Virginia Purnell:
Welcome to Entrepreneur Conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online.
Hi everyone. Today I'm talking with Christina Szekeres about how she helps people become financially independent through affiliate marketing. Christina is an international keynote speaker and affiliate marketer for 15 years. She started when she was 14 and had no English, an independent business woman and was born and raised in Hungary and now living in Orange County, California.
Virginia Purnell:
Welcome Christina.
Christina Szekeres:
Hi Virginia. Thank you for having me.
Virginia Purnell:
I'm so glad that you're here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Christina Szekeres:
Of course. I'm currently living in California, but I'm originally from Budapest, Hungary. I was born and raised there and I was born to a, you know, like very poorest in European family and when I was 14, my dad got me an ebook which was written by a female affiliate marketer and she was un affiliate marketing, how to make money with ClickBank offers on Google adwords. And back then I didn't speak any English. I dedicated my whole summer to that book to translate it word by word, using the old fashioned dictionary method, you know, and I was very inspired by this woman because I thought to myself, if she can make money as a woman, then I probably can make it work too. And, and given that my parents never really had money to go on vacations or they barely had any money to pay the bills, I was super driven and motivated to change that, not only for myself but for my family too.
So I was always motivated to, to keep going. It took me about three years to find my first profitable campaign back then when I was just a teenager. That was pay-per-view traffic with running a lead generation offer. And then I, you know, from that point on, I, it was always like for me, a breakthrough when there was like a big, big when s**t hit the fan, sorry for my bad words. But when I'm under a lot of pressure, I tend to deliver very good. And, but I was about 2021 my dad does his job and he could no longer provide for the family and that was the point, the turning point in my affiliate marketing career because until then I was just treating it as like a game and like making pocket money. But then when really it got serious because if we're about to lose our home that was behind the beers by like three months and you know, he had a couple of mortgages that he had to pay and that was the moment when I was like, okay, I need to step it up.
I need to figure out how to make much more money. I mean I know already that you know how campaigns work and how you can make money with affiliate marketing. I did it on a low scale, but then that was the turning point for me, a big breakthrough, a push when I was under pressure to to be able to provide for the family, stepping in to become the breadwinner. And in about two months I changed the family's life. I turned it around because I was able to pay off all of his dad and I moved my dad to. After that I started traveling with my mom and I moved my dad to the us to keep working for me and now they are both are being retired in California and they are hearing me. So that is kind of like my life story in short.
Virginia Purnell:
Such an inspiring story. Thank you. So what's the biggest thing that you do to get visible online?
Christina Szekeres:
That's a very good question and I love that question. Many people today think that social media and like Instagram is the way to go and like to get miserably. Now there are like two different things that we can talk about. One, we can talk about personal branding and the other we can talk about running actual affiliate marketing campaigns. I would say they're two different things for personal branding. What I put a lot of emphasis on is providing value in communities that are interested in affiliate marketing. So I, the way I got, you know, a lot of let's say visibility or like I was put into the spotlight when I was a meeting, I don't know if you're familiar with stack that money, the forum, but it's a big affiliate marketing community.
And they had meetups all around the world. And the way my brand started was actually going to these meetups and I met the founders in Hong Kong. So for me, one of the main tactics to get visibility and people to get to know me, to actually go to meet ups and meet people in person. So they start talking about you and I saw her speaking at events that helps a lot and online being active in groups. So I was really active on, on SDN forum. People got to know me and they got really excited when they met me in person. Right? So they could put the username behind the face short put into a face. That's not my brand started. So SDN invited me to speak at their, at their first London event. And there are like 600 people in the room and you know, it, it just came naturally.
So I think I was very passionate about it wasn't very well planned out and you know how I am going to have a lot of visibility but it definitely was a passion of mine to travel and meet all the people and learn more from all these people and also provide value. So I kept hopping around from one continent to another just to go to an STM Europe to meet the people who are like people who do the same like I do at flare marketing, right. To share and discuss tactics and then hosting my own workshops in the meantime and mastermind and being active, you know, in the whole whole industry. So whatever industry you are a part of, I would recommend if you're planning to do a personal branding and you're passionate, passionate about, you know, being active in groups and then go to meet ups impression to not just online because that will help a lot for people to get to know you and to start talking about you. So to sum it up, I would say networking in person and in groups, Skype mastermind groups that are grow, mastermind groups, Facebook groups where you want to be active to get any recognition and to provide relief for the topic that you are representing. So I love helping out people when they push the question in our Facebook group and giving value and showing them, you know, my expertise and more and more people will see that and then they will reach out to you for help. So our perfect approach if you're just starting out.
Virginia Purnell:
Awesome. Thank you so much for those words of wisdom, Christina.
Christina Szekeres:
Of course.
Virginia Purnell:
How can people find out more about you and what you do?
Christina Szekeres:
They can find out about me, by IM Queen consulting.com or if they go to Facebook, they can type in. IM queen, internet marketing queen. And then on Instagram IM FB Queen to to find out more.
Virginia Purnell:
Awesome. Thank you again, Christina for sharing with us and I'm excited to have you back on the show in a bit.
Christina Szekeres:
Thank you Virginia. My pleasure, had a good time.
Virginia Purnell:
Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll get you on the next episode.
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