My 1000'th knowledge bomb early (because I'll never reach 1000 posts) 10yrs in 20min.

Great post, thankyou!

Is mobile changing the way you're doing or looking to do things? Obviously, we have things like responsive websites now - but do you think customers or affiliates will be looking more and more towards the mobile app markets. Are / how are cb changing to make the most of this?
 


Did the whole PW reset song and dance for the first time in ages so I could +rep. Norb's one of the rare people in this biz who practise what they preach.
 
I haven't seen this many 'great post' comments since... well ever, thank you kindly guys I'm happy you're pulling from it and genuinely hope it helps you rethink your journey and reflect on your journey to date.

I used to be here doubting myself and being all jealous of the guys slanging berries and doing crazy numbers on CPA rebills while slowly tinkering with my clickbank portfolio having a lot of moments of "ehhh maybe I'm doing it wrong, some of these guys are reaching my milestone in a few months where it's taken me years to just get here..".

However that was before I really got blessed with something more than a good short-term launch and spike. Once the big idea happened and took off, the money became kind of nothing more than a cool side effect of a powerful daily routine. You're still doing the same shit you were, but you focused and aimed right and hit bullseye, this isn't a spike, this is you stuck in crazy launch mode for years - Difference is now there is a lot of 'stuff' happening including money, and you're really scattered again but for great reasons. If you're smart you're not looking at it (damoney), you're looking at what you did right, and why it worked so well, and how to quickly maximize this moment because time shifts everything.

---

@Nick, MOBILE: It didn't really do anything special, at first I thought I would lose a lot of market because phone apps for drum machines/music production are indeed huge but over time I learned that no matter how cool gadgets get real producers or those trying to get into it are going to stick to their desktops, big screens, powerful machines, etc.

My affiliates on the other hand - took GREAT initiative and did a lot of cool campaigns to convert people from mobile to their desktops when they got home. I forget a lot of them now but I do remember being impressed more than once seeing ppl sneak an app in the store based around free beats or quick little games and push them to my site or their landers.

I started to make an app/game a while back actually ( Mission To Mayhem - Operation Save Gaia - Addictive Video Game For Iphone & Android ) because I too got fascinated by app world, but typical me it went from a little game to 80 levels, multi-character, 5 worlds, and I stopped half-way haha, will finish it someday. I tried looking for talent to convert my software into an app and failed many times too. EVen offered a bunch of the current app owners "make a version for me, stick my logo there, take 50%, I'll look after it, I have xx,xxx sounds internally produced we can share on that too" but none bit so I said fuck it and was already on a bit of a decline with it.

Some of other cool little highlights I experienced with my journey:

* I went on DragonsDen with it (only got to auditions though, got kinda chewed out, the story details are on the forum somewhere, I think in my 'so i did an interview' thread).

* I got poked fun of by DeadMau5, ppl on this forum and on Skype were telling me all day that this D5 dude is making fun of my stuff, at the time, and even though I'm from Toronto too and should know more about him, I was like "yeah so, wtf is a deadmou5?" then I saw his 2million facebook followers and x,xxx comments/likes/laughs about my software - then I logged into my clickbank account and :):):):):) went into the comments and thanked him, gave out a bunch of copies in the comments, and it toppled my then plateau of not being able to grow anymore at the time. I couldn't have planned for this or bought this type of plug. He never responded to my attempts to say thank you or send him a gift or something but I tried. SKRILLEX also did a few likes or shares or something but it was smaller and it didn't have the same effect, still really cool though (all this because I named it dubturbo, and it was before dubstep took off, so we repositioned for the EDM/Dub audience - and then made one called wobbleboss, and I guess they noticed :)).

* Hiring staff. Having a part/full time team is a strange thing if you've never done it. Once I started to get xx customer support tickets a day, and I couldn't focus on todays moves or just relax for a day/week, I hired ppl and they paid for themselves to be there many fold over so I learned to finally share the pie a little more internally, not be so paranoid about my... stuff - and free up my time to maneuver. This was an important lesson, who to give the keys too, how many, how to slowly build trust, incentive, and a solid biz relationship.

