Story of my first decent success online, $160 to $13,000

This happened way back in 2006, I was already making money from other sources online.. but was definitely under financial stress as I was starting from scratch, living by myself. Then I was not a part of any IM forums,all I learnt were from IM courses.. and I already had an immense drive for marketing & business.

But you can't make much happen without some funds, Luckily I had about 200 bucks to spare when this opportunity came up..

In short :

I purchased a website for $160 which was selling a downloadable product for $47, I made approximately $2500/mo in profits for two months using PPC and I sold the site for $5600 within 80 days of inception.



Here's how I did it and how you can too..

I purchased a website for $160 on Sitepoint marketplace (now flippa)

This was my second such purchase, my first purchase was of $250 which was a total waste..but I somehow knew in my gut that I had to invest in this thing.

This is what I learned from my $250 loss and I started looking to purchase a new website under $200 but with a different strategy all together..

1. It had to be in a market that is HUGE - huge search volume - huge demand - huge buzz. So even if I got 1% of the total search volume I would still make decent money

2. Long term trend - The business should be viable for at least 5 years even if you intend to sell it in a few months. It shouldn't be serving a temporary trend.

3. Competition - There should be damn good competition, I didn't care if I had to compete with 30 odd sites. The greater the competition, it served me as proof that there is money to be made - it's not just search and buzz anymore... it's real money!

4. PPC competition - I wanted to see at least 5-7 people competing for the same keyword. More proofs!!

5. It should be a product centric automated business, of which I only take care of traffic to make money - no headaches of service, complicated support or any of that which eats away my time.

Basically I just wanted to be part of a huge impulsive market and have an autpilot bsuiness.

The website I purchased..

Well for under $200 don't expect to buy anything great, you're probably making a mistake buying it - it is only going to serve you as a learning experience. but I was lucky - since I had already learnt a few lessons from my first purchase..

The website I purchased second time around was not just a piece of template, it had actually made about 5-6 sales using PPC with a pathetic, pathetic looking website..

Instantly I knew I could do an infinitely better job at selling that product..

This is what I did with the website within the next 7 days:

• Instantly hired the best minisite graphics guy I could find and paid $450(borrowed from friend) to redesign the website with AWESOME graphics
• Listed all competitor websites, their salesletter, pitch and strategies
• Revamped by salesletter with loads of content and persuasion (I din't use opt-in).. I was only focusing on making impulsive sales as the product demanded.
• Conducted full blown keyword research and setup PPC campaigns

Once everything came together I re-upd the site and from the next day onwards it instantly started making $50-70 profits/day. With further tweaking it started making a decent $100-150/day.

In two months of running business I decided to cash out which I did on the same marketplace for $5600 making me a total of approximately $13,000 + (including profits made from the business) IN PROFITS. revenues were much much higher..

That's how my first successful project happened, it's not a huge success but it made me believe that I could make it online and since then I have been part of many successful and unsuccessful projects and have sold many online businesses - and the experience is serving me well in my next big venture in life.

It all started from a few hundred dollars in 2006 - and I still sometimes fall flat on my face as I've never been a grt manager of money but I'm working at it.

Takeaways - Yes you can make a living online, don't give up, stretch yourself as much as possible, work as hard as possible, treat everyday as if it's your last,continue learning,believe in yourself and save up when you actually start making serious money.

Also make 'failure' a part of your life..

Even the most successful people on the planet face defeats and failures in their day to day life, you'll face defeat, resistance,losses and many other struggles in life (unlike what Gurus say) - so make failures a part of your life coz you will fail many many times in life to produce a few grand successes.

Enjoy the journey no matter how rough it gets because the journey is the reward.

If you ask me whether particularly you can make it or not - invariably the answer is - 'If you have high degree of persistence, perseverance and desire to succeed you can make it'. It all comes down to 'How bad you want it?"

I'm a drop out, have always been an average student in school and I don't think I've exceptionally high IQ.. but have always been a student of Business from a very early age and passionate about it... That's all I have as my credentials.


What was your first success - what made you believe 'Online' is the way to go..