KevScarb

I write this story not only because I am proud of what I have done, but in the hope I can help to inspire others find the right path to success too.

This Month completes an amazing 12 month transformation for me . Though I had been trying Internet marketing for 14 months before joining this forum last year, I had never managed to make any money online.

I had spent money on various courses, tried to apply the information, and always came up short, If only I had know then what I know now, and that is the reason for writing this.

Between September 2009 and the end of December 2009 I was able to generate sufficient revenue that I made the big step to quit my Job and go full time from January this year. The 8 months since have been intense but rewarding, and July was my first 100k+ Month and while I won't hit that in August (35k of that revenue was from a new product launch from a company I promote ) I know that what i am doing will only continue to improve.

I want to show others what I have learnt to be important and to highlight the path I would have taken with the benefit of hindsight.

If you are new to I.M, then I want to save you time and more importantly, money and the pain and frustrations I went through. I wish I could have read this post a couple of years ago. If I can stop even one of you making the mistakes that I made, then this post will have been worth the time.

So let's get to the nitty gritty

Firstly : Check my number of forum posts - in one year , not many, why ? because you don't make money sitting on here, you make make money taking action and getting things done, if you spend all your time on forums looking for what you should do, you will never get anywhere. I limit my time on here. I schedule my work time, and usually only visit this site at the end of the week. Even if I need to reply to this thread, I will still only do it at the weekend, when I visit. NOTHING will get in my way of working, including coming here to reply to questions. I will reply but it will be once a week. The rest of the time my focus is on my business.

This post is not exactly short, so let me set out right here, the ONE main thing that took me from losing money to making money.

I started to build a list. - Yes ,the reason for a 100k month in July is because for a year my focus is about the list.

The hardest thing in this industry is to get yourself to start doing, and stop reading,but with that said, let me first tell you what you should read.

First go read this thread... it's OK I'll wait...
PPC TO CPA Making Money Is About The Market Not The Offer - Example Case Study

Written over a year ago now, It's about time it got a bump and still the best thing I have read on here. It actually got me to sign up on the W.F. after lurking for more than 12 months, I signed up simply because I wanted to get in touch.

Be sure to read not only the post but the thread too, as there is some excellent replies to questions, and the best thing is that info is right there for free.

And you know something else ? this week Filsaime and Farrel launched affiliate 2.0 for $1997 as if it is some magic new way of working, and you can read the same thing in the thread I just sent you to from a year ago. There is no secret to list building and building a relationship with a list.

OK, so what else should you invest in ?

Here are 2 books to buy

1 Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman ( google it ). This book explains the life force 8. In effect how we, as humans are hard wired to react to certain things. This book has helped me target how I write campaigns. When I started to apply the life force 8 rules my sales and conversions increased by over 30%. It's also a key factor in how I do well with facebook.

2 Ultimate Sales Letter - Dan Kennedy. will cost you around 10 bucks, and is all you need. Just solid straight forward advice in how to craft your pages to make you money.

those 2 books willl probably cost you less than 20 dollars, and are better than any goo roo course you will buy. They will help get you where you want to go.

Use these books to learn to think for yourself.

I spent 5 days this week, free writing my thoughts on what else I think is important, so after editing them into a form that makes sense to more than just me, here they are.. I hope they are of use to you too.

Asking for the details about same niche someone is making money in, or same traffic source as someone doing well makes no difference, it won't help you make money just by trying to copy what someone else does.

It's rather like 2 chefs making the same recipe with same ingredients and same recipe instructions, you won't get two identical dishes. each will have the character of the person making it. One will have a better palate for taste than the other, and it will be reflected in the dish. Marketing is no different. You need your own secret sauce.

I can tell you that Facebook makes me good money, and that all my facebook traffic is first sent to a page to get them to be a subscriber. You should take that information and then build your own mousetrap, that fits YOUR MARKET and YOUR IDEAS.

making mistakes doesn't matter , I make mistakes every day, just about every new campaign I try fails, but I know its process of elimination, you only fail when you quit.

doing cpa offers ? , build a list , build a list, build a list. It Was My Game Changer

email submits are a waste of time - if you are going to spend your time trying to get people to submit their emails, then at least do it for your own benefit. The companies who do these offers scrub like hell, so your better of capturing the details for yourself , but overall, its just a lame way to try and make money. Easier and bigger fish to catch out there.

There is only so much time in a day use it productively. Since going full time, I find I do have to fight with myself to keep from wandering, but I have learnt what I am good at and where I am best utilising my time and skills.

learn a market and find where you can fit in to the market, every market has its own language, its own rhythm. If you research a market, you know the prices of the products, the costs of clicks, the pain of the market.

