My Story from Rags to Riches to Rags

Hi all, I re-joined WF a few days ago after closing my account a couple years ago. But now I'm back and more eager than ever before. I just need to get this story off my chest first before I get down to business.


My Story from Rags to Riches to Rags

I've been interested in Internet Marketing for years. I'm 23 now, but back when I was 17 I made $13,000 in 2 weeks without even trying by utilizing the power of Facebook Viral Marketing. It was the days of the huge viral fan pages with the 'Like this page to see the content inside' tabs. The days of FBML.

These viral Facebook pages were absolutely everywhere and I just 'happened' into the midst of an ongoing gold rush. It wasn't my intention. I was just a curious teenager who wanted to see how big I could get a fan page. My first ever page made it to over 700,000 likes in 2 weeks.

Around this time I joined a cash-for-surveys site which used the CPAlead content-locking system. If you accumulated 400 points through surveys or referrals you'd walk away with $50. At this point I had a FB page with ~200k likes, all I'd need to do is refer 200 people at 2 points per referral to get paid out. So the first use of my fan page was referring people to this cash-for-surveys site in exchange for points.

I referred over 1000 people to the site, but when I went to cash out my $250, you guessed it, the owner of the site had no intention of paying out. But he was intrigued as to how I got so many people to sign up to his site and wanted to work with me. He must have made bank from my referrals, he doesn't want to pay me out but he wants to work with me? Screw that.

That was my first taste of getting scammed online, but it wasn't the last. I felt terrible at the time, but now I had to think outside the box. CPAlead. I had heard about it from the cash-for-surveys site and now I wanted a piece of the action for myself. Instead of referring people to someone else's site I was going to create my own cash-for-surveys site. And I did just that. I found a nulled template script of his site, signed up to CPAlead and went to work.

I got hundreds of people to join my site via my Facebook page but made very little out of it due to insanely low conversions and people realising how long it would take filling out surveys to actually make anything worthwhile. So I closed down my cash-for-surveys site and sought another way to monetize my Facebook page.

CPAlead conversation 1 week later

Bhaval: hey u got traffic?

Me: yeah a fb page with 700k likes

Bhaval: wanna JV? i have a great script which can bring in $$$ I just need traffic

Me: well, okay

He had a Facebook viral script which would utilize the content-locking system I had only recently discovered. I put out a status to my 700k fans linking to Bhaval's website with clickbait title "SHOCKING: RUDE Hidden Message in Toy Story 3!".

When a user clicked onto the site, they'd have to go through Step 1: Share the site, Step 2: Like the site, Step 3: FIll in a survey to see this "rude hidden message". And that's all there was to it. We had a spinner on the site which switched between our content-lockers. It made me more money than I had ever seen in my life.

My downfall begun when I got scammed for the second time by naively letting some guy who wanted to JV remote into my PC and add his account as admin to my Facebook page. He then removed me as admin as I was struggling for my mouse back. I lost my page for a week until Facebook gave it back to me (surprisingly). But that wasn't until after he had milked my page dry of willing fans from selling statuses every minute of the day.

A week after that whole ordeal I got banned from Facebook and I haven't gone back since. The whole experience was bittersweet. I made a ton of money but also lost every avenue in which I could make money like that again. Those two weeks are the only time I ever made money online.

Now I want back in. I know I'm capable and this time I am willing to try other things such as affiliate marketing (which I WISH I knew about back then). I don't know if I want to completely turn my back on Black Hat techniques but at the same time I want to become fluent in the world of White Hat. I know I'm just one voice in a sea of many tens of thousands of Internet Marketers. But hopefully I will get to inspire others along the way with my journey back from square one.

Thanks for your support all.