My 1-year-or-so experience in AM has taught me some painful lessons: and by painful, I mean much more than just "oh I've got cash flow problems, poor lil me"-type shit. So if you find yourself bitching about things like that: stop being an idiot like I was and be grateful for what you have, stuff like that is nothing compared to the things which actually hurt.
I started out pretty much flat broke, so forget about startup capital and whatever. I used to write articles for someone and made like $1.5k/month by working like a robot, I almost used to dream about "San Diego Mortgage Refinancing" and other topics I used to cover.
Those topics made me ask myself some pretty big questions and I quickly realized that there's far more money to be made, so I continued working for the guy for another month and then decided that I had enough put aside to start doing something myself. I told the person I was working for that it's time to move on, he was very ok about everything and we've kept in touch afterwards.
Then things started developing very fast: I signed up for some networks and started to read like crazy for about a week or so. Strangely enough, I discovered that I can be pretty good at gaming systems/thinking outside the box and I've managed to make that work for me. I had like 10 profitable days each month (the other 20 were spent planning and testing shit out after each method stopped working) and things seemed to go in my favor.
Had my first 1k+ month, my first wire, my first bi-weekly wire, my first $1k+day.
I know it's not a fortune compared to how much money some of you guys here on WF make, but having my first $500, $1k and $1.5k day felt *ing awesome. Then I turned into an idiot, I don't know what other explanation there may be: I thought that just because I made a lot more than what I did as a writer by working considerably less, I was somehow bulletproof.
Boy was I wrong!!!
Putting expenses aside, I had managed to have about $15k in my bank account. And I'm NOT from the US, the average wage where I live is about $300/month so $15k is a pretty big deal...or so I thought.
I continued with my usual approach: about 10 profitable days each month and everything seemed to run pretty smoothly. I was pretty much done with gaming systems and have kind of moved on to PPC. I do tend to bend the rules, but aside from that nothing spectacular.
I thought I had it all figured out and since I had a lot of interwebz monies at my disposal, making bank became a piece of cake. My latest experience, that with MySpace, brought earnings which reached $1.5k/day at its peak.
When you're making bank, it's easy to think that you're on top of the world, but take my word for it: the structure is as fragile as it gets.
That's exactly what happened as far as I'm concerned. I thought that living outside the US was a huge advantage because you can accomplish more with $1k, $10k here given the fact that everything tends to be cheaper.
Turns out it wasn't!
Living in Eastern Europe actually had one disadvantage after another, as I was going to quickly find out. In my country, you see reports each day about how the health system is one of the worst there is, but you never realize just how dangerous that is until you have to experience it first-hand.
We found out about my mother's illness about a month ago and our experience with the national health system was terrible. It was clear for me that we have to go abroad, so I started searching and found one of the best facilities in Europe.
You'd think that paying taxes for 20 years would get you a good insurance plan, right? Wrong!!! Our insurance didn't cover anything and in the best case scenario, we're going to receive $1k or something in about one year.
The cost for the operation+ treatment was about $65,000 - 65 thousand dollars, out of which our insurance didn't cover anything. We've never even received one cent from them.
The $15k I had saved up were enough for the surgery and some additional costs, and I'm very happy that the surgery (a little over a week ago) was a success.
However, the fact that I found myself needing about $40-$50k within 5 months remained. My father earns about $1k monthly and my mother about $200, so saving money is obviously not an option because there's nowhere to save from.
You can see how everything I thought I had planned as far as my PPC campaigns go was impossible to achieve, because the treatment needs to be done in the other country once every three weeks and costs a lot of money, so I obviously cannot afford to have money tied up anywhere or wait for networks to pay me.
So now I pretty much need to raise money with keeping investments to a min. level. The $1.5/day I used to earn when my campaign was at its peak turned into about $100/day - $50 profit.
That's just how things are in AM: once you can't afford to make things happen, you're a nobody. $50/day means $1.5k/month or $7.5k in 5 months compared to the $40-$50k which need to be raised.
I quickly realized that offering services was my only option to make money without having to wait for wires and without having to invest money myself, so I've started writing again.
I currently make about $100/day writing here on WF and hopefully it'll go up. Together with the $50 I make from my campaigns, it's about $150/day and $4.5k/month, that brings me to about 50% of what I need. I'm recently spending about 6-7 hours/day effectively writing and I'm ready to even spend 15/day if I have enough orders coming in.
