My unsuccessful journey so far

Hey, I decided to write my journey, I am not a regular poster here but I do read almost every thread and try to learn something new that I could use in online marketing. So, my online marketing journey started about three months ago and I dedicated all my time and energy to build my own blog and start making money with a few methods that I will mention later. At first, I was full with positive energy and I truly believed that this thing will take off and I will make at least some money because I really wanted to avoid physical, brute-ass, idiotic real-life job because I dropped out of University at early stages and I do not have a degree. Sorry for spoiling the story but considering my success so far, it looks like that I will have to enjoy that shitty job after all. My time ran out and I do not have a cent to invest.

Early stages

I got hooked on online marketing after the first tutorial I read (can't recall where I found it). Next day, my mindset was ready and I started treating online marketing as my job ignoring the fact I practically knew close to nothing about online marketing or any other revelant online knowledge. In just few weeks, I digested tons of information, scavenged forums like BHW for tutorials, information, tried to contact people and asked for advice. First step was creating a blogger site just to learn how the most basic blog structure works. For the next magic trick, I bought a .com domain and used it with my basic blogger site. I could not decide what niche I should choose so I just went with nothing, just a site, posting about everything. I do not have any outstanding skills or knowledge in real-life that I could share and base my site of online, you could say that I am the most mediocre guy you could meet. After failing to think of something to write, I signed up at Clickbank and did a few reviews of the products and used Bing Ads traffic from free coupons. To be frank, this setup failed miserably. I spent 300$, got a decent amount of clicks and zero conversions. I tried my best to research the products I chose to promote. Generally, the process of though was "Would I buy that product myself?" You know that is coming next - I failed again. At this time, I overcame blogger platform and I needed more function, so I knew it was time to upgrade my blog to WordPress platform.

Life with a WordPress blog

Loved it from the start. Sorted out all the necessary plugins in a day or two and gracefully arrived to the question I was not able to solve before - choosing a niche. Took me a while and I finally came up with a main idea for my site and niche. I pledged myself with a goal to build a relaxing, mellow moody blog. The content I intended to publish were everything from a relaxing lifestyle to everyday items to improve your mood. Hosting and a new .com domain ate my whole budget and I had to go with a free WordPress theme. I tried to develop "my brand" further, so I created social media accounts for my site.

Monetizing my new blog

With the help of a free SEO plugin, I optimised every article I wrote, registered my site on Analytics, Google and Bing Webmasters, followed every guideline, all in hopes of my site would appear on search engines somewhere. I ditched Clickbank and moved on to affiliate real-life items and I still think it is a quite good idea, for example, I write a post about mood improving item lava lamp, I briefly talk about how cool lava lamp is and at the end I drop an affiliate link for the lava lamp as a trusted source to buy from. And finally, I made my first sale, earning me a very solid 8$ commission which is not paid to this day because I used JVZoo.com and the guy who created the product just does not give a damn about paying his affiliates. Impressive tactic. So I moved on to other affiliating website and accidentaly made one more sale which provided me a breathtaking 13$ commission. Still not paid to this day, this time for a legit reason - I would have to sell some more merchandise to meet a payout reserve.

Last shot at internet marketing

Everything I mentioned above actually took me quite some time and a little bit of money for hosting and domains. I know I did almost nothing but it was not easy for a complete beginner with zero knowledge, I just started at internet marketing and the fact that I had no prior experience with blogs or websites whatsoever did not make things easier. My little budget drained and I will have to live somehow so that is why I will have to find a real-life job now. For the last shot at this I managed to get my last batch of advertising coupons for Bing and Facebook ads, total of 150$ in coupons and chose a few sensible products (same though process - picked the ones I would buy myself). Half way in already, ~100 clicks for two products, no sales and almost no positivity. The end is near. I would like to thank everybody who took their time to write a good tutorials on BHW and some other forums (I might post my journey somewhere else too), every company who ignored my emails with questions regarding their own products and every soul who read this. Thank you.

Man i did not read your massive post, but if nothing works do CPA.
You just lost your motivation, the thing you need now is to see some real $$.

Just stick with a social network and start promoting CPA offers.
I'm not saying you are going to be rich overnight, but at least it will bring you a few bucks in couple of days and so your faith back in IM.

Please don't give up.

Seo for now is so hard , i remember way back 2007 to 2010 its easy to rank a website.Now its all about the content to get rank.

Just stick to direct marketing if you want fast result.
- Social Media
- Email Marketing

I never expected it to be easy. Never chased for big money overnight. I wanted to make at least a bit of money to start me off. And maybe earning some more money out of my website in the future. I have no idea where to start with social media and CPA. If you have some good information or tutorials on these topics, feel free to shoot me a PM. Thanks.

Long article you have written. However, what did you do for your blog to get success. I think your efforts was not enough to reach the target as well to be successful. Try again buddy.

alias2002 said:

Long article you have written. However, what did you do for your blog to get success. I think your efforts was not enough to reach the target as well to be successful. Try again buddy.

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Well, I do not have the funds to start over. And I did everything I knew, as I said, I was complete beginner to IM 3 months ago. And I feel like there is a lot to learn for me.

You can get a job and start learning part time. The guys saying cpa and social media is a good place to start. So what you want to do is read about building targeted followings on the likes of Twitter facebook Instagram. The good news here is that if you just spend time building these up you don't have to spend any money. You can do this part time while you work. You can build up a specific audience on a specific niche or go total noob easy method and make hot girl accounts. Simple way to get loads of guys following you. Once you have a decent following you can bring in your cpa offers. Or you can sell shoutouts or use a site like my likes to make money. This gets some cash rolling in and get your interest renewed in IM.

You can then invest in some software to automate and scale while you learn your next method.

If you fail. Change it and tweak it until you get it right. When you move on to the next method without making money you wasted that time and effort.

Get reading here on one method of social media and cpa. Map it out with everything involved and find out every step you need to take. Put your own twist on it. And go for it.

Thats a a bit all over the place but I hope it helps you out. Real jobs suck. But make money on IM part time and gradually make it your full time gig.

Good luck.

I saw your post and can sympathise with every word.. I am working on something now that is very exciting. I do not have room to go into details here but if you message me I would be more than happy to share the details could share details.

2% conversions and he is complaining.

darulez said:

2% conversions and he is complaining.

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I don't remember what I wrote on the first post but damn, 2% conversions? Count me in.


UPDATE TO THE STORY //

Oh, right. I remember now. I actually received another commission of $48 before quitting. The reason I quit, I could not cash out the commisions (two different platforms) because of high payment treshold. All the money I made in real life just had to go towards my university education. Every cent.
Now I am trying to get back into IM. New tactic, trying to find mentors and learning coding. Simple things for now, HTML, CSS, Javascript.

Man don't give up

thenick said:

Man don't give up

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I am not. Still here. Won't quit ever.