Quote: "For the record email marketing is still the method that drive the most engagement."
Hands down that ^^^^ is correct.
I've spent the last year doing a lot of what the OP has done, sans the link spamming. I've built sites, did white/gray/black hat link building, promoted cpa offers with media and traffic buys, and even offers via kindle books.
What might not be clear to everyone here is that this is still going on and there is still a huge market for this thing and thusly, quite a few people making a lot of money.
I have spent a long time building software. All kinds of it - client, server, web, mobile, now watch. I'm good at this and it's second nature. I've also made a lot more money doing this vs. any type of IM or AM.
However, after getting into IM last year, part of me felt like I missed a whole part of the web 'growing up' because I was focused on spending huge amounts of time building building the tools & platforms vs. using them. Part of this was my disdain for advertising and marketing in general. However, in the last year I have developed a new found respect for those aspects of business - they are required nowadays and you can't avoid them. The few get lucky sites or app builders are just that - lucky. For the rest of us, it's marketing hard work.
I actually didn't do that bad during my foray into this last year. I probably made back 75% of my spend, which was 'only' about $5k. The easiest was bing ads -> clickbank offers. I'm still amazed that tinnitus or diabetes are still big sellers...
I feel like we programmers tend to look down on this or feel it's beneath us. I used to but I don't anymore. I posted before on HN how I thought Pat Flynn was doing a great job and got comments that what I was talking about was spam, not sustainable, etc. But Path's now up to about $1m/yr by becoming his own brand. He engages with his audience and has figured out how to bring a lot of these different types of marketing and educational aspects together.
Another great one is Brian Dean - his posts on driving traffic and capturing audience are amazing. He's definitely a hacker seo guy and I like that.
Hands down that ^^^^ is correct.
I've spent the last year doing a lot of what the OP has done, sans the link spamming. I've built sites, did white/gray/black hat link building, promoted cpa offers with media and traffic buys, and even offers via kindle books.
What might not be clear to everyone here is that this is still going on and there is still a huge market for this thing and thusly, quite a few people making a lot of money.
I have spent a long time building software. All kinds of it - client, server, web, mobile, now watch. I'm good at this and it's second nature. I've also made a lot more money doing this vs. any type of IM or AM.
However, after getting into IM last year, part of me felt like I missed a whole part of the web 'growing up' because I was focused on spending huge amounts of time building building the tools & platforms vs. using them. Part of this was my disdain for advertising and marketing in general. However, in the last year I have developed a new found respect for those aspects of business - they are required nowadays and you can't avoid them. The few get lucky sites or app builders are just that - lucky. For the rest of us, it's marketing hard work.
I actually didn't do that bad during my foray into this last year. I probably made back 75% of my spend, which was 'only' about $5k. The easiest was bing ads -> clickbank offers. I'm still amazed that tinnitus or diabetes are still big sellers...
I feel like we programmers tend to look down on this or feel it's beneath us. I used to but I don't anymore. I posted before on HN how I thought Pat Flynn was doing a great job and got comments that what I was talking about was spam, not sustainable, etc. But Path's now up to about $1m/yr by becoming his own brand. He engages with his audience and has figured out how to bring a lot of these different types of marketing and educational aspects together.
Another great one is Brian Dean - his posts on driving traffic and capturing audience are amazing. He's definitely a hacker seo guy and I like that.
So, to each his own, but this was a great read.