[Success Story] How I made $3k in 3 months (and I just started out)

[WARNING: BASED ON A TRUE STORY] 

The Begining

Hey warriors. I created this thread both to inspire you as well as to give back to the Warrior Forum. 

As you can see on the left, I am not a newbie when it comes to IM. I joined WF 8 years ago and during this time, I tried all sort of things. 

I tried selling on eBay, Flippa, Udemy, create my own products, created multiple niche blogs for adsense income ...nothing pans out. 

I spend money and time buying WSOs after WSOs and still, I made barely anything....

Since selling products doesn't pan out , I decided to market myself as copywriter here.

It failed too....

I decided to give up IM and market my service to local businesses. 

But you know what? 

I am very unhappy. I don't like the idea of trading time for money and I don't like the fact that most biz owners treat freelancers as dirt. 

In fact, I am only happy when I work alone....with just a computer and an internet connection. 

So, after about 2 years as a local copywriter, I came back to WF looking for the "magic pill".

The Magic Pill

Looking back the last 8 years of fruitlessly searching for the one method that work I asked myself this very important question: 

"What does it take to be successful in IM?" 

And the answer have always been around us - The List! 

You see, the fact of the matter is, the bigger your list, the more money you gonna make. It's a fact and it will always be a fact. 

I never learn list building for the last 8 years and was trying to avoid building one because its expensive with no guarantee of returns. 

Now that I want to build a list....the number one question I had was, how can I build my list without bleeding to death (financially of course).

I mean, paid traffic is expensive....free traffic is time consuming..But there has to be a solution to this problem right? 

And the solution lies in the Solo Ads model.....

Solo Ads Business

You probably have heard about the solo ads biz. 

Basically, it's about buying and selling traffic from various list owners. You pay them a small sum and they will send an email to their list which will click on your link and visit your squeeze page. 

Lucrative? At that time, I don't know yet but I know that it's a possible way to cover the cost of building my list. 

I risk all I have (at that time I had just $2k left in the bank) and I told myself, if this doesn't work out, I will get a full time job and quit dreaming. 

I sign up for a training program...learn the basics and threw myself into the sea of solo ads. 

My First Month 

My first month was in Nov 2015. I remembered when I started paying for my first solo ads, I made a major mistake. 

I forgot to switch my Aweber from double opt in to single op in. 

I lost $65 in the process and gain just 1 subscriber. 

My subsequent solo ad buys got better and I build a list to about 500. 

Though I joined a CPA network and got some PPL offers which converts, its barely enough to cover the cost of building the list....

I made a decision to sell solo ads as well.....

Around 2 weeks into my first month, I made $60. 

3rd week, I made another $60. 

From then on, the momentum started to build. 

The Second Month

In the second month, I started getting payments of $60, $120, $32, $160 etc. 

In fact, I have 3 payments from my CPA networks totaling $508 on top of the sale of my solo ads. 

I also had $115 on the last day of the year from Clickbank. 

All in all, I made a total of $1,600. 

Remember how much I made in my first month? Just $120. 

The Third Month 

This month marks the third month I am in the solo ads biz and the based on my rough estimation, I already made about $2,700. 

Many large orders came in this month....Some $100, some $160 and one is $320. 

I also had a great first week of 2016 thanks to Clickbank with a total of $680....

I am still $300 shy of $3k but I know it's possible to reach it since I have 11 days to go before Feb. 

What The Future Hold

My initial goal was to find a method to build my list without bleeding to death. I found it in the solo ads model.

Will I be selling solo ads one year from now? Probably...but you know what, with a huge list, you can sell whatever you want. 

CPA, solo ads, membership sites, even your own products. 

The whole message in this thread is to encourage you to build a list. 

That is what most newbies try to avoid.... 

If you ever watched Joy (the movie starring Jennifer Lawrence), Joy's Miracle Mop would never sell if it's not because she had a television audience. 

She will never become a millionaire, if its not for the audience who adore her.....

The same rule applies to IM. You need an audience to sell to and your audience is in the list you build. 

That's about it. Go build your list now! 
Roderick

I don't think solo ads are any less reliable. At the end of the day, list building is a number's game. 

I usually buy a 100 clicks to test the quality and opt in rates. Of coz, with so many facebook groups, u get to see the main sellers popping up most of the time, usually in the form of testimonials. 

If a seller provide good opt ins, I will buy from them again, this time abit more (200 or 300 clic

Thanks! 

At the moment I am focusing on building the list to 10k (half way there). 

Once I get there, my next step is to diversify my traffic source. I probably will start with PPC first and in future PPV. 

Either way, generating traffic from solo ads alone isn't going to be long term.

I would never want to be in the solo ad business. It seems like such a miserable way to make a living. 

Think about it. 

You are buying lists of people and treating them like a comodity and then rehashing those lists in order to make a quick buck. 

Is this the dream job you always wanted?

There are better things in life than solo ads that are mostly zcrap. 

Go out, live life. Don't get sucked into a bottomless pit like solo ads. 

Not saying they don't work but most of them are zcrap. and people on facebook selling solos are like vultures. 

Happy new year.