How I lost Rs.2,28,815 by neglecting Affiliate Marketing?

It took 3 years for me to identify the biggest mistake that I ever did. Its choosing PTC sites over Affiliate marketing.

If you are new to my blog, I will share with you my story on where it all started.

Update: This article was originally published on June 4, 2018, and was last updated on February 28, 2019.

How I came to know about PTC sites?

Right at the end of my higher secondary examination and when the summer vacation started, I thought of finding a part-time job, which I could do it at online itself.

While keep on browsing, I came across this site called Neobux.

It is a PTC site, where I clicked ads and just then I noticed my first ever income started rolling.

The money just started to increase in terms of $0.001. It was less. But still, I couldn’t still control the joy, because I was earning something, which I had never done before.

I wanted to multiply these earnings. So, I started to find many other similar sites and joined all those PTC sites.

What was running through my mind?

I thought, If I started to earn in multiple websites like this, soon I can buy an iPhone. It was actually iPhone 6, that I wanted to purchase. Because this was the one recently introduced in the market at that time.

Even after joining many sites like this and clicking the ads on the entire site, I couldn’t even earn $1/day.

Can websites bring you referrals?

So, I started to browse, how to earn more with these PTC sites. Only then, I came to know more about these referrals.

Referrals are people, who join these PTC sites with your unique referral link. All those blogs that I read online, explained to me that, If I have a huge number of referrals, I can even earn $100/day.

My greediness overshadowed my wisdom, and made me try this out!

I started to promote these PTC sites everywhere like emails, traffic exchanges, landing pages and a few more. But, none of them gave me the referrals what I wanted. Every referral just joined those PTC sites and became inactive in one or two days.

So, I browsed more and more and then I came to know that blogs and websites attract the most number of referrals. But, I don’t know how to create blogs. After watching some youtube tutorials, I first created a small subdomain at Weebly.

It was an easy drag and drop builder and that’s how my first website/landing page was created. Everything went well, until one day, a Weebly staff, visited my Weebly subdomain and blocked it, claiming these MLM sites violate their policies.

So, I had to look out for another platform like this, Because, I was very much impressed with the drag and drop builder Weebly. I went on with Wix. I created a subdomain there too.

I was still not convinced.

Time to start with WordPress:

I created a blog at Blogger, with URL, onlinerockerswix.blogspot.in, where I started creating content on Neobux and Clixsense. But, the blogger platform, somehow brought out the writing interest inside me. I soon started writing on other topics like C programs, Lets Make Engineering Simple etc

I started making more referrals and the blog was receiving some search engine traffic too. In the meantime, I made my first payout at Clixsense, and that gave me the confidence to buy the domain onlinerockershub.com

And that’s how onlinerockershub.com was born

Later, I moved my website to WordPress, after I was stuck with an inspiration, ShoutMeLoud’s Harsh Agrawal.

Even after this, I was still writing on PTC sites and making money online. I did come across Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing, but I underestimated Affiliate Marketing at that initial stage.

Affiliate Marketing is the major source of Income for millionaire Bloggers:

One day, when I opened my inbox, I noticed an eBook from Harsh Agrawal. He gave away all his premium eBooks for free and one among that was,

Affiliate Marketing: A-Z Guide for Beginners

I guess, this eBook is still available for sale at Instamojo. Also, check the contents of this affiliate marketing eBook here.

Only after reading this book, I came to know affiliate marketing is a really powerful money making method. In fact, Harsh revealed that his major source of income was affiliate marketing. It sums up to 70% of his monthly revenue (around $25,000 per month)

So, I thought I should try this one too. I joined a few Affiliate Networks and some affiliate programs. But, I did not make any commissions for a long long time.

If you are unaware of, What is Affiliate Marketing?

Let’s talk about it. According to Wikipedia,

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

Let me explain you in simple words.

Affiliate marketing is referring your friends or readers to an eCommerce store. When your referral makes a purchase at that store, you will get some commissions for that purchase. But, before sending referrals, you need to join those sites as an affiliate.

It took quite some time for me to understand in-depth about affiliate marketing.

My effort into PTC sites is a waste of time and energy:

And coming to the current date,

iPhone X has been released months ago, but still, my income from PTC sites is not sufficient to buy one.

I made a list of my PTC sites referrals and the commissions that I earned there,

PTC Site / Traffic Exchange	Referrals	Earnings/ Commissions
PifExplosion	4	$0
Easyhits4U	9	$0.1
Buxvertise	72	$0.1397
FamilyClix	95	$1.293
Clixsense	145	$20.5695
Neobux	196	$36.78
Total	521	$58.88

Out of the above-mentioned commissions, PifExplosion can never be withdrawn without buying any matrix position. And only Neobux total earnings can be calculated and not the ones made from individual referrals.

So, by making 521 referrals in three years, I just earned $58.88 out of it.

In today’s USD to INR conversion, $58.88 is Approximate ₹3941.58

That’s so pathetic.

It’s not the result that I deserve for my hard work.

If I had chosen Affiliate Marketing?

Imagine a different situation, what if I had chosen Affiliate Marketing over PTC sites?

