Make Money Online

Over the past few months the industry has seemed to gone through some slight changes. Rebill offers for the most part are not run like they were before. I know this because of what’s happened to my own traffic, getting approval on my own offer, and then friends that I’ve talked to who have had to go back to “legit” affiliate offers.

So now what? Some food for thought…

Oldies but Goodies

Offers like credit reports, auto insurance, dating, etc. These are the classics but they’re offers that have been running strong this entire time for a reason…they convert. Some of the very first offers I ran back in the day were all 3 of those I listed above, and all 3 were profitable. I also see Google ads as well as Facebook ads for all 3 of those, which tells me that it looks like they’re converting just like the old days.

Mobile/IQ

Mobile used to be the hot “shady” thing to do, when rebilling people for $9.99 was unethical. My oh my if we only knew we would rebill for 10x that amount and go to bed with a smile on our faces (’our’ just referring to the entire industry). Mobile offers are doing well from what I hear. I see some ads on Myspace and other teenage oriented sites, and I also hear incenting these offers on app traffic is working nicely.

Edu

If you take a closer peek at Facebook and a few other places, you’ll see a few people running education offers. These have been kind of a “sleeper” for a while now, I ran them a while ago with some success. The only thing you have to watch out for is quality, they can end up nailing you on it. But other than that it’s a nice leadgen with a good payout for just completing a form with no credit card.

Good Ole Fashioned Business

Maybe it’s time for you to take some of those rebill profits and pour them into a business idea you’ve had in your mind for the past year. Don’t forget that affiliate marketing is just one of the ways to make money online. Build a site that people want to visit every day or a service that they don’t mind paying to use. In the age of Facebook/Digg/Reddit/etc, sharing has never been easier. This makes viral sites all the more easier to go viral.

Just some things to think about in case you’re a deer in headlights now that the FTC truck is speeding at you.

Source:

Long story made short with no explanation : I’ve just created a chatroom here at Uberaffiliate, you can click here to connect to it.

Now for the explanation. If you’re anything like me, some days you’re at your house chugging away at campaigns and you just get bored. Maybe most of your friends on IM are working and can’t talk, you don’t want to wait for people to reply to your forum posts, and you just want to take a break. That’s why I set up a small chat room attached to UberAffiliate. I plan on just popping it up in a new window and letting it chill in the corner of one of my monitors. I used to hang around the Cakes chat room, but the past few times I’ve gone in there hasn’t really been anybody on.

This is also a way I think I’ll be able to connect with you guys (the readers) better. A lot of you send me IMs during the day and I’m either not paying attention to Adium, or by the time I get back to the computer to respond you’re already gone.

So if you just want a place to hang out and chat/shoot the breeze with other marketers, just head to the chat room.

Nothing big, maybe I’ll see you there maybe not! Oh if you have your own IRC program that you’re more used to, the channel is #affchat.

View original here:
AffChat at Uberaffiliate

Hey guys and girls. I just want to write a little message, and I want other affiliates to comment on this issue as well. This is kind of aimed towards affiliate networks.

This post is coming because of something that has happened to me many times. If it’s once or twice at one or two networks, okay maybe those are legit. But when it’s happened at almost every network I’ve been at, some have to be true. This actual post is because I’m planning on running smorgasbord of offers with 1 network. They gave me the heads up that 1 of the offers I requested was no good to run. So my response was basically what the rest of this post says, and a ‘thank you’ to that network.

How many times have you asked “So what are your top converting offers to run for Vertical X?” and got a list back, ran those offers, only to find out that it’s converting worse than what you’re running now?

This has happened to me quite a few times. I’ll get a list of the top offers, and then I’ll ask my AM what the offer is converting at for most affiliates. They usually say very nice things, like “It’s converting at 13% for affiliates with a $5-6 EPC”. Now I’ll be getting like a $3.50-4 EPC now so this sounds amazing, almost double my revenue. So I run the offer and guess what, it’s a $2 EPC and I’m now almost losing money. It’s just happened too many times for them all to be my fault (I know my traffic is good because I’ve run it fine on other offers that look exactly the same).

