The one thing I have never really talked about was the back story on WHY I took a picture of me and that AdSense Check for 133k before taking it to the bank to cashing it.I learned how to make money from donations, affiliate programs direct banner sales, selling my own products, and subscription. Within a few months my subscription revenue, Direct banner sales, and affiliate revenue each by themselves dwarfed my Google AdSense revenue.
So I have all this money coming in from the website im all diversified but I still did not really feel safe.
So I started the ShoeMoney blog (originally on googleninja.com before I obtained shoemoney.com) basically just talking about the ins and outs of making money.
Because I had the Google AdSense Check for 133k and some pretty other large screenshots of revenue that I could use to make points on what I was talking about the blog VERY quickly became an authority in the space of making money online. So much so that in its first year that we implemented advertising on shoemoney.com we did over 2007 $100,000.00 in revenue.
In 2008 we boosted that to $490,000.00
in 2009 shoemoney.com will make over $750,000.00 probably closer to 1m in revenue.
But lets take a step back. Because we had built this authority we were able to leverage our audience into starting our own conference called the elite retreat. We started the event in 2006 and have sold out events every year since. Even at a price tag of $5,000.00 per person.
In 2007 we leveraged the blog audience and our contacts and started our own advertising network called Auctionads. Auctionads is truly an amazing success story and one of my proudest accomplishments. We took a company from 0 to 25k active publishers doing over 3 million per month in revenue in less then 4 months and sold the company. That is simply unheard of. It would not have been possible without leveraging our previously accomplishments and taking them to the next level.
So what drives me to keep doing more things?
I can remember that feeling of hitting rock bottom like it was yesterday.
ONLY now the steaks are MUCH bigger. I am now married and have 2 kids. I also have 20 employees that I am responsible for.
So why am I telling you all this.
I want you to recognize what you have and not take it for granted.
I had to hit rock bottom to find myself and really develop a work ethic and drive for more. Maybe you don’t?
Always be leveraging your current position and looking for your next thing.
I have no doubt that everyone reading this will come into money/success eventually. If you love what you do and you keep trying then its just the law of averages. Eventually its going to work. But when it does what will you do?
As I am sure you know Google AdSense is run on your website and you get money when visitors click on your AdSense ad. Almost all of my traffic was coming from Google so I felt it was really a house of cards. If Google felt my website was no longer relevant for the keywords they were sending me traffic then over night I was done!
At the time I was totally new to making money on the internet and I never thought it was going to last.
I took the picture because I always thought that if my websites disappeared tomorrow I could leverage that picture into a book or something… I didn’t really know…
Now I don’t mean to pee in your cheerios but I want to talk to you and share something with you. Something I feel is really important. Making money online is easy. Profiting from it over the long haul IS NOT.
Eventually everyone’s ship comes in. When your ship comes in what will you do? Maybe your ship just came in?
This is my personal story and dealing with my first big success and how I was able to position myself for the best outcome.
I hit rock bottom about 8 years ago. I was 420 lbs, smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day, about 60k in credit card debt, and just had lost my job. I also sleeping on my friends couch.
Its important to know what rock bottom feels like. Its important to know what its like to really be hungry. Its important to know what it feels like to drive a 1990 rusty van with no muffler. Its important to know what having massive amounts of credit card debt and what appears to be no way out feels like. Its important to have that feeling that you are a failure at life and maybe that’s all you will ever be.
Now I say that its important but to me it was ABSOLUTELY crucial in developing my mindset for success.
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This is such an important topic, I wish more people would write about it, not just spamming other people’s ideas. Researched content is hard to find on the Internet these days.