* Getting attacked: Reflecting on it now, it was a good experience, I can write a book on blackhat competitor sabotage from the shit I dealt with (biggest one being a 5-6 month attack on SO many levels including random intermittent way overkill DDOSing where I'm paying bucketloads to stay up and filter packets well with an at the time DDOS specialized host (I also learned the value of hosting your big winner in a good neighborhood vs a shitty host, it helps your serps a lot more than you'd think), to social tarnishing, to email bloating, to poaching staff/devs/affs/support, to 100% cloning and rewording of my sites/softwares, to seeing the power of VCC's in the wrong hands (massive buys then massive refunds by design in creative ways), to a whole slate of other stuff.

I got to see my affiliates do some amaaaaazing marketing and be sneaky, tricky, gray/black in some cases - but I also got to see how the minds of criminals work, how I can get fukt, and how much I need to relax in order to actually stay sane while all this is happening on top of earning enough to cover it all and be worth keeping it up. Eventually my own success took me out (I won't share it publicly but my own affiliates or a smart competitor did something so shady it forced me to close shop or go through endless lawsuits and hunt for ppl in Russia and the UK, fuck that). By then though, I had already pulled everything I could out of this, was on a natural decline of the offer anyway, they showed up just a tad too late and all of them wasted a lot of money and time trying to get me as I retained more marketshare than all of them combined, they sold their sites, or let them die and I finally got to breathe easier.

K I'm ending it here for the morning - make it a great day boyz!
 
ncmedia said:
* Getting attacked: Reflecting on it now, it was a good experience, I can write a book on blackhat competitor sabotage from the shit I dealt with (biggest one being a 5-6 month attack on SO many levels including random intermittent way overkill DDOSing where I'm paying bucketloads to stay up and filter packets well with an at the time DDOS specialized host (I also learned the value of hosting your big winner in a good neighborhood vs a shitty host, it helps your serps a lot more than you'd think), to social tarnishing, to email bloating, to poaching staff/devs/affs/support, to 100% cloning and rewording of my sites/softwares, to seeing the power of VCC's in the wrong hands (massive buys then massive refunds by design in creative ways), to a whole slate of other stuff.

I got to see my affiliates do some amaaaaazing marketing and be sneaky, tricky, gray/black in some cases - but I also got to see how the minds of criminals work, how I can get fukt, and how much I need to relax in order to actually stay sane while all this is happening on top of earning enough to cover it all and be worth keeping it up. Eventually my own success took me out (I won't share it publicly but my own affiliates or a smart competitor did something so shady it forced me to close shop or go through endless lawsuits and hunt for ppl in Russia and the UK, fuck that). By then though, I had already pulled everything I could out of this, was on a natural decline of the offer anyway, they showed up just a tad too late and all of them wasted a lot of money and time trying to get me as I retained more marketshare than all of them combined, they sold their sites, or let them die and I finally got to breathe easier.

K I'm ending it here for the morning - make it a great day boyz!
Click to expand...

Some cool posts in this thread man. Glad to hear of your successes. I personally would pay money to read the details about the people trying to fuck you over and blackhat their way to stealing your biz.

Either way, interesting stuff and thanks for sharing.
 
^ Maybe one day I'll spill everything in an ebook you can buy.


just kidding.

It was a dark time, I couldn't let anyone know, especially my affiliate base or biggest earners or those closest to me in the biz (so I don't freak everyone out or lose my base slowly). It was someone I knew doing it which compounded the frustration but not enough proof yet to do anything through legal and it's bullshit trying that route in this scenario. SO many times I thought I was out, hanging by a string, but I ate it and had to pretend all was ok. And for the most part it was, it was just very taxing and tiring on the psyche.

As for all the methods they used, well if I wasn't raised right I could take out anyone right now in 19 different ways and make it look natural while I clone and launch 5 of my own versions for a sniper launch in x months... A lot of the stuff they did was not calculated and had me thinking "wow dudes, at least you could have xxx", i.e. the VCC's were a batch so it was easy to tell it was all a farce, each time we did a launch of a new little sub-product on a new domain, instant DDOS overkill for a few days, email support botched with thousands of fake looking support tickets so we're left hunting for real ones, constantly waking up running to my machine to make sure I'm up... They had me going pretty good for a while so they did do a lot right, including mindfucks so I get so tired of it all I walk away - no fuk'n way not when you're making this kind of money, bring it on.