As an example, look at this place. the language = cpa, ppc, bum marketing, seo, IM. cpa networks, squeeze pages, landing pages. ppv etc

product prices go from $7 up to $1997, with avg of $67- $97.

you know the guru names,Kern, Walker, Deiss,Jenkins, and the names of their products.You know if you look at ppc for the keywords for internet marketing and make money online, you will see the ppc market is expensive. From that you would learn what an optin will cost. And reading this forum, you can learn about the pain in the market.

Which webshost ? is wordpress good ? which theme should I use, I can't make money, google slapped me.. no sales, no traffic.. do backlinks work etc

You see ?

This is how markets are, and I don't even sell stuff in the make money market. My point is , that if you do want to make money in a market, you better understand it a little more than just grabbing the html banner from neverblue and sticking it on a blog page.

Google ppc for search is tough , quality scores are a big problem now we have reached the point that even for paid traffic you have to build sites that google likes, many keywords are also too expensive to compete on now for small marketers.

You better be sure the time your going to spend doing internet marketing is going to be bring you profits, so research your markets properly.

I have certain markets now where I spend for the long term development on SEO as I can't afford to buy the clicks, but I know the niche is profitable. I don't expect to see results for 7- 12 months.

I would advise you to choose a market with a back end potential what i mean by that is choose a market that you can sell to more than once. You can't make much money trying to sell a clickbank ebook for acne anymore because keywords with volume are too expensive to buy for selling a one off book. For those who were doing this 6 years ago, when the keywords were 5 cents, then of course fortunes were made, but those words are not 5 cents anymore. If your paying 35 cents + a click, you better have a decent back end.

look to build a business. I am now investing in domain strategy and the SEO process for the long term. That means I am building websites in the niches I have had success with.

You have to commit time and effort so don't be afraid to make mistakes as I said earlier most campaigns fail. The important thing is to be measuring it.

Your budget determines how you can do this.
I may spend $200 for a 100 clicks on one main target word to see if it has potential.

when I started I spent $20. and went for 40 cent clicks, but I still had a system to measure if it would work. But to put it into perspective for you, I would often need to do 20 trials to get a winner. That means you need to be prepared to lose money. Those 20 trials would still be in one market, not 20 different offers, just so we are clear on that.

Now I am fortunate I can afford to lose bigger.

I lose money testing new things, but most people don't understand keywords that make people buy.It does not matter if it's SEO or PPC , you need to understand this rule. Most people fail because they simply do not understand how to identify buying keywords

marketing knowledge is the most important skill to acquire . anything else you can learn fairly easily.

my advice is to spend time learning about marketing. learn about people, their emotions, what makes them act. learn the language of communicating with your marketplace.

learn what you need to understand to get people to take action. Thomas Watson Sr of IBM said it best when he said "nothing happens until something is sold " That is the same for what we do. CPA networks do not exist unless somewhere something is sold. If everyone sends the network crap leads, then the offer will go away. Send good leads, that a company can convert, and everyone wins.

CPA marketing does not mean you have to sell crap. plenty of good companies and offers are out there for you to work with.

I don't follow the crowd
I have got to a point of making my own lead gen deals.I always sell a back end, for example capturing an auto loan lead, or a payday loan lead, I will follow up with the free credit report trial. A large amount of the applicants would be declined, so you have a good chance to let them find out why, and what they can do about it. Same would go for mortgage leads. This is an easy way to make more sales from the same user, think of some that would work for your market.

It is easier to work in markets you have an interest in or know about. What do you know ? what do you like ?

finance is probably the exception to that rule. you don't need to be passionate about insurance to sell it, but you do need good content. make a guide for people, not everyone will click through at the time to fill out the offer, so offering a guide enables you to get their email details the more names you capture, the more money you will make long term.

It is simply a numbers game if you capture some of those customers, you have a chance to still make money of them. You have worked hard to get them to your site, the least you can do is try and get their details while they are there.

So what is the take home message from this rather long post ?
Build a list and approach this as a business if you want to quit your job somewhere down the line.
Why build a list ?

Look at every goo roo launch, every single one get's you on a list, so why do you think that is ? They may be selling you some fancy scheme, but their own marketing efforts will tell you far more about what you need to do to succeed, than the product they are pushing at you. I would not have done the revenue I did in July without a list.


What helped me go from losing money to making money ?

Here are some resources that I have used.

I did have money to invest in doing paid marketing when I started, but I realise many people don't, so here is my tips there.

Paid can get you there quicker, but the model is the same, it just will take longer with free, but plenty of people do well without spending on paid traffic.

