Almost daily I have people complaining about how they can’t seem to make more than a buck or two a day online. These are good, hard working people, almost all of them are really intellegent. Why can a guy like me make money, but they cant?

• Time Commitment
• Lack of Focus
• Lack of Skillset
• Lack of Connections
• No Killer Instinct

Time Commitment

Some of you jokers waste a lot of time. I am challenging you this - if you are new to this game, set aside 6 hours a night to it. Wow, deStone, thats a lot of time for a guy like me. No crap. I did it. I worked an 8am to 6:30pm job every day. I’d come home, log into irc, open up my eclipse dev setup, and start. A lot of times I would work until 3am, go to bed, and start again at 8am. Yeah, it sucks, but if your going to learn and be successful, you got to put in your time. Unfortunately, not all of us got to learn about Affiliate Marketing while we were in high school or college.

Lack of Focus

Go buy an nice, expensive moleskinne notepad from Borders. Write down all of your goals for the night in it — everything you need to get done. Use a new page every day, carry over the stuff you didnt finish to the next day. Jot ideas down in it. This book is your new lifeblood.

Find good mood music, and start lighting up your projects - be it creating a mass amount of PPC campaigns, facebook ads, or building a cloaking system for your super-duper-blackhat control center. Journal everything.

Quit wasting time in irc pestering people! I see so many people just sitting there on irc, waiting for someone to drop this super idea that is going to turn them into a millionaire. Guess what, the only way to strike it rich is to do it first and keep quiet about it!

Lack of Skillset

I’m putting this on the list just because I think a lot of people think they are too good to code their own stuff. I’ve met them, they continue to tell me on email “deStone, I’ll just outsource it”. Yeah, ok, whatever, Why are these jokers emailing me asking for tips if they are so sharp and have enough cash to outsource everything. Don’t get me wrong, outsourcing has its place, but a fundamental understanding of how to code and create systems is going to make you a winner in this business.

Lack of Connections

The ultimate fear, I remember it — talking to my first affiliate manager. Guess what guys, very few of those affiliate managers have a clue on how to drive traffic, build websites, or scale systems. All they do is interface offers to people. If your a newbie, guess what, your getting an affiliate manager that probably knows less about the business then you do! But guess what, those people hold the keys to success. Dont be scared to call them, dont freak out when they call you wanting to join their programs. Having a ton of affiliate programs, and good people to work with — that’s key!

• Neverblue Ads
• Copeac
• RocketProfit
• CPAEmpire
• PepperJam Networks
• Ads4Dough
• Advaliant
• Hydra Networks

Another important way to get connections — irc! Don’t be a douchebag - join our channels, idle, jump in every once and a while and share something but DO NOT COME IN ACTING LIKE YOU’RE GOD and start demanding people tell you how to do stuff.

No Killer Instinct

I’ve had terrible headaches for nearly 4 months now, daily. I have an amazing girlfriend that wants to spend more time with me. Trust me, I have 1000x more reasons to not be working on projects then you do. Hell, I didn’t feel like writing this blog post. But guess what, I have a killer instinct. I MUST SUCCEED. I will not let myself fail. And that drives me insane. It pushes me to staying focused. It forces me to meet new people and network. That instinct made me become a php ninja and css junkie last year. I can not fail. I will not allow it. Do you have that? If not, your not going to make big bucks in this business. I know a lot of people that have that kind of drive and desire — to be the best, and those people arent going to let ANY of you out-do them, especially if you’re lazy.

In conclusion

I know this post wasn’t technical at all - I just feel like every once and a while, a person needs to hear something like this to encourage them to keep building systems, keep starting new streams, and to continue to strive to be their best. Hell, I feel energized right now while I’m reviewing this — lets get to work, mates!

I’m writing this because I am pissed, like, violently upset. I’ve had hundreds of people messenging me stuff like this:
"deStone, help, my clicks went from $0.10 to $8.00 overnight. What can I do? Why did this happen?"

Well, I’ll lay it out for you, the reason you got slapped is because you’re lazy! LAZY! All you want to do is “get rich quick” and you think that there is some magical formula that will never change. Google has built their Adwords platform around having companies create landing pages that sell products. We are kind of like middle men to that process, as most of the time, we don’t own the product nor are we the company.

So Google wants to make us pay more, cause they want legit stuff - not third-party affiliate marketers that are just looking to get rich quick. What do they do? They change the rules to make it harder for us when they see a pattern forming. Guess what, you whinners, 90% of the people that are complaining were direct linkers to affiliate offers. Google doesnt want Neverblue Ads or Copeac to make money, THEY want to make money. Obviously Google cant get rid of us - their stock would fail epically — like barman’s attempt to hook up with this hot girl. So it has to be a slow and progressive change. This is one way they weed out the morons trying to make a quick buck.

