I use to make 10k a month with CB, now nothing...

I've been reading this forum for a while, have been in and out of the affiliate marketing industry, and frankly wanted to share my experience and ask for guidance.

From 2008 to 2010, I made a stupid amount of money marketing clickbank products. It started when a kid who was working for my friend claimed he was making 5 or 10k a month selling peoples products online.

Long story short, I made a ton of money for a few years, stopped working all together, spent it all, and now I have been working a regular job for a year...it kills me every day to think of what I took for grantide, and lost.

So I'll just tell everyone, the product I was marketing, was those movie download websites that are actually just torrent sites that you pay for, which have since been banned from clickbank.

My old marketing strategies of posting articles, submiting links to social networking sites, and building landing pages is seemingly obsolete and ineffective. I noticed the industry is much more crowded these days.

Anyway, my reason for posting is asking if anyone else has experienced this trend, either due to the economy, competition or the changing SEO practices?

I know no one wants to give away their secrets or their products, because that will just create competition for you, but it kills me every day seeing the sites in the top 10 of Google, the youtube videos with 100k+ visits and the random articles all marketing affiliate products, which I can no longer seem to do.

I just need a bankroll to start investing in the internet marking biz again, but working a square job doesn't exactly leave much money left over.

So if anyone can relate to this story, and would like to help point me in a direction that does not require a ton of start up cash, please let me know. I will do whatever I can to return the favor.

Even though I have a decent job, I once led the life of a successful affiliate marketer, and that is my dream. A dream that has never left, I think about it every day, and I want to go back to that life.

I'm going to invest in an article spinner/submitter soon, and some proxy IPs, so hopefully I can get back on track...

The Search Function.

Read, read, and read some more.

There are plenty of methods on this site which tell you how to start up to expanding your IM empire.

thanks for the advice

Thank you, I've read some great tips and strategies on this forum.

Does anyone have an opinion on which is better?

Creating domain names targeting your keywords, and putting up wordpress blogs?

OR

Simply creating blogger websites with targeted keywords?

I've noticed a lot of blogger websites posted in various niches that seem to rank well...

whats an mnf site?

lol

First I would like to relate to your story. When I was finishing my bachelors degree I decided to try & learn how to make money online. I probably put six good months of hard work while doing school but the "black hat" spam methods I learned / created ended up building me a team of over 2500 affiliates in a company called Global Domains.

I wasn't rich but I was doing good. Unfortunately that company blows & has no retention rate which I learned as my team grew, i couldn't keep up with the amount that were dropping out. After such hard work & the dream of getting to 10000 members & retiring for good crumbling I took a looong break from online stuff.

I collected some residual from Global Domains but that is now down to about 50 people left. I spent two years finishing my masters & not even looking at a computer. I was disgusted because I seriously made myself unhealth & gained a ton of weight working on the computer day after day when i was marketing.

After two years my fiance got pregnant so I knew it was time to look for additional income streams. I went back to looking at online stuff & wanted to use my old black hat methods.

From what i have tested just about "none" work anymore.

I use to be able to rank on the first page of YouTube in 3 to 7 days for just about any keywords related to working online or making money online.

I had over 25 twitter accounts with 12,000 people on each adding hundreds everyday bringing in a nice portion of leads.

MySpace I had 3 accounts which were overloaded with about 500 to 700 friend requests from a strategy i was using.

Facebook I still have / but was able to create a new group and within 5 days get the numbers to reach up to 50,000 to 100,000 people joined.

I truly knew how to dominate social media with black hat methods. But know I spent probably 12 hours a day working and doing all of them each & everynight.

When I came back to marketing online I have looked into all of these methods & it seems each social site has upgraded & changed things around. Twitter is always stopping the amount of people i follow / unfollow....youtube bots no longer work....facebook groups can't be built like before .....& MySpace looks like a ghost town.

Okay that was a lot of information & typing but wanted to let you know that I to know how you feel. Now to move onto some of your questions.

