My IM success and failures...and success..and future success

I thought this worth sharing...

I started making money online on 2003 and created my first SEO blog via blogspot.com. The blog was earning around $120 a month for 2 years before I decided to migrate the content to wordpress platform with a new domain. The earning increased and after a year with more than 200 blog posts, I sold the blog for $4K+ via sitepoint marketplace.

2005 - I created 2 authority sites. 1 promoting Commission Junction products and the other was dedicated to promoting tripadvisor affiliate. Both sites were doing good. The CJ site was doing pretty well earning around $700/month when I got problem locally. I was having difficulty cashing out CJ checks. I sold the site for more than $6K.

Laziness and procrastination hit me and the tripadvisor site was left unupdated for several months. The sales hit the rock bottom. I sold the site for less than $3K via flippa. I stopped maintaining sites for a year and offered niche blog creation service.

I was employed since then until 2009. I had no plan to get employed again so I started from scratch again. I created a clickbank authority site and post an average of 3 product reviews a day (until now). My time is not enough writing articles for my own use so I hired 1 writer. He is so fast with high quality so I offered writing service and hired 10+ more while maintaining my CB affiliate site at 3 review articles a day.

After almost 3 years, my CB site become huge and is now promoting most of the products with above average gravity while having dozens of pages holding significant positions in Google pages. The earning is enough to support 4 college students locally.

Sometimes I thought, If I maintained those previous authority sites (CJ and tripadvisor), I can't imagine how much money I am earning right now. Ahh, not to mention that CPA site I sold also through flippa... the site was averaging $50/day though email and zip submit..

Future plans:
Create a couple of more authority sites for other affiliate programs (not adsense neither amazon).

Lots of people fail (like me before) because they can't maintain what they have started, and always tempted by new suggestions, ideas, systems, etc. A number of warriors I know who started 10 but finished nothing.

Sometime in early 2003, someone asked me to moderate his 1-month old webmaster forum. I was a newbie then and interested in doing everything inside my capacity and time. After a year, I left her forum and dedicated my time on my own activities. Today, that forum has more than 250K members and the owner is just sitting pretty waiting for her monthly earnings from advertising sales.

I learned that the big hindrance to success is not the system but ourselves. Most system works but not most people work. A dedicated someone can make money without the need of expensive marketing materials (except promotional and seo software which is optional)...

I remember someone from another forum quit his college after a year of studying business management. His reason "I can't make more than $5K a month after 4 years in college, while I can make even more after 3 years of consistently doing IM".. And he is right. That kid is now the owner of a big moneymaking blog sitting on top 5 of Google for the keyword "money making online".... Although I am not saying it's bad to go to college, it depends on one's circumstances....

Well, it's taking longer so I think that's all for now....

My final words:
Once you started something, analyze it thoroughly and don't stop. Don't start many things that you can't maintain (unless you have enough resources to outsource). Be consistent. Time pays sacrifice at the end so throw away that idea of "fast and easy way to make money online" because that's a myth. Work hard and see the result later.

Have a nice day to everyone