That being said, we now have to accept the rules have changed and we have to work harder to get cheap clicks. Guess what, I’ve been doing that for a long time, my strategy has only slightly changed with this update. You, if you are seeing high dollar clicks, must now change or be removed from the SEM gene pool. Here is what I would do if I were you. Careful, you might actually learn something in the following steps.

• A) Quit reading seo moz and all the misinformation posted on their site about how to fix the QS Slap. Google doesn’t give a shit how fast the page loads - this information is retarded. 90% of those people are just wanting you to subscribe to their rss feed so they feel important.
• b) Go do a search on google for a competitive term.
• C) click an ad that is ranking well, and you feel would not be there unless they got the click for a real price, versus the inflated QS price.
• D) Very important — VIEW SOURCE THE EFFING PAGE and see what they are doing to get a high quality score. Then apply it to your designs if applicable. Rinse and repeat these steps until you have a system that gets you $0.05 clicks again.
• E) *BONUS* Don’t ask me what i’m doing, because i’m going to make fun of you for expecting me to give away a million dollar strategy to some dumbass (I don’t know) on the Internet for free. Live, Learn, and Utilize.

I’m thanking God this happened. I can now buy some competitive terms for a lot less mula then before because there is less competition.

ps: I <3 you, barman.

I have two four requirements to use this code.

• so if your reading this, and you haven’t signed up on the mailing list - do so, now.
• Go to another super affiliates site and ask them where their code samples are and link back to me in the comment section.
• Join us on #deStonesucks on irc. — see details here.
• Add the RSS to your reader.

Mailing list signup

You’re going to need a few things for this to work. One of them is magpie, then you will need a dictionary file as well (right click, save as). For those truly lazy, here is a complete download of this entire tutorial.

Step 1:

Create a directory called backlinker on your server. Dump the contents of dictionary.txt, the magpie install, and backlinker.php into it.

Step 2:

Modify the code so that $promoteurl is your website you are wanting to blast out. $throttle is just seconds between hits on del.icio.us.

Step 3:

Run the backlinker from the Command Line. If you have other dictionary files, you can use them instead of ‘dictionary’ (must be a .txt file)

php backlinker.php dictionary

Step 4:

Watch as the hits start rolling in from referrer logs. Modifications I have on my personal version - I store each url in a database so I can re - hit it later, I have proxy support built in, and I am using the multi-curl class our buddy win– created. If I gave you that, I wouldnt be helping you, now would I? Questions? Join the irc channel and discuss.

Backlinker.php - View Source

<?php
// set timeout to 0 so it doesnt time out.
set_time_limit(0);
$promoteurl = "http://www.somewebsite.com/subdir/";
$throttle = 10;
require_once('rss_fetch.inc');
// open up our dictionary.txt file, dump it to memory for use
$myFile = $argv[1] . ".txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'r');
$theData = fread($fh, filesize($myFile));
fclose($fh);
unset($fh);
echo("\n\n deStone's del.icio.us backlinker \n***************************************\n");
echo("Promoting: " . $promoteurl . "\n");
echo("*** LOADING " . $argv[1] . ".txt\n");
// get an array of each keyword from the dictionary file.
$taggroup = explode("\n", $theData);
unset($myFile);
unset($theData);
foreach ($taggroup as $tag)
{
$tag = trim($tag);
$url = "http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/" . $tag . "/";
$rss = fetch_rss($url);
//throttle for del.icio.us
sleep($throttle);
foreach($rss->items as $item => $x)
{
$url = $x["link"];
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, $promoteurl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0');
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
echo("Hit " . $url . "\n");
unset($result);
unset($ch);
unset($tag);
}
}
?>

Just wanted to share a few things with you guys real quick. First off, the fastest way to introduce a lot of people and get some synergy created is to create an irc channel. Some of you guys have never used IRC before, and that’s fine, but its a great way to network. Here are the quick steps:

Windows:

• Download mIRC
• Install mIRC
• Join a freenode server/server irc.freenode.net
• Join #deStonesucks /join #deStonesucks

Mac guys:
I’m clueless, whats a good irc client? Comment away.

Linux:
Google Irssi or xchat - depending on if you want a GUI interface or not.

Once you’ve joined, here are some rules. Don’t be a dick. I mean that in the most nice way possible. I already had some guy get pissed.