For an affiliate like me, who doesn’t even want to talk to networks anymore unless they’re going to be honest, I propose this :

Instead of telling me what offers “your affiliates are running great right now”, give me some REAL numbers I can look at. If you have 1 affiliate running at a $6 EPC and 10 affiliates running it at a $2 EPC…tell me the offer has a $2.50 EPC. If that doesn’t beat what I’m running now, that’s just the way it works and I won’t run the offer. But if you’re honest about it and you get an offer in a month that has a $3.50 EPC overall, when you come to me I’ll actually run the offer. It’s annoying to run the offer, not see the $6 EPC, and lose money half the time just to find out that it’s a bad offer.

There was 1 vertical where I literally ran at least 20 different offers where every time I was told were the best offers at the time with great EPCs, only to find out that they all sucked. Lost at least $10,000 just to learn that anything an AM tells me about this offer is going to be a lie, and I should just call it quits.

Anyone with me?

Read the rest here:

So Nickycakes has come out with his first affiliate industry product he calls LPLockdown. It’s a service that provides cloaking for your landing pages so other affiliates can’t see or steal them.

LPLockdown : The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good

We’ll start off with the good here. The things it does for your pages are nice, if you’re not currently doing something like this with your pages, you should look into it. LPLockdown will :

1) Cloak your pages from other affiliates. Cakes has a database of affiliate IPs he’s collected, so when they hit your landing page they’re redirected somewhere else.

2) Steal their traffic if they steal yours. if someone rips your page 100% and leaves your javascript, you can redirect traffic from their page to your page/offer.

3) Uptime/downtime monitor so if your landing page goes down you get a notification.

The Bad

While there are positives to using this service to protect your page, there are cons to this.

1) It’s not self-hosted. And seeing as Nickycakes himself said it’s “by affiliates for affiliates”, do you want to give Nicky (an affiliate) potential access to all of your landing pages?

2) I have a friend who programs and said he programmed the exact same thing for himself in 2 days. Do you want to pay $50/month for something you can pay a programmer a few hundred bucks and have forever?

3) This is interesting…reverse IP lplockdown.com. You’ll find the site 11i.us. Check the WHOIS on that info. It’s Nicky’s actual info. Do you trust a product who was created by someone that can’t privacy protect their own self?

4) It looks like I designed that site the first week I learned Photoshop. The WordArt in the video gives it a nice ‘95 touch.

The Ugly

Everyone is pretty aware that this is NickyCakes’ product. I’ve gotten the chance to meet him and chat at events and he’s a nice guy. Like with all arguing on the internet I think once everyone comes together we realize how lucky we are and the pansy e-fighting that happens doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

Be that as it may, Nicky’s online persona has always been ripping others in the industry to shreds. He rips on the big Gurus like Shoemoney and Chow, and also has torn apart myself (the Goober) and Ubercamp.

So the question is : if he really made this product to “contribute” to the industry, why does he have to charge for it (more so $50/month…maybe $5-10/month would be more legit)? Especially when it’s not anything advanced, it’s like making a blog post about how to track keywords with PHP. Again I’m not a programmer and haven’t seen the backend of LPLockdown, but after talking to friends it doesn’t seem all that hard to just do this on your own (or pay someone to program it for you). I’d use LPLockdown as a fresh reminder that you should be doing your best to hide and protect your pages.

Nickycakes having financial trouble perhaps? Gotta pay those taxes.

Here is the original post:
Nickycakes Gains GURU Status w/ LPLockdown (/sarcasm)

This isn’t meant to be a long and planned out post with my 2010 predictions, just getting some thoughts out.

