
Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure - johnward
http://johnathanward.com/make-money-online-failure/
======
codingdave
The general online audience has matured over the past 10 years, and most
people have an excellent filter to avoid clicking ads, which includes
affiliate links. You can still monetize a site these days, and make some money
while not being sketchy, but it requires approaching it as a service to your
users, not as an exploit of your users.

What I mean by this is that whatever your site is, if your audience has a
legit interest in specific products, and the next logical step in their
personal workflow would be to buy something, go ahead and put in some
affiliate links. It makes sense, and everyone gets what they need/desire.

But if you are adding links and talking about products solely because you want
those nickels from someone clicking it, you are not helping your audience, and
they know it, and they will react accordingly.

I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would have spent 10 years flailing in this
arena and not learned that.

~~~
FilterJoe
I'm one of those people who has approached content creation strictly "as a
service to your users, not as an exploit of your users." All of my blog posts
are very carefully researched, in-depth guides, sometimes literally taking
over 100 hours of research and writing for a single post.

I made very little money for years and had just about given up until Panda 4.1
and Penguin 3.0. Since then, when I write well, Google is sending traffic my
way, and my traffic and income have been steadily increasing by 20%-30%/month.
I now have the incentive to keep adding more high quality content to my blog.

Prior to these Panda/Penguin updates (Sep/Oct 2014), I can totally understand
why so many attempted to do what the author did. It made more money. Even if
Google algorithm changes or Affiliate changes shut you down, jumping to the
next thing seemed to work.

Hopefully Google is ahead of the curve once and for all, providing greater
incentive to create great content than game the system.

~~~
smacktoward
I've had the opposite experience with my blog; as I've increased the amount of
original research and writing in my posts, I've seen traffic steadily decline
over roughly the same period.

The conventional wisdom with blogs has always been that the way to success is
more frequent short posts rather than less frequent long ones, and that still
seems to be the case. I don't really care much, since I don't run ads and my
goal for my blog has never been to capture a large audience anyway, but more
readers would always feel better than less.

~~~
FilterJoe
Out of curiosity I poked around on your site and did some test searches using
words similar but not identical to some of your titles. I did this just on
articles I thought people might actually be looking for and that are over 1500
words. For example:

heartbleed bug what you need to know

Your post ([http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2014/04/the-heartbleed-bug-what-
no...](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2014/04/the-heartbleed-bug-what-non-nerds-
need-to-know/)) was buried. I gave up looking for it after the first 6 pages
of google results.

I'm not sure why you're ranking so badly for this article. The only idea I
have off the top of my head is that you have a very wide variety of content.
Google tends to prefer sites focused on one topic, or perhaps just a few.

I never wrote about youth baseball on my blog until last year. The first 2
articles I wrote got virtually no traffic from Google for 8 months. A couple
months ago I started writing more in depth articles about baseball. I'm now
getting a significant amount of Google traffic for those same two articles -
one of them is over 10 visits a day. That's still pretty small compared to my
blockbuster posts (my top post on best browsers gets hundreds of visits per
day). But baseball is growing, because Google is (algorithmically) beginning
to believe that I'm some kind of authority on youth baseball, based on a
growing concentration of quality content.

So - my guess is that you would get more traffic if you wrote about fewer
topics - or perhaps split into several blogs, each with different topics. I
should probably do that as my various tech topics have nothing to do with
baseball.

~~~
smacktoward
Yeah, it's the curse of the generalist. My interests are so catholic that my
blog ends up being about everything, which means as far as Google is concerned
it's about nothing.

------
softdev12
I enjoyed reading this because it's not something you usually see publicized.
And as a single data point leads me to believe that there are some people
really doing well with these sort of tactics - just not talking about. It's
like the blackjack card counters in 1980's and 90's. They were successfully
employing a system to pull money from casinos - but weren't talking about it.
It was only when the MIT Team started publicly talking about the strategy,
that it made it into the open. And that was at the time that the casinos made
it not a really viable strategy.

So it seems likely that there are successful strategies for using these
affiliate tactics for profit. I know that Wired magazine profiles a few of
these people every once in a while. There was a Canadian entrepreneur who was
big into the diet pill scheme and made millions (he, too, would fly down to
Vegas with friends). And here is a link to another scheme that used scareware:

