[Journey] $50,000 in 2026 or I Quit

[midnight_rider]

Respect for setting a big goal. Focus on one method, don't hop. Track everything. Rooting for you. 50k in 2026 is doable with consistency.

 

[KingMasterEg]

Nice journey to follow ,, goodluck bro

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 23: False Gold

So if you've been following along I've decided to focus on 1 tiktok account.

I'm using Chatgpt to create images and Kling Motion to create videos.



I was super excited when my first video hit the FYP but the next 3 have had little success. But good to see some success on Tiktok and I already have 1000 followers so I can post a link.

I will upload 1 video a day to see if I have any more videos hit the FYP

Tiktok Earnings:





I made $4.23 this week. Expect earnings to be down as we transition into 1 Tiktok account.

Pop Ads:

I've made 1 big error with learning pop ads and that's focusing on USA traffic. The traffic is just too expensive for someone learning the ropes of paid ads.

Therefore I will be looking at Tier 3 countries for cheaper traffic so I can learn how to optimize campagins.

Currently, looking for offers.

Comments/Questions:

Respect for putting a clear goal out there, that alone takes commitment.
$50k in a year is definitely doable, especially with your experience, but I think the key will be focusing on one or two things and going all in instead of jumping between methods.
Social media can work, but consistency + a clear monetization plan matters more than the platform itself. A lot of people get stuck posting without a real funnel behind it.
Also, try to track what’s actually bringing results and double down on that instead of spreading too thin.
Looking forward to your updates, these journey threads are always interesting to follow.

Thanks. I agree that I definitely was spread too thin. I have now settled on testing with 1 Tiktok account. The plus side of of trying with so many accounts so I learned a lot about the Tiktok algorithm in a short amount of time.

I think I have a decent funnel for Tiktok with dating apps (i have a unique niche) but I need more traffic to really see that.

Trying to make it perfect and micro management is a big problem. This is common if you just start out, my friends did the same mistake. You just need to get it somehow right and then see what works. If it works and you get traffic, double down and make it perfect. There is nothing worse than working on landing page for 1 week and then to not get any traffic

I agree. I really struggle to stop trying to perfect/micromanage things. Just how my brain works.

I think I have a fear of failure where I'd rather work on something continuously than test it. Because once I test it and it fails I feel a lot of self doubt and I think to myself I won't actually succeed.

Something I'll have to work on.

All the best with your journey mate

All the best for the journey.

Nice journey to follow ,, goodluck bro

Respect for setting a big goal. Focus on one method, don't hop. Track everything. Rooting for you. 50k in 2026 is doable with consistency.

Thanks for all the support guys!

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 24: These Weeks Go By So Fast

It's crazy how fast the week goes by. I feel like I never have enough time to accomplish what I want.

Tiktok:

So this is my one account I'm working on. Chatgpt image into Kling Motion. Had a second video hit the FYP which is nice to see.

Will upload 1 video per day this week and see what we get. I have over 1000 followers so link to dating offers is already up.



Earned $3.20 this week.

Pop Ads:

I have an offer picked out and I'll be targeting Colombia (which CPM compared to the USA).

I need to make a landing page but I'm not sure what design to use.

Adplexity and Anstrex are both pretty expensive. If anyone knows a cheaper way to spy on pop ads, please let me know.

Comments/Questions:

(thank goodness no questions, I'm headed to bed)

 

[I Am Batman]

Hi mate, how much you make until now.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 24: Wait A Sec...IG > Tiktok

Quick recap of this week's activities

Tiktok/IG

If you've been following along you know I've been focused on Tiktok but I decided to give Instagram a try again.

I've had issues with creating IG accounts in the past (they keep locking my accounts) but I was able to make one this time.

Tiktok:



IG:



As you can see. Way more success with IG than with Tiktok.

This is my first AI character and TBH she doesn't look super realistic. I'll continue to upload this week to both Tiktok and IG and probably make a new AI model to test.




Made $13.28 this week, which I think is my best week.

I don't think i'm going to get rich of this but it's a fun side project and I'm learning more about both social media and AI.

At this point I feel like anyone could do this and make a little money. Give it a try.


Paid Ads:

This is where my hopes lie for big money.

Due to bemobs being down and an error with my campaign, I just launched it today.

I'm targeting Colombia (lower CPM compared to USA) with surveys.

We'll have results for next week's update.

Comments/Questions:

Hi mate, how much you make until now.