No matter if you use free or paid methods, if you get your initial research wrong, you won't make any money with either method.

For example to get sites ranking in the search engines,you are most likely looking at 4 months on average. If you understand that, and are on the right keywords, then you will still make money, it's just not an overnight thing. The problem is most people quit after a few weeks or a couple of months because they think it's not working.

Building sites to rank TAKES TIME. If you keep the mindset of 4 months and not 4 weeks, you have a chance of success. If you thinks there is a fast short cut, chances are you won't be around here next year.

If your wanting to do CPA, but don't have money to buy traffic, then check out Kensters rags to riches guide . He gives you some great ideas of how to start with free methods.

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...qPnnKfnw6ZQwT6

Need to understand SEO for getting free traffic without paying $2000 on guru launches ? then get Daniel Tan's WSO's on this forum. and if you are using wordpress, use his seopressor plugin for your on page SEO optimisation. All his stuff is great value.

The RANK MOVER - Google Page 1 to #1 Down To A SCIENCE! NEW WSO Launched! Get It Early!

And finally If you have money to invest , then my advice is get a coach. I hired Dave Ward after reading his thread, and I still use him as my mentor today. What I have paid him, in relation to what I have made, makes it a no brainer for me.

The simple way I looked at it was, what is better for me ? $2000 on a guru product launch, or 2 months of personal mentoring with Dave who has 15 years internet marketing experience working on MY business, and MY problems with real solutions for MY circumstances ?. The answer was simple, but we are all different and you have to get what works for you. You and your Mentor have to be a good fit. In my case I needed someone to help me cut through the noise of this business. Only once I did that did I really move forward.

So that about covers it for now. As I say I will be happy to reply to questions, but don't expect them before next weekend.

I just want to end with A final thank you to Kenster for the inspiration to do this post.

I hope it is of use to some of you.

Kev

Update Sept 4TH 2010

First let me say I appreciate all the Thank You messages. I am also pleased that so many of you have felt it has helped you with your own continued journey.

Second, to those of you who have pm'd me about coaching, sorry but I don't do coaching or mentoring, and have no intention of starting, so please don't ask me. I am still building my own business. I did mention above that I still have my own mentor, but as I said you need to have money to invest if you want to apply for his inner circle coaching, so don't waste your time or his by applying otherwise.

If you are new the market selection is the most important area to spend your time on.

Have a great week.

Kev.

Update Dec 11th 2010

Coming up to the end of my first year as a full time marketer, December is currently looking to be my best yet, but it is still early days. Facebook is proving more a pain since Mr Greens FB ads software I used was banjaxed ( right after poor Mr Green bought it ) Other than that everything else I wrote about in August remains the same.

Also nice to see my post has at least got one guy on the right road, well done Stian !

12 month Journey From Losing Money to my first $100k + Month - What I Changed And Why It Worked.


Update Feb 5th 2011.

Replied in the thread to some great questions from Trevor, you can find the questions and answers here 12 month Journey From Losing Money to my first $100k + Month - What I Changed And Why It Worked.

Update Nov 5th 2012

Replied to list building question.

Wrote this post 15 months ago now. How many of you are actually building a list ? Staying in this business long term DOES require one. Build a business.

Kenster

Hi Kev, thats an amazing post my friend.

There is nothing I like to see more than a post by somebody who worked their butts off and came out in the winners circle. The truth is that a lot of Imers dont make it to the big money for a multitude of reasons including...


Dont Want It Enough: Many people just dont want to be successful or make money bad enough to go through the sacrifices and work involved in reaching the reality of making money. Many times its a roller coaster of emotions and the sacrifices are great. You need to want it as bad as you wanted it.

Don't Have The Right Resources: Although I personally think if you want to succeed bad enough you can and will find the right resources, sometimes people go into IM and start building campaigns without the base of knowledge needed to make it. Places like the Warrior Forum, some of the guides out there are invaluable in helping cut out expensive and time consuming mistakes.

Lose Money: As you mentioned, PPC can be tough. People are making it big with PPC but unless you know what you are doing, you will likely lose a lot of money before you turn profitable. In fact, I still lose money on most campaigns I start. Testing and optimizing costs money and time. Many people jump into paid traffic right from the start, get burned and then lost faith, confidence, and motivation to continue on to make it in their IM business.

Mindset: Many people dont have the right mindset to make it and be successful in CPA or IM. CPA is not rocket science, its literally taking the basic principles of internet marketing and putting them to work in creative ways. You dont need to have special tools, software, or relationships to make it big, you just need to understand the basics and implement them in a creative way. You need the right mindset to achieve this. The right mindset will get you over the many hurdles that you will inevitably face.