I'm not the type of guy who gives up or feels sorry for himself: the $40-$50k do not magically appear unless I make that happen. I wanted to share this painful experience with you because I honestly hope it helps you appreciate what you have more and that helps you see things in perspective. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, so at least I hope I've helped you understand that:
1) Earning $1k+/day DOESN'T make you bulletproof
2) In the end, almost nothing turns out as planned
3) Even when you're desperate, you have to keep going and try everything humanly possible to make things happen: feeling sorry for yourself ain't gonna get you anywhere
I started out pretty much flat broke, so forget about startup capital and whatever. I used to write articles for someone and made like $1.5k/month by working like a robot, I almost used to dream about "San Diego Mortgage Refinancing" and other topics I used to cover.
Those topics made me ask myself some pretty big questions and I quickly realized that there's far more money to be made, so I continued working for the guy for another month and then decided that I had enough put aside to start doing something myself. I told the person I was working for that it's time to move on, he was very ok about everything and we've kept in touch afterwards.
Then things started developing very fast: I signed up for some networks and started to read like crazy for about a week or so. Strangely enough, I discovered that I can be pretty good at gaming systems/thinking outside the box and I've managed to make that work for me. I had like 10 profitable days each month (the other 20 were spent planning and testing shit out after each method stopped working) and things seemed to go in my favor.
Had my first 1k+ month, my first wire, my first bi-weekly wire, my first $1k+day.
I know it's not a fortune compared to how much money some of you guys here on WF make, but having my first $500, $1k and $1.5k day felt *ing awesome. Then I turned into an idiot, I don't know what other explanation there may be: I thought that just because I made a lot more than what I did as a writer by working considerably less, I was somehow bulletproof.
Boy was I wrong!!!
Putting expenses aside, I had managed to have about $15k in my bank account. And I'm NOT from the US, the average wage where I live is about $300/month so $15k is a pretty big deal...or so I thought.
I continued with my usual approach: about 10 profitable days each month and everything seemed to run pretty smoothly. I was pretty much done with gaming systems and have kind of moved on to PPC. I do tend to bend the rules, but aside from that nothing spectacular.
I thought I had it all figured out and since I had a lot of interwebz monies at my disposal, making bank became a piece of cake. My latest experience, that with MySpace, brought earnings which reached $1.5k/day at its peak.
When you're making bank, it's easy to think that you're on top of the world, but take my word for it: the structure is as fragile as it gets.
That's exactly what happened as far as I'm concerned. I thought that living outside the US was a huge advantage because you can accomplish more with $1k, $10k here given the fact that everything tends to be cheaper.
Turns out it wasn't!
Living in Eastern Europe actually had one disadvantage after another, as I was going to quickly find out. In my country, you see reports each day about how the health system is one of the worst there is, but you never realize just how dangerous that is until you have to experience it first-hand.
We found out about my mother's illness about a month ago and our experience with the national health system was terrible. It was clear for me that we have to go abroad, so I started searching and found one of the best facilities in Europe.
You'd think that paying taxes for 20 years would get you a good insurance plan, right? Wrong!!! Our insurance didn't cover anything and in the best case scenario, we're going to receive $1k or something in about one year.
The cost for the operation+ treatment was about $65,000 - 65 thousand dollars, out of which our insurance didn't cover anything. We've never even received one cent from them.
The $15k I had saved up were enough for the surgery and some additional costs, and I'm very happy that the surgery (a little over a week ago) was a success.
However, the fact that I found myself needing about $40-$50k within 5 months remained. My father earns about $1k monthly and my mother about $200, so saving money is obviously not an option because there's nowhere to save from.
You can see how everything I thought I had planned as far as my PPC campaigns go was impossible to achieve, because the treatment needs to be done in the other country once every three weeks and costs a lot of money, so I obviously cannot afford to have money tied up anywhere or wait for networks to pay me.
So now I pretty much need to raise money with keeping investments to a min. level. The $1.5/day I used to earn when my campaign was at its peak turned into about $100/day - $50 profit.
That's just how things are in AM: once you can't afford to make things happen, you're a nobody. $50/day means $1.5k/month or $7.5k in 5 months compared to the $40-$50k which need to be raised.
I quickly realized that offering services was my only option to make money without having to wait for wires and without having to invest money myself, so I've started writing again.
I currently make about $100/day writing here on WF and hopefully it'll go up. Together with the $50 I make from my campaigns, it's about $150/day and $4.5k/month, that brings me to about 50% of what I need. I'm recently spending about 6-7 hours/day effectively writing and I'm ready to even spend 15/day if I have enough orders coming in.
I'm not the type of guy who gives up or feels sorry for himself: the $40-$50k do not magically appear unless I make that happen. I wanted to share this painful experience with you because I honestly hope it helps you appreciate what you have more and that helps you see things in perspective. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, so at least I hope I've helped you understand that:
1) Earning $1k+/day DOESN'T make you bulletproof
2) In the end, almost nothing turns out as planned
3) Even when you're desperate, you have to keep going and try everything humanly possible to make things happen: feeling sorry for yourself ain't gonna get you anywhere
