If the affiliate community needs anything, it's a step away from everyone being mindless sheep. If you (the random reader) learn anything from this post, it's this: Please realize that people that are making money don't talk about it. They (dare I say "we") are either too busy, or they don't want the competition. If they do decide to share information, they're going to
charge you for it. Notice I didn't say charge you for
good information... paying money for information doesn't automatically make it
valuable!
There is an exception to me selling you information though. If you're my friend and I trust you, I'll take you under my wing and look out for you; but I'm also ever aware that
no amount of friends pays my bills. And as much as I love you, don't expect me to show you everything I'm working on. Envy's still a deadly sin, folks... between friends it's far more sinister.
Those of you that know me are well aware that I have an adult past. At one point, you probably saw most of my pay sites in the top 10 for every major adult SERPs though my various deals with Nightsurf, Inktomi's paid inclusion, etc. I've also sold a number of my 13,000+ domains for very large sums of money. Here's a recent
Escrow transaction for one of my domains I sold end of December.
At one point, I was even
sued by Microsoft for spam (being sued is not being guilty of). Shortly after ending that legal nightmare, my brother committed suicide and I decided that despite the easy money in adult, I was due for some serious soul searching. I still have a number of friends who own very large adult affiliate programs, but I've decided it's just not for me. Why you ask? Because I wanted to get away from people who all day claimed they were making millions and really weren't. I also got tired of spending hours on the phone with people telling me how many thousands of visitors they were going to send my way only to find out they were full of it. At some point I hope you guys realize that people that
aren't making money are precisely the ones that are incessently preoccupied with it.
Next time you meet your mentor, why don't you take a gander at him and see how he's dressed. Every man that's ever made money at least has a decent watch, nice shoes, or a spiffy wallet. How about you ask him what kind of car he drives? Or where he lives? Not everyone making money has all these things, but perhaps you ask him what sort of nice things he's bought himself with all his mad cash. How about pictures of these nice things?
It seems like WickedFire is important to Jon and I respect him for that. The above paragraphs aren't intended to be personal commentary on him as a person, as I don't know him. For the record, I'll say that I believe him (as I would anybody) until he gives me reason otherwise. I'll even venture to say I am interested in meeting him next time we're all in Vegas... I'm buying the first round of drinks.
Let's talk numbers...
RevenueSource has been online since Oct of '04 and is one of several projects I'm involved in. For argument's sake, let's say that RS is net'ing (not grossing) $45,000 a month. If someone offered me $16 million for it, they'd get a return on their investment in 355.55 months, or
29.62 years. For RevSource, at 11794 registered members, that works out to
$1356.62 per registered user.
Can anyone seriously say they would buy an entity that wouldn't give them a return on investment for 30 years?! Even if you halved that, it's
still 15 loooong years. Would you pay $1360 per webmaster for RS's webmaster database? What about the $4718 per user for WickedFire's population of 3391 registered users?
What about a affiliate forum's
potential value? My wife's grandfather used to say, "If hard worked paid off, donkeys would walk around with check books." Despite the hard work put into WF, two-times WF's zero current revenue is still zero. By comparison, two times our current revenue on RS is still quite a bit less than $16 million.
I have a unique viewpoint here because I actually own and operate an affiliate forum. We actually are profitable with RevSource and I'd take less than $16 million without hesitation. Any takers?? You can call me a "sellout," but I'd still be a rich sellout relaxing on a beach somewhere.
Re: WickedFire webmaster forum worth $16 million? -
04-12-2007
- :) read my 