[http://www.wired.com/2011/09/mf_scareware/](http://www.wired.com/2011/09/mf_scareware/)

~~~
AznHisoka
Oh man, I first learned about affiliate marketing at around 2005, but started
seriously doing it in 2006. I made close to $50,000 a month for a good 2.5
years promoting various colon cleansing products. I considered myself lucky
because this was actually the first product I chose to promote, and colon
cleansing just was about to become "hot". I found out that ranking for terms
like "X review" or "X coupon codes" were the money keywords.

In 2008, I then decided to create a coupon site (think RetailMeNot) and scale
this thing, and promote all sorts of products by ranking for coupon keywords.
I quit my job, but couldn't reproduce that success so turned it into a content
farm.

In 2011-2012, I decided to create an online gamification calorie counter,
thinking stupidly some big player would acquire it. After a year of muddling
success, I just turned it into a glamarous, well designed affiliate site :(...
which ironically turned the site into a profitable venture.

Now I'm building a very successful, profitable product in the SEO/content
marketing industry. So in a way I'm building the shovel for the gold industry
instead of digging for gold like I used to :)

------
josefresco
Like many, I was tempted into these same areas - driven by success stories and
my own technical knowledge which fooled me into thinking it would be "easy".

What I found is there's lot of money to be made in... telling people how to
make money! Those guys like Shoemaker who have an almost cult following end up
making an empire on those in the "pyramid" below them.

Not to say this is shady, just that the real "riches" are in charging people
to tell then how ... not in actually practicing what you preach.

~~~
hackerboos
To be honest, HN is full of this stuff too

\- Double your freelancing

\- Guys who create a not-very-well-known startup and then start pushing guides
on how to be successful

\- Email marketing, write 3 tutorials on topic X to build your list and then
spam your ebook.

Don't get me wrong, things are better targeted and less shady. It just feels
like people spend more time selling their systems than they do using them. It
looks like 'snake oil'.

~~~
jacquesm
First you sell the stuff you mine from the ground, then you sell shovels to
the miners, then you hire the miners and make them dig stuff out of the ground
for you that you sell.

The final stage is selling miners to other mining companies.

~~~
kolinko
The final stage is selling stuff that helps people sell miners to other mining
companies.

~~~
sebkomianos
The final stage is actually owning the mines.

~~~
droidist2
And then selling the mines when they stop producing so much.

------
clarky07
I'm not sure I'd regard making 100's of thousands of dollars complete failure.
Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to
society, and promoted products that were less than stellar in spammy ways, but
just having the goal of "Making Money Online" I'd consider that money to be
pretty dang successful.

The fact that he blew it all after the fact just makes him bad with money. It
doesn't mean that the attempts to make money online were failures, just that
his personal finances were.

P.S. Not in any way condoning the things he did, and you can definitely argue
it's a failure in that it didn't build a sustainable business. I don't feel
like I'd call it complete failure though. Lots of people try to do the same
thing and make dozens of dollars :-)

~~~
wpietri
In his shoes, I would definitely call it a complete failure. It was certainly
very educational, but failure nonetheless. I think his failure lies in
equating making money with success.

The purpose of commerce is to help us create value for one another. But there
is a bunch of activity that uses the same tools that is essentially parasitic.
The reason his income streams kept blowing up was that people eventually
decided that they were better off without him involved.

He could have spent 10 years building products that were creating value. He
could have spent 10 years learning the tools and techniques necessary to make
the sorts of thing where customers can't get enough. Instead, he spent a
decade as a leech on the ankle of the economy, getting scratched off and
reattaching himself.

I could have gone the same way. In high school I had a job doing telephone
fundraising. It turned out to be basically a scam, with ~12% of the money
collected even going to the non-profit, and therefore even less being spent on
actual beneficial work. There was a lot that was appealing in the work: smart,
funny people; great challenges; getting paid in cash. But eventually I came to
realize how morally bankrupt it was. I got lucky in that it was much easier to
see how what I was doing was worthless.

So now he's basically starting over. And good for him, I say. I think this
post is incredibly brave, and I wish him the best of luck in making something
so useful that customers are clamoring to hand over their money.

~~~
clarky07
perhaps (obviously, completely) personally it was a failure, but the title was
referring to making money online. Maybe the failure isn't connected to that
specifically? I dunno. I mean I mostly agree with everything you said, just
trying to point out that he did in fact make a decent amount of money online
whereas a lot of people try the same types of things without making anywhere
near the amount of money he did.

------
brockers
What I got out of the post was what happens to a person who spends a decade
trying to make money instead of building value.

