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The Rise to the Top
| Posted Friday, July 24, 2009 in Life |
“The megalomaniac pleasure of creation produces a type of elation which cannot be compared to that experienced of other mortals" - Edmund Berger
I get asked this all day long: how did I get started in this industry? Well, it’s a long story that goes way back to 2003. I started creating “hacking” forums for online video games (such as Diablo II). I provided free hacks and exploits and networked with users for these online games. Creation thrilled me. New forums, new connections, new people – I thrived on it. With the connections I made on my forum, I started duplicating items and selling them on eBay. This was my first real viable source of income from the internet. I turned this into a huge operation profiting enough for me to buy my first car – a used red BMW that I was in love with when I was 16.
After Diablo II got locked down, I moved onto my other love – design. I ran a hugely successful Photoshop tutorial forum getting traffic from all the tutorial submission sites. I learned about SEO to gain rankings and created a custom plug-in to optimize my forum. With the optimizations, I started driving major traffic (or what I thought was major traffic) to my site and started to get passive Google AdSense income. The profit increased with the traffic, so my next move was to make more sites. I created about 20 sites, part of the “void” network – everything from rap to MySpace to classic video gaming.
I woke up one day and hit gold – I guess people were really looking for MySpace Codes! My site had already profited several hundred dollars from AdSense when I had woken up and it took the #1 rank for MySpace Codes. The story of Eagle Web Assets begins here (formerly known as xCell Technologies). I worked day in and day out to create more sites, and at the peak of my SEO career I had 15 sites ranked #1 and several ranked in the top 3. I was handling about 250,000-450,000 unqiues a day profiting from Yahoo Publisher Network ($3~ clicks), ZangoCash ($1~ installs), and ValueClick popups. Lets say I had a fat bankroll that was only getting bigger
MySpace webmasters began monetizing their sites with this thing called Zwinky, so I applied to the advertising network and was opened up until a whole new world of advertising – CPA. I started off simply by adding a web creative to my sites and making an additional stream of passive income. Some MySpace webmasters got into the new hottest thing.
But, there comes a point in every blackhat’s career where you cannot progress further as a businessman. I decided it was time to quit – especially considering the business was getting riskier and harder to do. I went straight to media buying on MySpace for mobile campaigns and never went back to the dark side in early 2007. As an affiliate, I still promote via social, media buying and popup traffic. Earlier this year, with all the capital I saved up I decided to start a private network and that’s where I’m at now. Splitting my time between my internal campaigns and network management. The one thing that I have learned in this industry is that you need to adapt to survive. I’ve been independent since 2004 – now I employ my father, brother, several internal marketers and network staff. I’m not done writing chapters to my book, so for now – you better get your money while the gettin’ is good. I make this look too easy – but I still work 20 hours a day to maintain my position. Once you get it, you never want to give it back. The Rise to the Top |
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Ryan wakes up every morning thinking about my next dollar.
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