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The Not So Successful Story of a Young Affiliate

Or How You Can Learn From My mistakes

By Affiliate X (I’m trying to be anonymous here)

Vilnius,

Lithuania

2015

Table Of Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 2

About me: ................................................................................................................................................. 2

Why Should You Read This Book: ................................................................................................................ 2

My Side Of A Story ....................................................................................................................................... 2

My Experience or Who am I to Tell You ...................................................................................................... 3

What is Wrong and what is Right ................................................................................................................ 3

Biggest Mistakes To Avoid ........................................................................................................................... 4

Not having a plan: .................................................................................................................................... 6

Finding the wrong information ................................................................................................................ 6

Trying out too many things at once ......................................................................................................... 7

Not bringing value .................................................................................................................................... 7

Not willing to change ............................................................................................................................... 8

Wrong kind of traffic ................................................................................................................................ 8

Being too cheap ........................................................................................................................................ 9

Choosing a sacrifice ................................................................................................................................ 10

Lack of research ...................................................................................................................................... 10

Choosing a wrong niche ......................................................................................................................... 11

Some Helpful Tips For You ......................................................................................................................... 11

Free Photos ............................................................................................................................................. 11

Facebook Tips ......................................................................................................................................... 12

Last thoughts .......................................................................................................................................... 13

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 13

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INTRODUCTION

About me: Hello, I am a young affiliate from Lithuania. I thought that I have enough experience to

share with You guys. I do not have any experience in writing books and actually my english is

not that great, so please excuse me if I make some mistakes. I don‘t want to spend extra cash

on proofreading, because I don‘t have a lot of it (not yet) and yet this book is free, so bare with

me! Please take note that I do not want to expose my identity because the story I‘m about to

share with You is not that great (which is a great thing for You, because You can learn A LOT

from it).

Why Should You Read This Book:

If You are interested in making money online, becoming an entrepreneur, etc., learning

from mistakes is a great place to start, but remember that these mistakes don‘t have to be

Yours!!! You can learn from other people` s mistakes, for example, from me. And believe me

buddy, I made lots and lots of them! I invite You to join me on my journey to becoming a better

affiliate and overall a better person.

My Side Of A Story

I don‘t want this book to be all about me, after all, You are reading it (hopefully someone

is still reading this) to learn from the mistakes that I made, but I‘d like to introduce You to my

side of a story and tell You why I started doing this. (You can skip this part if You are not

interested). Ok, let’s go! I’m 18 year old guy from Lithuania and I was always passionate about

making some extra money, yet I’m (or I should say “I was”) a very lazy person, so I did not like

the idea of working pointless factory job that most of my friends were doing. I always knew that

there should be some other ways to make money, so I decided to try out this “passive income”

thing. I thought that this won’t be very hard and, oh, I was wrong. I also liked the idea of

making money while I sleep. I love this idea to this day, but let me tell You that I had some

sleepless nights to make this work. Yet, I did not quit this and I encourage You to do the same.

To this day, I spent more money on becoming an affiliate than I earned from it. Now I realize

how stupid some of my purchases were, how I could have spent that money better and also,

how I could have earned a lot more! I also understood what I did wrong and how to do it the

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right way. Also, I gained a lot of confidence and I know I can fix the mistakes that I made and

make this thing work better, faster, stronger and be more fulfilled about it . This book is also a

sort of encouragement for me too! You see, this is a recap of my journey, the journey which did

not have a very great start, but I know that it will have a great end. Also, this is my way of

leaving some sort of a legacy behind. Well, I’m getting too emotional here with all this hippie

stuff. The idea behind this book is this: hopefully You will learn from my experience and

hopefully I will too!!!

My Experience or Who am I to Tell You

What is Wrong and what is Right

Let’s begin, let’s talk facts! I have two sites right now, one of which is not working and the

other one I’m still working on. I also have quite great following on Facebook and it keeps

growing, a lot of followers on Pinterest, Twitter and so on. I know how to use these platforms

for Your advantage, I have experience in Word-press sites, I know a little bit of HTML coding, I

have experience with Google: AdWords, AdSense, Trends, Analytics, the list goes on and on.