Howdy. Probably about $5,000 all told. Not good to say the least.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 25 : Crawling Towards Money

In another exciting episode, we actually get some conversions with Pop Ads

Pop Ads:

Week 1: USA traffic with survey landing page= fail
Week 2: USA traffic with new survey landing page = fail
Week 3: Colombia traffic with survey landing page = not complete failure

So in exciting news i got my first conversions with Pop Ads ever!!! (very exciting stuff)

The bad news is my tracker wasn't working properly for the first day so I missed out on some of my conversions and won't be able to optimize.



So I ended up spending about $20 and making $6. It may not have been a winner but I now know I can make this make

This week I'm switching to Indian traffic and a media player installation offer. The payout is much lower so i should get more conversions and actually be able to optimize.

Tiktok/IG

Another week with IG performing much better than Tiktok.

I'm testing another network but they all seem to be performing about the same. I'm thinking of what else I could offer besides dating apps. I know there's OF but I would prefer not to do that.




Between the 3 networks I earned $19.69

Comments/Questions:

Nothing this week.

 

[lordprinceking]

Interesting journey. Following!

 

[shopburner]

Not trying to sound like a twat. But If after 24 weeks of tweaking your method, you’re still only earning <$5 per week your method is probably just trash mate.

I don’t think any amounts of traffic is going to make you a substantial amount of money, due to the fact that Fake IG Girl > Dodgy Dating Link in bio simply isn’t believable. 99.9999% of the internet can see that’s fake from a million miles away. If you were doing OF that’s a whole different story.

 

[Xin 3]

I’d focus on one method only. Most people fail because they keep jumping between different models. Consistency matters more than chasing new trends.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 26: 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back

Not the best of weeks but we continue on.

Pop Ads:

So after last week's small success with the Colombian survey offer I tried an Indian movie offer



My landing page is pretty good as it got a lot of clicks to the offer but 0 subscriptions.

The lesson I learned is I should focus on offers that make people money (surveys) or save them money. I'm not ready to try to get people to spend money.

Tiktok/IG:

My IG account got a selfie verification request.
Tiktok is harder to gets views but easy to keep an account while Instagram is easy to get views but harder to keep an account.



$5.44 earned.

Comments/Questions:

Not trying to sound like a twat. But If after 24 weeks of tweaking your method, you’re still only earning <$5 per week your method is probably just trash mate.

I don’t think any amounts of traffic is going to make you a substantial amount of money, due to the fact that Fake IG Girl > Dodgy Dating Link in bio simply isn’t believable. 99.9999% of the internet can see that’s fake from a million miles away. If you were doing OF that’s a whole different story.

Harsh but fair. I see the largest Tiktok spammers running dating offers so I know it does work but they're probably using 100s of phones and thousands of accounts. I can't scale like that.

I'll have to think of another approach though.

I’d focus on one method only. Most people fail because they keep jumping between different models. Consistency matters more than chasing new trends.

Agreed. I'm currently focused on 2 methods.

Interesting journey. Following!

Thanks!

 

[shopburner]

Week 26: 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back

Not the best of weeks but we continue on.

Pop Ads:

So after last week's small success with the Colombian survey offer I tried an Indian movie offer

View attachment 525343

My landing page is pretty good as it got a lot of clicks to the offer but 0 subscriptions.

The lesson I learned is I should focus on offers that make people money (surveys) or save them money. I'm not ready to try to get people to spend money.

Tiktok/IG:

My IG account got a selfie verification request.
Tiktok is harder to gets views but easy to keep an account while Instagram is easy to get views but harder to keep an account.

View attachment 525350View attachment 525351

$5.44 earned.

Comments/Questions:

Harsh but fair. I see the largest Tiktok spammers running dating offers so I know it does work but they're probably using 100s of phones and thousands of accounts. I can't scale like that.

I'll have to think of another approach though.



Agreed. I'm currently focused on 2 methods.



Thanks!

Haha sorry didn’t mean to sound harsh! But good luck with your journey. Yeah I agree i see dating offers all over TikTok etc but I think they must have huge amounts of accounts/phone farms. Even then I feel like there much more effective ways of making money and they’re selling themselves short.

Good luck in the future!

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 26: Goodbye Social Media, Hello Pop Ads

As much as it pains me to say but Tiktok/Instagram is not making me money.

Pop Ads is going to be the thing that makes me enough income to survive in this business


Tiktok/IG:

I won't give up completely on them as I love AI and creating videos but it will take a backseat.