I'm not trying to make a judgment call but the emptiness of it almost hurt to
read.

~~~
johnward
I never looked at it like this but now that you pointed it out I tend to
agree.

------
JacobJans
I read this earlier in the day, and I've been thinking about it a lot since.
In many ways, my story mirrors the one in the blog post. However, I've been
fortunate enough to make my living at it. I too started by encountering a lot
of "internet marketing" gurus.

I was lucky enough to find one idea that let me make a fair amount of money,
relatively easily. Back in the day, Google SEO was shockingly easy. Looking
back, I probably could have made many times the amount of money that I did
with SEO.

All things come to an end, and eventually SEO became much harder. Fortunately,
by the time that happened, I had learned enough to be able to pivot my
business.

I've ended up building a business that I'm proud of. I get emails all the time
from people thanking me for the free services I provide.

The OP talks about a lot of marketing techniques that have worked very well
for him in the past. I think what he may have missed is this: A marketing
technique is not a business. A business is a set of activities that create a
sustainable competitive advantage. A product is not a business, a marketing
technique is not a business, any skill, no matter how well developed, is not a
business. A business is a system -- a combination of activities that hopefully
support and reinforce one another.

I'm always looking for new ways to add stability and strength to my business.
In fact, I get pretty "terrified" at any hint of weakness. Sadly, there are
lots of hints of weakness. But, I've managed to do this for ten years.
Hopefully I'll be lucky enough to continue for many more.

~~~
kposehn
> A marketing technique is not a business. A business is a set of activities
> that create a sustainable competitive advantage. A product is not a
> business, a marketing technique is not a business, any skill, no matter how
> well developed, is not a business. A business is a system -- a combination
> of activities that hopefully support and reinforce one another.

So true! This is what allowed me to succeed as an affiliate. What I tired of
was the churn that kept the value I built from realizing a long-term ROI.

------
sblawrie
I want you to know that this post reminded me of a blog I had set up several
years ago and placed some affiliate ads on. The site has been down for years,
but I figured I'd log in to the affiliate dashboard to see if any users who
signed up through my affiliate links ever spent a significant amount of money.

Turns out, there's a $740 pending balance sitting in there that just came in
in the past few months. Sweet! I probably would have forgotten I ever set up
an affiliate account if I hadn't read this, so thanks for writing.

------
ianlevesque
Really great read. What seems to be missing from the author's 10 years is
actually building value. Affiliate marketing, arbitrage, finding a cheap ad
platform to flip for some clicks - none of this is really building something
of value for users to buy. I feel like 10 years spent product building or
building up a set of useful services would have had a much greater ROI for
this guy.

~~~
josefresco
I felt like if he stuck with this original tech review site, his income would
have grown more steadily, and while he may have missed out on some "rich"
years, the overall results would be a website/company with value.

~~~
ianlevesque
Absolutely, might be running a whole network of blogs by now.

~~~
johnward
Looking back now I think I would try to not make money via ads on my blogs and
instead create some info product that I could have sold to that audience. A
complement to the information that they were already coming to the site to
get.

~~~
josefresco
Diversifying income would be key - AdSense+Private Ad Sales+Affiliate
Promotions with your own "products" sprinkled in. That way if an affiliate
cuts you off, or Google decides to nuke your account you still have other
income streams.

*You can tell I haven't left this market completely ;)

------
jstalin
Sure, you can do all sorts of scammy things to squeeze a few dollars out of
people in quasi-illegitimate ways, but if you want to build a sustainable,
long-term business, you need to provide people with something they actually
want.

------
brc
>I apologize to all you forum owners for what I did in the past.

Yeah, well you made hundreds of thousands of people spend hundreds of hours
cleaning up after automated bots turn a site to crap.

The underlying issue here is a lack of understanding on the difference between
taking cash and creating value.

A reader of this might think that all this stuff is in the past, but it's
getting bigger and more sophisticated by the day. The tools are all automated
and the money is in the people who sell 'systems' which clip the ticket for
all the wannabes who charge their credit cards for the latest 'make money
online' schemes.

They all convince themselves that spamming out links is providing what their
marks want. I'm not surprised to hear that depression is a common result.

Something like this could be worked into a decent movie script.

~~~
bredren
I don't accept the apology. It isn't enough.

Both myself and volunteer moderators of a solid and truely valuable online
forum worked many hours to deal with this very problem.

Hearing this guy has great memories from a visit to vegas is exactly what I'd
expect was happening with the 'value' created. Shameful.

------
Fiahil
I have the firm belief that, being continually exposed to sketchy spam 10
years ago, made me extremely averse to advertising, clickbaits and
affiliation. Today, I can't imagine the web without an adblocker, and I'm
certainly avoiding giving money to a service when I'm prompted to by an ad.

So, I may be wrong, but if the minority of "EnlargeYourMaleParts.com" hadn't
polluted my visual field 10 years ago, it would be a lot easier for
advertisers to have my contribution today.

~~~
scobar
I understand your aversion to ads. When I tried affiliate marketing, it made
me sick just learning of the products shady companies were trying to trick
consumers with. I quickly moved toward creating websites to offer useful
content and including ads or affiliate links. Most of them failed to earn
anything substantial.