But the most important part for YOU is that I made shit load of mistakes using these platforms

and managed to figure out how to use them faster and where to search information on them. I

also earned legit money, well, not the legit amount but the money is real.

Here are some photos to back it up: (Warning!!! Some of the graphics used can be very sad

to more sensitive viewer)

This is what my site used to look like. Sorry, but I don’t have better screen shots because I

thought that it would be still up and running (more on that later).

Image 1 comparison on how my site used to look and how it looks now...

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Well, I hope that You believe me, I also have 500+ followers on Pinterest/Twitter.

So… Now that You know what You are dealing with, let’s begin the “learning process”.

Biggest Mistakes To Avoid

Here’s a list of the mistakes that I believe slowed my progress. I’ll break each one up further

and You will see that one mistake leads to more of them!

Top 10 things to avoid/change (no order, because the value of these points can differ from

person to person):

1. Not Having A Plan

1.1. Not being consistent

1.2. Not knowing what You are doing

1.3. Not having an “end goal”

1.4. Lack of motivation

2. Finding the wrong information

2.1. Bad knowledge – bad results

2.2. Wasting time

2.3. Thinking that things are going well

2.4. Applying it

3. Trying out too many things at once

3.1. The ABCD method

3.2. Wasting time

3.3. Lack of motivation

3.4. Not finding what works for You

4. Not bringing value ( this can be number one)

Image 2 my following on Facebook.

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4.1. Bad SEO

4.2. Bad karma (ok, ok it’s a joke, lighten up!)

4.3. No commissions

4.4. Once again: a waste of time, but this time, one is wasting his and other people`s time.

5. No willing to change

5.1. Being stuck in one place

5.2. Not opening Your full potential

5.3. Seeing only the “tip of the iceberg”

5.4. Loosing traffic

6. Wrong kind of traffic

6.1. No commissions

6.2. Lack of motivation

6.3. Waste of money or time

6.4. Bad SEO

7. Being too cheap

7.1. Spending too much time

7.2. In a long run losing more

7.3. Not opening the full potential

7.4. Bad SEO/commissions

8. Choosing a sacrifice (yeah, life is not a fairy tale)

8.1. Sacrificing wrong things

8.2. Trying to save every thing

8.3. Losing in a long run

8.4. Lack of motivation

9. Lack of research (this is different from point 2)

9.1. Not keeping up with competition

9.2. Not knowing how to bring value

9.3. Not using some opportunities

9.4. Using/bringing outdated information

10. Choosing a wrong niche ( this could also be top 1)

10.1. Bad commissions

10.2. Not bringing value

10.3. Too much competition

10.4. Urge to punch someone in the face

As You can see, I repeat some of these points. “Lack of motivation”, “waste of time” and

“bad SEO/commissions” pop up in most of the points that I mentioned. I find these mistakes

(or should I say these results of mistakes) made me “suffer” the most. Also, I now see that I

can easily change that! But for You to better understand why and how to do it, I’ll break

down all the points I was talking about.

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Not having a plan: Everything that is worth having should start with a plan. Of course, Your plan can be this: “I’ll

make a plan later”, but this won’t work, I know, because I tried it. I strongly suggest You making

a plan before You start doing any affiliate stuff. Mostly because You will see what is working

and what You’ll need to change. I’m not a great planner, but I suggest including these points in

Your plan:

1 - Your end goal

2 - Your schedule

3- only now You should create Your attack plan.

To be more clear here are some examples:

END GOAL: I want to make 1000$ in 3 months: month 3- 1000$; month 2- 500%, month 1- 100$

(as You can see, I scale down from the end goal, because once You’ll find what is working, You’ll

most definitely will be able to scale it up).

SCHEDULE: I’ll work on this for 2 hours every day and on a weekends I’ll work for 3 hours until I

reach 1000$ a month.

ATTACK PLAN: I’ll be using plan X (this could be a blog, Facebook marketing and so on).