[20:13] <johnwinner> are you doing arbitrage to aff stuff or pure click arbitrage?
[20:13] <johnwinner> or are you just a noob in need of attention?
[20:13] <johnwinner>
[20:20] <destone> noob in need of attenion.
[20:20] <johnwinner> i knew you were to say that
[20:20] <johnwinner> ok
[20:21] <johnwinner> good luck with whatever you want to do
[20:21] * JohnWinner has left #destonesucks
[20:21] <destone> i wanted to punch that guy
[20:27] <thebarman> what was his problem?
[20:27] <thebarman> jealous of your success?
[20:28] <thebarman> you should have been a really serious asshole
[20:28] <thebarman> "i don't got time to talk to broke people like you"

I don’t have to validate myself to you. I’m not asking anything from you, you obviously want to be successful. You wouldn’t be reading my blog if you didn’t.

I added a waiting list for information … I know a lot of you guys wanted to be first to know when I push out stuff, so you can subscribe here.

btw - #cakes, #bluehatseo, #wickedfire are good channels as well.

Wow, guys, great.  I had about 250 emails over the weekend wanting more information about some of the things I’ve been building.  Probably 10 of those were bad ones - basically get-rich-quick morons asking for screenshots of checks for legitmacy before they would even open their ears to my preaching.  I’m not going to be doing that.  What if my systems all fail tommorrow?  Are you going to abandon me?

I know one thing for sure - I am a permanent fixture in this industry.  We build systems and procedures to survive cycles, right?   Exactly.

I’m going to try and personally contact each of you over the next two nights.  If you could, lets continue to expose others to the light.  I would like to have a lot more people with varied talents helping in our discussions.  Do you know someone that is an expert in SQL?  What about other coding languages besides php?  Let’s turn them on to the idea - share the rss feed with them or get them to email me.  My number one skill is being able to communicate to others, be it affiliate managers or other marketing professionals - You need to master that to become successful in this industry (yeah, sorry, I know you want to just email people all day …)

Hopefully that clears up all the confusion as to why I have not replied to the emails thus far.   Oh yeah, What kind of format would you guys like this in?  Do you think we should start a forum, chatroom, newsletters, daily email, etc?  It needs to be dynamic - we are creating a community.  Would love your thoughts…  d( ** spam_makes_ppl_money ** )eStonesucks@gmail.com.  Holla.

Boys and Girls,

I come to you a humble man. A man that has finally found his path in life. As some of you may know, I recently put in my two weeks notice. It wasn’t a bad gig ya know, but I was getting tired of feeling like I was wasting my time and abilities on some slacker job that a 40k php developer could do. It wasn’t fair for them, and it wasn’t fair for me.

In less than three months, I have been fortunate enough to jump from making roughly $5 to $10 a day in adsense to nearly $30,000 + a day in PPC arbitrage. I’ve kept it quiet for a long time mainly because I wanted everyone to respect me and not treat me like the other ’super affiliates’ that are running around slapping their jaws, acting like they invented the internet.

I don’t review websites, I don’t put on funny looking t-shirts every friday, and I don’t lie to absolute beginners. All I do is code, build systems, and scale madly. I’m not here to jerk chains, all I want to do is help a few people quickly change their lives around.

I was in debt almost $70,000 dollars when I first started these side projects. I had a boat I loved, I had a cute girlfriend who needed a ring, and two car payments that made rent look cheap. My ignorance got me into that position and now that I am debt free, I will never live through that hell again.

I want to help a few find their way and earn this kind of money. I don’t want to brag or post checks. I don’t really think you care what I wear, but if its kewl looking I might show it off… That’s not my purpose on this blog.

If you are up for the challenge and you want to learn some legit systems (whitehat, greyhat, bluehat, blackhat, or redhat) — shoot me an email at deStonesucks(spam_stops_here)@gmail.com.

Later peeps.

NOTE: This blog post is a continuous work-in-progress …

Everyone knows I suck — but you know someone who doesn’s suck? Shoemoney. This dude has all kinds of money. He’s kind of this ‘icon’ or ‘playboy’ for affiliate marketing. Flashy black hummers, t-shirts, daily blog posts about how great his life is … He is a modern day Affiliate Marketing Messiah ™.

Every decent blogger (and some that suck) feels compelled to take pictures with him.

It’s almost like your blog can’t be cool until you meet the man. Well, since (a) My broke ass is obviously not going to ASW and (b) he’s not going to be there either — it looks like i’m going to have to do the next best thing, splog pics of him and others on my blog for linkbait!

This is Wes Mahler from http://www.wesmahler.com. I usually like reading his blog and using his sql-injection-infested tracking202 software (unconfirmed rumor). Oh well, he went the way of the darkside and proudly aligns himself with the shoemoney.