I don't think you're wrong, but many great websites that provide content
people really want rely on Adsense-type earnings to sustain themselves and
afford the content creators the income necessary to continue producing it.
It's unfortunate that the financial fate of some really great contributors is
so closely tied to that of others who seem to produce little or no value. I
wonder how those who offer high quality content via their own free website
will continue to thrive.

~~~
Fiahil
I share your concern for the few website with high quality content, damaged by
the reputation or shady moves of a lesser population. One of the greatest
examples is, to my mind, Ted.

But, regarding to Ted, they have done something absolutely genuine: they run
ads, yes, but at _the end_ of the videos. And often the ads themselves are
very high quality (comparing to the one on your average TV channel).

For me the benefit is twofold: I believe their behavior is rewarded by people,
like me, who will stay and engage with the ads; because they don't feel
betrayed and because they might learn something new or interesting during the
advertisement. And, I believe it will become so difficult to make money with
shady trades (because people are more and more protecting themselves), they
will eventually come to disappear.

So, to be short, I think great websites which offer high quality
advertisement, will earn back the trust of the users at some point. And, if
they can manage to keep genuine user experience above their own greed, they
will be rewarded for that.

PS: Not sure if it's relevant, but I should have disclosed this, I'm currently
working for a startup who sell a recommendation engine to the travel industry.
The product itself is not very far from an ad, but at least it only include
references to the client's content. It's pretty ironic when you think of this.

------
equalarrow
Quote: "For the record email marketing is still the method that drive the most
engagement."

Hands down that ^^^^ is correct.

I've spent the last year doing a lot of what the OP has done, sans the link
spamming. I've built sites, did white/gray/black hat link building, promoted
cpa offers with media and traffic buys, and even offers via kindle books.

What might not be clear to everyone here is that this is _still_ going on and
there is _still_ a huge market for this thing and thusly, quite a few people
making a lot of money.

I have spent a long time building software. All kinds of it - client, server,
web, mobile, now watch. I'm good at this and it's second nature. I've also
made _a lot_ more money doing this vs. any type of IM or AM.

However, after getting into IM last year, part of me felt like I missed a
whole part of the web 'growing up' because I was focused on spending huge
amounts of time building building the tools & platforms vs. using them. Part
of this was my disdain for advertising and marketing in general. However, in
the last year I have developed a new found respect for those aspects of
business - they are required nowadays and you can't avoid them. The few get
lucky sites or app builders are just that - lucky. For the rest of us, it's
marketing hard work.

I actually didn't do that bad during my foray into this last year. I probably
made back 75% of my spend, which was 'only' about $5k. The easiest was bing
ads -> clickbank offers. I'm still amazed that tinnitus or diabetes are still
big sellers...

I feel like we programmers tend to look down on this or feel it's beneath us.
I used to but I don't anymore. I posted before on HN how I thought Pat Flynn
was doing a great job and got comments that what I was talking about was spam,
not sustainable, etc. But Path's now up to about $1m/yr by becoming his own
brand. He engages with his audience and has figured out how to bring a lot of
these different types of marketing and educational aspects together.

Another great one is Brian Dean - his posts on driving traffic and capturing
audience are amazing. He's definitely a hacker seo guy and I like that.

So, to each his own, but this was a great read.

------
dragonchild
hey man don't listen to all the negative comments that are bashing you ! You
were brave to bare your failures for all to see. Yes your success came from
the shady affiliate world, but learn from your mistakes and move on. Offer a
real solution for users out there and I think your results will be different.

------
dusing
This article was like a trip down memory lane for me. 10 years ago it was
Hoodia diet pills, pay day loans, and blockbuster trials that filled my war
chest. Difference is after I multiplied my initial 1K, I invested the profits
in starting a legitimate business. I treated every success in affiliate
marketing as a fad, and I'm so glad I moved on after a few years. I've never
"worked" with scummier people then those that ran CPA sites.

~~~
Scoundreller
Since it sounds like you're now out of it and have nothing to lose, could you
elaborate?

Any advice for those now getting into content-based websites that would be
supported by banner ads or affiliates?

(edit out of prompting questions that sounded like I was looking for help on
being a bad guy on the internet)

------
putzdown
It's nice to know that people who fixate on making money not by building
useful or beautiful things but by gaming the system are having a hard time
too. I've seen enough obnoxious Acai Berry spam to know there must be money
there. I'm thankful that the money was short-lived.

~~~
brc
"One weird trick" \- the scams and spams will never leave us.

------
pmcgrathm
We have a great deal in common. I followed a similar path to yours, and
somewhere along the way moved into the Advertiser side of the equation, where
the potential upside is much higher. Being a solo affiliate these days has
been usurped by large companies posing as 'ad networks,' reselling traffic on
the open exchange. With your background, you could make a lot more (in the
form of salary and bonus) by marketing at a company that has a large marketing
budget. I personally know affiliate vets like myself that pull 500k+ salary
and bonus, whilst also having side projects. This is definitely one of those
cases in which your skills are more valuable promoting an existing business
than starting your own.