I’ll leave the last part (the attack plan) for You to figure out on your own. The point that I’m

trying to make here is: You need to set up Your end goal and work on it consistently!!! This is

the only way to guarantee Your success. Your plan will keep You motivated. Your schedule will

save Your time: I sometimes worked for 3-4 hours a day, then took few days off, then worked 1

hour, then all night, of course, the next day I felt like s*it. I also felt like s*it when I saw that

none of this was working. Now I understand the importance of the things I talked before. I

would have saved a lot of time, money and nerves if I knew better when I first started. If I have

not convinced You to make a plan, here’s a really nice quote from one of my favorite

entrepreneurs: “Random actions will get You random results”- Brandon Carter. This quote hit

me hard. My goal is to move out of my house within a few months. I know that if I do random

marketing or blogging, I won’t be able to move. Even if I do, I’m sure than random work won’t

let me sustain the house. Anyway, let’s move further.

Finding the wrong information Through my experience I managed to find some bad information about E-marketing and about

my niche. This is mostly because of lots of different information that is being put up Online.

One person says one thing, other person says otherwise and in the end they are both wrong.

There is no way around it- You’ll have to devote some time to find good information. I suggest

You doing this: if You find a video on YouTube, DO MIND the likes/dislikes ratio. I find that if a

video has 75/25 ratio, it’s still good, but if it’s less- don’t waste Your time. Also, I founded out

that if I speed up a video, I can still clearly understand the information. Join some forums,

perhaps on Reddit or elsewhere. I can also share with You some of places where I find the most

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valuable information. Here is one YouTube channel that helped me A LOT: RankYa. I strongly

recommend You visiting it and learning all the necessary technical points of SEO, page domains,

etc. If You are interested, I also encourage You to speed up the videos, because this guy talks

slowly, but the information is on point! Also, I know for a fact that Amazon affiliate system

works well. I managed to find this cheap, but great offer just for YOU: NicheProfitCourse. (You

can join it for free, but I encourage You to spend those 10$ and be free from some sort of

hosting problems). I’m currently not working with it, because I invested in other program and

because of ABCD method (more on this later). The last thing that I would suggest here is this:

find a balance between being open-minded and being skeptical.

Trying out too many things at once Okay, so now You have a plan and You founded all the right information. If You did Your

research correctly, You should see that there are million ways to earn money online! It’s great,

but I suggest You doing one thing at a time, two things max! “Why?” You may ask. Well, I’ll

once again bring up Brandon Carter. He talks about the ABCD method. A lot of people try out

too many things at once and fail at all of them because it demands too much time and effort to

work on all of them at once. The ABCD method explains it better. When one is working on thing

A, B, C and D at once, he barely makes any income (let’s talk money, because that’s what we

are here for) from all of them. However, once he works on a thing A and gets it done, he has

more time and money (investment) to work on a thing B and so on. I truly believe that this is

the way to go. Now don’t get me wrong- You’ll have to do a lot of things to make Your passive

income. Let’s take a site/blog, for example. You can write amazing content and bring heaps of

value, but You also have to market it at the same time! You can make a reasonable amount of

money through amazon association on Your site, but You can also include Google’s AdSense.

You see, I talked about 4 thing: A, B, C, D. I said that You should do them at the same time.

Well, it defeats the purpose of this method. No… The thing that I’m talking about here is this:

1)DO NOT start 2-3 different sites/blogs until You have finished the other ones 2) do not go out

on every social media site and gain +5 followers on different platforms, instead – gain some on

Facebook, then some on Pinterest, etc. 3) even though I said that You can work with

Amazon/Google at the same time, try to use them separately and see how it goes. I hope You

got what I tried to say for You here. Either way, let’s move on.

