"I still wonder if affiliate rapper dullspace ever got a record deal"
I'm not sure, but he did get into YCombinator
Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
81–90 of 173 posts
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#82I'm not sure I'd regard making 100's of thousands of dollars complete failure. Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to society, and promoted products that were less than stellar in spammy ways, but just having the goal of "Making Money Online" I'd consider that money to be pretty dang successful. The fact that he blew it all after the fact just makes him bad with money. It doesn't me…
"Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to society.." FYI making markets more efficient is definitely useful to society by reducing costs / bid ask spread. In particular this helps those who get the most utility from this savings, the poor and middle class. Obviously I'm setting aside the ethics of some of his ways and speaking in general. (Although you'd probably want this competition…
Actually I'm happy with making markets more efficient. I have no problem with affiliate marketing in general. I was more referring to the fact that some of the things he was marketing were scams.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#83I'm not sure I'd regard making 100's of thousands of dollars complete failure. Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to society, and promoted products that were less than stellar in spammy ways, but just having the goal of "Making Money Online" I'd consider that money to be pretty dang successful. The fact that he blew it all after the fact just makes him bad with money. It doesn't me…
In his shoes, I would definitely call it a complete failure. It was certainly very educational, but failure nonetheless. I think his failure lies in equating making money with success. The purpose of commerce is to help us create value for one another. But there is a bunch of activity that uses the same tools that is essentially parasitic. The reason his income streams kept blowing up was that people eventually decid…
perhaps (obviously, completely) personally it was a failure, but the title was referring to making money online. Maybe the failure isn't connected to that specifically? I dunno. I mean I mostly agree with everything you said, just trying to point out that he did in fact make a decent amount of money online whereas a lot of people try the same types of things without making anywhere near the amount of money he did.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#84So good to see another affiliate go through details of his experience. I've been in the space for almost 10 years now as well, and looking back I have a ton to relate but just haven't ever really written it out.
I never got into some of the things he did, and it did definitely hold my peak revenue back. I went down a different - and much more technical - route and had a more consistent income over time.
The big thing that most people don't realize is how the "churn" will get you in the end. At every moment as an affiliate, it doesn't matter how good you are - the offer you're running or the network you're buying traffic in can kill your best campaign in a second, and there is little/nothing you can do.
For example, I had an AMAZING search site for the food & bev space with a major beverage company as a client. We made a ton of money for them and they loved us because we were super-white-hat and never had issues. But after 5 years the parent company of our client killed the entire affiliate program.
It didn't matter that we were their top search affiliate - we were a drop in the bucket for a multi billion dollar company. The campaign ended and the site is dormant for lack of clients to work with.
This churn gets affiliates all the time. You have to stay one or more steps ahead of it and constantly be searching for new methods to succeed. In the end, I looked at that game and decided it was no longer one I wanted to play with the rules as they were.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#85Like many, I was tempted into these same areas - driven by success stories and my own technical knowledge which fooled me into thinking it would be "easy". What I found is there's lot of money to be made in... telling people how to make money! Those guys like Shoemaker who have an almost cult following end up making an empire on those in the "pyramid" below them. Not to say this is shady, just that the real "riches"…
To be honest, HN is full of this stuff too - Double your freelancing - Guys who create a not-very-well-known startup and then start pushing guides on how to be successful - Email marketing, write 3 tutorials on topic X to build your list and then spam your ebook. Don't get me wrong, things are better targeted and less shady. It just feels like people spend more time selling their systems than they do using them. It l…
The first and the third work though. The first is from Brennan Dunn. Haven't seen him on here in a bit, but I used his program. Really helped improve my tutoring business.
I've actually had to tell some freelancers I use to RAISE their rates, because they were too busy and frazzled. The kind of advice in Brennan's book is something a lot of freelancers need.
The third is probably Patrick Mckenzie. He advice helped me create an email course that is very popular on my site. It's not spam if you write good stuff and people ask for it.
Everyone on my list explicitly signs up to get an email course, and I get tons of excited emails from happy users.
That stuff is popular on Hacker News because a big percent of the audience here genuinely needs help with those problems.
(I agree that the second one can be an issue, if they actually lack expertise. On the other hand, lots of startups are good even though I've never heard of them. It all depends at what level you're giving advice. If you're giving advice about a solo business, you don't need to have founded Facebook)
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#86"I still wonder if affiliate rapper dullspace ever got a record deal" I'm not sure, but he did get into YCombinator
wat? dullspace is someone from rapgenius or?
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#87I'm not sure I'd regard making 100's of thousands of dollars complete failure. Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to society, and promoted products that were less than stellar in spammy ways, but just having the goal of "Making Money Online" I'd consider that money to be pretty dang successful. The fact that he blew it all after the fact just makes him bad with money. It doesn't me…
Yes, I'd call that successful too. The expectations were too high, tough.
I'm not sure why people are focusing so much on the fact that the money was obtained, but nothing useful was created. How different is it from, say, high frequency trading?
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#88This article was like a trip down memory lane for me. 10 years ago it was Hoodia diet pills, pay day loans, and blockbuster trials that filled my war chest. Difference is after I multiplied my initial 1K, I invested the profits in starting a legitimate business. I treated every success in affiliate marketing as a fad, and I'm so glad I moved on after a few years. I've never "worked" with scummier people then those that ran CPA sites.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#89I see alot of criticism in this thread, but basically he ran ads against content, which is the business model of many people reading this. Vice does the same thing. AOL has become America On Listicles. Facebook and Google also run ads against content - they both made hundreds of millions from acai berry ads being run by affiliates like this guy.
I suppose the difference is in the value of the content, but then Facebook got their start by spamming everyone to death and even today actually has negative value to me. They make a significant portion of their revenue from scammy affiliate ads, so they aren't all that different (except that Facebook is worth $230 billion because they sit at the top of the affiliate marketing food chain).
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would imagine that online 'get rich quick schemes' have an even higher rate of failure than most startups. Perhaps 99.99% versus 90-95%?
With some startups it's hard to distinguish between the two to be honest. I almost feel like the way the media covers startups they are a "get rich quick scheme". What percentage have a successful exit? I don't know. I did hit the startup lottery once as a late hire and got about $8k from the acquisition. However, I do agree I would have better spent those years thinking about how I could solve people's problems inst…
Not all non-get rich quick schemes are startups.
I think what people here are saying is that given the obvious level of effort you (I assume you're the author) put into this, you could have put serious dents in a few patio11/rob walling style saas or other small product businesses. I understand there's money to be made chasing various arbitrages in online advertising, but those get plugged over time. Plus a product business would make me feel better about what I spend all day doing.