~~~
imjk
Can you give me an example of a company and position that pays $500K for this
type of work?

------
MicroBerto
Clearly, this guy can write decently well.

Now imagine this: had he spent the time building a consumer-facing _brand_
instead of hocking affiliate scams and other such bullshit, he'd actually be
somewhere.

I've been down this road too, and could write a very similar story. At some
point, though, shouldn't you learn the lesson instead of constantly making the
same short-term mistake for ten years straight??

------
echoless
There are plenty of legitimate products out there to promote, but those Acai
Berry/Weight loss rebill offers were really shady and one had to have
absolutely no moral compass to promote those. Even newbies knew that they were
flat-out scams(for the customer).

You would see marketers justifying these products by saying that the customers
were suckers for not reading the TOS or that nothing was wrong with
rebilling(citing Netflix,which is totally different; people knew it was a
subscription unlike with these shady stuff) and stuff like that. It was
amazing the lengths people went to fool themselves into thinking they weren't
ripping people off.

~~~
johnward
I agree. There are plenty of legitimate channels that use affiliates and there
are tons of shady ones.

------
kposehn
So good to see another affiliate go through details of his experience. I've
been in the space for almost 10 years now as well, and looking back I have a
ton to relate but just haven't ever really written it out.

I never got into some of the things he did, and it did definitely hold my peak
revenue back. I went down a different - and much more technical - route and
had a more consistent income over time.

The big thing that most people don't realize is how the "churn" will get you
in the end. At every moment as an affiliate, it doesn't matter how good you
are - the offer you're running or the network you're buying traffic in can
kill your best campaign in a second, and there is little/nothing you can do.

For example, I had an AMAZING search site for the food & bev space with a
major beverage company as a client. We made a ton of money for them and they
loved us because we were super-white-hat and never had issues. But after 5
years the parent company of our client killed the entire affiliate program.

It didn't matter that we were their top search affiliate - we were a drop in
the bucket for a multi billion dollar company. The campaign ended and the site
is dormant for lack of clients to work with.

This churn gets affiliates all the time. You have to stay one or more steps
ahead of it and constantly be searching for new methods to succeed. In the
end, I looked at that game and decided it was no longer one I wanted to play
with the rules as they were.

------
IanDrake
I had a rather tough time with an affiliate venture that was a short term
success followed by scaling up and ultimately failing.

Nothing nearly as seedy as skinny pills, but I ran a service that would alert
people when "hot, got to have it, out of stock everywhere" items were back in
stock at online retailers. It was a great system that grossed about 45K in the
first three months with little work.

I had started with one product and a simple website, so after the initial
success I doubled down. I spent two months creating a site that would allow me
to add more products, a subscription management system for users, and added a
bunch of retailers to my web scraper.

I also calculated how much revenue I made per user to figure out how much I
should spend to acquire more users. Based on the result I started aggressive
spending on Google adwords with the expectation of future affiliate
commissions.

But then the retailers caught on that I was earning commissions on items they
could barely keep in stock and the gravy train came to an abrupt halt with no
warning. I turned off the adwords just in time to break even. If it wasn't for
Amazon.com staying true, I would have been in the red.

------
jraines
"I still wonder if affiliate rapper dullspace ever got a record deal"

I'm not sure, but he did get into YCombinator

~~~
kposehn
wait, what?

------
e3Yw2HjDrjsRVi
I have this idea to use technology and excellent customer service to be a sort
of agent in the skilled labor market (painting, landscaping, masonry, etc). My
wife is fluent in Spanish and English and I am good with web technologies.

I though we could build relationships with some of the lower cost skilled
labor providers in our area. They are on craigslist or we know them in other
ways. Unfortunately, their English and their customer service skills are often
lacking. I've seen where they don't follow through to make the sale, or don't
give nice estimates/invoices, etc.

I really just want to be a middle man for this market, using Twilio (IVR),
invoicing software, the phone, etc, to give clients a warm-fuzzy. Yeah, my
wife or I may have to drive around, and make sure the jobs are getting done
well, but I want it to be as low touch as possible.

