How long did it take for you to make your first sale online?

47 replies
Hey warriors,

I was thinking about my early days, (it's seems now like it was a lifetime ago!) and I was thinking about my first money online, first sale and all that other stuff.

That first sale made me little 4 dollars or something like that and I made that while selling my own product on Clickbank, lol

For me, to make my first sale online it took about 6 months and then it just snowballed!

The biggest mistake that I made was not focusing. Studying too much. Not taking a massive amount of action. That probably was the biggest mistake.

It's better to get it going than to get yourself studying

How long did it take for you to make your first sale? And What was the biggest mistake or roadblock for you?
#long #make #online #sale
  • Profile picture of the author Crystal_Jobs
    Hey Matt.

    That's a very intuitive question.

    I started making stipends, 1 to 5 dollars per month from Google adsense many years ago. Funny enough, I never really made any money until I began to sell web contents as a writer.

    Thanks for making me remember.
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  • Profile picture of the author JasonGiorgini
    Wow Matt you brung back memories for me, not of my first sale, but of the first money I made online. It was thru AllAdvantage. Not sure if many people remember the company, but it was one of those paid 2 surf gigs. My first sale was a clickbank product. I believe it took me 2 months to make my first sale, if I remember correctly. My biggest roadblock looking back was that, I wouldn't stay committed to one method. I was jumping around, reading every PDF. It wasn't until I said, you know what, I'm going to take this one product and write an article every day until I make a sale. Then I received many more sales, because my old work paid off.
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    • Profile picture of the author arkhamindustries
      I have been setting up Amazon sites for a couple months now. I feel like they have a lot of room to grow as far as ranking goes but I started about 2-3 months ago and got my first 2 sales last week. I have quite a few amazon sites up now and am slowly building backlinks to all of them. I really hope it starts to snowball in the next few weeks!
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  • Profile picture of the author Juan L Costa
    I also started with adsense on my webpages, but after I joined this forum and found out about affiliate marketing, it took me about 6 months to make a sale.
    I guess that online marketing has a huge learning curve or I was just horrible at the beginning
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  • Profile picture of the author JamesGw
    I made my first Clickbank sale after about a week or two of promoting the product. I had no idea what I was doing at the time tbh.
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  • Profile picture of the author Arock
    I was just on my Ebay account, and saw that I opened my account in 1999. I did not realize it had been that long... Shortly after opening my account there I sold an old violin for a great profit. I have been hooked ever since. 1999! Yikes. Shipping actual products is such a pain though... Lutzi
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  • Profile picture of the author Clint Faber
    Took me One month back in 1999 but I was not even trying lol. Ya back when now one know anything lol
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    • Profile picture of the author IMWinner
      Wow, it took me some time to think about posting in this thread. It's been a while since I had my first sale online. It was from Click bank and it didn't even reached 2 dollars, but I was very happy at that time since it was my first time to really earn something online. I was just trying to give it a try, and when I saw the result, it really brings that smile to my face. Although it is a small amount, but man, it was great at that time. I really made some money working through online, and since then, I gave myself some time learning some basics of what is now the Internet Marketing business.
      Although I am not yet full time ever in the IM business, because I have my daytime job, I made sure for the last couple of years, I made sure that I had time for my IM business.
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  • Profile picture of the author DavidG
    It took me 3 months.

    regZ
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  • Profile picture of the author tonyalves
    For me it was just over 10 years ago, but I don't remember if it was from MLM or from Affiliate marketing.

    I just know that from that moment on, I was hooked.
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  • Profile picture of the author wgempire
    I just started internet marketing about 6 weeks ago, I am super excited about what the future holds. I have been an ebay power-seller for over a decade on multiple accounts. I spent first couple weeks just researching and reading up on internet marketing. I picked the perfect training course, and made my first click-bank sale just 24 hours after joining the course. Of course it was offline marketing that brought the sale, still trying to get all my sites to first page of search engine, not an easy task!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author nicholasb
    it only took me 3 days from the time I read my first ebook till the time I made my first sale. I made close to $300 my first week and close to $3,000 my first month.
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    • Profile picture of the author arkhamindustries
      Originally Posted by nicholasb View Post

      it only took me 3 days from the time I read my first ebook till the time I made my first sale. I made close to $300 my first week and close to $3,000 my first month.
      I think me along with many others would like to know the name of THAT ebook!

      ;P
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      • Profile picture of the author nicholasb
        Originally Posted by arkhamindustries View Post

        I think me along with many others would like to know the name of THAT ebook!

        ;P
        it was bum marketing secrets revealed not sure who the autor was on that, I've checked but I think it was just a plr ebook.Thats the way I learned to drive traffic with articles and the ebook I learned to convert that traffic is was zero to fifty in 30 days by Peter Tremayne

        it was a combination of the two, I read them both in one day, started implementing later that night, and the next day and the next night, woke up the next day with my first sale..