Then one day it all literally just stopped cold turkey, I think they had enough or too many crooks in the kitchen and maybe had internal beefs. At the same time I noticed competitors products started dying, all my affiliates started returning from the poach (they didn't convert, it was all inflated and gravity rise faked, it dropped like a rock within a few days once they stopped funding the fake gravity to attract aff's. Nothing goes from a gravity of xxx to low xx in a few days naturally on a Tuesday and nothing about the offer changed.. To the trained eye that charting is fukt and something is up).

Crazy times mang :). I remember it being good because it forced me to both UP my value like crazy for customers (which is who it's all about at the end of the day, once they compare our offers, they are buying mine fuck you), and build out a ton of sites and sub-brands to solidify my lead and create software they can't clone this time which I did x 19 titles which I gave/give away free and a bunch of premium ones. This is actually where I discovered that yes ppl WILL pay $xxx (where as my main product would not convert on any tests past $39) if I build better shit, so I did. Hence why I say it was a good experience. Nobody likes to be attacked, but new competitors in your niche force you to maximize corners you didn't see before and really focus on what this shit is all about when it's biz vs biz (which is still customer satisfaction in my books no matter how much you invest into attacking me).

N.
 
ncmedia said:
...once they compare our offers, they are buying mine fuck you...
Click to expand...

Something I stress to the highest degree for new product developers when competing with something already out there. Be it price, value, what they get, make it absolutely no brainer. I temporarily lowered my price to match my new competitors, then said fuck it and raised it back up. I had way more value, and an extra $10 (my differential to them, and $20 to the other alternate) wasn't enough to make customers buy theirs. Actually that's a funny thing for me too, each time I raised the price, I moved more units instead of less (it's too cheap to be good).. HOWEVER this only worked x months and x years into the offer as previous price tests proved shitty, so with some establishing of your brand re time you can definitely reposition easier and maximize earnings (aka never stop split testing even if it's been years now since launch).
 
Getting flashbacks from 2007-2008 by reading your posts Norb, when we were all on DP at one time, then on NC forum up until the end of 2013...

Funny that what you say today was probably true even 10 years ago and will always be "the way to do business", no matter how many years pass.

In essence, come up with a profitable, monetizable idea, build a strong offer/product, test the fuck out of it until the conversions are maxed, sell it yourself and recruit affiliates to scale it as much as possible.

It all sounds very simple in one paragraph, but as you start to dig deeper, so many questions pop up of how to do things, what's better or where's more money to be made, etc...I think in the end it just boils down to whether you stick with it or not, and keep learning from your failures by pushing forward, constantly improving and not giving up.

Motivational crap or whatnot, but as Joe Girard said: "If it's to be, it's up to me".

Your threads back in the day taught me a lot and you're one of the "key" people in my makin the moniez online experience, thanks to you I stuck with CB and learned a lot about shady shit that should be avoided in online biz.

Thanks again, good to see you're still kicking about :)
 
Blackman said:
Getting flashbacks from 2007-2008 by reading your posts Norb, when we were all on DP at one time, then on NC forum up until the end of 2013...

Funny that what you say today was probably true even 10 years ago and will always be "the way to do business", no matter how many years pass.

In essence, come up with a profitable, monetizable idea, build a strong offer/product, test the fuck out of it until the conversions are maxed, sell it yourself and recruit affiliates to scale it as much as possible.

It all sounds very simple in one paragraph, but as you start to dig deeper, so many questions pop up of how to do things, what's better or where's more money to be made, etc...I think in the end it just boils down to whether you stick with it or not, and keep learning from your failures by pushing forward, constantly improving and not giving up.

Motivational crap or whatnot, but as Joe Girard said: "If it's to be, it's up to me".

Your threads back in the day taught me a lot and you're one of the "key" people in my makin the moniez online experience, thanks to you I stuck with CB and learned a lot about shady shit that should be avoided in online biz.

Thanks again, good to see you're still kicking about :)
Click to expand...

Hey dude,

I actually specifically remember you and your first few products, you were really resiliant to all the hate and negativity - despite your offer not taking off you did shit right. More of that, but this time do not recruit if it's a dud, put in less upfront to test the waters and only dive deep when you pull profit on your own first.

I do oversimplify it a bit, but I had to start from zero too, and I had to put sooo many projects to sleep that gave me feels and fuuuuuuck moments.. Would you agree that you went alllll out on your first few when you should have tested more and not put in all your resources or had expectations of the formula? Just more jam at the wall and faster and faster/better?

