How Long did it take to see your first success? When You started

[KhairujjamanS]

For me, it was around 3 months. The amount was less than $1. But the happiness from it: HUGE

 

[Ryuzaki]

Let me be the first to say it. "Less than $1" is not success. Yes, it's the first milestone in this adventure, but come on.

I think I built my first website around the age of 15 on Geocities around 1998/99. I didn't monetize but it's what started all of this. It was about a Japanese topic that the Western world was yet to be really introduced to, and now it's a huge market. What a shame I didn't keep it going.

My first success was an e-commerce store and associated forum related to music I was producing at the time. I wasn't concerned with SEO and had no fear about anything. I simply wanted to sell my music. It was a one-focus goal and that led me to do everything we should be doing but many don't, which is basic marketing. I ended up selling CD's globally, along with T-Shirts and Stickers. Then I went to college. This was the late 90's / early 200's. I was 17-20 years old at the time.

Once I finished college I nearly immediately abandoned that career path and went right back to building websites. I spent a few months building a site about a personal interest and getting my bearings. After that was making a few bucks a day on Adsense I accepted it wasn't where the money was at and started a site about training in a career path I had jumped into at the time. Within... a year I suppose I quit that job and went full time and moved to another city. Two weeks later the site was penalized and I was forced to adapt and survive. It worked out in the end but sucked so bad. This was 2008 to 2010 I think.

Fast forward to today and I've done all the dumb stuff like build giant PBNs and sell links and get slaughtered there due to the stupidity of a few clients after making good money. I've build dozens of sites for businesses and other SEO's in a client/developer relationship. I've built for myself over 50 sites. I've sold them and they've ended up in the hands of the FTC due to the buyer running a ponzi scheme, listed as the highest earning sites. I've built and flipped projects monetized in all kinds of ways, from CPC ads, RPM ads, Pay-Per-Call ads, and more. Recently I flipped a site that earned $500k in it's lifetime. Now I'm following the method I followed then, which is to focus my efforts on one project rather than diversify (which isn't to say I'm not diversified, but I'm very exposed when it comes to SEO alone). But it's also time to diversify more in general and I've been looking into new ways to branch out on top of all I'm already doing, which has been fun and liberating.

 

[Darth]

I think I built my first website around the age of 15 on Geocities around 1998/99. I didn't monetize but it's what started all of this. It was about a Japanese topic that the Western world was yet to be really introduced to, and now it's a huge market. What a shame I didn't keep it going.

Pokemon?

 

[DanielS]

Depends what you consider to be a success. I made my first $1.00 online when I was 14 uploading videos to YouTube - that was 12 years ago. I made my first "significant" amount of money online ($700.00 in 2 months) when I was 17 selling graphic design services to clients on Twitter. I had my first $1000.00 month when I was 19 selling services on Fiverr. I had my first $3,000.00+ month when I was 23 selling services on Upwork.

Making money online doesn't have to take long. It just depends on what you want to do, how much time/money you want to invest, and whether or not you're willing to show up when you need to (all the time).

 

[makoloko]

It took me 1.5 years to hit 50k views. I wanted to hit that before monetizing. After that, I formed my business and quit my cushy job. This is Freedom, the first milestone.

Next milestone: grow 10x more to obtain life-long Security for me and my wife.

Note: To be clear, monetized content is one leg of the triad. Others: consulting + product (in progress)

 

[JOoa0ky]

Never really thought about it because I never really cared for the word success.

Does it even mean anything and does it matter?

Attaining it is not why I do what I do.

There's an unanswered question on my mind and I just want to see if what I'm thinking is true or not.

Therefore the answer is never. (:

 

[fatGPT]

Made my first affiliate sale within three months of starting.

 

[Drramu]

For me, it was around 3 months. The amount was less than $1. But the happiness from it: HUGE

for me it was my first week of internet marketing.

 

[ntmk]

I gonna say I had plenty of success and failures!

1st Success
My first real success was my first affiliate site which took about 2 weeks with Google Adsense. But that was 15 years ago. I think I was one of the first Google Adsense users and one of the few monetization programs available to me back then.

Which led to me leaving my corporate job and building my own niche empire/web publishing business until it was destroyed by Google Updates.

I built it into a high 6 figure business.

Though it was a great lesson learned about diversity! I took too long to diversify into different traffic sources and revenue.

2nd Success
My next success lol...after the crash that killed it off.
More of an experiment! Let's say I was pissed with life and couldn't give 2 f about things.

I dabbled in Auto Blogging which I set up 100 blogs on Tumblr and ran a script that automatically extracted images and reloaded onto my Tumblr blogs. Basically mass reposting other people's content. Took about 2 weeks to build but once built I simply ran the script on autopilot using Windows task scheduler. So it operated literally 24/7.

That lasted 8 months it was generating ~$30-$50 a day and getting ~100K views a day which was monetized by ads until it got shut down by Tumblr. Mainly I got lazy with my Proxies.

I didn't restart the project, as Tumblr was getting stricter on their policies and their changes to their API made it difficult to do repost.

It was fun money. Only cost me electricity from my computer.

3rd Success
My current business - Freelancing Web Dev/Digital Agency, I actually never intended to do Development work again! When time is desperate you do it I guess.

It all happened serendipity. I was working out of a coworking space and I was setting up Infusionsoft (CRM/email autoresponder) for my then Consulting Business (failed) and a Business Coach approached me who was working at the same place and said wow you know Infusionsoft.

I said no, I just learnt it last week. But he continued, can you help me set up ours, we bought it 6 months ago and we haven't done anything with it (they were on the high-end package of $200 per month).

Ok maybe, but don't expect miracles. So I quickly added a landing page to their WP site, connected it up and built a simple automated email sequence.

