[DISCUSSION] Learn from my 7000$/day IM Journey mistake!

Disclaimer
I’m not trying to sell you anything or make you click a referral link on this thread. I want just to open a discussion and share with you my story.(If you saw this thread on another forum just ignore it, I’m trying to get many advices/suggestions/ideas as possible).

A little background about me
I’m a 26 years old male from Morocco, still living with my parents, software engineer student (soon will be graduated). Since I was 15 years old I had a big passion on anything related to computers.

In 2017,2018 everything changed when I discovered the internet marketing world, and that I can MAKE MONEY ONLINE ! I had some basic ideas before on IM but never took it seriously. I started reading on forums what people are doing to make money online, what fields/domains are they working on, what problems are they solving, what services are they offering, etc…

At the same time I continued my passion at computers and developed my skills on programming and web development specifically.

2017 was a trending year for DropShipping and CPA (I mean CPI and not the classic CPA like Maxbounty, which is easier). I spent some time reading and asking about those 2 fields, and cause I hade no money/budget to start with I took the CPA/CPI road + it does not require Ads experience/skills, no market/keywords/products research.

My journey started when I signed-up on Ogads network. I was reading some journeys on the BlackHatWorld forum of some dudes who makes 50$, 100$ per day, and I was like “MASHAALLAH BRO, 100$ PER DAY FOR ME IS A LOT TO ASK, MAYBEE I’LL START MY OWN JOURNEY WITH ONLY 10$/DAY”. And believe me my friends, when I say 10$/day for a 17 years old guy living in a third world country in 2017 was a DREAM!

3 years passed with testing/trying new stuff, new methods… I remember when I was investing in the Instagram + CPA method. Basically, you purchase a bot to spam others with DMs to illusion them with a fake free iPhone giveaway for a 0.3$ per offer (cpi). And yes like everyone else I did the math, 0.3$ per person, and each person can do the offer 2/3 times and that’s 1$ per person. If I can send DMs to 1000 person per day with a conversion rate of 10% and that’s 100$ per day!! “DAMN BRO WTF?! EVEN MY FATHER ISN’T MAKING THAT MUCH MONEY !”. I tried days, months to make this method work and make some benefits but all the cash that I was making was paid back to the bots subscriptions and aged Instagram accounts, proxies, VPS, etc… The only winner here were the guys who taught us the method, cause they told you: “you won’t success if you don’t buy this proxy from this site”, or “it won’t work if you didn’t subscribe to this amazing Instagram automation bot”. And guess who owns those services in the end ?

Now we’re in January of 2020, the year when the Corona virus started. I had some experience on that time from the passed 3 years and a 200$ in pocket + the lockdown. It was the perfect situation for me to start a new journey again, but this time I’ll do something different than the old method. I discovered the YouTube + cpi method, and it was INSANE ! Many of you already know the method, and there is who’s still doing it till that moment. Basically, you upload videos on YouTube for a fake tutorial where you teach kids how to get free coins on X game/app, but they should complete a human verification step that requires completing an offer to get those coins on their accounts. Then you try to rank those videos on YouTube so you are among the first ones to appear. And believe me this method was much better than the Instagram method, cause it’s the others who’s coming to you, not you who’s going to DM them and try to make them complete an offer. I was making videos all day long, 10/15 videos per day and upload. 2 weeks later, I hit 50$ per day. 2 Months later I hit 300$ per day, 300 DOLLARS PER DAY ! Remember when I told you “10$/day for a 17 years old guy living in a third world country in 2017 was a DREAM!” ? well, I wasn’t believing that this is the real life. If I’m already in a dream let’s keep dreaming until it ends, so I kept dreaming more, and tried to invest all that money that I’m making in something bigger, maybe I can make money that will guaranteed my next 10 years of living.

2 months later, instead of getting free organic traffic, I tried promoting my videos on Google Ads (YouTube discovery ads), I learned those ads stuff in 3 days. I started paying for ads to make profit with the CPA videos. The ROI was 100%, 50% in most times. Not bad at all, you spend 100$ and make 150$/200$ and that’s 50$/100$ extra profit. But why extra ? Cause the YouTube free traffic method still making me 300$ a day without doing anything .

1 months later I discovered that I can create Google Ads Threshold accounts and do ads without paying my own money (100% WINNING). I was spending +1000$ on a regular 350$ threshold account, and was creating 10 accounts per day, that’s 10k$ of ads value per day for FREE! Do the math. My best day was 7k$ in one day. I was top 1 on Ogads for a month, here is some screenshots from my 3 Ogads accounts







You want more proof ? ask anyone on the Ogads chat now on who’s SuperKid (yeah that’s was my nickname, so stupid lol)

I made a total of 340k$. After seeing those results, I became lazy, selfish, rude, and didn’t give a damn about my future cause I though that those results will last forever. So I stopped working, bought a new car for 25k $, bought new iPhone, new Gaming PC, new MacBook, new TV, new PS4, you name it. Everything that I was dreaming of is in front of me now. I spent 2 years doing nothing, I dropped from university, stopped my learning path of programing, what I did was just traveling and spending money, LOT OF MONEY EVERY DAY. I visited France, and when I got back to Morocco I changed my car to a new one. I was living a kings life in a poor country, the avg salary is 400$ - 600$, I was spending that money in a half day !