Still visit WAFO and DP but like once a year and it doesn't feel the same at all - this is the only forum left that gives me a sense of familiarity and family, that's why I wanted to leave my little positive footprint knowledge session here.

I'm surprised you didn't hit big for what it's worth Blackman, you were halfway through the shit imo, just needed more products and faster fails to finetune wtf works.
 
*This might sound abstract, but Blackman probably knows 90% of this shit inside out as we were side by side going into this, I wouldn't be shy to partner with him if you're a go getter and can see yourself pumping out product, he'd save you the learning curve by at least a high xx% imo. Might be better than fumbling your own way on the first few. Just a thought, helping you guys network a bit.
 
ncmedia said:
Hey dude,

I actually specifically remember you and your first few products, you were really resiliant to all the hate and negativity - despite your offer not taking off you did shit right. More of that, but this time do not recruit if it's a dud, put in less upfront to test the waters and only dive deep when you pull profit on your own first.

I do oversimplify it a bit, but I had to start from zero too, and I had to put sooo many projects to sleep that gave me feels and fuuuuuuck moments.. Would you agree that you went alllll out on your first few when you should have tested more and not put in all your resources or had expectations of the formula? Just more jam at the wall and faster and faster/better?

Still visit WAFO and DP but like once a year and it doesn't feel the same at all - this is the only forum left that gives me a sense of familiarity and family, that's why I wanted to leave my little positive footprint knowledge session here.

I'm surprised you didn't hit big for what it's worth Blackman, you were halfway through the shit imo, just needed more products and faster fails to finetune wtf works.
Click to expand...

Exactly like you say...First product, I didn't even do anything myself - just bought it off Flippa as a complete package, got it approved and chucked it on Clickbank, thinking affiliates would flood me with sales and I would be an overnight millionaire...

The second one, did some work myself, a bit more testing, but nothing significant...Then the third was slightly better, but not perfect, then the fourth, etc, etc.

As long as you are willing to put the work in and not afraid of starting it all over again, if it doesn't go as planned, then time is the only thing what separates you from hitting it big.

DP has been dead for a loooooong time, since probably 2011...Not sure what's the story there, but at least up until then it was alive with decent content in some threads. Today it's an absolute joke...

WaFo seems the same to me , apart from new owners and slight forum re-structuring.
 
Are you still killing it?

And have you or will you reach a point where you retire and just live off what you've made?
 
r3p1v said:
Are you still killing it?

And have you or will you reach a point where you retire and just live off what you've made?
Click to expand...


That's actually a good question, the offer is over (it's still there but on the grand scheme of things it's over) and it's weird.

My body wants to sit here because this is all I've done for xx years, is sit here and create/produce/buildShit/repeat... Now that it's tipped over and I have a few lifetimes worth of this money stuff for my lifestyle, you start to feel like yes you've accomplished something most won't, but seriously now what? I still sit here right? wait no... wait wait.. I love this stuff though do I stop?

I sometimes feel like I have no purpose anymore, I got 70,000 kids out there making music with my software, gave out over 100K units of my free stuff (more of the same/music stuff) and taught them all on youtube how to make music - and it feels good that I did that, like that was my purpose to teach kids to help raise the vibrations of the planet with good music/being creative... the whole affiliate portion and them eating too - is still secondary to that. So, now what?

Stimulation: This one is FUUUUCKED. Because you just experienced something so extraordinary, it takes a lot to stimulate me now. From women (they have to be magical now to impress me), to my biz mind going off on a 'wow this might something huge' to my creative release getting triggered by the right things.. It really is like chasing your first high sometimes.

I have started sensory depravation just to 'feel' shit again when I come out of it and am thinking of doing some spiritual retreat type stuff. You feel like you can just stop because you have all this money and you can retire/do fuck all or do fun things only - but you can't, you won't be happy it's all too new and different.

Your brain starts to.... I dunno.... twist itself as you've just spent your whole life doing shit being a boss and staying important and seemingly busy. Trying not to die, maybe thrive, and then you do but nobody is really around to explain or guide or tell you what to do once you're here, it's like being a kid again with no parents around and an abundance of traps waiting for you.

Once you party enough, see a bit of the world, do enough drugs/drink/videogame/collect dumb expensive shit/whatever your poison is, you go through phases in your psyche that push and pull you from LIVE MORE mode to DUDE CHILL YOU'RE WASTING IT to MAYBE YOU SHOULD COSTARICA NOW AND BYEBYE CANADA to a bunch of stuff.