        I have copies of the books but I have no rights to give them away and I can't find the original sales pages.
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        • Profile picture of the author tizak
          Originally Posted by nicholasb View Post

          it was bum marketing secrets revealed not sure who the autor was on...
          Could this be the link, I stumbled upon both this thread and I was directed to this link through a different search on the same day, so some juice is flowing, could this be the link to the sales page you are referring to?

          Article Marketing

          ?
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      • Profile picture of the author Anthony Lex
        My first sale online took about 3 months and that was after a lot of procrastination. Being such a perfectionist trying to make sure all the graphics on my site looked good, and then continually fiddling with them over and over again and never quite being satisfied with the final look. All in all I think from time of implementation until completion of my first website I took at least five to six weeks of work each and every day.

        When I finally launched it I spent a further month of continuous all out promotion to get it ranking well in the search engines for a multitude of important buyer keyword phrases. After that month I think I pretty much just sat back and forgot about the site while I carried on with various other things.

        A couple of months later I received a cheque in the mail from ClickBank, I was so happy; I truly believed that all the stories of people making money online were lies up until that point. I seem to remember the cheque being for around $180, and over the course of the year that one simple site with no further promotion went on to earn me around $2000.

        It was so easy to give up in the beginning because there was no instant result after so much effort, thankfully the IM gods had other ideas and that first website for me was the stepping stone to much larger things online, and for that I will always remember that simple 10 page site I created all those years ago.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matt Poc
      Originally Posted by nicholasb View Post

      it only took me 3 days from the time I read my first ebook till the time I made my first sale. I made close to $300 my first week and close to $3,000 my first month.
      Wow, that's awesome!

      I am curious about what strategies did you use? Making $3000 in your first month seems like a lot of money, it took me quite a lot of time to reach $3000 a month
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      • Profile picture of the author nicholasb
        Originally Posted by Matt Poc View Post

        Wow, that's awesome!

        I am curious about what strategies did you use? Making $3000 in your first month seems like a lot of money, it took me quite a lot of time to reach $3000 a month
        basically setup a squeeze page to give something away for free. Collect optins make an offer on the thank you page and follow up with an offer through email while also providing good value to the list from time to time while still making offers.

        Sending traffic with articles, which I wrote about 5-10 articles a day for the first month then took everything I made that month and invested it back into my company. that was in the beginning 0f 2007.

        My business model is still basically the same, just now I create my own products, pay for my traffic and recruit affiliates for free traffic instead of driving all the traffic myself.

        I picked one thing and stuck with it. Yes I did buy other courses on marketing but only to add to my business and not change it completely.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael D Forbes
    My early days on Ebay were great (back in 2000), it was really easy to buy stuff at garage sales and pawn shops and make some big margins on EBay. These days people want Ebay prices at garage sales and pawn shops.

    I'm kind of bummed that I can't remember my first strictly online "sale".

    I do remember my first ClickBank sales. A week after putting up my first site I had 3 sales within about 12 hours, I was jazzed! I was ready to retire! I was going to average $300 a day!

    And then... nothing for 6 weeks... and one refunded. Sad!
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  • Profile picture of the author michaelcorvin
    First sale online was in 1998...was for about $3 :-) took me 4 weeks to get that...haha....But my second site that I launched took me 7 days from the day I finished the site....$14,000 on very high-end product.

    Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Took me a week from a banner ad. After I saw the possibilities, I started creating and selling products the next weekend.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jack Duncan
    Matt,
    I remember way back to the early days of eBay...and remember that first auction sale for 0.99.

    It wasn't much, but you could see the huge potential as more people started to trust the internet with their credit card number.

    Biggest lesson learned: You can't do everything yourself and keep growing steady.

    All the best,
    Jack Duncan
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  • Profile picture of the author Jenny4u1
    My first sale on fiverr. It took 6 months to achieve.
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  • Profile picture of the author Snd65
    Banned
    I have also started my career and it took 1 year to study about affiliate marketing and Internet marketing. But as soon my website reached the #! page of Google I started earning money.

    So always focus on the SERP of your website and your targeted traffic.

    More Traffic = More sale = More money

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author misstan
    For me is a few month. got about 3 sales in end of 1st year promoting cb ebook in twitter and fb. after that got sales on and off. 1st sale was $17.
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    • Profile picture of the author PattC
      This is my fifth month, and my list is growing. No sales yet, but I know that internet success is a process, so I know that sales will come.
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  • Profile picture of the author celente
    I did not make a cent until I got off my ass, yes that took about 2 years. LOL now I make a living from clickbank, and it all revolved around sending traffic to a squeeze page and putting offers or oto as the thankyou page.

