Hello all, Mateen from Affengineer.com here.
Firstly, I’d like to thank KJ for having me on his blog.
I still remember reading his blog when I hadn’t earned a single dollar and being motivated by his case studies and blog posts. They were what I needed to keep going and make this work!
I’m here to tell you my short story how I transitioned from a full-time graduate engineer stuck in the corporate office to a full-time internet marketer.
Before I continue, I wanted to set the tone.
Internet Marketing is hard. Very hard. If you want to make this your full-time career, you have to make it your number one obsession. Your reason to live and breathe. Especially at the start, when your learning curve is enormous.
Sure, you can get lucky and stumble upon a profitable campaign right off the bat but that’s rare and you don’t want to depend on dumb luck. You want to build a skill-set so you’re able to maintain an income for the rest of your life. That’s what I realised.
I remember my last year of work like it was yesterday. Over the two years I was employed, I went from being ridiculously passionate about building a career in construction to hating being in a 50m radius of my office.
You build fake relationships, have to go through with stress levels no one should be dealing with and work long hours hardly having a life of your own.
I remember going from endless conversations of fun to boring conversations of work. Nothing was new in my life anymore. I’d get up, go to work, come home, eat, sleep and repeat.
What was the point of this? How can anyone be ok with this? Forty more years of this? No way!
In my second year of employment I had lost all interest. I was still there but my mind was out. It was at this moment I started to be interested in business as a full-time career.
I was a hustler at school, selling USB’s, Phones, Playstations, anything I could flip for some extra income. It was exciting and where people saw fun and excitement, I saw opportunity to make money.
Anyway, I finally quit my job and entered the world of entrepreneurship. For six months I tried everything. I started some random blogs, made iPhone apps, bought and sold things from eBay, Went yard sale hunting, started a YouTube channel and all sorts of things I thought would make me money.
They all ended the same. I’d lose interest and give up. Mostly it was my fault for giving up too early but there was an element to all this that was making me fail time and time again.
Marketing.
I was creating all these awesome websites, but had no clue how to get it in front of people! How do I go about doing this?
That’s when I decided to stop all projects immediately. What’s the point on working on a mobile phone app for 3 months only to launch it and see hardly any downloads. I realised a business with no marketing plan is not a business. It’s a dream.
That was the one thing I was missing.
That’s when I researched on marketing, stumbled upon Affiliate Marketing and immediately fell in love.
I could learn good marketing and make money at the same time? That’s perfect!
For the next month, I worked 12 hour days learning simple design, coding, WordPress and setting up tracking. I read everything Affiliate Marketing related like a mad man. There were days I forgot to eat. My hair and beard were grown out and I looked like the biggest hobo. I had also lost some weight.
I was obsessed. It was unhealthy but it was necessary for me to evolve. Everytime I came across a great post I saved it. I’ve got a massive database of random threads and success stories that helped me greatly.
I eventually found the right people to guide me and started to see results. After a month in, my 12 hour days paid off and I saw conversions. Three months after that, I had my first $200/profit campaign!
I even wrote a success story on AffPlayBook about it!
It was crazy. It was a massive puzzle at the start but when it all clicked and came together, it just made so much sense.
Everyday I had a new challenge and as I asked questions, read around and learned, I got better and better. Every month, I’d look back and if I had learned a lot, I knew I was on the right track.
About a year after this campaign, I had my first 10k Revenue day and six figure month.
It was after this day that all the limitations I had in my mind were unlocked. No more did I think about making just $500 a month or $100/day I wanted to make $1,000s a day.
Anything is possible in this industry and I learned that eventually. You just need the right skill sets to capitalise on opportunities when the time is right and the ability to never give up.
You may think I know a lot more than the newbie marketer. Maybe I do but the biggest difference was I work a lot harder than most people and I spend my time doing the right things.
While people are reading and watching YouTube tutorials, I’m spending real money and learning from my mistakes.
I might lose $200 in one day, but a month later it will help me make $1,000s.
I’ll launch 10-20 campaigns a day sometimes just to see what happens. My success rate is low. Very low.
Probably one in every 100 campaigns I launch is profitable. In fact, I’d call that lucky. So what do I do about it? Launch as many campaigns as quickly as I can. If I launch 100-200 campaigns a month and get 1-2 profitable campaigns out it with the occasional unicorn, I’d be on easy six figures. That’s how this industry works.
You spend, You Learn, You earn.
Right now, I’m doing a ‘100 Campaign Launch Challenge’ which I’m blogging about almost every day. I launch campaigns and tell the world what happened with them. Did I lose money or did I make money? There’s some very valuable gold nuggets in there for newbie marketers.
Anyway, I just wanted to drop by and say hello. Hopefully, I’ve opened your eyes to the realities of this industry. It’s not a fairy tale but it’s not easy either. If you’re ready to put in hard work, you’ll get there I guarantee it.
Cheers and thanks to KJ for having me here.
Mateen @ Affengineer.com
