Or: How you should learn and drag out something positive from even negative situations
You know how they say that you should structure your articles and blog posts? I’m a true believer of that principle as well.
But guess what? This blog post is going to have no structure what so ever. I will write about (in no particular order):
- What I’ve learned from the Rhodes Brothers’ Super Affiliate Challenge, although it was a failure.
- How Silence is not always Gold
- The difference between “giving up” and “knowing when to stop”.
Well, let me start with the latter first…
The difference between “giving up” and “knowing when to stop”
You probably know that it takes two things to succeed:
- Taking action
- Stick to it
But sometimes that will make you waste a lot of time, so how do you know when it’s time to let go?
Easy! For me this has just happened two hours ago. My husband told me: errrrm…. maybe you should stop now.
And it dawned on me that he was right.
This “super affiliate challenge” started March 17, and we were told that we should put in two hours of work each day, seven days a week. Well, I didn’t. It was closer to 7-10 hours of work, six days a week. I didn’t mind. I learned a lot. I also got stuck on some really boring tasks, and because they were so boring, I spend more time doing them.
So for some of the things, I felt that I had only myself to blame for using much more time on them.
Like writing 150 forum posts in a week. I spend more time searching for actual interesting posts to answer, than on answering them. But there are in fact only so much activity going on on most forums…
And writing articles – 15 the first week, that wasn’t so difficult, but spinning them manually, and especially finding other article directories to submit to, that part took hours.
Well, I wrote on the Simple Cash Blog that it took me 6 hours to write, spin, and submit 10 articles to 5 different directories, so there was no way that 15 articles could be done in 5 hours. No answer.
We were promised that we would learn from the same blueprint that the Rhodes Brothers used themselves to make $1700 per month, doing affiliate marketing, and we were promised great rewards, when we succeeded. I especially remember the iPad. I could see myself with that iPad, received as a reward.
So I stuck to it.
But made no money. Not one penny. Zilch, nada, niende, sjumdavar, zero, nothing.
Well, I was behind on my weekly work, since it took much, much more than two hours daily, so I still felt that I would make it. Week 6 is about to start tomorrow (we got 4 weeks extra), and the challenge would last 11 weeks, so I felt I should still give it a change.
When my husband said: “Maybe you should stop”, I knew he was right, though.
Then what did I learn? Why do I still not think it has been a complete waste of time?
One of the rules I live by is to always learn something from what happens. Always get the best out of a situation.
What I learned from this challenge is to… challenge myself, and to be structured.
Since we had to turn in our homework, I saved every URL from my articles in Evernote. I learned that it’s not enough to write articles. You should also bookmark them, and again — be structured. Take notes, when you’ve bookmarked them. Ping them. Next step is to turn them into videos. Make use of them. You can just as well drag every last drop of juice out of them, now they are written.
So, even though I’ve spend a full time online, making no extra money (thanks to AdSense and other income streams, I still made money in this period), I learned something.
And from making all those forum posts, I got to know people on several forums. I saw jerks writing fluffer and “nice post, keep up the good work”, and I saw competent people giving great advice for free. And I am really thankful for spotting one persons signature on a forum, and joining The Wealthy Affiliates University because of it.
I also learned how you should have everything prepared, if you put up a challenge like this.
The Rhodes Brothers gave us extra intention to promote their blog and make money as affiliates from that, but their blog didn’t contain much content. That should have been in order to begin with.
The lessons, we received, weren’t tested. We tested them. Then they made revised lessons with less homework. But somebody should have checked that, before we were made alpha testers on the product. After all, we paid for it.
Matt wrote to me (in private) that his father was terminally ill. I’m really sorry about that. I can understand how that can set you back, and of course you don’t feel like doing business under such conditions.
But for the rest of us – it’s a question of life and dead, too. By spending all that time on this challenge (and still being behind on my weekly homeworks), I haven’t made any other extra income. Luckily, I have other income sources, but many people might not have that. So it’s business for us. And seen from a business point of view, the Rhodes Brothers has not only shot themself in their foot, but also committed IM suicide with this project.
Who will have faith in them after that?
Silence is NOT gold
What really made the snap for me was seeing comments on their blog getting censured out.
People started to write critical comments about too little new content on the blog, and them telling one thing about traffic in a webinar, and teaching us the opposite. At first, those comments were answered, but when I wanted to write a comment the next day, they were gone.
Well, I wrote, anyway, only to find out that my comment had to wait for moderation. It still does, 8 days later. But you can see it here:
They should NOT have censured our comments. They should have taken care of the problems, when they started. They should have tested the materiale, before selling it to us.
Rhodes Brothers committed so many errors with this Super Affiliate Challenge. Which is sad. I was a big fan of them, and I thought they made great info materials earlier.
But for me, it’s time to stop now. I will not continue and put around 7-10 hours of work daily into this for the the remaining six weeks.
It’s over and out. Closing time.
Rest In Peace, Super Affiliate Challenge.
You wrote:
“I will not continue and put around 7-10 hours of work daily into this for the the remaining six weeks.”
Right, so now you’d better get to the kitchen.
Signed: The husband 🙂
Nah, real good article. It wasn’t very pleasant to see you work that much, feeling guilty when you weren’t finished in time and nothing coming in.
It was time to stop. No reason to beat a dead horse.
Hi Britt
I am certainly glad you were encouraged to stop by your loving husband. He is a patient guy who wouldn’t say so if it wasn’t because he could see you could have spent your time better.
