The ClickTrackProfit Christmas Badge Hunt has begun. Whoopee! Only a few months ago, the previous badge hunt had ended, and already a new one has arrived for our Christmas entertainment.
Recently in CTPtalk.com, there have been a few articles and comments made regarding these hunts. Questions have been raised about why so many people are addicted to using traffic exchanges. Perhaps some history from my 10 years of surfing experience may help explain that rather odd phenomenon, at least from my own personal perspective.
Since April 2009 when I became an affiliate for Clickbank, I have maintained a spreadsheet of my internet adventures. I tasted affiliate marketing for a while and tried to promote using the only resource I had available at that time, being social media. Because I had only a few followers, I had limited success. I could not afford to get my own website, so I used WordPress.org and set up a few blogposts. I didn't have enough knowledge to make a real go of that venture which really was just a hobby for me anyway.
My offline projects consumed my time for a while until I was able to resurrect my online hobby business in May 2010. Coming to the realisation that I needed to advertise the various affiliated wares I was promoting, I looked for the best way to do that with the very little money I could afford to invest.
My focus back then was to build my social media following, so I joined over 30 social media sites and began promoting programs that would increase followers to the places like Twitter and Facebook. A few months later, my own following had increased enough for me to be confident that I had enough exposure to rekindle my affiliate marketing business again.
Initially, I went looking for advertising sites to promote these social media follower sites. Not having too much success, I began promoting these advertising sites themselves. The promise of easy money to be made and without any effort, that was just too distracting and lead me away from my core business of affiliate marketing.
In July 2012, I clicked on a CTP badge being promoted by Irving Sears Jnr on ListSurfing.com and that led me to ClickTrackProfit, so I joined that site. I began making some money from their cash badges they used to have on traffic exchanges, and from the one or two referrals I had that actually upgraded (nice!).
My focus had shifted and now I was heavily involved in surfing and promoting traffic exchanges, and converting CTP cash badges into money. I was on a roll for a while, earning enough money to upgrade on CTP. Again, I got distracted by easy money and little effort, and wandered down a different path that led to matrices, hyip, and other less ethical sites.
In 2015, my PC died. I was living with my twin brother and he refused to let me use his PC for anything but gaming. In July 2019, Mary and I got our own place, and we got a new PC and reconnected with the internet. Oh happy days!
A forced break for almost four years and wow, the whole internet marketing scene thingie had changed big-time! Crypto was a joke back in 2015, and now the tide had truly turned as the former cash sites were struggling to stay in business so were offering very little returns on time invested; a lot of them refused to pay out to free members, offering just credits to promote your wares. Unreal, just less that four years, and my dream of residual revenue streams had gone.
After a couple of days of distress, I was back on ClickTrackProfit. I needed a way to kick-start my business again, and I was hoping my mate @jongolson would have the answer.
Man, did he what! Out had gone the old ways of encouraging freeloaders through cash badges, and promoting traffic exchanges as the means of generating wealth, and in came the new refurbished look rifled down to affiliation.
Yep, ClickTrackProfit had been phoenixed into the site that Jon Olson had first envisioned: an affiliate marketing platform to teach people desperate to build their online business, in a friendly and methodical manner. The core focus had reverted back to personal brand building in conjunction with building your own list.
As Jon pointed out, and continues to state, you cannot trust any site you do not own as the keeper of your own list, being the email addresses of your own customers built up over many years. That list is your intellectual property and is priceless, as without customers you are doomed to fail in any business be that online or offline.
Jon and his site co-owner @blainjones know how important that list is. No excuses, without a list you are just plain wasting their time! Point taken, so start working on your list, get involved with what Jon and Blain are doing, learn what you need to know, gain confidence about email marketing through using mailers, just keep on learning. The time will come when you know in your heart that you now need that list.
So, how do you go about building your personal brand, and building your list?
Well that's easy, just join their program. Yes, a free site that offers free money with little effort, like all the other sites, right? Too good to be true, yeah? Well, there is just a little bit of work involved:
- writing a few blogposts every week and commentary on other ones
- joining a few more sites in the training modules
- creating some lead capture pages to build your own list and running their effectiveness through the onsite Gauntlet
- promoting your LCPs on traffic exchanges and mailers, and don't forget the most important aspect being
- engaging daily with your potential customers on social media, chatrooms, and other strategic platforms, and that's just the beginning of your new entrepreneurial life!
Yep, traffic exchanges are too easy alright, just keep working your fingers with that click-click-click, what are you going to end up getting?
Boney fingers.
Ian Ballantine
Wellington, New Zealand
December 19, 2019.
My CTP referral link: https://clicktrackprofit.com/ianballantine
Lyrics: https://cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/axton-hoyt/boney-fingers-237.html
Playlist:
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STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Thanks @steemitboard for another awesome badge. I love these badges, make me feel very special.
good post of your journey and liked the song at the end
Hi Howy, thanks for your kind words. Yep, that song is an old favourite of mine. Finally wrote a relevant topic for that one. Sometimes, I find the song on YouTube then shape an article around the lyrics, or perhaps the music if that stirs my emotions enough.
When looking for songs, if I come across ones I like, I save these in a Blog Potential folder in my YouTube account. When I write a blog using that song, I move the song into my Blog folder, so I know which songs I have already used. Who would have thought songs could be so much trouble!
Wow Ian, you just shared a ton of value while telling your own story of affiliate marketing, it's the 3 B's, build your knowledge, build your list, build your brand, and watch out for Boney Fingers, stay awesome.
Thanks Erik for your kind words. Yep, life as an affiliate marketing on the cheap, using as much free stuff as I could. The problem with going free is that you get distracted by false claims of easy money with little effort! Much better to be active on a few sites and upgrade on them so you get their full benefit.
Jon and Blain at ClickTrackProfit are right, go Evergreen. The Evergreen sites they promote seem to work best for them. Once I get a regular revenue stream from Steem and other sources, I'll be upgrading the Evergreens and I highly recommend all affiliate marketers do the same (if not already upgraded). Let Year 2020 be known as the Evergreens Year!
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BEER.Hey @ianballantine, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @flaxz for you. Enjoy it!Well said Ian, you deserve a !BEER
Thanks for a really great post @ianballantine, and nice to get to know your story as an affiliate, and you share really great tips here that more people need to read, keep up your great work, it's awesome.
This post is AWESOME!
It has therefore got a manual 100% upvote from @thisisawesome, for the Awesome Daily Upvotes in category CTPtalk, I give out 1 such vote in that category per day, plus 3 more in other categories, and your post will also be featured in todays Awesome Daily report for more visibility.
The goal of this project is to "highlight Awesome Content, and growing the Steem ecosystem by rewarding it".
Thanks Erik, I really appreciate the what you are doing here on Steem. May you continue to be just awesome too, my friend!
Thanks @ianballantine, and keep up your awesome work.
Awesome post, Ian! Just perfect!
I like to read these stories by experienced members from the affiliate marketing world... And learn from others' mistakes, errors are creating a shortcut to our growth... We don't have to do the same thing over and over again... And fail again...
Thanks for sharing your story with us!
Thank you too Zoltan, for you were the reason I got off my butt to tell the world my story! You inspire me to do so much more, and I'm so grateful that you choose to be with us in the CTPtalk tribe when you could easily had been lead away somewhere else. Hmm, telling my affiliation story on Steem, I wonder if that would qualify for the Mistletoe Red badge, as being an original idea for your final badge?
Oh. my... I've got some really great ideas for the last badge and I will have a really hard job to pick the best one... And, yes... it counts... :)
And thanks for your kind words, we have to work together if we want to succeed! That's the way it works... :)