What Clicked that Made you Successful, and What Made you Get Consistent Sales

[Charles Montgomery]

I am interested in how you became successful.

How many products did you try to promote before finding a winner?
What moment did you realize you were going to be great at AM?

I am not looking for strategies, just trying to wrap my brain around how to figure out when a product is a dud.

Thanks

[Will Edwards]

* It took me 1 year before I made my first sale.

* It took me approximately 100 products before I found a few real winners.

I realised I was going to make it when I was able to correlate success with effort because I was always prepared to put in the effort.

Will

[Jeremy Kelsall]

Shkad,

For me the "I get it" moment was the first day I got two sales. I sat back for like an hour and jotted down everything that I had done to that point to see those sales. I followed the flow of traffic and then it just clicked in my head just how simple it really is.

Content----->Visitors----->Sales

As simplistic as that might look, if you think about it, It is dead on correct.

Of course there are other things that go into the different parts, such as content and visitors, but even with those, there is no hard fast rule.

Some people write their own content, while others outsource the majority of it. Some rely on visitors only from PPC or Articles, while others capitalize on RSS feeds and social sites like Digg.

One of the hardest things that anyone has to do is to simplify the whole process in their own head and then just start building on it with actions.

Jeremy

[Nathan Hangen]

You know, I'm no rockstar (yet), but I'm just around the corner from hitting it big. I just need to get back to the states so I can tidy up some things.

What did it for me, was when I got out of the fear based mentality and started seeing money everywhere. When I first started, I was literally terrified to buy courses, WSO's, outsourcing, whatever.

I started making a few sales here and there and gradually as my confidence increased, I started seeing money everywhere I looked...what a rush!

Just for fun I decided to do some article writing, which paid off much more than I had expected. I lost my fear of spending money (I was making it faster than I could spend) and I started outsourcing...that's when the lightbulb really went off inside my head and I realized the importance of otusourcing and buying good products to teach me new skills.

I haven't looked back and now the only problem I have is finding good people to outsource to. If you will look back to a few months ago, one of my first posts was about "the outsourcing frenzy" and I didn't understand it at all...my how things change in a few months!

[TZ]

When I first started a made a really ugly golf web site trying to make commissions selling golf equipment. I had a burning desire to become full time.

My AH-HA moment was when I spelled "golf apparel" wrong as " golf aparel" by accident in one of my articles. Lo and Behold I had my very first visitor.

I sat back in awe of the fact that we can write content and get traffic because of it. The next step was learning how to write good content and write it FAST.

It all depends I suppose on what we consider succeeding.

I'm 6 years at this now and 3 and half years full time. I STILL don't think I've got it figured out. I know Internet income earners that make 10 times what I make and they have been at it a shorter period of time.

Z

[BlueSquares]

After several years doing this, it's the realization that rehashed, unoriginal content simply doesn't do as well as original, quality content.

I keep seeing my personal blogs with original content pull in 200-300 solid uniques per day while my "autopilot" sites with untouched PLR fluctuate wildly from 100 to 10 (yes ten) uniques per day.

From here on out, it's only high quality original content for me.

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by BlueSquares

After several years doing this, it's the realization that rehashed, unoriginal content simply doesn't do as well as original, quality content.

I keep seeing my personal blogs with original content pull in 200-300 solid uniques per day while my "autopilot" sites with untouched PLR fluctuate wildly from 100 to 10 (yes ten) uniques per day.

From here on out, it's only high quality original content for me.

People keep saying that there's no such thing as the duplicate content penalty (and maybe there isn't) but I also find that unique content far outranks anything with PLR. I haven't tested the use of PLR for very long, but methinks I'll be going back to unique again very soon.

[sylviad]

Well, I suppose if someone sees an article directed at your site that they already saw directed at another site, they aren't likely to go to your site to read it again. That's where duplicate content can hurt you... if not by Google's lack of interest in sites that offer nothing original.

Oh, and to the OP... I'm still waiting for that "click".

However, realizing that I need to work harder on the right things was a huge breakthrough in November. It takes awhile for things to sink in with me... like 9 years!

Sylvia

[Charles Montgomery]

Originally Posted by BlueSquares

After several years doing this, it's the realization that rehashed, unoriginal content simply doesn't do as well as original, quality content.

I keep seeing my personal blogs with original content pull in 200-300 solid uniques per day while my "autopilot" sites with untouched PLR fluctuate wildly from 100 to 10 (yes ten) uniques per day.

From here on out, it's only high quality original content for me.

Originally Posted by Hamida Harland

People keep saying that there's no such thing as the duplicate content penalty (and maybe there isn't) but I also find that unique content far outranks anything with PLR. I haven't tested the use of PLR for very long, but methinks I'll be going back to unique again very soon.

UH OH...It seems my thread has been hijacked. Can we not discuss content and PLR in this thread? No offense. I just want to get back on topic.
How did you know when the product you were promoting was a dud? How many HOPS? Then, did you flip the website since it want profitable?

[ryanman]

For me it was trying and testing almost everything out there. Finally I found a winner and not one but several of them.

[Charles Montgomery]

Originally Posted by ryanman

For me it was trying and testing almost everything out there. Finally I found a winner and not one but several of them.

How do you know when a product is a dud? Then, what do you do with all the work you put into that site?

[maximus242]

My Ahas were:

The money really is in the list
The real money is in the second sale
and most importantly...

Provided you have chosen a good market... and have a product people want... its almost impossible not to make money eventually provided you test and track your results!!!!!!!!!!

When I realized that the purpose of the first meeting was to schedule the next meeting...

To paraphrase...

The money is in the follow-up!

[WebsiteMarketer]

What made things click for me was simply getting off the sidelines and jumping in the game. For so long I sat by and was too scared to risk my own money advertising offers then one day I said screw it, I'm just gonna go for it and it worked.

It helped that Facebook advertising is like the kiddie pool for real PPC advertising so it made it much easier for me to get started and see results.

Moral of the story: The sooner you start risking your money, the sooner you will learn how to succeed.

[Andy1750]

Turning point for me was realisation that what I am interested in selling or promoting is irrelevant. Any project has to be driven by the market - i.e. demand/keywords/search volume and careful consideration of the competition.

Andy

[ryanman]

Originally Posted by shkad14

How do you know when a product is a dud? Then, what do you do with all the work you put into that site?

Well if it fails...You have to deal with it and try something else. You have to keep going no matter what.

[trafficwave]

I was very fortunate in that my first internet product was successful. It was in direct response to my own need. I had built a list of people that were interested in reading my articles.

I sent out an email to inquire about their possible interest in a system that would help them not only generate more leads, but manage those contacts, follow up with them, etc...

That was March of 2000. TrafficWave.net was born. (And still going strong)

Since then, I've had my share of duds, for sure. And I've had some that did alright.

When something was a dud, I just pulled the plug on it, learned what I could, and moved on.