What forum can I research this on? Any one know or have experience in the same
thing?

~~~
somedangedname
What sort of middleman do you want to be? Customer support for the local guys'
clients? Or do you see yourself advertising to the public and contracting
others to work the job sites?

In the latter you will be competing with the labour guys for clients using
local SEO and ads. In the former you won't rely as much on search engines as
the pool of customers is limited to the business owners - more relationship
building and outreach.

I've never found useful stuff on a public marketing forum - the good ones are
probably unknown and selective entry only. Try reading some of the blogs
linked here by other commenters. Hopefully their discerning tastes will filter
out the bs :P

------
admyral
This article was extremely depressing. Not for the author, but that sadly,
this is the state of business done on the Internet. Never does anyone receive
any tangible, lasting value. All of it relying on deceptive or coercive
tactics, or rigging an otherwise legitimate system for individual gain. All of
the tremendous effort that goes into attracting as many people as possible, in
the hopes that a small subset of them are gullible enough to convert.
"Communities" who don't exist to provide resources and support, but to share
tales of their victories and conquests. All this done so they can collect
their next commission check and blow it all on vodka and wild nights in Vegas.
All of it done so they can move on to devising a new scheme to extract money
from the next batch of suckers.

------
iblaine
I like the end. Create a product that people want. I feel the same way. I've
hit the SEO lottery before, earning $20-100k/month, and it didn't last long
enough. Being an affiliate site is a hard gig and I have a lot of respect for
people who can keep it up year after year.

------
coliveira
You have to see it this way: making money with ads has to be hard, because
there is very little benefit for any person who clicks on ads, while at the
same time there is a very low barrier to entry. So contrary to what the make-
money-quick salesmen want you to believe, you have to work a lot to maintain
this type of income.

Things get a little better if you sell an ebook, for example, although most
money spent on ebooks is money lost. Progressing on the benefit curve you will
see that things get very different when you create new technology (think of
Apple or IBM) or invest your capital in something that people need to survive
(food, oil, housing, etc). My philosophy is that you should work on anything
that you like, but the money you make you should invest on things that have
real value.

~~~
mgkimsal
".... you have to work a lot to maintain this type of income."

If you love what you do, it's not work...

------
downandout
I see alot of criticism in this thread, but basically he ran ads against
content, which is the business model of many people reading this. Vice does
the same thing. AOL has become America On Listicles. Facebook and Google also
run ads against content - they both made hundreds of millions from acai berry
ads being run by affiliates like this guy.

I suppose the difference is in the value of the content, but then Facebook got
their start by spamming everyone to death and even today actually has negative
value to me. They make a significant portion of their revenue from scammy
affiliate ads, so they aren't all that different (except that Facebook is
worth $230 billion because they sit at the top of the affiliate marketing food
chain).

------
crimsonalucard
He's not a failure. He's a success, not a big success but a success
nonetheless. What he failed at was keeping his wealth.

------
cm2012
I really enjoyed this article. I think anyone in direct marketing or sales has
experienced highs and lows like the described.

------
spiritplumber
Heya, I have the opposite problem - I keep inventing physical products, and
the people who buy them are happy with their quality, but I'm too shy to
market them properly. Want to talk?

~~~
imjk
What type of products do you create?

~~~
spiritplumber
3D printing accessories like liquid print heads, laser cutters, and continuous
production thing that I call a "broom". Android based robotic rovers (we were
the first to do one at google i/o 2010, I should do a writeup on how that
went). Industrial control systems.

~~~
imjk
Thats really cool. How are people (the few that do) currently buying your
products? How do they find out about them?

~~~
spiritplumber
Paypal, and... that's the thing - I don't want to spam. I did an indiegogo
last year, but I have no idea how to advertise in a non-spammy way.

------
patrickfl
Just here to share a bit about my experience. I've been affiliate marketing
for 8 years, and self-employed for 5 years. (I also run another business)

Affiliate marketing is an emotional roller coaster, not just in the sense that
the money goes up and down so much. It is evertything, constantly watching
traffic and analytics is very draining. It becomes almost impossible to go on
vacation when things are bad. Almost worse wehn things are going good because
all you are worried about doing is scaling.

Like a few other people in this thread, I've been out of the game for a while.
I still have a few profitable campaigns that I am lucky enough to have nailed
down to the point where I'll dominate as long as the niche is alive. I stopped
innovating and testing new things because the industry is so god damn shady.
Not just the CPA offers, I've had affiliate managers steal my campaign
creative ideas, networks continually not pay me out and so many people fk me
over.

Part of me thinks I would still be in the hustle if I didn't get married and
have a kid, but for me it isn't something you can do if you want to
responsibly sustain a household.

For anyone looking to get into this: pick a product (CPA, CPS) that you can
get behind mentally. Can I promote this? Do I know how to sell this? Do I know
how to write creative ads that will be better than the next guys?

