Who got you in IM?

avatar33

e-Hustler
Dec 5, 2009
3,839
52
48
Calgary, AB
We all started somewhere/somehow... but I think most of us got into IM because we met someone who was ballin big time with online moniez.

Me: meeting this kid in a bar back in 2001, the guy was 21 and banking 25k a month with affiliate marketing. At that time I thought making big money online was an elite thing that was unaccessible, but meeting this average joe really made me realize that I should get into it, unfortunately it took a many more years before I actually jumped in it seriously :angryfire:
 


Was 14. Googled "make money online." Ended up on DP. Made my first hundred with another kid I met on there. I actually paid for the method and it turned into a long-term partnership. Ended up in BHW. Now im here.

Of course I left out all campaign details lol
 
An ebook off the pirate bay.

I then proceeded to register a domain name I thought was "clever" and copy/pasted a bunch of ezinearticles to it, stuck my amazon widgets on it and sat back expecting the money to immediately roll in.
 
Did a search and came across some guru blog i think it was retireat21. Learned about AM through his ballin ecourse and the rest is history.
 
Was 14. Googled "make money online." Ended up on DP. Made my first hundred with another kid I met on there. I actually paid for the method and it turned into a long-term partnership. Ended up in BHW. Now im here.

Of course I left out all campaign details lol

Exactly same.
 
Someone actually posted a really good post about IM on /r9k/, I've been trying to remember the name as they didn't post anonymously but I can't think of it. They said they were a regular, I'd appreciate a PM if they read this!
 
When I was 16 and needed some extra spending money my brother had just gotten into bum marketing for clickbank products. After seeing him make $200 from just an hour or two of work a day I jumped in, got lucky on a good product and made a $100 the first day my articles went live and have been hooked since.
 
Four Hour Work Week book. Made a facebook application and thought'd I'd cash in...found out more about marketing when trying to monetize it. It never made money, but started me off in the right direction.

I found this place when looking for gay webmasters.
 
Had a pretty popular movie site going. Some company contacted me asking me to put their banner (selling a DVD copy software; 50% commission) on my site. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing - people don't make money online. Did it anyway.

Went to bed. Checked my stats in the morning - made $20 (in my sleep) and the light bulb immediately went off in my head. The rest is history.
 
I started with porn sites. the thing about adult industry is there is no one willing to share risks with affiliates. Most is CPS and no CPA.

of course traffic with porn is so much easier than with mainstream.
 
when i was 15 I built a wav and midi download site for fun and needed some hosting. Ended up finding a related chatroom with a few big colocation/dedicated company owners and became friends with them while listening in on them talk business. One of them (a sexcam hosting company) offered me free hosting (since i couldn't afford it) in exchange for pushing their colocation and dedicated servers on others which was the beginning of my AM. Shortly after I ended up making my first dollars on CPC banner fraud, doorway pages and eventually made the first adware program later that year (wasn't so much a program as it was a netscape plugin) by building one of the first popular download accelerator programs pushed through top site list cheats.

It was very addicting.

Edit: I'll append an amusing story,
My first two sites were basically made back to back and were done completely in frontpage. I knew html from a tutorial i downloaded and studied but didn't know anything about cgi or programming or even that it existed. I hand made and edited every page of the sites.
So for my third site I decided to make a search engine. I opened frontpage and made a nice header tag at the top saying "Eli's Search Engine". Below that I did an Insert >> Form field >> text box then put a button next to it. I labeled the button "Search" saved and uploaded it. After about two hours of making every imaginable tweak to the button's properties and settings in frontpage and frantically typing various stuff into the box and clicking the search button over and over wondering why nothing was happening I ended my dreams of starting a search engine.
 
When I was 13, found out that my girlfriend's parents were ballin on Adsense Checks. So I made my own blog, put up some adsense ads; failed. Joined a couple forums, and the journey began.
 
At 12 I decided I was going to make money online. I looked it up online, ran into SiteSell and downloaded their free 100 page ebook. I read through it all and tried to build my own online coupon site based on what Sitesell recommended.

I failed miserably but it was my entrance into affiliate marketing.

So for my third site I decided to make a search engine. I opened frontpage and made a nice header tag at the top saying "Eli's Search Engine". Below that I did an Insert >> Form field >> text box then put a button next to it. I labeled the button "Search" saved and uploaded it. After about two hours of making every imaginable tweak to the button's properties and settings in frontpage and frantically typing various stuff into the box and clicking the search button over and over wondering why nothing was happening I ended my dreams of starting a search engine.
Almost the same exact thing happened for me (this was back when I was really young... in 3rd grade I think), I created my first website on Expages and was absolutely convinced that by creating a textbox that said search and a submit button that I could become the next Google.
 
At 12 I decided I was going to make money online. I looked it up online, ran into SiteSell and downloaded their free 100 page ebook. I read through it all and tried to build my own online coupon site based on what Sitesell recommended.

I failed miserably but it was my entrance into affiliate marketing.


Almost the same exact thing happened for me (this was back when I was really young... in 3rd grade I think), I created my first website on Expages and was absolutely convinced that by creating a textbox that said search and a submit button that I could become the next Google.

3rd grade? shit son. back in 3rd grade we were tearing up the sims and rollercoaster tycoon.

on a side note, i am a strong believer in the butterfly effect. i told my dad that if he didnt get me into playing starcract and warcraft when i was like 4, i would not have had my interests in computers. even though i couldnt really play when i was 4, i would sit there and watch him for hours. without that, i would have never ended up here.
 
3rd grade? shit son. back in 3rd grade we were tearing up the sims and rollercoaster tycoon.

on a side note, i am a strong believer in the butterfly effect. i told my dad that if he didnt get me into playing starcract and warcraft when i was like 4, i would not have had my interests in computers. even though i couldnt really play when i was 4, i would sit there and watch him for hours. without that, i would have never ended up here.

funny how everyone is always getting younger than the previous poster. I guess starting young somehow is supposed to show intelligence.
 
In 2004 or so I found a download for some ebook called "Google Cash" which showed you how to make money with Adwords/Ebay. I got lucky as hell and thought of a product to advertise that was on fire and had literally no competition. I did over $100,000 in 4 months with ebay when I was 17. Adwords cost me about $40,000 in the same 4 months so net profit was $60,000. After taxes I was left with like $40,000-ish.

And now I'm not making jack shit...but working on it.

The funny thing is, I've told my story to friends who don't know anything about affiliate marketing and I can tell they don't really believe me. In reality, my numbers are very modest in the IM world though.