unlucky

This is a repost from 4 months ago. Original thread is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6253248

"I hope the tobacco industry takes a huge financial hit from the sale of these things because they literally prevent people from dying."

From what I can tell, the tobacco industry is going to eventually own the e-cig market too.

http://money.msn.com/investing/big-tobacco-invests-in-e-ciga... http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57588583/

In affiliate marketing, the only time methods are shared is if they have been dried up for months or years before by the author. I never shared any of my methods until I knew they were no longer valid.

The amount of luck needed is the same as any other industry that you are trying to break into. It is far more common to hear about the crazy success stories of a niche than the ones of grinding for years with little money and eating PB & J.

It is only low risk if you aren't fully committed to it.

I did affiliate marketing for about 10 months total. This was starting with not even knowing what affiliate marketing was, to making $200+ a day completely passive from ads. When the ad campaigns worked, it was one of the best feelings in the world. It is very hard to replicate the satisfaction of waking up and knowing that you had already made half your income for the day while still asleep.

The problem is with any "easy" money like this is that there is no consistency. Like most ad campaigns, the fuel behind them runs out. You are constantly having to come up with new ideas, that in which most will fail. I would say less than 10% of your work is directly profitable (just due to testing and failed ad campaigns.) So while I did have "passive" income for moments at a time, it wasn't truly "passive" because I would constantly be preparing for my next campaign. The stress that can come with the down time of not having any campaigns hitting can be brutal.

I would never do affiliate marketing again, but the taste of passive income was enough for me to completely realign my goals towards it. For me, it's not about the top end number anymore, its about the consistent one.

I can't agree enough. I can remember being mystified when I first saw a CLI "expert". It was like he attached a Game Genie to my computer.

My existence proves this sentence wrong.

Boredom is a huge source of trolling.

Watching someone else's over-reaction is a very easy source of entertainment. Reality TV is a great example of this.

"...these big radio advertisers want cars to have online radio only so they'll be able to measure their advertising reach precisely, rather than relying on estimates."

The difficulty or expense is not the issue here. This is purely an advertising decision.

Seems almost too simple... I feel like I am being tricked.

I too started with scripting languages, and also learn in a similar way. Hearing the value that learning C provided you makes the decision to learn it myself a simple one.

To those versed in C, is the tutorial linked in the original article a recommended one?