------
schandur
Back in 2006, I made enough money through online ads to fund a 10-day trip to
Egypt (excluding the airfare). That was the pinnacle; I don't actively blog
now but I should probably get back just for the fun of it.

------
cpks
10 years to discover you have to create some kind of value to make money
sustainably.... Otherwise, it's just gambling. Bit of a waste, spending that
much time on get-rich-quick schemes.

------
hias
I hate these picture gallery clickbaits sites on facebook. If you are visting
mobile, almost every "next" click redirects you to some ad site and you "have
to go back". And yes, I still click on them because i want to see funny/sexy
stuff ;-)

I will never understand though how people manage to just "burn" serveral
thousands of dollars after they got them. I like to save and don't need any of
this funky stuff. Why would I want to spend 1200$ on some vodka? WTF,
seriously!

~~~
level09
usually people coming from a non-rich/poor family _might_ have this need for
"Status". it's not usually about having value for your money, but most the
time is about feeding the ego, feeling the power and sending a signal of
success to the world around you.

~~~
crxgames
It's not necessarily that, but do not get me wrong for a lot of people it is.
Depending on who you are with, sometimes it is more about the fun. IMO it
really depends on the person/crowd.

I own an automotive business and it is amazing how much networking goes on at
SEMA after parties every year in Vegas. It's really truly depends on the
person and who you are with.

------
droopyEyelids
Thanks for the awesome view into your private world of trying to make it on
your own. As a wage slave, this is the most interesting thing to read about!

------
guelo
I hate sounding like some kind of prude but rap lyrics have got to be the
worst advice being dished out to millions of impressionable young people.

~~~
dustcoin
Ben Horowitz begins all of his blog posts with rap lyrics:
[http://www.bhorowitz.com/](http://www.bhorowitz.com/)

------
BrentSkillhd
Great article. I myself make a full time living online and have dealt with
every single point that was made.

The main thing is on you great months you have at act as if you're still
"broke" just because you have a great month doesn't mean the next one will be.

A few months ago I made a large sum but have only made chump change sense. If
I had spent it all the day I got it, I'd be f __ked.

------
delpino73
Quite interesting to read. The Penguin and Panda updates did a lot of damage
to my legitimate business (which was slowly but steadily growing until that
point) and many others, so there have been a lot of victims of Google trying
to kill off these spammers, collateral damage I guess.

------
InfinityX0
The sad part is he is making an effort here to rank for "Make Money Online",
so he can again make money online. Not sure how confident he is in actually
doing that, but seems like a somewhat recursive cycle..

------
pnathan
Frankly, this stuff was really shady and sketchtastic. I guess I suggest
finding a pastor-type and talking about right behaviors.

How come you never tried to make something people wanted?

~~~
jh3
> How come you never tried to make something people wanted?

When you're making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in your
20s, why would you want to do something different?

------
frade33
an ordinary tale of, one of the millions of adsense-salary drawers, who were
suddenly fired. Starting from the 1st 'Panda' update. I didn't know it
mattered much in the 1st First world, but imagine this in countries like India
& Pakistan. Little young boys became super-rich and bought flats in Dubai and
what not. Now again back to earth. All of them are now fat and depressed, like
the one writing this comment ;)

------
tracker1
This is why I don't think in terms of money buying happiness... it clearly
doesn't... but it can rent it for a while.

~~~
paulhauggis
It buys me happiness. I don't want to work for anyone besides myself and I now
make enough money to do just this.

~~~
tracker1
And unless you have enough money to last your lifetime, and then some without
losing it all, or even most of it, it's temporary... Yes, it _can_ last a
lifetime.. just the same, you don't own it.

------
kenrick95
I enjoy reading `The Downside of Becoming “Rich” Suddenly` since it teaches a
good life lesson on spending wisely.

------
ednihs
try this

<a
href="[https://www.paidverts.com/ref/ednihs﻿"](https://www.paidverts.com/ref/ednihs﻿")
>[https://www.paidverts.com/ref/ednihs﻿</a>](https://www.paidverts.com/ref/ednihs﻿</a>)

------
vgeek
OP should PM grindstone for more motivation.

------
chatmasta
The best way to make money from SEO is to sell tools to the people doing SEO.
Marketplaces of BHW and WF have ~1M revenue per month in aggregate, at least.

------
tempestn
I'm really glad I didn't fall into the trap of just trying to "make money
online". It could have easily happened. My inspiration was the timeless
milliondollarhomepage.com. One simple idea, and boom - a million dollars.
Awesome! So I decided to learn how to build web sites. Then I could make some
kind of site where... maybe people could rate ads. Or something. That sounds
like it would make money.