Feeding ducks would have been greater fun than spinning articles. 🙂
All facetiousness aside, I am sorry you had to go through this, but I think it’s lovely that you write about it to warn others. I hope my retweet can help many more find your article.
No one should be forced to work so much without getting anything in return – and I do hope you will get at least a refund for the money already paid. But the Rhodes Brothers have probably secured themselves against refunds by huge disclaimers.
Thanks for your comment, Henrik
I’ve seen several get a refund, but I don’t see why I should ask for one. I joined to do the Super Affiliate Challenge. I’ve learned something. Well, this wasn’t the blueprint, I thought it was, but the guarantee promised either $1,700 per month or three times the money back, if you completed the course (11 weeks) and made all the homework. I’ve only sent homework for the first four or five weeks. Yeah, I could have spent my time better, if I’d knew, but I didn’t, and I always prefer to take action, and risk to be mistaken, than not to take action, which is a guaranteed mistake. I learned something, and thanks to the challenge, I got in contact with WA, where I am now and learning. Not so bad.
But it aroused my suspicion already, when I learned that one of the brothers had just quit his day job. Well, I did the same 15 years ago. So maybe I know a lot more, than I think?
Good post Britt! I had the same experience and feelings about this challenge and the cash blog. I think everyone in it did too. Too little content, not enough interaction with our “leaders”. That was a huge workload and if you picked a bad product to promote, you waste a lot of time.
In the same period of time we could have tested out 5 or 6 different products with a similiar approach. Write some articles, build landing page/blog and do some forum marketing and make some videos for several products.
The Rhodes brothers have given us some good reports and a workplan. But it sure isn’t worth paying every month for a membership site with so little new content. And them posting about 2 times a month is a little insulting. Starting to think this is just another of their PLR/outsourced projects and they have already moved on. Apparently they are happy getting people to join and pay for 2 or 3 months and then cancelling. Instead of building this into a long term place to be. This kind of membership site needs a forum/community, frequent new posts and steady new content to be worth the price. They just didn’t spend enough time working on this project. I mean it was kind of a let down going to the blog everyday and seeing nothing new for weeks at a time.
Heck, I almost set up my own forum for it. But I doubt they would have let me post the link in a comment. They deleted a lot of comments.
I canceled mine.
Personally, I think most of the reports and probably the master plan were simply other peoples ideas rewritten. I never saw anything new or something special they were sharing. Where was the this is how the Rhodes do it?
I made a couple sales of the product I was promoting and the traffic is starting to build from all my work but it sure wont be $1700 a month anytime soon 🙂
Hi Mike
Good to hear from you. One of the things that made the Super Affiliate Challenge a great experience for me after all, was the way we students communicated. It could have been a lot more, if we’d had an uncensored forum, yes. That would have been great.
Early in the course a thought stroke me (happens from time to time, nothing serious, a couple of pills, and I’m okay again): Are they going to sell the blog after this challenge? That would make sense. Getting a lot of people to promote the blog. Getting lots of new subscribers. But they denied that. I don’t know… Now it’s certainly not possible to flip it.
I’m glad you made a couple of sales after all. And good luck with continuing growth of your online business.
Thank you for the valuable input. I’ve been thinking of creating a challenge too… but more in line with this contest: http://comluv.com/news/famousbloggers-comluv-contest/
~Henry~
That looks interesting. Thanks for the tip. A challenge is btw always a great way to get things done and push your limits.
Hi Britt,
Great post! I too was working the challenge to no avail. I’m sorely disappointed and gave up weeks ago because I could not keep up with the forum posting. I’ve seen people on forums who have been on a long time that don’t have as many posts as we were required in the first 4 weeks!
I didn’t join the Simple Cash Blog but still paid $77 for the challenge and it was a waste of money. There really wasn’t anything earth shattering in what we got (and we haven’t even gotten everything) and not worth the money.
I use to admire the Rhodes Brothers but not anymore. Too bad….
– Jean
Hi Jean, thanks for your comment. Yes, the forum part was what got me, too. It took far to much time just to find something worthy of answering. I can see some traffic coming from forums, and it’s of course great for branding your name, but 50 forum posts per week would have been more than enough. I choked on the 150 one week.
What I really liked was the plan, though. And I’m going to copy that part and make my own planning the same way. Not to put 11 weeks of hard work into one tiny CB product, but to plan, and to focus.
Hi Britt,
I spent close to 10 hours/day at least for the first month when the challenge started, and then at least 4 -7 hours in my 2nd month doing some boring task that I don’t feel like doing (you know those forum posting, article writing, etc). However, no matter how boring they are, I try to stick to the plan and committed to complete it. fyi, I have few yrs of IM experience but having said that, when I started the affiliate challenge I try to put all that aside and just follow exactly whatever Rhodes Bros’ said. I fully trust them and wanted to make things happen whatever it takes.
They keep silent now and I really feel cheated and much regretted to start the affiliate challenge in the first place.
Sticking to your content schedule and strategy makes all the difference in the world but, as you’ve noticed, there does come a time when you have to cash in your chips. It’s not failure so certainly don’t think that because you’ve learned a lot during this experience – that’s what matters. In fact, it’s probably a great thing that you’ve realized the idea of saying “no more” to a project so you don’t wind up months later with little to show when you could devote your time to something that may have a lot more opportunity 🙂
So true, Murray, and thank you for your comment. We talked about this over dinner, and my husband asked me: Does that mean that you can learn something even from a bad product? And I said, yes. It depends on your mind set, I think. You can learn from every experiment, good as well as bad.