Here’s what’s been happening with me and my product launch. My plan has been to set up a continuity offer with a product but have it be legitimate at the same time. Believe it or not I think there are ways to attract customers without offering them a Free* Trial. I’ve now been rejected by 2 or 3 merchants and am awaiting the reply on another. Because of all the scamming that went down in 2009, Visa/Mastercard are tightening their grip on things…especially domestically. And since I don’t have any real processing history, domestic is the route I have to go. So even though my offer is completely legitimate and actually charges them up-front for a sale, the banks are saying no just because there is continuity involved (I don’t want to get into the specifics, but my charges monthly would be under $20, not $110.33). This sucks pretty bad because now I may be forced to abandon that business model and try and make this work by just straight selling it. I’ve put too much time into it to scrap, but now I have to make huge changes. I have to now build a full website and come out with a mini product line so I can offer combo packages and things like that to incent customers.

That’s how 2009 impacted me, where will the affiliate industry be in 2010? While working on all of this product mumbo jumbo, I kind of “left” the affiliate industry for a while. Didn’t talk to my AMs much, didn’t browse offers, didn’t keep up too much on the news. Now that I’ve been looking to get some campaigns and other projects running again (with the product delay I have to make money somehow), things seem to be changing. Rebill offers that made up a lot of business for affiliate networks are dropping. There are still ones that exist and offers running well so it’s not like they’re completely dying, but things will change.

I think many affiliates will realize that before rebills came along everybody was still making money. Not millions every month, but there was plenty of money to be made and there still is.

I’ll keep you guys posted on what happens with my projects and how everything is influencing them.

Read the original post:
Affiliate Marketing in 2010

Just wanted to say congrats to Jeremy on rolling out The ShoeMoney Sytem. As much hate as he gets (which the hate has died down tremendously because a) people realized that fat jokes are only funny for so long and b) plenty of legitimate trolls have entered the industry that are actually worth the negative attention), the man knows how to launch and run a successful web-based business.

Can you believe all the self-hype about it? I’m sure many people read “how to make money step by step” and are a bit skeptical, after all that’s what every shittyscammy bizopp promises. Will it lead you step by step to making money? Probably, if you actually digest the information properly. You can check out one of the free videos to kind of get a feel for it (I just watched about half of one of them). You can also read about it on his blog. If you’re just getting started into the industry or have some O.K. businesses running online, Shoe is a guy that’s worth listening too. If you’re just a shady aff raking it in on rebills trying to stay cloaked, you’ll probably find this boring.

I don’t want to plug it too hard because I don’t know the full system and I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, but it looks like Shoemoney put a lot of work into this and so far it looks like he did a pretty good job. So, nice one dude.

P.S. This isn’t a paid review.

P.P.S. Like the category I put this in whoop whoop :p

Excerpted from:
ShoeMoney System, Cool Beans

I’m just assuming that this is going to have to be a series of articles, it would probably be huge if I crammed it all into one. At this point in time, I am almost ready to launch my product on the advertiser side. By the end of this week everything should be 95% ready to go. I want to just shed some more light on this area because there’s not too much content on becoming an advertiser. Most blogs just write about the affiliate side of things, but you still hear all the affiliates saying “being an advertiser is where the money is at”. Do we not see content on this topic because that’s the truth? At first I kind of thought this, but not so much anymore.

Being an advertiser is a HUGE hassle. If (like me) you’re doing it by yourself, it seems the number of things to do is endless. I would make checklists every week, and for every 1 thing I crossed off, 2 were added in. It’s stressful, time consuming, requires money and connections, and some knowledge. I’ve been working on this for almost 6 months now, and for the past 3 my income has shot down to $0…I’ve been spending all of my time and resources on this. I’m hoping this article series will save potential advertisers a lot of time, or at least give you a good “idea” of what being an advertiser is like.

After seeing Shoemoney’s post a while ago, I decided to get a Visa Black Card for the hell of it. Came home from a movie last night and saw this on my doorstep :

Pretty neat. Centurion card members can maybe post what holiday type gift they received from Amex (if any).

As far as the card goes itself, yeah it’s the poor man’s Centurion. Membership fees are $500/year (same as Amex Platinum), and the worst part is…the card is plastic. Point/cash-back wise, it’s no different than any other card really. Benefit wise, so far it doesn’t seem to really compare to the Amex.