Not bringing value THIS IS IMPORTANT. This is the biggest mistake that held me down and it might hold You

down. If You are starting a new site/blog/ad/whatever – bring value. Well, it’s easy to say, but

it’s fairly hard to do. I’ll explain this with my own experience. As You already know, I started a

calligraphy/fountain pen related site. And I’m not great at calligraphy, so when I started to do

some pen reviews nobody saw any value in them (in the reviews not the pens). I mean, all my

life I was using some cheap, plastic, bad quality pens and here I am trying to “sell” people some

expensive wooden pens. I did not know what to write about. Of course, my reviews were

getting better and better and I initially started getting sales from them. But the spike in my

income was when I started to do some more research on calligraphy and saw where I can bring

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value!!! I couldn’t write about how to draw perfect letters, but I wrote about things like: how to

set up your workspace, how to improve your handwriting(in this article I talked about things

like posture, what paper to use, even about the mindset and so on), I also tried to differ people

traditional beliefs and I succeeded. As You can see, I added value, true value, I helped a lot of

people (this is true, because I got a lot of positive feedback, of course, some negative also, but

more on that later). Even now when I’m writing this book, I try to bring You as much value as I

possibly can: I share insights that people usually pay for. Also, remember that bad value – bad

SEO and it’s essentially a waste of time. You will earn a lot more from doing 4 hour research

and 4 hours writing than four times do 1 hour research and write four different posts. So, if You

are determined to earn some money, bring some value to Your niche/industry etc. and You will

be determined to make it!!!

Not willing to change

This will keep You stuck, believe me. Let’s use the same example I used before. My reviews on

calligraphy pens were bad, but I was not willing to change my perspective on my site.

“thecalligraphypens.com was supposed to be a “review” site strictly, because that’s the only

way that I will make money”- these were my thoughts. I also was not eager to change my

“attack plan” – I’m talking about marketing, affiliate products and so on. Only when I figured

out that these thing won’t work for me (as much as I wanted for them to work) and I need to

change them and also change my views on them, I started to make some income. So, as I

already said: find a balance between being open-minded and being skeptical!

Wrong kind of traffic This point does not apply to me, but I see a lot of people struggle here. When I did my

research, I saw that a lot of people suggest this “free traffic” which is very nice and might work

for You in some cases. But I knew that if I joined some “get free likes on Facebook page” or “like

for like”, I wouldn’t profit from it! Remember: if You are working on a specific niche, having the

right audience will make You money, having a huge audience which is not related will waste

Your time. Here is another example from my experience: I started two Facebook pages, one

about my site, where I shared my articles etc. and the other one about calligraphy products

with discounts. I tried to add as much value as I could to both of them, but I noticed this: even

though I have 700+ fans on my “The calligraphy pens” page, I made 80% more income from

100+ fans on my “Calligraphy discounts” page. This is not hard to understand, at least now, -

those 100+ fans want to shop cheaper and I provide them the opportunities. And the 700+

people want to read about calligraphy and I provide (or should I say provided) them that. If I

tried to sell some cheaper calligraphy products to those 700+ fans, I would get nothing and the

other way around. So, don’t try to build up huge audience of wrong kind of people – don’t

waste Your time!

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Being too cheap Now this point does apply to me. As I said I spent more money than I earned (not a lot

actually), but now it starts to change and actually it starts to change dramatically. Only now

when I started to invest my money in the right places I make more of it back. It was very

different when I first started. When I first started I thought that if somebody wants some initial

money from me, I’m being scammed (and let me tell You that this is not true). Instead, I paid

with my time, with a lot of my time! Now I understand that my time is more valuable than

some money. A lot of things could be different now if I used my time more efficiently. Not only

I would make more money, but also my grades, my social life etc., would be much better. Now I

pay for traffic and I also invest in other stuff. Don’t get me wrong- You can absolutely make

money for free, but, once again, You will have to spend Your TIME! I strongly suggest You

making some sort of “investment” to some other people, because they can explain this better

than I can and their results speak for themselves. Here is an amazing and fairly cheap program

that I found and started to use not long ago. I strongly recommend You trying it out: click HERE

or click the image. Now let me tell You upfront that You won’t be making as much as this guy

when You start, so don’t be scared of these figures, because it is possible and it might come to

You.