What I did was moved myself away from affiliate marketing for some time. I learned how to build wordpress sites & create e-commerce niche product pages. I'm not sure if i can help you in this area but I can say learning how to build your own site & sell your own products is much better than being an affiliate.

As I began to make roughly $50 to $100 a day with my niche sites, I started to learn about AdWords. If done correctly you can probably add an additional $40 to $60 ontop of what you are making. Eventually I came across an affiliate company I believe is amazing.

I am looking to continue to adding to my progress but for now I have 2 main income streams & spend little to nothing on advertising.


So to point you in the right direction I would highly recommend learning how to build your own blog sites (wordpress) if you can. Ranking is as easy as just blogging around keywords. If you can find a niche that you can make an e-commerce site out of & sell your own products or be a reseller I would recommend this as well.

Lastly don't spend to much time reading & learning. Read something you like and take action and try it. Once you get the hang of that move onto the next thing. A lot of people get caught up on the "learning curve" portion of marketing & never see results.

You have been successful before, you can do it again!!!! Dont let it get to you, start looking into fresh methods on this website! there are plenty to get started again.

Sounds similar to my story few years ago. Made a killing doin some BH methods few years ago and lost every penny and more online gambling. SMH...

Can you explain the concept behind an MFA site & how it makes money

@rufus40444 dont give up bro, try to make it back

what sites are these??

sounds like u may have given up mate. dont do that there must be other options open to you.

did you run it from sites or jsut from videos and articles??

dont get into article marketing now its just about dead. no traffic on article sites(maybe a few but most of it is gone) and google now hate article dirs so noone is starting new ones.

I hate to say that I am kinda sorta in the same boat, and thats why I'm here. I'm getting by but looking to get ideas and maybe make some acquaintances before I find myself back in the 9-5 ratrace.

I've written about MFA sites before, but it was a long time ago. Best I remember is:

MFA = sites made for adsense

The sites have NO articles - just links to products and adsense ads _ You see them all of the time.

I've always heard that those sites are very short term. They don't last.

Then there is the problem of getting your adsense account banned which will probably happen.

!mrfarshay
This are for me helpful information, thanks a lot.

I have been in IM many years and have had many ups and downs in those times. When I first started A very long time ago. I went from 0 to about 120k a month in 6 months. But Google changed and so my method stopped. This type of thing has happened to me 4 or 5 times in my career. However now I am stable I got a family to think of. So the hot cars and big parties I used to spend my money on, no longer factor in my life. I guess what I am trying to say is if you find success again, then don't waste it this time. Re-invest in something more permanent. I invested money in offline and online companies, not all went well but the few that did have made me great money. I guess finding success is kind of the easy part.. making it work for you long term is the hard part.

Not that I can help or add anything to your situation....

but I have been ultra successful this past year in IM... made an absolute killing.

I have not spent a single dollar in impulsive buys....

I have invested everything I have made into offline real world projects.

I quickly learned that things can change for the worst in IM faster than you can imagine and without warning.

Noob question what is IM?

Ottomeir - no problem.

mrfarshay said:

Noob question what is IM?

Ottomeir - no problem.

Click to expand...

Internet marketing

Agree with everyone here. Once you make decent money in IM, you should start reinvesting it in more stable project (such as offline ventures)

Wow that's a sick story.

My advice: You don't need a bankroll, you need knowledge. Check out a few of the guides I just wrote on this forum for some tips.

My first suggestion specific to your situation would be to stop selling crap products and/or scams. For instance, one of the top selling CB products right now is called "Satellite Direct" which is supposed to let you watch TV on your computer. It's basically a scam and I would never promote it, yet I'm sure there are people out there making solid money with it...for now. Maybe 6 months from now though it is shut down and then your income stream is gone.

Think of this as growing a legit business which you can rely on for years. What would you want to market to provide yourself with a stable income that has no risk of being deemed illegal? Just some ideas...