I'm still new to money, I'm still learning from those that have had it longer (generations), I'm relearning how to live with every resource I never had from better foods to toothpastes to longer sleeps to noooo sleep for however long I want - and it's strange. I'm still a fumbling mess 'up here' and it hasn't solved all my problems, but a good 90% of them are indeed gone :).

Also now that I've been down a path like this, I see what it takes for something like this to happen, it's hard to look at stuff the same way I used to and get motivated to build it out. I compare it to how it might be in a year and in 5 years and I don't see winners like I used to when I compare to what I went through. Or maybe I'm afraid of my success swallowing me again for x-xx years and I want to live.

I think this all depends on what age you are and where you are at in life and where you come from. I'm 37, been online since my teens trying to find this reward, was poor growing up so now it's the opposite extreme but I still live poor in certain ways because it's more comfy. TIME is my currency now.

/mouthful.
 
ncmedia said:
put in less upfront to test the waters and only dive deep when you pull profit on your own first.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to putting in less money for testing the offer internally? How much money do you personally recommend putting into testing an offer?

I spent about I sent about $3k on Adwords before I knew that I had a winner, and then continued the campaign with further split tests.
 
I meant more as an all around effort and not to think that just because you understand the formula it's going to work by default so dump in all your resources.

That testing phase is hella important as is walking away from it if it's not a win. Re money, it's a variable that would change niche to niche/cost of keys/how experienced you are with adwords to keep costs low/results high I suppose.. I don't know how much is enough to say it's a winner but once you've moved xx units and it doesn't cost you more than you earn, you're on yr way.
 
Did you recruit affiliates or did the majority come to you via CB?
 
When I first started I did things wrong, and blindly recruited like craaazy to everything I built winner or loser, then about 5-10 products in I started building winners so by then I didn't have to recruit as much because I had previous products and ppl and forums to reach out to and was a bit known by then as a vendor that's not going anywhere. But yeah recruiting was a full time thing at one point and it's not that hard once you start a run (put up some banners on wafo going to your aff area and bang, you'll have a big run if your offer is already converting nicely).

The funny thing about CB (or any ecosystem I guess), is you CAN'T really hide a winner. Once the thing starts converting for affiliates, it attracts other affiliates like crazy because of all the clickbank analytics type sites (where you can see charting of new products and how their gravity is rising). Once that happens it's less about recruiting, you have an abundance of them - it's more about converting them into earners vs having a big turnover of aff's constantly coming in droves, not converting, and leaving (I mean your offer converts great, but that doesn't mean all aff's will be profitable right away, and they start warring with each other too for marketshare so it's tricky).

This is where setting up your aff area and being a nice person/set up a forum/some type of homebase for everyone to learn is important as success stories "I just converted/popped my cherry" type stuff is golden as noobs learn from noobs who learned from me.
 
Fucking lovely to see you here again Norbz! And what a wonderful way to make your appearance!

Glad all is going well - you were pretty stressed last time we chatted on IM as I recall, so it's good to see you've sorted that crap and still on top of the game! :D

Have a great amount of respect for what you've achieved (so far).
 
microphone head said:
Fucking lovely to see you here again Norbz! And what a wonderful way to make your appearance!

Glad all is going well - you were pretty stressed last time we chatted on IM as I recall, so it's good to see you've sorted that crap and still on top of the game! :D

Have a great amount of respect for what you've achieved (so far).
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Thanks fam :)

I think that was right in the middle months of all the attacks and I got to vent a bit with you?

--

This is worth noting if you're going to explore this path: All the CB analytics type sites are still up, got flashbacks just visiting them all..

Great data sponging and potentially sniping products you can do better than that are getting good traction, or discover gaps/trends/stuff you might want to try aff'ing for before building out a competitor etc.

Top Clickbank Products by Gravity this was the one I remember visiting among the top 3-4.

The others being:

ClickBank Marketplace - cbengine

A Professional ClickBank Marketplace | CBGraph

Make Money with ClickBank | ClickBank Affiliate Marketing | Click Bank Trends and Analytics

and if you google 'cb analytics' you'll get a bunch more maybe there are new gems out there now for this stuff.. Oh and you can check that other lambo thread vendor to see how he's really doing on his lifetime chart so far (ppl can still fake their gravity, but only for so long).
 
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