Because of the aforementioned reasons along with many more, a lot of people jump into CPA and quit 3 days later, so its very nice to see this success story post.

So thank you for sharing your story and sharing some helpful tips to other warriors.

Hopefully I and other warriors played at least a small part in your success and I hope you will share other ideas, things that worked and didnt work to help this wonderful community!

~Ken

Six Figure Alliance Training/Coaching Course...


Kenster's Six Figure Mission Blog | Kenster's Six Figure Alliance | WarriorJV - WSO Launches

safe as houses

Brilliant and inspirational, many thanks, Mick.

Earn thousands of $$$$$$'s from your own discussion forum...

ChadH

Great post kev.... I fully agree, choosing the market an monetizing the market is a better play than building based on just offers.

I just wanted to add a couple things.

Beginners to more advanced marketers would be smart to heed Kev's advice here.

Now, one thing that should be kept in mind for CPA marketers if they're entire market is based on rebills is that the compliance of rebills can end up affecting conversion rates dramatically. The good news, however, is that if your market is responsive to you, you could end up building your own offer, and as Kev said, brokering your own deals.

The money is in the list as they say, but at the same time, it doesn't have to be your list. Gary Halbert talks about it in the Boron Letters, and Mike Geary from Truth About Abs among others has shared the same sentiment that the best list to build or purchase is a list of buyers who have purchased one of YOUR previous products. Everyone else can funnel their freebie list into your offers while you build your buyers list. Quite a few of the top end Clickbank merchants doing 7 figures don't actively promote freebies on their page. But they build a hell of a buyers list.

If you're a pure affiliate and not interested in creating your own offers or products (as most on this sub forum probably are), then what Kev has laid out here is the way to go, it always has been. My aweber account still gets me my best roi

For those interested in creating their own offers and products, the ability to create high converting offers within your market and your ability to sell via copywriting are the 2 best skills to have in this game. Create something that sells within a specific market and people will fall over themselves to promote it once you can show proven numbers.

If I could add 1 more resource.... it's free and will help you understand markets and sales writing. They are Gary Halberts Boron Letters. They are written to his son, so the tone is a bit casual. The good stuff starts around the 4th letter... light reading. Go here and scroll about halfway down the page to find the 1st letter:

http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/...r-archives.htm

Going after a market is similar to choosing the traffic source first (like one large site in a specific market) and finding a way to monetize it. It's demographic based and it's what good marketers do.

Once again great post, hope it helps many here.

Rukshan

Perfect! I really happy to see a person who share his successes stories.

ocd

On those two books, go to Alibris.com and type them in.

Cashvertising starts at $13.49 and Ultimate Sales Letter starts at .99.

What an excellent thread! Thanks Kev

jonat2005

I enjoyed every bit of this piece KeyScarb. I had to save it on my desktop so that i can go through it again

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BryanC

Thanks for the post. As someone new to internet marketing who has been absorbing as much information as possible on this website for some time, resulting in an information overload and no clear direction, I'm starting to open my eyes to CPA with list building. Maybe more importantly, it is also becoming apparent that taking care of the consumer and providing them a fulfilling buying experience is vital - something that is often overlooked in this business.

TE2

Excellent post!

Those who are struggling... Re-read and internalize it's message

And I also share this quote in support of your quest for success...

"For things to thange for you, you have to change" - Jim Rohn

Regards,

John

Carlsbadd

Cashvertising is a awesome book.

Nice post, everyone starts somewhere and at some point you need to focus on a long term business plan.

I have been moving more and more to long term SEO and buying websites in niches where others have failed to have a decent plan in place.

Many here know that I am mostly a bum marketer, while we have had many a debate on PPC versus SEO it depends on your mindset.

So here is my two cents on BUM marketing what works for me and what I have failed at. I hope this might help some of those starting out.

First , SPY on your competitors , look at how others are structuring their articles and what keywords they are using. Use google wonder wheel and other keyword tools and try to rank for long tails first and then work your way to the more competitive keywords.

Take what I said above and apply it to your own websites, if you are thinking about a long term plan. Remember that the article directories own your content so it's better to have your own website, don't worry about duplicate content, it's a myth. Take your longer articles and build web 2.0 websites with links to your money site squidoo, hub pages and so on.