A lot of times when I’m out at stores and use it, the cashier asks “Is this a real black card?” Unfortunately I always respond “Nope, this is the Visa version.”

All in all Visa thanks for the gift and all, but I will probably be canceling the card before the next membership charge.

See the original post:
Surprise Ray-Bans from Visa

This is just from a couple days ago, but DazzleSmile is suing Epic Advertising (Azoogle) and Jesse Willms (Just Think) for basically abusing their brand. Read the PR Here.

In a nutshell (from what I believe and have heard), DazzleSmile was already a teeth whitening company that nobody has heard of really. Just Think comes along and makes DazzleSmile Pro, the rebill offer. Azoogle is one of the many affiliate networks that pushed Dazzle.

As you can imagine, when you brand something with a shady rebill you’re almost guaranteed to destroy it’s brand in some way. People will be pissed off, they’ll report it to scam alert and ripoffreport and that ranks high in Google. I’d be pretty pissed too if I had a brand I built and someone came along and basically ruined it. Don’t quote me on this as it may be rumors and what not, but I did hear that jail time is going to be involved in this.

If you want to check out the legal jargon, check this link out.

EDIT : Just read through that entire PDF. Pretty intense but an entertaining story to say the least. Seemed like an internet marketing version of Law & Order lol. Some major charges going on in there though.

It’s a good thing I didn’t name my product Hydroxycut Pro like I was planning on.

DazzleSmile Sues Epic Advertising + Jesse Willms

Why does Zac Johnson have almost 9,000 subscribers and I have 6,000?

Do I need to make 90% of my posts sponsored posts about products I don’t even support/use and the other 10% about a recent “profitable” Facebook campaign that made $20? His most recent post is a sponsored post about a charity for the Make A Wish foundation. Come on now, you need the money that badly that you’re taking money from a place trying to promote a charity?

I mean really, I must suck. This dude posts his profitable campaigns that make $20 and he has 3,000 more readers than me.

Yeah I’m bitching. Give me the answer, NOW.

/sarcasm

But really…why? Zac Johnson pwns me.

P.S. Congrats to Wes and the 202 team, Tracking 202 has been acquired by Bloosky. You guys developed an awesome piece of software and deserve it!

The rest is here:
Zac Johnson, God of Blogging

Boy, when I look back into my past, it’s funny to see what I said and did. From the rise and fall of UberCamp, to my multiple admissions to “blog less” or stop blogging, I’ve been able to see quite a bit of indecision in myself. And it’s helped me learn about myself, a lot.

See while maybe most people would think making a public ass of themselves all the time isn’t professional or conductive to real business, I would say overall that it’s helped me. By constantly throwing my ideas out there impulsively as I think them, I get an incredible amount of negative feedback. And while it may also seem uncommon, negative feedback is what I thrive on. How can you make yourself as close to perfect as possible without first knowing your flaws?

Believe it or not this wasn’t just me venting impulsively (okay, mmmmaybe partially), this can have practical application in your life and work. Couple points :

a) Don’t be afraid to pursue any idea that comes to your mind. Even if you get all the negative feedback in the world, you’ll still never really know until you try it.

b) Throw every idea out to as many people as you can (while being confidential if need-be). So maybe you have a killer product idea and you don’t want to reveal it, but you want some type of feedback from fellow marketers. Give away as much information as you can, talk about general strategies you’re thinking of employing, and get advice! Practical example :

Determining a rebill price for my product was one of the toughest things to figure out. I wanted to have a legitimate value for the product being sold, so I came up with a pretty low price. Shot that idea out to a bunch of my biz friends, and pretty much got all feedback that said “Not going to work dude.” They were right. The numbers just didn’t work out. Eventually I got the idea that instead of charging $100 for a bottle of 16oz Pepsi, I could add perceived value by shipping them 2 bottles of 10oz Pepsi, at the price of $50 per bottle. It increases the cost to me a bit since I have to ship 2 bottles, but the end value to the consumer will (hopefully) feel like they are getting a much better value at $50 per bottle instead of $100. Obviously all of these numbers are highly embellished, but you get the picture. Ran that idea by the same friends, they thought it was a much more practical idea then what I originally had planned.