As I mentioned above, Affiliate Marketing is where you get commissions, when your referred customer makes a purchase.

But, every affiliate program need not work in the same way.

Some affiliate programs, just want you to send leads to their store, where the customer creating a free account on their website is sufficient. You will be paid commissions for these free signups. These are called as CPA Affiliate Marketing.

One such affiliate program, that pays you for sending leads is SendInBlue.

What is SendInBlue?

SendInBlue is an email marketing software, that allows you to send emails to your customers. It is actually free to join. With the free plan, you can store 2000 contacts and send 600 emails every day.

Why should you join SendInBlue affiliate program?

SendInBlue has its own affiliate program. When you join as an affiliate at SendInBlue, they will pay you €5 for every signup and €100 for every paying customer.

How much, I could have earned with SendInBlue Affiliate Program?

I mentioned earlier, I made 521 referrals at PTC sites in these last 3 years. Sending referrals to PTC sites and sending leads to SendInBlue is not a big difference. They both need the same amount of content creation and promotion.

What if I had sent these 521 referrals to SendInBlue?

I would have earned, 521 x €5 = €2605

Yes, I could have earned €2605 in this last 3 years, If I sent these 521 referrals to SendInBlue rather than sending them to PTC sites.

In today’s currency conversion rate, €2605 is approximate ₹2,32,756.75

I did earn around ₹3941.58 out of those PTC sites, as I showed you in the above calculations.

So the net amount is ₹2,32,756.75 – ₹3,941.58 = ₹2,28,815.17

Shocking Amount!

I could have earned ₹2,28,815 more if I had promoted SendInBlue rather than those PTC sites.

The sad end is that I lost ₹2,28,815 by promoting PTC sites and neglecting Affiliate Marketing.

To note that, when you join SendInBlue as an affiliate, you will get €5 for every referral. But, it does not stop there. You will get €100 for every sale. So, earning chances are even higher.

If I had promoted a Recurring Affiliate Program?

Let me explain to you with one more example of Affiliate Marketing. The former one was with CPA affiliate program. Now, I will go on with recurring Affiliate Program.

What are recurring Affiliate Programs?

Recurring Affiliate Programs come into picture when you are dealing with memberships. When you refer your friend to purchase a membership using your affiliate link, you will get a commission for the first purchase.

But, this will not stop right there!

The recurring affiliate programs will pay you a commission once again when your friend renews his membership. This goes on for a lifetime!

One such recurring affiliate program is BeRush Affiliate Program.

How much I could have earned with BeRush Affiliate Program?

BeRush is the affiliate program of SEMRush.

If you are not aware of SEMRush,

SEMRush is a popular Search Engine Optimization ToolKit for websites. It has got a lot of tools to help you with optimizing On-Page and Off-Page SEO of your website. Thereby, it helps you boost the rankings of your website in search engine and helps you get more traffic.

What’s the big deal about it?

The big deal is, being an essential tool for online marketers it offers recurring commissions. So, once you refer a professional online marketer to SEMRush, he is gonna renew his SEMRush membership for many years. And for all these years, you will earn commissions without any extra work.

What if I had sent these 521 referrals to SEMRush?

The PTC sites were free to join. So, sending 521 referrals were easier. But SEMRush is a paid toolkit.

So, let me consider only 10% of 521 referrals i.e. 52 would have signed up for SEMRush trial.

And 10% of 52 referrals i.e. 5 referrals would have upgraded their account.

I was using PTC sites for 3 years (i.e. 36 months). Let me consider an average of 18 months.

So, the total sale amount would be $8995.5 ($99.95 x 5 referrals x 18 months).

BeRush pays 40% of the sale amount as commission. So, I would have earned $3598.2 (40% of $8995.5).

In today’s currency conversion rate $3598.2 is approximate ₹2,41,331.27

As I earned ₹3,941.58 from PTC sites, the net amount is

₹2,41,331.27 – ₹3,941.58 = ₹2,37,389.7

This is still higher than the CPA Affiliate Marketing and I could say confidently that I would have earned even more commissions without any extra effort.

I could have earned ₹2,37,389.7 more if I had promoted SEMRush rather than those PTC sites in the last 3 years.

Don’t Neglect Affiliate Marketing, just like I did:

What could I have done with this money?

With this money, I could have paid my college fees. With this money, I could have developed my blog and hired some people. And why not, I could have just put them on Fixed Deposit and saved them for my future.

It’s my mistake of being careless!

The height of Ignorance!

So, I request you not to do the same mistake that I did. I request you, not to waste your precious time with PTC sites, traffic exchanges, and other scam sites. Instead, try Affiliate Marketing.

And I request you to

Say NO to PTC Sites and Scam Sites!

Say YES to Affiliate Marketing!

Here are some hand-picked affiliate marketing articles for you to read:

• Affiliate Marketing 101: A Guide for Beginners [Infographic]
• How to make money with Affiliate Marketing – Expert Advice
• ShoutMeLoud Affiliate Marketing eBook Review: Making $1000 fast
• 17 Affiliate Marketing Strategies that will help you make more money

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