Thread: Your success story ?

Success stories are always nice to hear. Even about how you earned your very first 1$ and then your first 100$ etc. So tell when did you earn your first 1$ online and from where did you earn it. Also about the first $100. Share your victories and failures along the way.


I earned my first 1$ online in 2005 from AdSense. It took me over one year to each first $100 because all my sites were new. Second at network I have been successful with is Amazon. Again it took me like one year to reach my first $100. I used all blogspot sites to earn from Amazon since those were getting lot of Google traffic and I started earn around $50 per month from each blog with my own content. Then blogger started their witch hunt to crack down spam blogs and Affiliate blogs so things started getting bad. It seems having affiliate links in every post was taken as SPAM even posts contained unique content. I lot almost all of my Amazon earnings and traffic. But a good lesson learned ! use your own domain names and hosting. That was over 1 year ago now I'm again building up network of sites with my own domains. So My goal for the moment is earning combine revenue of $5000 per month. There is a long way to go but my plan is to reach it with in 3 years.

I'm also interesting in CJ and Click bank but haven't starting using them yet.

Well, its a great idea to share our success thoughts over here. I am thankful for bluearrow to start this.

I have stepped into Internet Blogging for just a year ago and presently earning a full time income through freelance article writing. I get my $1 from Hubpages.com a year back but not work so much to get more income. Just use hubpages.com articles as for my profile to get jobs at freelancing sites. Then I started my blog just a 3 months back with Unranked ranking and now it has alexa ranking 214255. Currently earn only $10 from AdSense, now started building other sites also. Well my focus to earn at least $500 per month in this year from AdSense. I have not earned much from Amazon but I am seriously thinking to use it.

I want to step into Affiliate Marketing also but no idea about it. I think if anybody share his success through Affiliate Marketing over here ,it will be a great idea.

Here is my story...

I started about 10+ years ago with different money making tactics, like software selling, ebay selling, first affiliate marketing programs, later came adsense....
In that first days I was earning nearly nothing, back in that days you didn't have the right information or any info about IM or SEO especially if you where outside US(no seminars, credits cards to purchase anything, etc..)
So after a while I found some resources like warrior forum and been on some first IM mailing lists in that time (pople like Corey Rudl, Ken Evoy, etc), I also bought first IM/SEO courses, so I have learned some stuff, but still I didn't know what to do, because these guys where smart and keeping secrets to themselves. I knew that I need to start testing all that techniques and see which one is working, so I have been testing and reading/learning for a while, a few years and I earned few bucks in the process ($100-$200 a month)...
So next thing after I gained some knowledge, about 5 years ago, I was doing MFA(made for adsense sites), real affiliate stuff with CJ and amazon, doorway pages, some resale rights stuff and I started to see some results, my first $ where from the adsense, affiliate and resale rights... all that combined it was something about $500-$1000 a month, it was OK because that was my side money, because I was working at my 9-5 job all that time..., but I knew that you can "really" earn from this, if you play your cards right and if you work hard.
So back to the "school" and read and test some more, buy some more courses like John Reese and Jeff Johnson stuff and also try to find as much good and quality info out there as you can, so this time I learned really a LOT from others and from my own experience testing different stuff during past years, that combined gave me a great picture about how stuff is really working and suddenly all came to me, something like focus on your camera, when you see all but all is blurred and suddenly focus is right and you have clear picture of what is out there, really amazing feeling...
Because I was working 9-5, I couldn't start some real business, so I chosen affiliate marketing, plus some other thing like adsense and also testing new things...
I decided that I will start my first BIG site for some really competitive keywords(travel industry), so some months after my BIG site hits Google 1st page for 3 very very competitive(fearsome competition, big dogs) search terms and suddenly I was earning thousands in commission every month just from that site alone, after a while I was at number 5 spot for that keywords and traffic was poring in, my best month was something about $5.500 in commission only from that site alone and I didn't fine tune that site, I guess I could earn more than a double... So I paid for redesign of that site and while waiting on that I was working my way to the top 3 for my main keywords, when suddenly my competitors pulled some really nasty stuff and my site was on second page for my main keywords instantly, then after a while third page, I was still ranking for few hundreds other keywords for my home page and my deep pages, but my main keywords where gone, no matter what I do(I built thousands of quality backlinks) that keywords where not moving at all from that 3rd page. Let me tell you what monthly searches are for that 3 main keywords, we are talking about 3.000.000+ monthly searches (3 keywords combined) "exact match" searches in google keyword tool, so this is for adwords, now multiply that with 4-5 times for organic searches, I assume that you understand now what type of competition I have to deal with, they are willing to do what ever it takes to move you from 1st page of Google, trust me.
Now I still have that site, after a new redesign my sales went up 5 times and it still brings me from $500-1500 a month, but I don't spend much time or any time at all dealing with it, I just let it bee now for past few months/year...
I also have some other affiliate sites and I got smarter again not to go with ultimate competitive keywords any more, not because I can't get them on top 10, but because I know competitors are always watching and they will do anything to stay there.
Now I go for mid and some higher competitive keywords just to stay under the radar, but still earn some decent $.
There where some other stuff going on in the past, but this is a short story and I have chosen only some highlights to shorten it.
Also for ages I wanted to start some IM/SEO community and make some SEO tools, because I like everything related to IM and SEO and I like helping people, but never did and finally a few months ago I decided (as you know ) to make this forum and pursue my dream...
Now I'm full time IM (no more 9-5 job thank God ) and my "little" project is my main focus and I really love working on it, I have some other projects going on, but this I like the best and I have some great plans for this forum for the future .