If I hadn’t asked my friends with experience and looked like a newb (which is what I felt like), I probably wouldn’t have come to the eventual conclusion that I did.

c) Keep putting yourself out there. Just because you ran into a tree and fell down doesn’t mean you can’t get back up and run right back into it. Things will fall off the tree every time you hit it, and that’s how you learn.

Not really a post about much here, but if you have all these ideas bottled up and just don’t want to look stupid…look stupid. Who cares?

View post:
Be A Stumbling, Bumbling Idiot Like Me

A lot of chat has been going on recently of this Dennis Yu character. Dennis has been recently revealed as a con-man, with his failed local search company operating as a cover-up for porno websites. Sound crazy? Don’t take my word for it :

Dennis Yu – Rise and Fall Of A Con Man In The Affiliate Industry
Dennis Yu – Hypocrite Defined
How Dennis Yu Succesfully Trolled an Entire Industry
Dennis Yu Discussion

I’ll try and summarize this all into a short paragraph.

Dennis Yu built himself up as a pioneer of legitimacy in our industry. He ran a company that did local search campaigns for companies. He lied about his “investors”, number of employees, and profitability. It all ended up being a cover for porn sites. This I can confirm. I was out to lunch with Volk and a few other friends including Dennis at the time. See us all so happy here (yeah ignore those faces, bit of an inside joke) :

We’re at lunch and I can’t remember what happened, but Dennis had his laptop out and started playing a porn video. He was showing us ads or something, but we were all pretty confused why he was blasting a porn video in the Cheesecake Factory.

I let him write some guest posts for me. A few months ago he said he wanted to launch an article series that was for Scott Richter (who kicked Dennis out of his building), but it was really just promoting his BlitzLocal company hard. He also outed some Facebook strategies on TechCrunch, bringing much unwanted attention for affiliates.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing him at many conferences soon, but just in case : make sure to stick away and not buy into his b/s.

View original post here:
Dennis Yu : Matchstick Man

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say at least 9/10 people reading this aren’t really making a significant income online. Via affiliate marketing, blogging, SEO, whatever. Well I’m about to tell you how to turn that around with a little bit of simple writing. You see, becoming a super affiliate blogger really is a lot easier than you’d think, you actually don’t even have to know anything. You’re going to really sense the satire in this post, but also know that everything is true.

Step 1 : Pick a name that dictates you from the start.

You want people’s first impression of you to be that of a self-proclaimed badass, chances are they’ll believe it. Examples :

UBERaffiliate.com
shoeMONEY.com
SUPERAFFILIATEmindset.com
CASHtactics.net

In the least, include something like “I Make Money Online By Telling People How I Make Money Online” in the title of your blog. All people want from your blog (in most cases) is to learn how to make money. Remember…you don’t actually have to be an uber affiliate, you just need people to think you are.

Step 2 : Regurgitate some already known tips.

Go to my affiliate marketing guide, or visit other affiliate marketing blogs around the web. Read all the content that’s been talked about a billion times (like how to track with php, why more content on your site gives you a better quality score, how to write adcopy, etc). Use words like “laser-targeted” and “server side tracking”. You don’t even have to know what you mean by that, it just makes you sound pro.

Step 3 : B/s current events.

Bring up some fancy Google Trends swine flu graph :

And talk about the huge spike in the graph, and that you should be capitalizing on selling immune system rebill products. Now people will think you’re keeping up with current events, and they can check back on your blog for more current events. Even though you pointed out an obvious fact and just pulled a Google Trends graph. Case in point. Not many comments on that post but that’s because it was one of the first. It did it’s job.

Step 4 : Land a big guest post somewhere to explode your readership.

