Read through some of your responses, and a bunch of stuff resonated with me and my own situation.
I'm an affiliate and have been at it for 8 years. Used to check and re check affiliate dashboards for hours everyday (Still do actually).
Also had all my income gone to 0, at least twice. Not sure why I haven't offed myself yet...I must secretly love to be a failure (my family does, so maybe it's in my blood).
And I've been in the shitter for some time now.
I actually kind of despise IM. To me it's not "fun". My motivation is to solve the problem. I learned, when i was a kid, that only if I didn't give up could I fix the issue. Whatever it was. Passing my exams, losing weight, leaning a language or learning guitar...anything really.
And so now I'm here, not giving up even though I feel I should have.
I get the "not shotgunning", the "focusing on work not refreshing analytics" and the "not all eggs in one basket"...but even with this, and my experience, I don't think I've personally been as lost as I am right now.
So I guess my question is, knowing what you know today, what would be a good idea to do? Or how do you pick yourself up after a fall? Did you ever have to swallow your pride and step back for a bit? (I might have to do that cause I'm tired as hell).
Would you still "find something you love and building a business around that"?
For context (in case it's important) cuttently I'm running ads, but am second guessing myself, diversifying in case they block me or decide not to pay me or whatever...so very slowly.
Thanks a bunch
Woops, missed this reply, think you posted it just as I was replying to previous messages.
OK, so let's break this down.
Used to check and re check affiliate dashboards for hours everyday (Still do actually).
Yeah, break this habit of daily checking any kind of analytics. Not only is it a time wasted (and it really is - there is no valid reason to do this), but it's also pointless in the fact that 24 hours of performance as a datapoint is
fucking meaningless. Imagine you login Monday evening, then on Tuesday evening you see conversions/traffic is 40% increased/decreased than the previous day. That variation tells you nothing, and you cannot make any decisions nor implement strategies based upon it. The data set is too small, WAY too small. Not only that, but this exact scenario is often the reason people abandon things before they even really get started. Imagine you start pushing a CPA offer, and after 3 days you have zero conversions.
Let me make this very clear, zero conversions in 72hrs for a brand new offer does not indicate the idea/offer/lander is bad. It indicates nothing, nada. 30 days should be the minimum you allow before trying to extract whether something is working or not.
Similarly, don't tweak your landers/copy/pricing without 30 days+ of traffic/earnings data. That's self sabotage. At the end of month, you'll have no reliable data or understanding about whether something you changed was effective. The likely scenario is you'll give short-term bias to one of the changes because it performed marginally better for the 4 days, 7 days, 10 days you kept it before adjusting again. If you want to tinker with things, do A/B/C split tests, but again like a broken record, you need to run these tests for a minimum of 30 days otherwise it's a complete waste of time,.
I actually kind of despise IM. To me it's not "fun".
Straight up, the fact you've used the "despise" as the verb, I'd encourage you to be brutally honest with yourself and think about why you're even considering a career in IM. As I've referenced in previous replies ITT, to me that sounds similar to people who say "I hate Monday's", "I wish I didn't have to work" etc. These phrases aren't literal, they translate to "I hate my job". Nobody "hates" Mondays - imagine how mental that would be.
They hate the feeling of Monday's because they know they (assuming they are in a 9-5 job) are 5 days away from not having to go to work. Equally, when people say "I've got that Friday feeling" or "Friday is the best day of the week", it's because they're in a career they find boring/dull/unchallenging and Friday evening signals 2 days off.
Life is short, we all know that. What people often forget though, how you make a living is not forced upon you (I'm generalising here, I know there are exceptions in some countries around the world). Working a job you hate should only really happen when you need a job after a period of unemployment / ill health / etc -
when you just need an income and need it fast. Of course in that time, you take anything, any job. But in my experience it feels like people forget that they can take that stop-gap job to make ends meet, but they can continue applying for other roles from day 1 of taking that job. That's when people can be selective. Apply, apply, apply, get that interview, and then decide whether they really want it. They can afford that luxury because of the wage they are collecting from the "any job" attitude when they really need it. People don't do this though, they stay in jobs they hate for years and years. Baffling.
If you really do despise IM and feel that conscious dread and "pit of your stomach" feeling every time you sit at your desk - don't pursue it. It's not for you. There will 100% be jobs out there that you'd thrive off and enjoy. Also, if you hate your work, you have precisely 0% chance of beating people in your niche/role/industry who love it. Period. They'll work harder, better, faster.
So I guess my question is, knowing what you know today, what would be a good idea to do? Or how do you pick yourself up after a fall? Did you ever have to swallow your pride and step back for a bit? (I might have to do that cause I'm tired as hell).
It's a cliche, but a great one. When I've 'fallen' in the past, I've always made fallen FORWARDS. "Make sure you have something to fall back on" - The most idiotic common parlor I have ever heard. Fall, we all do, but fall forward. Learn from it, see at is as positive - "So this is not what to", "This doesn't work - why?" etc. Every failure teaches you something (usually multiple things); it's upto you to ponder what they are. It's not difficult to get into mindset. "That didn't work" - is business suicide. "WHY didn't that work? WHAT could I adjust" is a helpful question.
As for a good idea. Again, you need to look deeply and honestly within yourself for this. Me personally, I absolutely fucking love sales, marketing, conversions. That's my bag. But I can't tell you to do that, because I don't know what makes you tick. To really drum down on this point; even if I was the first person in the world to see a gap in the market relating to Linux,coding,servers etc, I would not even attempt to fill that gap. I'm shit at it. Always and always will be; because I both lack the understanding of those things; and more importantly, I find them boring. Others absolutely love them, we're all different.
For context (in case it's important) cuttently I'm running ads, but am second guessing myself, diversifying in case they block me or decide not to pay me or whatever...so very slowly.
Give yourself a chance and run tests for 30+ days without adjustment, as I said above. If you're second guessing yourself every few days, and making decisions (well - making changes - a decision suggests consideration), you're not learning anything nor optimising anything.
