The biggest lesson I learned was that consistency feels boring before it becomes rewarding. Most people quit during the boring phase, not because the opportunity doesn't work.
This really resonates with me. I used to think the louder the headline, the better the results. Turns out, people are tired of being shouted at. My best-performing ad started with a simple question about a problem my audience faced every day.
I learned this lesson with an Amazon affiliate site. Everything looked great until I realized 90% of the traffic came from one Reddit thread that had gone viral. Two weeks later the traffic disappeared. Never again.