Comeback To IM After 6 Years. It's harder.

So I'm back in the IM game.

6 years ago, I was a 16 year-old looking into the hype of whether you can make any money online. Many lurks of the Warrior Forum later, an autoresponder and a squeeze page later, and I had made $100 US during high school. Not too bad for a kid doing something on the side.

But my methods were never really sustainable. It involved some articles, some e-mail marketing, and bombarding my <50 list with affiliate links.

In 2009, you could write any crap and someone would probably buy. I put in a lot of work for that $100 dollars, and making money not being a priority, I took a break.

In 2011, I finished school. I tried pulling the same stuff. Didn't work. Didn't make a cent. Not one. Less opens, less engagement, less hops, no sales.

In 2013, I thought I had it figured out. I made my own info product. An e-book. With some haphazard, poorly thought out marketing and some low-quality promotion, I didn't make a cent.

You see, in those four years, the marketing world has changed so much. Everyone is being bombarded with sales letters and affiliate links, constantly. We (myself included) see an info product sales page and roll our eyes. The public sees through all the tactics... we're looking for money and providing junk as a bargaining chip. And they're not buying it.

The game has changed. So much.

Anything could rank on Google with the right keyword in the past. Now your new site is stuck in nowhere-land with no search referrals. E-mail opens are lower. There's so much black hat and spam and outspending on PPC that in some niches, you're lucky just to get a pageview.

But the fundamentals are the same. Add value, and people will come. Create quality content, and people will come.

And with all the noise, there's also more opportunities. People make a full time living on Youtube, teenagers do. If you create something truly amazing, sites like Reddit could turn you into a 6-figure business overnight.

So why am I saying all this?

Because realizing all of this broke my 6-year IM drought.

As of today I've made $25.93 this year in IM. (Now it's nothing to brag about. I'm sure many of you have made that amount while you read this post.)

What did I do? I found a super specific niche. I created valuable content. I promoted through everything, every damn slightly related site I could think of.

And after a massive grind, I made that first sale. After years of missing it, it was great to have that feeling come back again.

Now most people don't even get to that first cent. And when you make that first sale, it's like a drug. It's like you beat some system, and made something for yourself. It doesn't matter how much you made, it's the joy of intrinsically being an entrepreneur.

If you want to make money easily, find a job. Somewhere is hiring. It's honestly easier to swallow your pride and work for a stable(r than IM) job. I will probably make a lot more money in my life from jobs than IM.

But if you want to do IM, don't have any illusions about it. It's hard. It's most likely going to be a lot more work for a lot less return, so you should really think about your motivation behind being an internet marketer.

And if you've been trying for a long time and getting no results, something sucks. It's probably your strategy. You have to really look at the value you're making, and whether what you're doing can really be turned into cold hard cash.

But you know what the best feeling is? Getting over that 6 year drought and getting a solid sale. Now my thing might not take off. But I've got momentum now, and I know I can do this. And that will be the driving force behind whatever I end up achieving in IM.

I wrote this post because even though I've got a long way to go on this journey, I still see the same crap being posted as I saw 6 years ago. And a lot of the crap being posted back then barely worked too. It's 2015. The competition is higher. The game has changed. Every 'conventional' method of getting leads goes via a very crowded marketplace. Don't blindly follow everything you read.

On that note, thanks for reading.