Confessions of a Former Super Affiliate
While I have been a work at home mom (WAHM) for nearly 12 years, I never really considered myself a Super Affiliate. I’d always thought of myself as a “Blogger” or “Freelance Writer” but never “Super” anything. After looking up exactly “what is a super affiliate?” I guess that is a title I did earn at some point.
There was a time when I was generating as much as $8,000 a month. Can you believe that? BUT those days seem so long ago.
As of recent, I have been going over some of my favorite printed materials, namely Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook and putting together a plan to get back to the place I was in 2008.
People have asked me Why I didn’t maintain that income? Why I sold my biggest income generating website? Why I’m not making $8,000 a month now – Why? Why? Why?
In hindsight it was probably without a doubt, a very foolish thing to do, but at the time, I was thinking only of survival. Thinking only of protecting my kids, myself and everything I’d worked my entire life for.
Long story short(ish) – I married a man I thought I knew very well. A man I really believed had a similar work ethic as me. A man who was working 2 jobs – loved his kids – enjoyed family time, blah, blah, blah. I was an idiot!
One month and two days after we married, he suffered a back injury, had surgery and was handed an excuse, a justification on a silver platter – to never work another full day again. To his credit, he did eventually get a job working 2 days a week to support his own tobacco habit and gas in his V8 truck I was paying for.
Over the next 4 years he would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He spent money like we had an endless supply (very common symptom of this disorder) – on very silly items like coffee cups. He actually purchased FIVE $39 coffee cups once – and he didn’t even drink coffee!
I took all his access to money but he managed to go behind my back and get online credit where he would shop on eBay and Amazon – in a single month he racked up over $2,000 in debt on the one card.
He would do amazingly stupid things like run electric heaters in the barn for days at a time racking up $600 and $700 electric bills that I would have to pay.
Simple things like keeping electricity on – food in the fridge were enabling him to thrive and keep doing exactly what he was doing.
After taking it upon myself to go to a local support group for families of the mentally ill, I realized this was a monster much bigger then me. The State of Indiana is a ‘no-fault’ divorce state and him being formally diagnosed with mental illness, I knew that I needed to have a very strategic plan to keep my kids, me and all we owned safe.
My plan for divorce took 2 years to complete.
I sold a website to help afford a house for my kids and me. Because of what he’d done to my credit, my dad’s name would be first on the home. That was perfect though – because for all intensive purposes, my dad owned the house and everything in it.
Because of his repeated threats to take half of everything I had, I allowed depression to set in and my income to drop to a level that half of would have been nothing worth fighting over. I’d rather do without the larger dollar amounts then to have ever considered giving him half when he’d already taken so much from us.
I hired Two Men and a Truck to pack us up and move us – and with that – it was done. I was done. I was stepping out and into the next chapter of my life.
One of the many lessons I learned from that nightmare is when you allow your efforts to fall and your income to drop so drastically, it takes so much effort to rebuild it.
Would I go back and do it all the same way again? Probably! Was it the smartest thing to do? Probably not. That’s just the way I roll.
So there you have it – the glorious truth of where I was – the ugly truth of where I am.
In my next post I will let you take a look at some of my actual income during my days as a successful super affiliate. Actual screenshots of my Paypal account, real numbers, genuine deposits.
That’s what you want to see, right?
I remember being in your very shoes – wanting to know if there’s real money to be had in this whole “work at home” internet marketing thing.
I am here to tell you there is! And very shortly, I will show you!
Stay tuned!
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