My advice to those people who believe that their affiliate marketing / internet marketing / seo / whatever careers will last for your entire life is this: don't count on it.
For example, let's say you're 25 years old. Fast forward 10 years, you're now 35. Will it still be possible to make money by yourself with nothing more than an internet connection, a $10 hosting account, a strong work ethic, and a healthy supply of indians ready to work for $5/hr? What will you do at that point? I don't care if you're the smartest motherfucker in the room and ready to adapt...there's no telling what the future holds. You need to consider that you *might* have to get a job. No companies are going to give a shit that you used to make a boat load of cash without even having to put pants on or leave your house. They'll say cool story bro, and move on to somebody else.
8 years ago I setup my first adwords campaign. It took 15 minutes or so. For the next 6 months, I didn't touch the campaign and I did over $100k in revenue, 60k or so was profit. That is simply not possible today. It doesn't matter if you adapted along the way...the environment has changed considerably and will continue to do so.
I did what I had to do, and sooner or later you might find yourself facing similar situations. I'm just glad that my "easy monies" dried up in my mid 20's, and not in my mid 30's.
I've also done work by myself for clients. I much prefer my new environment, being surrounded by likeminded entrepreneurial people like myself. Even if it's technically a 9 - 5. A rev share also makes things a little sweeter.
OP, you're entirely correct. It sounds like you were spoiled by affiliate marketing.
I honestly look to affiliate marketers for cutting edge insight into squeezing every penny out of my Internet Marketing campaigns, but I've never been a full-time affiliate marketer (So I honestly don't know what easy money from the Internet feels like just for putting up an adwords campaign.)... Even though, when I was DEAD BROKE... Picking up spare change around my apartment for food for the week I never considered getting a job. Just didn't cross my mind.
I'm not attacking your work ethic or character, but it sounds like you were more of a guy who came across how to make quick money than you are an entrepreneur or that you didn't have the drive to turn your early successes into a business empire of sorts... (Which in all honestly is mind-boggling that you'd watch people making millions pushing offers through affiliates and never made your own. Shit, even I'm launching a few health products through aff networks right now and I've never been a health affiliate.)
If I can offer any advice it would be to ALWAYS BE HUNGRY and NEVER BE SATISFIED.
I also don't see why you couldn't just throw together a media kit, build a bunch of websites so you had a portfolio of "clients", and start cold-walking businesses offering a free marketing audit, then up-selling yourself for a few hundred dollars on the spot. Gosh, I don't know why you couldn't of programmed yourself together a niche local business directory and offered free spots with optional sponsored listings, then went ahead and hooked up with local marketing businesses selling access to your business leads, "Who are interested in online marketing" for a nominal fee.
Heck, I don't know why you couldn't of simply taken 20K of that 60K you made your first year and started developing products based on what your most successful affiliate campaigns were sending traffic to.
Geeze, I don't know why you couldn't of taken a UBot Studio license and bombarded the shit out of Craigslist's services section selling moving and labor while farming out the work, eventually getting licensing and working your own leads...
Not that I know anything about making money. We all know that WickedFire doesn't have anyone that actually makes money. I mean... it's not like I have gmario lambos or anything... but I'm doing alright for a young guy.
