The Slow Path to Here
I think it’s interesting to look back on the strange paths we take that lead us to where we are. Here’s my strange little path to where I am now.
I first found out about internet marketing from reading about something called the Golden Backdoor near the end of 2007. I was curious about it and found a review of the product where someone said it involved promoting Clickbank products. I didn’t get the Golden Backdoor, but I took a look at Clickbank and got an account.
I didn’t know anything about internet marketing, so logically, I printed out a bunch of neon fliers with the address to a website I bought that redirected people to a Clickbank product. I then spent a few days plastering these fliers all over my neighborhood. On bus stops, at the local community college. Pretty much anywhere I could post anything. I then proceeded to make exactly $0.
I was in school at the time and classes started again. I let all this affiliate marketing stuff slip into the back of my mind.
In the summer of 2008, I got a crappy summer job working at Phoenix-area architecture firm that “designs” large big box and chain stores. I put the word design in quotes because we didn’t actually design anything. We got a prototype store from our clients and then did everything we could to trick local building departments into letting us build these monstrosities. “What? You don’t want a giant box in your city that doesn’t have any windows? Well, what if we put these fake windows on it so it kind of looks like a real building?” It was soul-crushing work that contradicted everything that I believed about architecture.
I was fortunate enough to work near a Borders bookstore. One day after work, I decided I should get an audio book to take advantage of my 30-minute commute. That was when I found The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. I hated my job, so I got the audio version and listened to it every day on the way to and from work. I must have listened to it at least 15-20 times that summer.
I wanted to try out what Tim recommended, but I couldn’t really think of a product I could create and market. I already knew about Clickbank, so I decided I could just market someone else’s product. I opened up a Google Adwords account and started direct-linking to Clickbank products. It was pretty easy. I must admit that I didn’t make much money doing this, but I did make a little.
I kept this up until about the beginning of 2009. I heard about this course called Profit Lance. It seemed really good, so I got it. I started to get into it, but then school started again. I graduated in May 2009 and came back to it. It taught me a lot of good things, but I think the course became outdated since it was put out in 2007.
I gave up on it in June 2009, and floundered around in July. Then in August I heard about the Thirty Day Challenge. I did it and I built two Thirty Day Challenge sites. Both of them never really took off, but I learned a lot about the current trends in internet marketing.
One day while looking for a Clickbank product for a third Thirty Day Challenge site, I saw something called the Six Day Weekend. I clicked on it because it sounded like a knock off of the 4 Hour Work Week, which I liked a lot. This was Sean Morrissy’s site that he had launched about a week earlier. I watched some of his free videos. They seemed really good, but I honestly had no idea where to start or what order I was supposed to watch them in (sorry, Sean). I got confused. All I knew was that Sean said Mark Ling was his mentor and Sean was living the lifestyle I wanted to live.
So I went to Mark Ling’s site Affilorama and signed up there. I started making websites like they recommend back in August. Now it’s 6 months later and here I am still doing it.
The past 6 months have had a lot of ups and downs. I’ve had some success despite the fact that I recently realized I was doing a few things very wrong. Things have gotten faster and easier as I’ve learned ways to shortcut and automate things. Honestly, I’m really excited about the next few months and I’m eagerly looking forward to building some more websites!
February 23rd, 2010 at 6:09 pm
I heard about 30 day challenge too although I never joined it. What was it like? Can you still promote those sites with AMA?
It might be a great idea to put a post up outlining the mistakes you made. I’m sure many of us can benefit from them
Huddson
February 23rd, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Hi Clayton
I agree with Huddson, It would be great to get a post about the mistakes you maid with AM and how you have corrected them.
Strongfarmer
February 24th, 2010 at 10:39 am
@Huddson and StrongFarmer, okay I can do that. I’ll see if I can get that post up early next week.
30 Day Challenge is mostly about finding niches and keywords with pretty much no competition. They use Market Samurai to really drill down and find the right keywords. Then you put together a blog and post a few entries with some kind of affiliate ad on the side. To promote it, you just do EZA, Hubpages, Squidoo, Blogger, Wordpress.com, and Weebly (I think). You could definitely use AMA in conjunction with it. They recommended a software called Traffic Bug, which build backlinks on auto pilot. I only used Traffic Bug during the free trial period, but I’ve heard some not-so-good things about it on the Warrior Forum.
30 Day Challenge is good for learning to ropes, but if you’re already doing all the Affilorama stuff, you probably already know most of what they teach in 30DC.
February 24th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Hey man, this is a great blog. I’ve been at this seriously since this last Christmas, even though I’ve been dabbling with ehow and squidoo lenses. Count me in as a 2nd vote for you writing a post about some of the mistakes you made.
By the way, I can relate to soul draining development projects. I did cell site tower development for 5 years. Talk about an effective way to ruin a neighborhood. But, we all like talking on cell phones now, don’t we?
See you back at the ranch.
February 25th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
@Carl, yeah, I didn’t want to become “the WalMart guy.” I didn’t want everyone to see me coming and think, “Oh here comes Clayton. He ‘designs’ WalMarts.” I mean seriously, people form groups to protest and boycott a new WalMart. How can I seriously take pride in doing that for a living?
February 26th, 2010 at 4:15 am
Great post Clayton. To compliment it, I’ve written my own story here.
It’s surprisingly similar.
@Huddson and StrongFarmer – my biggest mistake was not to focus on one particular system and work the f**k out of it.
February 26th, 2010 at 9:51 am
@Keith yeah, getting distracted by the “best new shiny program” will definitely cause you trouble. Fortunately (sort of) for me, I’m too broke to afford any new programs no matter how tempting they may be.
February 26th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Totally agree Keith!!
There’re many systems out there as to many recipes to bake a cake!! I think we are/were victims to these “best new shiny programs” that promise the moon and got sidetracked.
April 28th, 2010 at 6:55 am
I use Clickbank together with Infolinks on my Blog. You can earn a lot in Clickbank if you just concentrae more on US traffic “