MarketLeverage Contest Winners

Ok, you guys made it WAY too hard to pick a winner. I just spent the last 2-3 hours reading every article, and trying to narrow it down. I started with the 45 or so articles and narrowed it down to 10. That was hard enough in itself, so imagine how hard picking 3 out of the top 10 was.

Anywho, I’m going to announce the winners in individual posts. I’ll announce the First Place winner today and post their article, then Second and Third the following 2 days. After that, I’ll still post all the other great entries, because we can all learn a lot from them. Even if some of the points are repeated, that just means we’ve found a common point and should really learn from that mistake. Now onto the winner…

Drumroll please…

The first place winner is…William C. I loved the message behind this article and it’s so true, really a great read. Congrats William! Here’s the entry :

Mistakes Made And Lessons Learned

Affiliate marketing, Few know what it is, Yet so many wish to become one. Lured by promises of the get rich quick dream, Many Will try and few will succeed. It is A True test of determination and Will. Affiliate Marketing Is not for the weak and fearful. Mistakes will be made and lessons to be learned from it all.

Wither or not you succeed with Affiliate marketing, the mistakes you make and fix along the way give you more experience in marketing and business than most people could ever dream of. There are only so many things books can teach you, but one thing you will never get out of a book is experience, and to me that’s all that matters in the business world.

Growing up my parents would pound the phrase “you’re going to college” in the back of my mind any chance they got. I didn’t grow up in the best of conditions but I always made best of what I had. Through high school I got side tracked with a few bad influences in my life and ended up dropping out and getting my GED and heading straight for community college. Not long after that I dropped out of College. From the day I dropped out of High school I vowed to never work a 9-5 job. All my life I Had heard how the only way to succeed was through college. I disagreed. I felt school was never really my cup of tea. Although I did enjoy learning and the school life style, I just never really got in the rhythm of it.

In my late years in high school I had started working small operations online through websites like digital point. Building small sites selling them back, running proxy sites you name it I’ve probably done it. For my last two years in high school I was working from my room making more money than my friends working 30 hours a week at star bucks. I loved it. The whole idea of working from home making more money than the average Joe was a lifetime goal of mine and I was doing it. Telling myself I would be happy with 3,000$ a month I continued to work toward my goal awaiting that day I would reach my goal.

Then one day a good friend of mine who I had not talked to in a good while told me about affiliate marketing and how he was making hundreds a day. Obviously this intrigued me and soon enough I followed suit. My first market was Ringtones. The dreaded saturated market in which every Noob should stay far far away from! Either from sheer dumb luck or past experience my first run with ringtones was an automatic profit. From day one I profited, Now really intrigued by the potential I continued deeper and deeper into the ringtone market. I had my share of bumps in the road but all learning experiences.

Next thing I know I am making 3,000$ a month profiting 100$ a day every day. Not even realizing that I had reached my goal. All I had time to worry about was improving and pushing harder. 4,000$, 5,000$, 6,000$ I had doubled my goal amount by 2x and I was making more money than both my parents combined. Falling off the horse a few times but always getting back on I ventured farther and farther into the ringtones market. I had something to prove to everyone who ever doubted me. That was all the motivation I ever needed. I pushed forward until one day I sat down looking at my monitor at 4pm in the afternoon and seeing for the first time, my first 1,000$ day. Not only had I accomplished my initial goal, I had bested it 10x over. A High school and college kid drop out. Three years of Online experience has brought me 30,000$ a month in revenue. I had proven all of my doubters wrong. And now I achieved a income even most college graduates would dream of. I had succeeded in my lifetime goal at the age of 18. I never stepped foot in a real world job, I never plan too. Entrepreneur Is the only title I want.

Now recently hitting my 2,000$ a day mark I look back and reflect on the mistakes and lessons on the road to where I am now. The biggest mistake I’ve been making is not taking the time to look back on all my failures. Nobody wants to acknowledge failure let alone reflect on it, But the lesson to be learned from it is that mistakes are success in a nutshell. You can learn to look at mistakes as failures and shrug them off and never think about it again or you can look at mistakes as experience gained and a lesson to be learned with each mistake.

The best piece of advice anyone can ever give you in business is to take the time to stop. Reflect on your mistakes, Write them down, in a journal if you want and figure out the reason why you failed. Don’t brush it off without knowing why you failed in the first place, The same reason why some people never succeed is because they never learned from their mistakes and its an endless cycle of failure. Don’t be afraid of failure, You can’t avoid it so when you do fail approach it as a learning experience and knowledge gained from it. The more you fail the more experienced you become. I would seek advice from people who have multiple failures than people who have none. They know what not to do, and that experience will always be with them and they can only get better from it.

So take the time to analyze your failures when and if they do happen. Write them down in a notebook to record it for future preference if need be. Tossing aside your mistakes will be the biggest mistake you will ever make. So learn your lesson now before it becomes a huge flaw in your business model.

I hope you enjoyed the read.
Thank you,
William C.