By this point, you have a name like DancingWithTheSuperAffiliates.com and a tagline like “Ex-Blackhat Conman” to give people the impression that you’re straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie. You also have a small reserve of posts that are going to make you look like you know what you’re talking about, and that you keep up with the industry. It’s time to get your readers.

This could be one of the most difficult steps, because you actually have to write something that’s worth a guest post somewhere. For me, I had to sacrifice breaking Facebook ads on Shoemoney to get my readers. It was a great article though and I think I had over 1,000 readers a week later. Once you have a kick-start like that, your readers will start linking to your future posts, about regurgitated tips and common sense current events.

Step 5 : The Earnings Screenshot

This one is absolutely necessary if you want a following that will pause their campaigns at your will/recommendation.

As demonstrated by previous heroes of our past, you can completely fake the screenshot. If you’re then caught doing so (which you have to be really stupid), just come back and say “EDIT : This edit came in before people called me out. That check isn’t mine, I only posted the picture for entertainment purposes. I did make that money though…”

Step 6 : Linkbait and Commotion

Any decent blogger can be good at writing link bait. Have you noticed the hundred links in this post already? Also I don’t mean it’s required that you get a ton of links back to your article, starting a good fuss in the comments section usually does the trick as well. You want to keep people engaged in your blog, and also entertain them. I think people like when I post something they don’t agree with, because they get to speak up against me.

Step 7 : Ads, Review Posts, etc

Things like ads and review posts can add a sense of legitimacy I think in a blog. If people are buying ad spots and review posts, the blog must be worth something. Keep in mind, nobody actually has to buy a review post/ad spot for it to look like they have. Put in some affiliate network ads and review posts (that they didn’t ask you to do) and pop in your referral link.

…

Follow all these steps and you may actually turn yourself into the super affiliate you’re claiming to be. You’ll make money from the ads to put into PPC, and have networks begging you for your traffic that doesn’t exist.

Cool people (and friends) mentioned in this post :

Me
Shoemoney
John Chow
Chad (CDF)
Kris (Cash Tactics)
Cakes

More:
How To Become a Thuper Affiliate Blogger Overnight

This post is for anyone pre-college, in college, thinking about college, and thinking about what they’re going to do. This is just my unique chain of events, but everything did happen and you might be the exact same way. I think we often hear much too much barraging from the “other side” on the importance of college, most of the time it’s from people with jobs they got from their college degree. So this is just a story from someone who has a successful job but no degree. I had my glory Year and One Month at college, and I retired in my prime.

It seemed like my entire childhood education was built upon finally going out to college, learning a trade, and getting a job with the degree I would earn. At least in high school that’s all I heard from teachers…”You think this is hard, just wait until college.”…”We’re doing this to better prepare you for college,”, etc. Throughout our high school years is when our parents encourage us to save up for college, and even set up college funds for us with their money.

So what did I put in? Two years, roughly $15,000 (including all tuitions, books, room/board, etc), and a lot of my time. What did I end up with? College certainly didn’t pay me for my time, so that’s -$15,000. Looking back, I really didn’t learn anything useful other than the fact that if you really really want to find a way to get around the system…you can. I did have some great times with great people, but this post is only talking about the education/degree factor. So I ended up with nothing but the lesson that college just isn’t necessary for some people. If I put more into it, would I have learned something and gotten a degree? Yeah, not denying that one bit. But college simply isn’t for me, and might not be for you either.

I’ll talk briefly about my college experience now for those that are interested and may be going through similar things.

Pre-college : In high school I was the kid who did nothing and got by. I hated homework, maybe just for the fact that I didn’t like the idea of having to do something I didn’t want to do. I took the test and did the big projects, but I usually avoided most small homeworks – because they could be avoided. If you really really want to find a way around the system…you can. And you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out, just take a step back and look at where you’re really going. If you know you want to go to a community college out of high school, do you really need an A? If you like working hard at things just for the sake of working hard, more power to you. But if not (like me), don’t feel like a failure because you just don’t see the point in it.

