Forum Moderators: skibum
to make a story short, I'm still alive and kicking. After about a year of hanging in Europe, I returned back to the good ol' US and been kickin it here in San Jose since this past January. As far as affiliate marketing, I've been making ends meet, but I did not bring revenue up. In the last two years, it wobbled up and down, but kinda got steady at $100/day and it kinda got stuck there. The biggest factor tho was probably that I got bored with the lifestyle of 'work-at-home' creating template sites. I did not develop more content or features, because I was just not motivated. It didn't help that most of my friends do have school or full time jobs, so being at home wasn't that much of a benefit as a single guy, except that I ended up watching a lot of movies, and working out a lot.
As of last month, I made a conscious decision to look for a job. In a fit of genius, or madness, I dusted off my resume, putting in my experiences that I learned in the past two years of AM and AS, with the intention of going into a company that worked in the internet marketing field. This way, I'd still be involved in the industry, but not only that, I'd get to be exposed to different ways and methods of doing things. From day one, a long time ago , when I first picked a book on html, to learning about affiliate marketing nad finding this site, I've been self taught, and so I've never learned other people's ways. By working at a company in the industry, I'd be able to learn processes done at a higher level than the one-man-company structure that I've worked with for the past few years. Brilliant? I think so.
Lo and behold I ended up landing 2 job opportunities as search engine marketing specialist and one as an affiliate manager. I went with the aff. manager position, because 1) it is at an online startup so I get to poke my nose in other aspects of the company 2) the title and responsabilities are higher up and 3) it pays damn well. Technically I'm doing exactly the same thing I was doing for myself, except that now its on someone else's dime and I get to wake up early at 6am to go to work in an office. Yey! Who would've thought? I do love it so far - time flies by, I spend most of my time in front of the computer, trying to figure out the best combination of affiliate programs to sign up and run. Our site deals heavily with the employment and education sector, so I'm getting paid to learn the high stakes game of education leads. (I was surprised to check my yahoo email and find University of Phoenix ads on their pages). On top of that, we contract ad campaigns to a professional adwords company, with a budget of $30k a month, and I'm a candidate to take on a lot of the e-marketing efforts. The next ad-Tech or CJ conference? my boss already said we're there! These are resources and opportunities that as a one man shop I would have never have been exposed to.
So yeah, you could say I didn't make the cut into financial independence, and I'm dropping back into the rat race, but it's okay. In the end I just felt the lifestyle was too unstructured for me, and in the two years I learned that tho it was nice to be able to travel the world and be a globe trotting vagabond, really I ended up missing on the connections you build with staying in one place for an extended period of time. And this job couldn't be more smack into the middle of things that is relevant to running sites for yourself!
For what it's worth, getting a combined income(salary+aff) of about $100k+/yr isn't too shabby for this decision and for learning and playing with other people's money :) The downside(upside?) is, my performance can be tracked directly to the bottom line of the company, and I estimate I have to triple their affiliate revenue(calculated through earnings/visitor) in the next few months in order to justify my salary. It's a nice fun challenge!
Waht's for the future? I do plan on keeping my sites running. I don't have to try and push out crappy datafeed sites over and over in an attempt to bring in the quick bucks. I've come up with an idea that deals with the adult industry that I think would be very unique in its implementation. And we all know the adult world is possibly the biggest market out there. I can contract out some of the programming work to some dude in India at a fraction of the price it will cost me in opportunity cost if I were to do it myself, so I can move my game a whole lot higher and more to a strategical aspect than ever before :)
Update your blog sometime too :)
thanks for the update!
I just cannot believe it!
Seriously though, it's great to hear from u, and I'm pleased that you are settled and happy.
Keep in touch.
I read with interest your '$20 a day' thread and it inspired me to keep at it when my site was only making $3 a month...
I'm now also at the $20 a day, still in the rat race, but the extra money is very handy.