I’m not really sure who these people are — but chances are they all have Google Adsense accounts, jobs as SEO consultants, and pages that rank #1 for keywords like “American Society for Douchebaggery”.

This girl is from the picture above too — so, uh, I just wanted to call her out again, mainly for reasons that are obvious.

I can’t remember this guy’s name, but he is probably a uber affiliate or something… FAIL!

WTF!?!? It’s jon from wickedfire.com - the gayest webmaster forum on the internet. Even he was drawn into the baptismal pools of Shoemoneyism. I am not sure, but I think that he has defected now — but once a cult member, always a cult member in my book!

sidenote: Just so I get the trackback from the forum

Someday, if I ever get to where I make enough money as an affiliate marketer, I might get to meet my heroes Ron Paul and Shoemoney at Affiliate Summit Canada. That would be totally the c00lest!11!!!11!

Btw - NickyCakes ain’t no sell out.

Note: This process is for retards wanting to get into making money online who (a) can’t code, (b) don’t know shit about PPC, (c) have zero clue about Internet Marketing.

Yes, the title might be a bit deceptive, but lets talk about a new strategy I am pretty sure will ultimately pay you nearly 150k dollars if you were to actually stop everything you are doing and implement it.

I know there has been a lot of talk about BANS and PHPBayPro products lately. Personally, I’ve not invested too much time and I am really not seeing much activity from my efforts, but evidently some people are making 300 to 400 dollars a week using these systems. Well, I have a system that will blow those products out of the water. The problem with my system? You have to do something off the computer – so maybe that ruins the entire mystique of making money online!

I’m assuming since you read this blog, you have to be of above average intelligence. Stupid people can’t find blogs like this. You already know about “the Internet”, “eBay”, and how sites like digg.com work. But guess what? You’re smarter than most of America.

What I am proposing is this – use your intelligence to share and grow people who are on the other side of the curve – while making 150k a year.

Step 1:

Look up your local community center as well as community centers in surrounding cities and counties. I’m going to use Marion, Kentucky as an example. Marion is in Crittenden County – people are poor, education is, well, lackluster. This is a perfect location for my methods – they have a brand new community center to use and will PAY you to teach technology classes.

Step 2:

Create a commission junction account, and sign up to be an eBay affiliate.

Step 3:

Create a referrer link that is easy to use. Try something like start-ebaying.com. Have this domain redirect to eBay registration with your affiliate information.

Step 4:

Schedule FREE classes at your community center to teach elderly people, young people, computer illiterate people how to use eBay. Inform the community center everyone needs to bring all the necessary things to create an eBay account.

Step 5:

Write very basic training materials. Make a username / password sheet in a folder labeled EBAY for people to write their account information in. That folder will be their ebay information source.

Step 6:

Walk a class of 15 to 20 Individuals through registering on eBay. Use your referral link to start the process off. Step them through making their first bid. In one 1-HR session with 15 people, you have just created $375 + any transactions that come from that initial bidding (hopefully someone will win something!).

Step 7:

Repeat process in another small area.

Now, do this three days a week (Keep in mind, classes are MAX 2 hours) – so you are working 6 hours a week after the initial creation of tutorial documentation and folders. That’s a mere 156 sessions a year.

156 Sessions x 15 avg users per session = 2340 users
$25 per person * 2340 users = $58,500 dollars.

You’ll make another $500.00 from the initial transactions of the events.

The $25 per person jumps as you scale and add new users. Spend your remaining time that week scheduling another event and getting people to come.

Say you do 4 sessions per week, and 25 people come, and your making $31 per person.

208 Sessions * 25 avg users per session = 5200 users
$31 per person * 5200 users = $161,000 dollars per year.

This is a great time to engage others in other affiliate offers as well…

I know this works because I have been helping teach “Internet for Dummies Classes” in similar style with 15 to 25 people per session and I am constantly having people ask me about this site they heard about called “eBay”.

First and Foremost, you are reading the first official post on deStonesucks.com. With the domain name like “deStonesucks.com” you would initially think I am attacking deStone, however or whatever that may be. Not true my friends, not true.

I am deStone. That’s my irc nick. I roll on freenet (irc.freenode.net) and efnet (irc.prison.net). On IRC, I spend a lot of time chatting, and getting bashed. Does it bother me? No way. I’m “that guy” in the channel. I always have been…

deStonesucks.com is my attempt to share my knowledge of affiliate marketing, SEO, etc to people who have never realized that they can earn good income off their sites! I’ll be sharing a lot of tips and code snippets as well…