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Choosing a sacrifice I wish that someone told me that this will be hard from time to time. So here You go, I’m telling

You that! Believe me, You’ll have to sacrifice something in order for this to work! But don’t

worry, because I can also say that it is worth it. Ok, let’s look at another example from my

experience (well that’s basically the only thing that I can share). My biggest sacrifice was my

time. Once again, I guess I was being too cheap, so I had to “pay” with my time, but I’m actually

quite happy about it. Sacrificing my time influenced a lot of my personal life. I had less time to

be with my friends and girlfriend and also I had less time to persuade my other goals. Well,

“Why am I happy about it?” You may ask. The answer is simple, I was “okay” about sacrificing

my time, but I was not keen about sacrificing other things. So, I learned to do more in less time.

I try to be as present as I can when I’m with my friends or girlfriend. I try to study with no

distractions. And I also learned to manage my time better. Of course, I’m not perfect at it, but

I’m trying and it makes me happy. I feel happy that I am becoming a better person while I

persuade my dreams and make an income. That’s what keeps me going and that’s why I know

that this will work. So, I urge You to sacrifice “the right” things. I could break up with my

girlfriend, stop going to the gym, have bad grades, but make some income. This might sound

okay to You, but I would feel depressed if I did so. I might have sacrificed those things and earn

more money faster, but I ended up sacrificing my “old self”. I strongly recommend You doing

the same, but it’s Your choice. And also don’t get me wrong, I would change a lot of things if I

had a chance.

Lack of research I talked about this in point four (not bringing value), but I figured out this deserves a separate

spot. Your research is proportional to Your success. If You do a proper research, You’ll find

what to write/ when to write/ how to write, etc. Spend more time on finding out new things in

Your niche: new products, new ideas. This is the only way You’ll make it. That’s what will

separate You from the others. Believe me, there is a lot of competition out there, but if You

bring new value or at least normal value (a lot of affiliates don’t), You will do better than 50%

of Your competitors. I read four books about calligraphy and handwriting, I used Google

Trends, Google Alerts and so on- all to be in a center of news. If You don’t want to do research

and think that You’ll do okay, You might be right, but You WILL miss a lot of opportunities.

Once again, an example: I started using Google Alerts and once got an alert about DIY(do it

yourself) Calligraphy. Now in my niche Google “alerted” me very rarely (more on this in the

other point), so I decided to “investigate it”. I ended up on a YouTube account that made videos

about myth-busting pins from Pinterest. This time they wanted to try some DIY calligraphy

pens. I saw an opportunity and made an article about other DIY calligraphy stuff. This article

ended up blowing up, because a lot of people stated to be interested in DIY calligraphy. Well, I

did not make a lot from it, because there are not a lot of products to offer when writing about

DIY (I remember linking to Amazon for a roll of duct-tape). But I hope that You see an

opportunity here!

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Choosing a wrong niche Well, this is kind of obvious. There are a lot of people who can explain this better that I can (at

least for now). But I want to share my insights on it. As You probably already understood, my

niche was about calligraphy. This niche is not too competitive, there actually are some

products to sell, there is a way to bring value and it’s not very broad. Sounds great! But what I

didn’t take into account is this: calligraphers are mostly old ladies who never shop online. So

when I managed to bring a lot of traffic, gained a lot of positive feedback and had almost no

sales I became 100% sure that instead of using my link to Amazon, those ladies went to their

local supermarket and got what they needed or asked their grandchildren to buy them those

pens ( my link not included – my earnings: zero). Also, those ladies are hard to convince. When

I brought up some idea about new type of calligraphy or a new product those witches tried to

bring me down. I actually got quite a lot of “hate” comments. At least this is my side and I do

understand and respect those ladies. After all, maybe I was doing something wrong. But the

point is this: consider these things which I talked about when choosing Your niche!!!

Some Helpful Tips For You

Although the internet is full of information, You can’t find everything there. These are the

things that I figured out on my own and some tips that I searched for a very long time (maybe

someone has similar tips, but I haven` t found them).