During College : I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to go in, I just figured I’d be good at business or law. But I certainly wasn’t going through all the work and hell to get through law school – life really is too short to waste 7-8 years of my life wanting to kill myself. So I chose business, and took on the easy schedule. I learned about online marketing while just starting my freshman year at school. By the start of the second semester, I knew I would be dropping out after that year. I saw the potential in the industry and had already made a few thousand bucks, it was worth it. You can always go back to college if you really need to. I started working on my business and stopped doing school work. College did indeed prove to be a bit harder than high school. Here homework usually wasn’t required, it all came down to the tests. Unfortunately those required hours of reading, so I usually read the cliff notes, or read the test of the girl in the row in front of me (she got a C on the economics exam). Once more now, if you really really want to find a way around the system…you can.

Transition Time : I resigned from college that year to work on affiliate marketing full time. I was learning 10x as much by getting out there and testing things for myself. I could either pay $20,000-100,000 (depending on what school you go to) to get a degree that will teach me how to manage my business assets. Or I could spend $1,000 testing Google Adwords to find the customers that want to buy what I have to sell. My first years in affiliate marketing, even now, have taught me an incredible amount…and I didn’t have to sacrifice a dime for it. But while I was building my business, I started to feel like I missed out on the college years of my life. So I went back…

Back to School : Last month I started school at SUNY Geneseo. It’s actually a very selective school now and they rejected my application at first. My grades weren’t even close to being good enough to get in (perhaps like trying to get a job interview with a low GPA?). So I drove down to the school, talked to the admissions officer, and told him why he should let me attend their school. All together now: if you really really want to find a way around the system, you can. After a month of taking classes that I just took out of interest (computer science, physics, and geology), working on this new product simply took up all my time. I didn’t have nearly enough time to study, and it was the best business move to just cut my losses and move back home.

Was the point of that whole story to either a) bore you, or b) lead you to believe I’m an egomaniac? No, this is for kids my age who may feel the same way about school. If you really feel that college isn’t for you, and if you really feel like you don’t need college to earn a good living, you have no reason to waste your money even trying. Why spend thousands of dollars on college, and THEN go out and try something that wouldn’t make use of your paper degree? If you’re in college now or any type of school, start working on something in your free time. Brainstorm ways to make money and put them to action. Don’t listen to anybody that tells you that you need college to be successful in “this day in age”.

Some points I want to make :

1) I am certainly not trying to encourage anybody to completely avoid college. If you want to be a doctor or nutritionist, college is completely necessary and will absolutely be helpful. I’m just making the point that many times something like college can be an individual case. Not everybody needs to be a part of the “system” in order to find their way. This is for those people, those cases…not everyone. I’m not talking about the fools with no college degree that peddle drugs, con people, or just sit and collect unemployment/welfare. Please don’t come at me with stats on college dropouts, because this article is not about that.

2) I go back to the “if you really really want to find a way around the system…you can.” quite a few times, and wanted to clarify that as it may raise some flags. Getting around the “system” is one of the things that my college experience showed me. It’s helped me to realize that if I really want to get somewhere or do something but have no direction, I know it’s possible that I’ll find a way to get where I want. Just knowing I can get there helps me stay motivated and fixated on whatever goal I have. BUT, you have to think of this in relative terms. I’m not saying beating the system means doing anything harmful, illegal, or highly unethical. In this article’s example I mention not doing homework, cheating on a college exam, and persuading the admissions director to accept me. Using an example of cheating on a test is probably inappropriate and slightly unethical…but it didn’t harm anybody and it helps to prove my point. Proving my point is more important than my personal reputation, the goal here is to be honest with others going through the same things as I am in regards to school. Hopefully it helps or at least reassures a few people out there.

