.
CONGRATULATIONS PAUL!
YOU HAVE COME A LONG WAY BABY IN A VERY SHORT TIME.
I AM VERY PROUD :)
-AUDREY
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
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.
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,
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
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.
Really nice chart you got there man.
What was your initial investment? Did you ever lose any money?
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!
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
Now that’s what I call UBER success ;-)
Very inspiring!
Mad congrats man. Things look good. Thanks for all the help as well.
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
Everybody knows I give all my secrets away only to those to email me and ask for them.
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.
congratulations on all your success. it is very inspiring.
Nice escalation… What was your starting capital?
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
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!
Congrats are in order.
Indeed, you have come a long way.
I agree jl……theres no beef in this post. On the verge of unsubscribing.
Perhaps you missed the in depth keyword research article I posted 2 days ago?
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.
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!
Lol..its like what they say. Its not always what you know….but who you know…that can help get you to higher positions.
$500,000. You are amazing. :) Nice job.
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.
Nice!
If this is the gross revenue what are the net margins that you are aiming for? 60%?
Congrats. Nice that gives some people some hope. Are you doing mostly AM to get there or straight site stuff?
I know you operate this blog at a loss, and I respect that… but this blog is skimmming more and more on the info.
Congrats, looks like your scaling efforts have paid off…
:)
82 clicks and $28.50, did u make -$100 profit?
It’s a good thing you didn’t quit after your 8th month :)
Nice work, thanks for the motivation!
Great job in the last few months. The challenge now is going to be keeping that going for the long term.
You could retire now if you wanted to
thats just asking for it
i was going to ask the same
I think back then I only did 10 cents a click, so I probably paid around $12 to make the $28.
Your a beast dude, if your at ASW i will have to chat with you! hahahaha
holy cow!
i’m depressed. makes my lousy $1900/mo seem completely irrrelevant.
how much tax do you owe for last year?
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?
Congrats to you paul, great job
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.
Not to mention the restrictions on some of the links/ads.
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.