Fortunately, I decided it didn't make sense to jump straight into a _real_
money-making idea until I knew what I was doing. So as a little project to
learn the ropes, I'd make a site to help with something I was doing at the
time - shopping for a used portable air conditioner on nearby craigslist
sites.

So, I made a really simple little site that just generated links to craigslist
results pages with criteria you specify. Using a mix of really ugly js and
(iirc) Dreamweaver I even programmed some selection boxes that let you choose
multiple states and cities in a more convenient way than a default multi-
select. It was hideous, but I was kind of proud of it, and it cut my air
conditioner search time considerably (although obviously by not nearly as much
time as it took to make the site!)

When I signed up for $5/month GoDaddy hosting (which I've fortunately left far
behind, but that's another story!) I got a $25 Adwords credit. So I used that,
because why not. Also, earlier in my air conditioner search, before I'd even
considered making the site, I had found a few forum threads while looking for
a site like the one I ended up making. So I replied to those as well, in case
it might be useful to anyone else.

A handful of people found the site those ways and started using it. (Like,
probably double digits.) One day one of them posted on some other random forum
to tell people about it, and a few more people trickled in. I certainly didn't
have Adsense at that point, and wouldn't have made anything if I had. But
gradually those people told more people, and I had a slow exponential growth
curve going. They started requesting features, and so I made them. Once I got
up to a few hundred users a day, I decided to try some adsense ads, and made
maybe a few bucks a month. Then a few tens, then hundreds. I remember how
exciting it was when it covered the rent for my basement suite. A little while
after that, I looked into other ways to monetize, while hopefully adding to
the user experience; the first really successful one was adding (optional)
search results from eBay.

Eventually I contracted, and then hired, a designer/developer who helped make
the site look halfway professional. Then I quit my day job to focus on it full
time. Then hired another developer and built a spinoff site. We've got a team
of 4 now, and are looking to add a couple more. It's been 9 years now since I
started work on that first prototype, and about 6 since I quit my day job.
Thankfully I never got the chance to try my "real" idea. (But seriously,
HotOrNot for _ads_? How could that _not_ make money?!)

------
paulhauggis
I visit forums like Wickedfire from time-to-time. Most of the people there
want short-term riches with little to no effort.

In fact, the business I started 4 years ago, which is still profitable today,
came from an idea I saw in Wickedfire. Only, all of the people in the forum
that tried it got banned because they wanted to do it the scammy way..and I
built it like a real business and gave people real value (and still do).

Even the guy in the article seems like he thinks like a gambler and not a
business owner. He makes $100K and what does he do? Blow it on expensive cars,
trips, and other luxury items. He should have taken the money and created a
service or software based on what he has learned from affiliate marketing.
Another route could have been a legitimate marketer. He might be in a happier
place now.

~~~
johnward
To be fair I did point out that blowing the money was an obvious mistake on my
part. Those numbers don't include expenses either. Actually most of the money
was lost to testing new ideas.

~~~
phkahler
I found it odd that even after some success, you had to borrow money and look
for credit limit increases. Or did you have the money and it was just that CC
was the method of payment?

~~~
chatmasta
Affiliate networks usually payout on net-30 max, or net-7 minimum. Google and
other ad networks take payments on net-3 or less. So you have to float money
for ads while you wait to get paid.

~~~
johnward
Yeah it's all about managing cashflow. That's how the entire thing works.
Affiliates float money hoping the network pays. The network floats money
hoping the advertiser pays. When the advertiser can't pay a lot of people
disappear.

------
atwebb
Just a friendly note, you may want to do some revisions/proofreading.

~~~
jmilloy
I think comments like this are OT and misplaced. It adds nothing to our
discussion here and assumes that the author will read all of the comments here
(though I did note that in this case the author has submitted the post
himself). This is direct correspondence to the author, so send him a message.

~~~
atwebb
I think everyone else agreed with you, just found it a bit distracting when
reading the article and I rarely comment on grammar or spelling, the post was
fresh when I made the comment and the post was made by the blog author. I made
an assumption he'd be monitoring the thread and made a friendly note here, or
so I thought.

~~~
johnward
I did take your friendly note and go back through the post but I'm just
terrible at catching those things.

------
nurettin
I thought this was yet another snakeoil article posted on hackernews. Too many
of them around these days. (Markov chains for stock market profit?? Parsing
stuff and oh-check out-my-awesome-SaaS?? Installing stuff and oh-click-my-DO-
affiliate-link??)

Turned out to be a humblebrag with no new insights into the affiliate
networks. I think it basically states that the train has left and you are 10
years late.

~~~
jplahn
Humblebrag? Maybe. But was there a promise of new insights into affiliate
networks? He simply described his experience with online income, but he never
claimed to provide fresh insight into the business.