I don't "shot gun" articles, use spinners and all that stuff. Sure it will build you lots of backlinks but a lot of those will be lost over time. It's better for me to backlink the ezine articles and web 2.0 properties on a massive level and drive that traffic to your money page. If you are using SEO nuke , or Blog farm evolution you can build backlinks at a astounding rate, but you protect your money page from being sandboxed. The only issue it that I have web 2.0 properties out ranking my money site, that's OK since it has links to my offer anyway. Hire out some decent social bookmarker and learn to take your backlinks and RSS them for indexing. Yes that's correct RSS your backlinks I won't explain how but it is not that hard.
One quick thing, ezine has a Tweet feature so you can use it to tweet your articles , this is a blessing in one way and a curse in another, your articles get indexed very quickly but you will notice that you will gain a lot of followers in your niche. I prefer to take the RSS feed of the articles and add them to my yahoo account to get some yahoo love and then to RSS directories. I am not sure that I will continue to use the tweet feature.

I hope this contributes to this thread.

Please Warriors , keep posting your niches in your sig....

Kenster

Jonats comment above made me think of something i do that may help others...


I did this when i first started out in Internet marketing but i do this same thing whenever trying to achieve a goal such as when i was studying for taking the GMATs

print out success stories of people who have 'made it' in whatever you are trying to achieve. So if you find this post inspirational, literally print the post out and tape it to your desk along with any other success stories on this forum. When i was studying for the GMATs i printed out posts from a GMAT forum of people who scored 750 or above, and taped them to the desk that i studied at

These success stories are great motivation and may help keep you focused and on track to achieve the same success. Especially with internet marketing its very easy to lose focus and concentration so having these printed right in front of you as you work and it may help

Maybe this won't apply to you but it's a practice i do that helps a lot

Best of luck CPAing all!

Six Figure Alliance Training/Coaching Course...


Kenster's Six Figure Mission Blog | Kenster's Six Figure Alliance | WarriorJV - WSO Launches

williamrs

Excellent post!!

I agree with the vast majority of what you said. I did (and still do) a couple things differently, but, as you said "You need your own secret sauce".

IMO the most important lessons in this post are:

1. No one builds a real and solid online business without focus and persistence.

2. It's necessary to be willing to lose while learning in order to succeed in the long-term. (It's not only about money, people dealing with free traffic need to be willing to spend time)

I think that if every beginner who reads your post understands at least these 2 things they will certainly be able to tell us their own success stories in the near future.

Another thing that I would like to add is the importance of the relationships.

Do not only read ebooks and watch videos, talk to people! Talk to other marketers and talk to your affiliate managers. I struggled for 2 years to earn my first commission selling Clickbank products, because I was always reading ebooks and watching videos but never actually talked to people to learn what they were doing. After a few months I got started with CPA and earned my first commission in 2 days. And, no, it was not because I had money to invest (I used free traffic!), but because I had an affiliate manager!

When I was working with CB products I needed to figure out what were the best converting products by myself, but when I started working with CPA I could simply ask to my aff manager!

So don't try to figure out everything by yourself, don't be afraid of emailing or calling people to ask for recommendations. Good relationships are much more important than anything else in this business!


William

Charleskidd

Man great motivational story. I feel like quitting when I lose money but I always come back to read stories like this, that's help me keep my eye on the prize.

Does internet marketing seem to hard? Click here and you will see how much you learn.

Carlsbadd

So true William..... Listen everyone, make friends with those who are successful, William and I meet on this forum and I learned a lot from him, even though I do things differently. When I am ready to branch out, I know not only will he help me, but I might be able to hire him to build a LP or he might be able to ask me to write some content.

Not everything is a secret and basic concepts remain.

The best way to to be a success is offering to help some else be successful , yea it sounds simple but it will come back to you.

Please Warriors , keep posting your niches in your sig....

CleaningPro Bournemouth

You could have written an ebook with that info! lol cheers Jason

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Michael Anderson

Excellent points William....

KevScarb, thank you for an honest account. It's fun to read success stories like this one.

Kenster, just finished your WSO this morning, yep I got 3 more read throughs to go... I highly recommend "Rags To Riches" to anyone. Solid, straightforward account. Thank you. ALso your music video on entrepreneur valley dot com is dope!

redfrick

Wow. Amazing post.

I have made a little money in IM and have been getting very frustrated with not knowing why I can't take it to the next level. Know I think I might have an idea.

I understand the technicalities of IM, of how to do things. I need to understand the thinking behind the madness, the thought process a successful marketer goes through.

It's as if you've pointed out something that is so glaringly obvious that it's rather embarrassing really. I realize now that not understanding the basic principles of marketing is like taking a knife to gunfight.

Before I just threw everything against the wall hoping for something to stick. I need to rethink everything now. Thank you.

martymmitcham

Thank you for the post. For someone who less than a year into IM, seeing that I am not the only one riding the roller coaster is helpful. Reading your post is inspiring at the very least. I hope to do as well someday. Keep up the good work.