Think about this :

You want to be a marketing manager when you grow up. Now you’ve looked at job descriptions and even called ahead to employers and asked them what a marketing manager does. You learn that once you’ve been hired, you’ll be trained on everything the company does. You’ll receive information to digest, and then receive your first task. Now it’s time for college. I’d say for that job position, easily more than half of your classes will serve you little to no purpose. Will learning the war heroes of the American Revolution help you sell toothbrushes? How about doing an advanced integral in calculus? The school system thinks you need these classes for your development/work ethic/blah blah. That’s why they make them required for any degree…for a lot of people that’s just simply wrong. It’s wasting their time and money to teach them something that will have little to no effect on their end-game (a career). I couldn’t help the fact that I simply couldn’t pay attention in classes I had no interest in. I know people that have paid to have somebody go and sit through all their classes and take their exams so they could work on their business instead…I say bravo. Beat that system boii.

3) Something to keep in mind : I’m writing this post as I’ve said for college kids in the same position. Same position meaning school just isn’t right for some people, and with some smart thinking and work you can make things work just fine on your own. Smart thinking, and work. If your idea for selling diet pills is to give out samples to marathon runners, you should strongly consider going to college or learning a trade. Being smart about things is 100% necessary for anything I’m talking about right now.

4) I sound like a slacker with my “do as little as possible to get by” philosophy. Most people resent that way of living…I embrace it. Why should I have to do homework that don’t have to do? If I’m doing well enough on the tests I obviously know the material, so I see no point unless I enjoy it. Should you go to lecture if you can learn all the material from the reading? Hell no, you should go play basketball with your friends instead. Instead of looking at it like a “do as little as possible to get by” approach, I look at is as : “accomplish your goals while enjoying as much of it as you possibly can.”

5) I am in no way saying to drop what you’re currently doing now. If you’re in college – stay in college. If you have a full time job – stay in that job. If you’re planning on going to college next year – go to college next year. But there is time in the “meantime” that you can start to explore career options that don’t require a degree. I know firsthand how much work college can be, especially if you actually plan on doing the work/studying. I have physics major friends who stay up all night many nights every week doing homework and studying. But they also have time to play a lot of Xbox and party on the weekends. Which if you’re going to school like that you need those breaks, but not if you want more. You have to want it badly enough. I started getting into internet marketing while I was going to school. I still did all my projects and went to my part-time job, but whenever I had free time I was reading about affiliate marketing. Once I started to see results from that (and only once I saw results), I started to cut back on school.

Anyway, bit of an off-topic post. But seeing as I’m just coming off of my second college run, the thoughts are flowing freshly. Keep in mind I like to stir the pot just for the sake of stirring, so don’t take any of this too offensively.

Always remember…be smart about it.

Continued here:
College : My Failed $15,000 Experiment

Join ma boi’s network Opes Media. I’ve been pretty excited myself a while for their launch, and now the time is here.

I actually went to Miami to visit the Opes HQ before ASE this summer, and it was pretty sweet. They have an awesome office and everything is setup really nicely. I got to sneak a peak at the back end of the system, see their offers, landing pages, etc. Basically by the time I had left, I was excited for their launch not so I can tell everyone here, but so I could run some of their offers myself . They have some offers converting pretty well actually that I’m going to give a shot (if you do any rebill stuff now, definitely check these guys out).

Opes is tops with its professional layout, and seamless interface. Signing up is easy and doesn’t require a lot of time. And once you get going, you know you are getting the real deal. They have their own proprietary network that utilizes server-side tracking, and everything is totally customizable. They have some pretty rad looking offers that are worth checking out. Plus they have exclusive advertisers too, so offers should convert pretty well.

One nice thing was the account managers which can be iffy for many other networks. Their account managers knew their stuff and were always available, which is nice because when problems come up it’s good to have help waiting. Also, they got flexible payment options that help with cash flow needs. Basically, it is a network that knows what you need to do well, but whether or not you do well is up to you.

Check them out, it’s worth a signup at least. I’m not getting paid for this post nor does Opes even have a referral program, so there’s no incentives for me. Just something you should check out.

Advertiser update: many long days and 6am nights aside, everything is starting to come together. Hopefully a couple more weeks and all the heavy work will be finished.