The Blindspot That Destroyed My First Business

I HATE this picture:

(Me as so-called "super affiliate")

I hate it because it projects an image of success when NOTHING could be further from the truth.

It started with this email I got in December 2008:

I had been generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions that year, and apparently, I was doing enough volume to put me among the top 100 affiliates on ClickBank (one of the largest affiliate networks at the time).

There was just one little problem:

I was BROKE, and drowning in over $100K of debt.

How could that be, when I was one of ClickBank's top affiliates? Wasn't I generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions?

Wasn't I rolling in cash??

To explain, I need to go back to the beginning.

What I'm about to share with you is painful to recall. My stomach still lurches when I relive it. But it's also one of the most valuable cautionary tales I could possibly share with you… with the potential to save you huge amounts of money, time, and grief.

So let's get in the shit.

After reading that Perfect Business article I shared with you on a minute ago, I committed 100% to starting a digital business.

The first thing I did was teach myself basic HTML and build a crappy little website.

Then I wrote a couple articles and put in some links to an affiliate offer.

(This is known as "affiliate marketing," where you promote other people's products in exchange for a percentage of each sale you generate for them)

After launching the site, I checked my traffic stats each day, eager to see how many visitors I'd had.

And each day was the same:

NADA.

And so I learned my first valuable lesson: if you build it… they will NOT (necessarily) come.

That's when I learned the importance of traffic… which led me to open my first Google AdWords account and start experimenting with paid advertising.

Once I realized how powerful paid advertising was, I forgot all about my crappy little review website and focused all my energy on learning the Google AdWords advertising platform.

I used a technique called "direct linking": in my Google ads, where you put in a website URL, I'd just put in my affiliate link, which meant that when people clicked the ad, it would take them directly to the sales page of whatever affiliate offer I was promoting.

This meant I could focus 100% of my energy on writing great ads that drove high response rates and affiliate commissions, without having to mess with creating and maintaining a website of my own.

After a few months of small-scale testing, I struck gold: one of my ad campaigns for a "people search" affiliate offer was profitable.

I would spend $30 or $40 bucks a day on Google ads and make $50 or $60 back in affiliate commissions.

It wasn't much, but it felt incredible: I suddenly had a taste of how life-changing a digital business could be.

I kept upping my ad spend, and to my amazement, the revenue kept going up as well.

Before long, I was making more from that one little campaign than I was making at my day job as a mental health program manager.

Convinced I'd "made it,"I quit my job just a few weeks later.

(My resignation letter)

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to celebrate.

When my profits first started to drop, I thought my campaign was just having an "off day." But over the next week, the trend kept getting worse.

Before I knew it, the cost of the ads was greater than the revenue generated FROM the ads… which meant I was no longer profitable.

And just like that, the "winning" campaign I'd quit my job on…

The one I'd assured my wife we'd be able to live off of… FAILED.

In a panic, I scrambled to replace the lost income, and eventually managed to create another profitable campaign… only to see THAT one peter out as well.

To make a long story short… I found myself in this "boom and bust" cycle for THREE LONG YEARS:

One step forward, two steps back…

One month of profits, two of losses.

I wish I could say that I had the wisdom and maturity to admit that what I was doing wasn't working… but I didn't. I doggedly pressed on, determined to "make it work."

I was CONVINCED that all I needed was the RIGHT offer, the RIGHT keyword, the RIGHT traffic source…

THEN I'd finally be able to provide my frazzled wife the income and stability I kept promising her… the life of freedom I kept assuring her was just around the corner.

Before I knew it, I'd maxed out our lines of credit.

Soon, we were carrying large credit card balances as well.

I still remember the day my wife called me from the grocery store, telling me our credit card was declined… and how I frantically logged into our online banking, with her still on the line, to see which credit card had enough headroom on it for her to buy groceries with.

(An old pic of me from that era. Stressed much?)

Needless to say, those were some very dark days.

I walked around in a fog of near-constant dread and shame… desperately needing to "figure this shit out," but apparently too stupid to do so.

So, now you know.

Now you understand how I found myself in that seemingly impossible situation… how I was completely broke, despite being a "top 100 ClickBank affiliate"…

…Scrambling like a rat on the wheel, doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in business turnover, with LESS than nothing to show for it.

What I didn't see was that my predicament had NOTHING to do with finding the right offer, keywords, or traffic sources, and EVERYTHING to do with my strategy…

…That my predicament was due ENTIRELY to the fact that I was stuck in the First Way model of doing business…

…Too blind to see that I was making everything WAY HARDER than it had to be.

What finally shocked me to my senses was a question from a stranger.