Free Photos Everything that You’ll do will require some photos. You can go

on stock photos websites and buy them, but I recommend You

starting this way: go to flickr.com and type what You are

looking for. Now click “Any license” and choose “Commercial

use allowed” or “Commercial use & mods allowed”. After You

filter the search You can use these photos and even modify

them if “mods” are allowed. But remember that You have to

give credit to the authors. I had a separate page on my site,

where I collected all the photos that were used on it and when

one clicked them, he was transferred back to the original

source. I think this is a great way of doing it. If You want You

can give credit bellow every photo, but this will look bad and

this will also hurt Your SEO. “How ?” You may ask. Well, I

encourage You to take Your time naming all the photos

correctly. For example: I used to name my photos “img1.jpg”,

“thisIsAGoodOneWithABackground.jpg”, but once I noticed (through Google Analytics) that

someone visited my site through Google Images, I quickly realized that one photo that I named

“BestCalligraphyPen.jpg” was on top in Google Image Search engine. So after that, I renamed

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all the photos correctly, giving them a description, a caption and a reasonable name. I hope

You don’t make this mistake, because it can cost You a lot. One extra tip here: try to “search”

with mistakes. Yes, You read it well. A lot of people make mistakes when uploading to Flick.

That means that they did not take time to check their spelling and it also usually means that

they did not check any license restrictions! So, if You don’t find any good photos for

“commercial”, try searching “comercial” or “commertial” and see if You can find any good

photos there.

Facebook Tips I consider myself to be quite good with Facebook. I tried a lot of other free traffic and I find that

Facebook works best (at least for me). I guess a lot of You are already familiar with Facebook,

so I’ll try to make this as short as I can. Firstly, I recommend creating a separate profile. You

don’t want to invite Your friends to like Your pages, because that’s a wrong kind of traffic ( I

already covered it), also, this will help You manage things better and You won’t be distracted by

Your friends posting on Facebook. When creating this profile keep in mind that You may have to

certify it! When I created my separate profile, I created it as a page. It sounds stupid and it is!

Instead of choosing a name, I named myself Calligraphy Pens. Not long after I started to gain

some followers, Facebook shut me down and asked for my ID. I did that and created a normal

Business Page. I used some random address that I generated in Google to stay incognito (I

guess You can track me down or some sh*t, but I don’t see a point in that). I started to gain

some likes on my page after I posted my articles in groups that are related to my niche. That’s

the way to go! But be careful, because if You try to join too many groups at once, Facebook will

block YOU!!! I think 10-15 groups a day will keep You safe and it will be plenty. I worked on my

Facebook following for quite some time and it worked! Now I don’t do anything and I still gain

more “fans”. I don’t actually know why, but I’m fine with it. I have one presumption: people on

Facebook are very sneaky, they want to appear different and cool. That is why some people still

share my articles, even though they DO NOT WORK anymore. This means that they don’t

actually read my articles. They just share them to appear cooler to their friends. For example, a

few days ago someone shared my “How To Set Up Your Work Space Correctly” article. He didn’t

want to set up his workspace, he just wanted to show his friends that he is very clean,

intelligent and he likes to work in a great environment. So, when creating article names, keep

this in mind. Also, add value consistently and post some encouraging posts from time to time,

try to interact with Your audience. Consequently, You will get noticed and gain more followers.

Last thought here is to try not to be friends with a lot of people because You’ll see all of their

posts (I suggest unfollowing them) and also they will see that You “posted in 20 groups” and

therefore lose trust in You, but have some friends or else admins of Facebook groups won’t

add You to the group. But the main point is this: Bring Consistent Value.

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Last thoughts Last tips that I will give You in this book are these: create a bank account before You start

making money. Always read the “terms and conditions”. If You have a chance use “.com” on

Your website. Find out how to leave some affiliate systems before You join them. Add

“disclaimers”, “cookie policy” and start using Google Webmaster Tools as quickly as possible!

Conclusion I hope I helped You out and You found this book to be useful. I tried to bring as much value as I

could (You should do the same). If You are interested in making money online, be consistent

with it, experiment and challenge Yourself!!! Remember that Your road will be bumpy (at least

mine was) but it IS WORTH IT. In the end You will be a better, richer and happier person and if

You use my tips and resources from this book, You’ll get there faster (faster than I did). I wish

You all the luck and encourage You not to give up!!!