New to IM and the Forum, less than one year. Here to learn. If you have any suggestions or comments please visit me at www.martymmitcham.com

Michael Anderson

ChadH,

The Boron Letters are GOLD. Thanks for sharing.

ChadH

ha, yep... and they're good for a laugh at times too.

Kenster

Even before I started doing well online, I had a fascination for successful people and entrepreneurs in particular. One thing I noticed that was pretty consistent among all the rich people I had ever talked to was...

-Provide Value: One of the pillars to my business today is based on this and it is the core of every venture I ever get into. Unless significant value is being provided, I dont want to even be part of it.

-Help Other Succeed: Almost every rich person I talked to told me that no matter what your current situation is, if you can help 5 people become millionaires, then you will become a millionaire yourself. The point is that helping others succeed can only help yourelf succeed. We all know that making money becomes tremendously more easy if you know the right people. If you help others succeed, this is the best way to create a powerful and influential network. Not only are you respected by the person you helped, but also by his whole network!


Your second point about the secret sauce is also very correct. CPA is about understanding the fundamentals and using creativity to use the basics in new ways. Master the core marketing and direct marketing principles, and you have just learned the bulk of any CPA campaign there is!




Yep 4 times buddy! Let me know if you need anything.

In the coming few weeks I will get back to that site. Created it one day and sort of just left it be. I thought the videos were more cheesy than dope, but thats just me, haha.

Be good and good luck CPAing!

Six Figure Alliance Training/Coaching Course...


Kenster's Six Figure Mission Blog | Kenster's Six Figure Alliance | WarriorJV - WSO Launches

BILLSBILLION

Excellent Post!!

Cash37

Really tired of these preachy, vague, "I went from $1 to $1,000,000" posts. Seems to be a new one every two weeks...

Barry Unruh

$1,000,000 is a little different than $100,000.

It is also possible every two weeks someone has finished busting their butt for an entire year and created their own success, just like Kev or Kenster.

I do not find anything vague about their posts but find them to be solid information giving us guidance in the right direction, maybe not a moment to moment template, but solid information which is actionable.

It seems odd someone who is promoting getting rich through Fiverr in their own WSO would be bashing success stories, instead of telling their own.

By the way, Kenster, Kev, William, Carl, and Chad... You guys piss me off. Damn it! My Google Documents is getting full of notes!! Thank you!!

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Cash37

Bashing? Really? All these threads are the same.

"Hey guys I couldn't make the monies online. Then I got a positive attitude, then I made the monies online, but no I can't share any strategy on it."

All these threads are remixes of each other and provide no value.

Univee

Freakin awesome!

Sane, wise, grown up, true approach.

"Do or do not. There is no try"

ukJoe

Oh yes great contribution, but at least you got your sig file in there.

As someone new to this, I certainly got value, and your first impression on me has hardly got me scrambling to your WSO.

Notice that the guy posting this thread has no sig at all ? He just offered advice and value, and I did not feel I was " preached ". You clearly have a different view of vague than I do.

ukJoe

Yes your bashing.

No Value really ?

Let me see if I can help you out, as it seems it's a bit too vague for you.

He says

1 Build a list

2 Don't jump from offer to offer,find a market and spend time to understand it.

3 Don't waste money on expensive Guru product launches, you don't need them, and he learnt that the hard way and is passing it on.

4 Getting the right keywords is critical to making money. Choose the wrong ones and you will fail, no matter if you use paid or free methods

5 Treat this as a business, not a hobby if you want to make real money.

6 Learn to understand the triggers that make people buy ( Here he suggests buying Cashvertising)

I am sure there are more. And I also got good information from others posting advice and links in this thread.

Chad posted the The Gary Halbert links which are awesome.

I ordered cashvertising tonight from Amazon, I wonder which has more value for me long term ? cashvertising for $10 or your fiverr secrets exposed for $47

janice98

wow! well said...very inspirational

i'm new to IM, and got struck with so much gurus trying to sell you this and that grrrr..stuff. too aweful for newbies me alike trying to seek genuine info about the real score to making the best out of IM.

I'm glad I landed to this forum, where genuine advices from "real" people with their ultimate success stories and how they made it to the top are rendered for FREE...

thanks guys and keep it up!

bestbuddy1986

I am also looking for some Mentor.

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Kenster

I think the thing to keep in mind is that the value derived from a certain post or certain types of posts are different for every visitor. I may get value out of a post or thread that you might not get any value out of.