    We do well each month now, and my rule is to always reinvest back into buying media buys and paid traffic, not just google ads. There is a whole world of traffic out there, that you can buy for any price.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Hlatky
    My first SALE from Clickbank took about 2-3 months.
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  • Profile picture of the author ProPowerSEO
    Originally Posted by Matt Poc View Post

    The biggest mistake that I made was not focusing. Studying too much. Not taking a massive amount of action. That probably was the biggest mistake.

    It's better to get it going than to get yourself studying
    A great piece of advice in my opinion. So true. I think a lot of people dont do as successful because their research vs time on SEO is balanced the wrong way!
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  • Profile picture of the author AlexMcLeod
    2 or 3 years. And after that, it was inconsistent at best, because so was I.
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    • Profile picture of the author Eleanor
      Originally Posted by AlexMcLeod View Post

      And after that, it was inconsistent at best, because so was I.
      That there is a gem of information!

      Inconsistency is one of the biggest reasons that new internet marketers fail. Staying focused on one method until it works is the best way to get started

      My first income online was back in 2006 with AdSense - I still remember the excitement when I logged in to check my stats and saw that I'd earned a measly £0.10!

      Luckily I managed to keep focused and my earnings grew from there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Oliver Williams
    I spent (no wasted) nearly a year trying to make money online before seeing any results. I was distracted too easily and had no idea what information to trust coupled with getting contrary information about the same thing from different sources only confused matters more.

    One day I woke up and had over $100 in my PayPal account from an affiliate program. I still get a kick out of making moeney online and now have a solid list building and product creation business in the making, I am just happy to be finally on the right path in the knowledge that what I am doing is actually working.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    It took me 2 weeks. This is when i was in college. My cousin suggested that i send a broadcast email out to the subscribers that i had. When i checked the next morning, i had 2 sales in my inbox... out of a list of around 60 people. I think i went and partied that night to celebrate.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgeP1
    For me (now don't laugh too hard or fall off your chairs) 11 years and 2 months! No fooling. Started trying to sell ebooks online since Dec. 1999. Matter of fact that is the only sale I have made. I decided then trying to do internet marketing was just not for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author apoorv.parijat
    After I actually started putting in the work, maybe a few days.

    However, I spent months doing absolutely nothing before that (more than 12 months!)
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  • Profile picture of the author surferchris
    Probably about a week, it was such great feeling even if it wasn't much at first
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  • Profile picture of the author sdentrepreneur
    I made my first sale in November 2007 and my commission was $900.00. I never looked back from that point. Sold the rest of my gas stations and it was on !!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Kal Sallam
    1 week made all of it through eBay back in the day when everyone was killing with ebay.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Ogbin
    Thanks Matt, I remembered the day like it was yesterday. I made my first sale in 2007! it almost $25 but I was feeling so happy.

    Always the first start feels so incredible
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  • Profile picture of the author SeanIsWinning
    Oh man, Thank you all for the responses here! And than you Matt Poc!! This is a very refreshing thread for new internet marketer to see!

    Great stuff!

    My first sale came a few days ago, since then things have been increasing, once I learned to let go of the greed, and poverty mindset and I just started sharing other peoples content, and helping others out, it seems I have increased my own business ten-fold!!

    Thanks again!!
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    • Profile picture of the author cashp0wer
      I would have to say my very first money online was made from Google Adsense and that was many, many years ago. I do remember that feeling when I first saw that I had money. Even though it was a minute amount, it was still money that I earned and I felt proud of myself.
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    • Profile picture of the author erikaawakening
      Originally Posted by SeanIsWinning View Post

      Oh man, Thank you all for the responses here! And than you Matt Poc!! This is a very refreshing thread for new internet marketer to see!

      Great stuff!

      My first sale came a few days ago, since then things have been increasing, once I learned to let go of the greed, and poverty mindset and I just started sharing other peoples content, and helping others out, it seems I have increased my own business ten-fold!!

      Thanks again!!

      Congrats
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      • Profile picture of the author SeanIsWinning
        Originally Posted by erikaawakening View Post

        Congrats
        Thank you!
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  • Profile picture of the author erikaawakening
    Fun reading everyone's stories! What strikes me is the shared sense of enthusiasm of everyone once they started succeeding. I wonder if this is because we could all smell the beautiful scent of freedom when those sales started to roll in. Who can argue with it? Working from home in our pajamas, geographically free, setting our own schedules. In my membership group, we have started calling it "pajama sensibility" (a phrase I borrowed from Oprah).
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  • Profile picture of the author Snowbro
    From the time I made my website, to the first sale. 3 days. at day 5 I had made 6 sales for $25 each.
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  • Profile picture of the author lcombs
    Took me about a week.
    But, I lost my ass on PPC.
    That's when I knew I had a lot to learn.
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  • I can't really remember. A few months?
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