Thanks for posting inspiring story, Nemanja.

If you don't mind could you get how did you monetize the travel site ? Which ad networks did you use ?

Looking forward to read more success stories, big or small every story inspire others.

I'm monetizing that site by affiliate travel offers like hotels, flights, cruises, etc.
Network I'm using for that site is Linkshare, they have some big names in there.

I haven't used Linkshare so I ll check them.

I think Travel is becoming bigger niche market so I want to make several web sites targeting local tourism.

i started from my online stuff from a game
I used to play a popular rpg game and always thought i would like to have my own where i could have all my m8s on then came the day i found one i could afford
yep didnt even know how to edit a file had it uploaded by the script developer and set about getting people playing from the other game
php html seo was all basically unheard of for me but i learnt fast over the years as the site was hacked on many many occasions and of course i had to learn to cut costs first year i spent putting every penny back into the site to improve it and started reading seo how to's and everything i came across on seo html php etc or releted to the gaming industry my site grew as time went on i decided on natural seo and did every link myself truthfully i was sitting at my pc for days on end from around 9am untill 1 or 2 in the morning mon to fri and if i was not doing anything at the weekend then too
afetr a long slog and 10k in links later and a pr4 site with over 12,000 registrations i sat back a little money was good jumped around a hell of a lot but i was averaging around $500 a week some weeks a lot lot more
cut a long story short after learning a hell of a lot on my own i started building more sites and it snowballed right this minute i couldnt actually say just how many i have exactly but its over 30
this generates a nice income for me now as i left my work due to health reasons so this now is my source of income tbh i have got lazy in the last year but i think i have worked hard enough to take a little break
i sold the game last year in the $xx,xxx range to a good friend who now has paid staff running it for him and generating an income for him

Thanks for the success story Apexglm, So which ad / affiliate networks are your main sources of income ?

mostly clickbank,amazon,adsense ,private ads and link sales
adsense provides a monthly quite steady amount rest just tops that up nicely

---------- Post added 04-23-2011 at 11:37 AM ----------

mostly clickbank,amazon,adsense ,private ads and link sales
adsense provides a monthly quite steady amount rest just tops that up nicely

Amazon works for you ? Tell about revenue if you dont mind. I haven't used ClickBack. Pretty hard to covert sales.

not that geat but over all my sites i do see sales as i said these just top things up
mostly its adsense and private ads
sold two sites last year in total which gave me more for the year than working a 9 to 5 so as long as i keep that up everythings good

Great !