I can tell you that inspirational "I made it" type threads dont give me any personal value of any significance these days, but when I was starting they helped tremendously. I would literally print out success stories and tape them to my desk and reminders of the potential and as reminders of optimism. I have told the story before, but when I was taking my GMATs I did the same thing. I taped stories of people who had scored 750 or better (a great score) on the desk I studied at.

This works for me.

A lot of beginner marketers have big dreams but lose faith very quickly when they hit the first few inevitable obstacles trying to make money online. Many people give up when they lose faith, but having reminders of the potential and having success stories helps a lot of people keep faith, keep plugging along, and ultimately helping them stay at it long enough to make it big-time themselves.


With that said, congrats to Kev and good luck to everybody else who hasn't reached their goals yet. The finish line is closer than you may think...just put your mind in overdrive and get 'it' done!

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Seantrepreneur

Very good post. I LOVE reading stories like these. I actually wish there were posts like this every week instead of two weeks .

It doesn't matter to me if the numbers are bloated I just like hearing about ppl being successful after they work hard for it.

Seantrepreneur will be returning SOOOON!! Stay tuned!

williamrs

I agree 100%.

I also would like to add one more thing. Besides motivation, Kev has also offered valuable advices. Most people are always looking for step-by-step instructions such as go to network A, pick offer B and create a campaign on platform C. This type of thing is very important, but it's a mistake to think that it's everything.

The fact is that there are many important... no, essential things in this business that can't be laid out in a step-by-step manner.

Kev talks about the importance of building a list. Now I ask beginners, who is adding new subscribers to their autoresponder everyday?

Kev talks about watching gurus instead of buying their products (brilliant advice, btw). Who has read and analyzed the last 3 emails from 5 of the top gurus in the IM niche? I can bet my fingers that there are beginners who have even unsubscribed from their lists!

I don't want to repost everything here again, but he gives many other important advices that I would pay $100 to learn when I was just strating, and I doubt that most people are following at least 4 or 5 of them.

So I do consider this type of post extremely useful for people who are just starting and I highly recommend any beginner to read Kev's post at least 3 or 4 times in order to make sure that they get all the gems he is offering.


William

Kenster

William, you are absolutely correct.

I have a seperate email account where I follow exactly what other marketers are doing. Not only do I look at what they are selling, but I look at how they are selling, how often they are selling, what language and tone they use and try and gather as much as I can. The big gurus, like them or not, know what they are doing when it comes to promos.

The guys with 100k+ lists have done testing and know what sells. Instead of testing yourself with your list, why not just follow what they are doing!



Listbuilding is one of many strategies to pursue online...each having their own limitations and benefits. What I like about the listbuilding strategy is...

-Long Term Play - you are dependent on SEO rankings that may drop or about a certain traffic source like PPV becoming ocer-competitive or dieing out. You can market to your list for years to come and make boatloads of money with very very little work!

-Passive Income - Although writing emails isnt pure passivity, its pretty darn simple to come up with a series of email promotions and make a ton of money. Build a list of 50k loyal subcribers and you can easily make 6 figures with an hour a week of working!


Of course listbuilding isnt the end all, be all. Its tough to build a list and just like any other strategy you need to learn how to get traffic to your site or squeeze. Instead of building a list with the goal of monetizing in the future, you can monetize that traffic right away with other strategies.


At the end of the day, its about maximizing the lifetime value of the prospect. If that means building a list, then go for it. If that means selling up front and not worrying about upselling in the far future, go for it. If that means a hybrid of both strategies, then go for that.

~ken

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Eliteworks

Wow... what a great post!

kyraline

Kev, I "accidentally" stumbled upon your post, allthough I believe there are no accidents. I will probably re-read it more than once because it will help me to stay focussed. Thank you very much for this enlightening contribution and cheers to you!

Johanna
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zoeguy

I really am not sure what the motivation behind this post was, but coming from someone who has lost everything literally, including wife, home, hope, with no job, no income whatsoever. I see tremendous value here and more than that, great HOPE, inspiration, and direction.
Kev, your post WAS worth the time. THANK YOU...

I think Kenster was right, it really depends on your viewpoint...

also KansasDragon's comment was priceless:

Kenster

Zoeguy ~ I hear many stories of great success that rise from people in the toughest of situations. When things get tight and hope is beginning to fade, thats when the body and mind are able to achieve the most. Thats when motivation is greatest. I am sorry to hear about the hardships you are currently facing and wish you much success. Things will get better and you will come out stronger.

Hope is a powerful motivator so take all the hope you have and channel it into your IM business. I have a funny feeling you will be one of the great success stories.

~ken

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rr1958

great story! would love to follow your footsteps.