I will also be thinking of some twists because dating offers aren't working very well.

I did make $0.02

Pop Ads:
I bought Anstrex, a spy software, which should help me find some good landing page and offer combinations that are working.

I will spend the week learning.

Comments/Questions:

Haha sorry didn’t mean to sound harsh! But good luck with your journey. Yeah I agree i see dating offers all over TikTok etc but I think they must have huge amounts of accounts/phone farms. Even then I feel like there much more effective ways of making money and they’re selling themselves short.

Good luck in the future!

No worries. I've decided this week to put Tiktok on back burner. I've seen the same thing. These accounts get so many views but spend 0 effort on optimizing their conversion flow.

Thanks!

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 27: Can't Fail If I don't Give up

What you have seen in this journey is 27 weeks of complete failure.

But I have never felt more confident in my internet marketing career.

I believe that as long as I keep trying I will eventually win (lets find out if i'm right)

Tiktok/IG:

I decided last week that I would put social media on the back burner so I skipped it this week.

Pop Ads:
This week I tried a "free iphone giveaway" offer from Maxbounty




I ended up getting 43 clicks from my landing page to the offer with 0 conversions.

I was honestly a little surprised I got 0 conversions. Either the offer isn't good or New Zealand traffic is too smart for these type of offers



On to the next campaign.

This week I have 2 campaigns in mind:
1. Golden Goose sweepstakes MVAS offer
2. Zeydoo Sweepstakes offer.

Cross your fingers that we will have a winner.

Comments/Questions:
***the sounds of silence***

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 27: Noise Or Improvement?

This week I broke my vow and went back to trying another MVAS campaign.

Pop Ads:

This week I promoted a Pakistani sweepstakes offer with a $1.30 payout from Golden Goose



I ran 3 rounds of pop ads, optimizing after each round.



Campaign 1: both IOS and Android, any browser
Campaign 2: only Android and Google Chrome
Campaign 3: whitelist zones that gave me a conversion on previous campaigns

As you can see, i did improve from my ROI from -80.54% to 74.12% but that could be noise because I didn't get a lot of conversions.

What I Learned:
-MVAS are too advanced for me right now
-Pakistani traffic is too expensive for what you get
-I need my first campaign to be -50% or better to have any chance of being in the positive

This Week's Campaign:

I will be running a zeydoo offer this week. This offer pays a lot less but the conversion is much easier and I should have a better ROI.

Just waiting for Adsterra to approve me and we'll be off with hopefully a more successful campaign

 

[SEOPartner]

You will go broke if you do not filter out traffic sources on popads. 90% is junk, even with their great filter systems.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 28: Tracking Issues

Quick update this week as I can't get my tracking working for my Zeydoo campaign.

I've tried both bemob and maxconv and they have the same problem, showing cost as 1000x.

I'm waiting for both their supports to message me back.

I've also been sucked back into AI with the release of Scail 2. Not as good as Kling Motion but much cheaper to run and it fits on a 5090

Comments/Questions:

You will go broke if you do not filter out traffic sources on popads. 90% is junk, even with their great filter systems.

That's what I'm finding out. I'm not sure if I'm giving up too fast but I also don't want to waste time on a campaign that is never going to be positive.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 29: More Campaigns

I figured out the tracking issue with my campaigns and launched 4 of them last week.

Traffic Source: Adsterra Pop Up
Offer: Zeydoo Giveaway

I used two different landing pages.
1. Penalty kick game
2. Running game



Here's the landing pages if you're interested.

Results:


The results weren't spectacular. I did get some conversions but the ROI was between -92% and -100%

It is very hard to optimize and turn a campaign profitable with those numbers.

I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board and what to try next.

AI + Social Media:

I know I said I would stay away from AI and social media and focus on paid campaigns but i just love it too much.

I'm currently generating AI women using Scail and will upload the videos this week.

I plan on optimizing my flow to see if i can get more conversions.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 30: July Intermission

I will be on vacation for the first half of July and not sure how much time I will have to work on this project.


I will be back at the end of July and will be really focusing on this project until the end of 2026.

 

[Purple Otter]

Week 31: Back From Vacation

I've returned from vacation. I'll be doing two things this week.

Pop Ads: Focusing only on survey offers and seeing if i can get a positive campaign

Social Media: I'll be uploading 1 AI video a day (7 total) and seeing what the results are