Everyone else, guys and girls share your story here, don't be shy !!

wow what a long story from nemanja and other members.. for me i don't have any good story to tell, i'm just newbies and still a lot to learn, everyday i learn a new thing, my first dollar come from adsense

So you can share how your adSense earnings are ? did you passed the first 100$ mile stone and first 1000$ mile stone for a month ?

It doesn't matter the story is longer or shorter. Good if you can share as much as details you can. Things like When did you get into Internet marketing and earning money online, ad networks you have used, failures and success, about revenue and everything.

i dont ever publish earnings anywhere thats a golden rule i might give a very very rough estimate but experience has taught me its best just not saying
right now i would say i am at the top best i have ever been but things change and its a constant battle let your guard down and next thing you take a dive in income some of my sites i have not maintained for around 3 or 4 months right now all are suffering as i am doing a big seo project for 50 keywords that has to come first,my new blog i have hardly done a thing to it checked it today and it has 16 incoming links but thats what i do every link i build and source myself and every link is checked out 9 times out of ten its content related. i do have a little network of other sites i use to experiment with also if they get hurt its not a problem so when i do things on my main sites i know it works this is how i keep on top.
as for the affiliates i only add products that are what my sites are about if no direct product match i dont add any
used loads of ad networks tried them all out at one time or another for my site i just use adsense now with private ads monthly fee i also vet my ads and only accept sites that would be ok for with mine when i started off i didnt have the pleasure of being able to do this i also do this with links bought returned quite a few payments over time
one ad network i really hate with a passion is adbrite

bluearrow, i'm still newbies and don't get any first $100 milestone yet, i just keep learning new thing every day and try to apply what i've learnt, i hope that i can be a full time IM ASAP But as we know, Rome is not built in just one day, still a lot to do and to learn

no matter who it is they are still learning we never stop as things change
the trick is to stay ahead and know whats coming and be ready for it
its cut throat out there and tbh if someone finds a way to a major earner they wont disclose it untill its practically dies off and they can make more money selling an ebook of the success lol

Originally Posted by franberries

bluearrow, i'm still newbies and don't get any first $100 milestone yet, i just keep learning new thing every day and try to apply what i've learnt, i hope that i can be a full time IM ASAP But as we know, Rome is not built in just one day, still a lot to do and to learn

If you have already earn your first $1 and first $10 then earning $100 is far away. You should be able to do it 3-4 months if you work hard on your sites. But it takes a while get used to this online career thing I think. You doing this full time or with a day job ?

I'm doing some other business related to tourism, so I don't have any special story to share with you about my online career. Maybe with time I will get some success with online business too.

I don't have a significant success story — yet. I more or less backed into the position that I hold now. I became interested in building websites in 2007. I first put up a personal site on ISP space and a site for my business on the same space. I bought hosting in late December of 2007 and some domain names and began building sites. I was approved by Adsense in January of 2008 and made six cents that month. It was not until October of 2009 that I got my first Google check. I had fun building sites, but paid no attention to SEO, or even knew much about it back then. Few of these 'hobby' sites have any real potential, although I do have several sites that do have potential.

In the fall of 2009 I lost a major contract for my business that had provided a comfortable level of income for me for the previous dozen years. I began to look at the Internet as a potential source of income. I began learning about Internet Marketing and improving some sites that do have some potential. For the last year I have seen quarterly checks from Google and the trend is upward. Soon there will be a check every other month, and I hope by fall to see a monthly income. December and January are very slow in my business (live sound production), so I need a boost by that time.

My primary weakness has always been offsite SEO. I do have lots of pages that need work onpage but I have had no link building strategy. Thanks to the information on this forum and the IMTalk Tools I am beginning to make some progress. I do need to focus more and take more action, but there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.