On those 2 years I spent almost all my money, I was a spending monster ! I didn’t realize that my sources of income are dropping day after day, until one day I tried to paid a McDonald's Cheese Burger with my credit card and the card was declined cause of insufficient funds. I hope you never see this message of “insufficient funds” cause it sucks, really sucks, and especially if you were a baller.

Now I’m broke and lost 2 years from my life. Being poor then becoming wealthy is a great thing, BUT the opposite thing no, being wealthy (at least for 2/3 years) then go back again to be poor ? THAT’S THE MOST SCARY DREAM I EVER HAD . Well, I will not say 100% poor but you get it. The only thing that I still have is the things that I bought for myself, but no income. I can’t even pay the gas for the car. Literally ****7000$ per day to 0$ per day.

You will say now: why you didn’t try to get back to your methods ?? YES of course, how did I not think about that ? Thank you. The answer is because of 2 things, the first one is that the method have more competition than before, plus YouTube update their algorithm every while with AI and stuff to avoid spammers like me, so my videos got shut down after 1 day, and the Google Ads threshold method is not working anymore. The second thing and it’s a big one: the first time I started working was fun, I wanted to make my life better, I had nothing to lose anyway, I’m already poor. But now I will work just to get back to the level I was in any possible/fastest way. So you will not enjoy what you doing, and that will effect you of course, cause always to be better than others you need to add your own twist. But how can you add this twist if you don’t enjoy what your doing.

I was depressed a lot when I faced reality and was officially broke. My life had no meaning, I didn’t enjoy anything in life. I couldn’t even get a good sleep without thinking that I’m broke.

One year later, and with my parents therapy help, I decided to move on and complete my studies, cause those stuff are a plan B if you didn’t succeed in your projects/ideas. I wanted to choose the IM road again but I said with myself: At least I need a backup plan, and that’s why I’m still on engineering school till now.

What I wished I was knowing
Before I started the YouTube method, some dudes on BHW forum said that CPA is not a long-term business, and it’s only a way to make budget for other businesses that needs money to invest, and they are 100% correct. What if instead of spending all my money in nothing, spend it instead on an E-commerce shop and scale it and make a brand of it and move to another one ? Or buy a real-state property ? But, MONEY MADE ME BLIND !!!

What can you learn from my mistake ?
I don’t know if you are a 18 years old or a 30 years old but the thing that I will say to you all and especially young ones: YOU WILL HAVE OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE IF YOU WORK HARD, YOU NEED TO LEARN FROM OTHER’S MISTAKES TO CHOOSE THE BEST PATH. BECAUSE IF YOU WANT TO LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES, YOUR WHOLE LIFE WON’T BE ENOUGH. and also, DON’T FOLLOW THE MEDIA AND DON’T BUILD YOUR DREAMS BASED ON IT. MEDIA WANTS YOU TO BUY MORE, HAVE MORE, GET MORE, SPEND MORE, SEE WHAT OTHERS HAVING AND BUY IT YOU TOO. THAT’S WHAT INFLUENCED ME TO LOOSE ALL MY MONEY. SO BLOCK ALL YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS RIGHT NOW! HAVE YOUR OWN THOUGHTS AND ALWAYS TRY TO HAVE MULTIPLE INCOME SOURCES.

Did I regret my mistake ?
Yes of course, BUT in somehow not much. My mistake was a life lesson that worth no money. Who would say that this think happened to me when I’m 35 years old with a family and then BOOM you have nothing, I will kill myself. At least I learned from my mistake when I’m still young and have another life in front of me. I would never known the value of money if I never fall in that problem. This will make me even stronger in the future and be more cautious. I’m also glad to stop this fake/scam CPA shit. I’m not comfortable with scamming kids to make money, that’s really bad. Instead I want to make a legit WhiteHat business.

Where am I right now ?
My budget right now is the same budget that I started with: 200$



The only different when I started in 2017 and now is that I have some experience in ads + skills on many stuff that I learned in the past years (design, payments, niche research, etc… ), and also programing.

I made this table on all the fields that I can work on and start a new journey on it with a pros and cons for each one. But I didn’t decided yet cause I want to hear suggestions/ideas from you guys. I maybe motivate some of you to start the same journey with me.


As a summary for the table:

• Affiliate digital marketing (Maxbounty, MarketCall, …)
• Affiliate physical products (Amazon, …)
• Digital reseller (Games-goods, IM related products, …)
• Dropshipping
• SaaS (Software as a Service)
• Freelance (in Web Development)

I will really appreciate it if you can share with me your thoughts!

Thank you for reading.

 

Interesting story and well written. Problem is no one will believe your figures, at the end of the day you come across like a very good salesman, and little else.
We have seen this time and time again, nothing new here.