Pretty much instantly they were getting leads. Not because of me, they built a blog, which has over 2000 blog posts and was getting a ton of traffic.

Then he asked me do I build websites! I said I can but I don't do it professionally But you can do it right, I've seen your consulting site and love it.

If you want the job, it's yours, is $5k enough? At the time I needed the money and my consulting company wasn't generating any money to pay ourselves. I said ok.

After that job! He said you know I work with lots of business owners right. Yep, they all need websites! Can I refer them to you and I said sure!

Well, that led to another client, another client and the rest is history.

3 months later, I quit my consulting company. Mainly I didn't like the idea of going back to an office! I was already a digital nomad but with a home and frankly, I hated working in that business! It was too rigid, felt like I went back to the corporate world and I didn't really enjoy working with some of my biz partners.

So I went off and built a freelance web development company
- I am a company of one
- Took me 5 years to build my own Website
- I still use my personal gmail account even today (I keep telling my clients I am rebranding lol)
- Today the business is 100% referral based. I have more than enough work from this alone!
- I even landed a project with a Community Bank and to this day, I have quite a decent retainer program with them.

The great lesson here is you don't need everything set up to be successful. Have you ever heard of a developer without a website or professional email account?

Another lesson, choose the right people you want to work with, before investing vast sums of money!

N

 

[Mack D]

My first success came after many years of trial and error. I stumbled upon building mass sites with spun content for affiliate marketing.

Made a constant $1-2k a month.

But those sites never lasted long due to G updates and I didn't feel good building them eventually as I was creating anything of value for my readers.

I know, an internet marketeer with a conscience

So for the last year or so, I have been focusing on one authority site. Traffic has grown to about 60k monthly and I'm proud of my work.

 

[Kakeshi]

It took me 1 year for my first success by earning my first Google Adsense check for my meditation website. However, the adsense income did not last for long and it started declining after 4-5 years, mainly due to shift from deaktop browser to mobile browsers. It was the period of 2005-2012. Then I remained a struggler for next 7 years. In July 2019, I got my aha moment when I entered into the world of paid backlinking. I never thought that backlinks was such a huge market. Despite being a very tiny player in the market, I earned 10 times more than what I was earning in my Adesnse days. The love for paid backlinks continues till today.

 

[ashley]

What a shame I didn't keep it going.

Yep this is me! In fact I'm thinking many of us dabbled in things and then moved on and then returned

I started a blog in 2006 - I just wanted to get my info out there. it was in the personal development realm. A few days after starting it, a huge listicle I'd written got picked up by a massive site in the niche and I got about 60(?) k visitors in one day. I was shocked and for the first time realized the potential of "this internet thing" - but that was unmonetized, sucking up my time and hosting monies while I was a grad student and needed to get an actual job to pay my bills. Between being a worker and a full time student I dropped the site because I didn't want to spend the $10/year - what an idiot I was! Last I saw, it was purchased and redirected to a huge site we've all heard of. I could've looked into how to monetize but my head wasn't there, I was dealing with a lot of other real world stuff. At the least I should've sold it or just sucked up the $10 hosting fee

Fast fwd a few years I:
- did MFA sites, made a tiny bit of money but they felt spammy to me so couldn't do it. I could also see the writing on the wall that this was a loophole about to get closed
- did a bunch of freelance writing and got royally ripped off (in hindsight) by a big client who refused to leave me reviews and took up all my time. I outsourced the writing to other native speakers and did the editing. It paid minimum wage. But it did teach me a lesson in providing value to others to make the "Easy" money, and it taught me to write and edit quickly
- sold some seo services but once again my heart wasn't in it. easy money but not for me
- at some point I decided to get into kdp publishing. It was early days and everything took off immediately, excellent money with minimal effort that still keeps going, knock wood. The one key "secret" to my immediate success was ignoring the "kdp courses" out there and the like but instead trying to find what the real money makers were doing. Everyone was sharing openly at the time and I chose to follow their advice.
- at some point I got into real estate stuff. Again, I made sure to learn what was working, talk to people who I knew were successful and not just "gurus"/big hatters.

So how long?
Each time varied, but other than the mfa sites (which took forever to earn past the $100 payout threshold), (also excluding real estate which is offline and takes forever to payout), it was usually within a few days.

I suppose that's because I hit markets early while the competition was lower, and/or I frontloaded a huge bunch of effort/quality/resources.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

 

[bernard]

I will say I have almost always tried to find a hustle and that was my way in.

Just due to the people I grew up with and that culture. Sports betting was the first, then came internet poker and all that, bonus whoring, poker bots etc.

Then I found BHW somewhere back in 2008 or there abouts lol.

 

[ItsYoBuddy]

I think I built my first website around the age of 15 on Geocities around 1998/99. I didn't monetize but it's what started all of this. It was about a Japanese topic that the Western world was yet to be really introduced to, and now it's a huge market. What a shame I didn't keep it going.

Slightly off topic, my friend's site and my site from 1997/1998 are still online at angelfire. We did some GeoCities sites but we mostly used angelfire at the time. And boy is my site embarrassing to look back on lol. Learning HTML back then was super fun!

 

[JPblogger]

I have my first success earning money online from my current website. I have tried few online ventures such as Amazon FBA, Clickbank but couldn't make it.

It took 1 year for my website to start earning from Adsense, then Ezoic. I had a slow start with only 50-60 articles published during this period.

From this point, I decided to publish 1 post a day and my website grew from 5k to 50k views within 8 months. I applied to Mediavine and earned my first $100/day when my website hit 2 year mark.

However, after being hit by few updates last year, my website started declining. Now my earning is only 1/4 of what I earned during my peak. I tried to publish more content to salvage but no result.

Now I'm building some backlinks to my site and see whether it can recover in upcoming months.