Motivation Mondays – Anything Is Possible

Today I decided to share a little story from my past.  This is one of those stories that no one believed when I told it but luckily this is an experience where I had the proof to show that I was telling the truth.

To set this up, the year was 2005 and I was a sophomore in college.  This was before I had any kind of experience with earning money online and I wouldn’t even think about getting into affiliate marketing until a few years after this.

One day I happened to be surfing around and one of those “Win a Free iPod” CPA ads popped up.  I had seen these before but I was at the point where my inquisitive nature kicked in and I decided that there had to be something about these things…I mean are they real, are they scamming people?  What’s the deal?

So I decided to do some research, perhaps because I had nothing else better to do.  Fully expecting to read tons of scammy stories (which I did find a lot) I found some stories where people had actually received the products promised to them.  That was all I needed to hear, even if one out of a thousand people got a free iPod, I was determined to figure out how they did it.

So I researched day and night and learned all about what sites were legit, fake, what sites needed referrals, what offers you had to complete, etc.  For those who aren’t familiar with these sites, you typically complete a few offers on these sites (which the site owners earn a CPA commission off of) and then you refer a few friends to do the same and you get your product.

Sure, a lot of these are scams but you can find nuggets of awesome amongst the rubble.

So I stumbled upon a forum called Scam.com.  Their “Internet Scams” section had turned into a few threads of sites where people were legitimately completing offers and receiving free stuff.

After weighing the pros and cons, I found a site that was offering a 52″ Toshiba HDTV.  This wasn’t even a flat panel TV, it was one of those DLP TVs that was a little bit thick.  The prospect of having one of these, especially in college was too appetizing to pass up.

This site required me to complete about 20 offers of which 12 were really easy (free trials, etc….essentially no money out of my pocket).  The others were harder and required some up front costs but you could get refunds, smaller packages, etc. if you knew the tricks.  Luckily, the forum included all of these tricks.  The selling factor was that this site DID NOT require any referrals, so I only had to rely on my own hard work to receive a free TV.

I spent a few months signing up for offers keeping a stringent spreadsheet of my progress.  I knew exactly when to apply for refunds of trials to get full credit towards my TV.  When all was said and done, I spent about $300 out of pocket in hopes to receive a $2000 television.

At this point, I still didn’t believe that I would be getting my prize.  It seemed TOO good to be true.  Around the time when I was finishing up my final offers, the site announced it would be shutting its doors in 30 days.  Any current customer had 30 days to receive credit for any pending offers and after that they would no longer be shipping any product.  I quickly finished up and filled out my tax form in order to receive my new HDTV.

After that I heard nothing for about 2-3 weeks.  I had given up hope and figured I had been scammed.  Then without warning, a white box truck pulled up to my house and two men unloaded a GIANT 52″ TV for me.

My friends couldn’t believe it.  Even when I told them the process they said they were going to follow in my footsteps and to this day not one of them has successfully received one of these “free” promotions.

I draw a comparison between this and Internet marketing.  The steps are there, laid out for you…it’s not hard…complete offers X, Y, Z.  But few actually follow through and complete every step necessary to actually receive the end result.  Internet marketing is similar in that the actual process is not hard, it just takes work.  Few want to actually put in the work to find success even though the work isn’t complicated or confusing.

To this day, I still enjoy my 52 HD TV and it serves as a motivator whenever I feel like something is impossible online.  Anything is possible with a little work and application of proven steps.