Viper X

Amazing. How many of us will realize that the more quality free stuff we give away, the more trust we build and the more money we make.......Seriously.

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Kenster

I realize it!!!

Building a successful business is almost always about providing incredible value. If you focus on value addition, success and prosperity will normally result!

Too many people have a short term focus and only care about making as much sales today instead of providing as much value today to maximize the lifetime value of the customer.

Its about providing value
Its about maximizing the lifetime value of the customer
Basic concepts yet uber powerful in building a business!


~ken

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KevScarb

You can. There is no reason why not.

I am not special. I don't have any unique talents. What I do have is the desire and dedication to put my ideas in to action.

Even though I have suggested books and resources in this thread. At the end of the day, for everyone reading this, only YOU can make it happen. But if you want to follow, you can.

All I did was finally focus in on one main ( building a list ). After that everything was easier because with everything I do I can always question " is this helping me build my list "

Not is cpv traffic going to make me a fortune, but " can cpv traffic build my list in my market "

Not, " will article marketing make money " but will article marketing improve links to my money sites and in turn help build my list "

You have to have a clear idea of what you want, because then it is so much easier to go and get it.

Looking back, that was my main mistake in my first 18 months.

KevScarb

Hey Chad, great to see you commenting on this for me, I see it even made your blog !

Gary Halbert is a copy writing legend, and anyone reading this should make use of Chad linking to this.

Remember learning about how to sell is the most important thing we can do. It is internet marketing after all

Here is that link again http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/...r-archives.htm

Mr.S

Hello All
I think the biggest problem at least in my case was distraction from all gurus. Don't get me wrong information they were giving was great, but when you looked at it the core message was the same. Another thing was jumping from one thing to another as you get new email offerings. I learnt from it, but still temptation is there. Congratulation Kev

lamposproject

Hi Kev,

I am getting touch with your success story. You were right about building our own opt-in list. I was once doubtful on using Aweber as my main e-mail autoresponder because I thought that it is only useless for me. In my previous months, I only thought about money, not about helping other people and that's how I realized that I don't have good readers in my old blog. Now that I have a new professional blog and signed up with Aweber, I'm happy for it.

Money is on the list you know, and right now I'm getting few subscribers daily to my blog slowly but surely. Soon it goes up and it keeps on coming. I lost money on purchasing useless domains that don't make me money through my ads, because I have lack of learning about the real attitude of an affiliate marketer. But now, I'm truly changed my way of marketing the products as an affiliate marketer, and I think with opt-in autoresponder like Aweber, I won't be disappointed. I'll just work hard on it to get my ROI in no time.

Jeff

mtmjohn

Freaking AWESOME post! Thank you so much for sharing your story and sharing some great tips with us.

David Bleidt

great post. thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am starting my own IM business and I am thankful for every tip I can get. Just keep on doing.

Reptor

prahna1

Thanks for taking the time to write this. It's like a free coaching session, which is probably why people want to hire you.

I've tried affiliate marketing and cpa marketing and it's tough if you don't know how to drive traffic. Building a list is the best way because you are generating a lead. If you don't build the list you are letting someone else profit off of your efforts and you only get a one time shot at a sale, which stats show is not likely to happen.

I find the problem with building a list is how to maintain it and keep up with content and offers and finding the right balance and list segregation. It can get pretty overwhelming.

Here's what I tell people. Don't focus on the initial sale that's only about 10% of your traffic. Instead focus on those that don't buy - you have a 90% larger pool to market to. Just makes sense to me especially since it's proven that it takes the average person about 7-10 points of contact before they actually are ready to buy.

Thanks,

Preston

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Preston Rahn is founder of VideoSalesLeads.com. Visit to get 2 free reports on using social media, seo, and video marketing to generate more traffic, leads, and sales.
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macchiavelli

I remember making my first $1000 day on CPA and I only spent $100 in ads to reach that.
It was a wonderfull feeling and that campaign still makes me money to this day.

Its weird campaigns that seem strange that make me the most money these days.

Like 250 business card type offers, I mean I advertise that stuff via google on the weirdest sites out there and make bank!

Kenster

Guru information is great but they typically giev you the tip of the iceberg to get you emotionally heightened and then leave out critical pieces to their concept or strategy and then in some way shape or form, make you pay for the complete pieces.


This is what I always say about Gurus...

- Create a seperate email account and joing their lists to keep up with what is going on and to eat up the bits and pieces of information they offer as teasers. Its still often times very valuable info, so take it.

-Tell yourself BEFORE opening an email, you wont become emotionally attached to any product or service offered on the upsell. You are reading the video to get tidbits or information ONLY...and convince yourself you dont need any more products because YOU DONT.

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