It's game time! I'm still really new to affiliate marketing and not completely familiar with all the terminology within the business, but I've always figured that you learn more by doing. So, I believe that I have read enough to at least get me started, and I will figure things out as I go. I am aware that this may not be the best approach, but at the same time, I don't think reading for a few months on theories of marketing is either. Either way there is going to be a learning curve and based on past experience, this has been my fastest way to get over that hurdle.
So far this is what I have done;
Jumping in once you've read enough to understand the basics is, IMO, definitely the best way to do it. You're on the right track!
Keep us updated and if you hit any snags, post about them and we'll all jump in to help!
nice work! Looks like you're getting organized! Looking forward to your success
Good work, bro... you need to be prepared first, before you dive into this game (a mistake that I made). Good luck!!
I have exact same mindset as you in regards to jumping into the AM stuff - Always been aware of what it was but finally took the plunge with STM and am aiming to make it my full time work.
I'm very confused at what I should register my domain name as for my VPS. You said you chose names related to health, wealth and relationships... does that mean you purchased three separate VPS'
Any tips on getting approved with networks? I took a gander and they all require you to have some sort of value offering proposition for them to approve.
Thanks - we're in the same starting point, lets do it bro!!!
@ Johnathanta
You don't need 3 different VPS servers. You can use multiple domains on the same VPS server..
Good Luck! If you need help setting up Prosper202 let me know! No matter what don't give up!
Thanks for the clarification alpacino
I'm literally a noob to servers, hosting, owning domains and php and all that jazz.
I've made my money on eBay / e-commerce. Much less technical.
If anyone can point me in the direction of literally noob content I would greatly appreciate it.
Read through the 2013 tutorial and using the search function to sort through follow alongs that outline getting past the learning curve.
This is gonna be fun.
Thanks everyone for the help and encouragement. Finding out managing my own server is a lot more work then I was expecting, but it's coming together. Setup for Prosper202 is a bit confusing, and not quite sure the issue. I was able to find someone on Fiverr to setup prosper202 on my server, so I am looking forward to that and hopefully he can show me what he did.
@johnathanta - I did a lot of search on youtube and reading tutorials on ubuntu server set-up. Below is a quick tutorial on setting-up your server. This helped me, and then if you follow the original posters other tutorials, he walks you through setting-up prosper202. I followed his tutorial for Prosper202, but still working on that. I'm using Adobe Muse for my web design, and I have been finding a lot of tutorials on youtube and adobe.com to help me with my needs.
http://tjosm.com/3042/ubuntu-nginx-s...fpm-mysql-apc/
I'll give you guys an update in the next couple days of what I have setup and done, which for the most part I have completed my "goals" list from above and should be able to get some campaigns going minus the landing page in the next couple days. I'm thinking, if I can get prosper202 and at least track the ads, but not have any landing pages yet, I'm thinking I should just start testing the ads anyways. From what I understand, landing pages are not as necessary.
Thanks again everyone and staying positive and excited for this new journey.
@bigaffdreams - thanks for the offer of helping me with Prosper202. I bought a fiverr for someone to help me get it going, but I would like to get it up today if possible. I may take you up on that offer. I'm going to play with it a little more, but I may send you a private PM asking a question for some help. Thank you.
Good Luck mate, hope you will get success.
Please add here your results with Peerfly.. I`m interested in it also.
BTW are you from Georgia?
It's been a hectic weekend and beginning week already. My main goal over the weekend was to set-up Prosper202. I have a VPS with Digital Ocean and it is hosting 3 separate domains. I was able to install Prosper202 onto one domain, which is good. However, I'm not quite sure though how to use that one domain for Prosper to track, and also show a landing page. That's fine though, i'll just use my other domain names for my landing pages and use this as my tracking for now. I feel like i'm getting too bogged down with the technical area and forgetting that i'm in this to make money with affiliate marketing.
For those of you in the public accounting world, "busy season" has started for me (I know, it's early...FML). For those who don't know, "busy season" in public accounting is where you work 10-15 hour days, traveling to the middle of no-where-land, gain 20 lbs, high-levels of stress due to managers on a power-trip (it's just a title, you're not better than us), and girlfriends hating you because there's no time to hang out with them. Luckily for me, my busy season last until March 31, 2014...FML. So, as you can see, after a meeting as to remind us of the "expectations" of busy season, I was reminded (and motivated) as to why I want affiliate marketing and NEED the freedom to live my life.
Anyways, on that happy note, here's what I was able to accomplish. As stated earlier, I set-up Prosper202, so I have that going. I know I said in my last post that I would be using Adobe Muse, but I came across http://ipyxel.com/ and he had some great tutorials on his website for making landing pages using Photoshop and Dreamweaver and they looked good and seemed very easy to make. So I switched over to using Dreamweaver. I've downloaded Dreamweaver, although I've only gotten around to making my landing page on Photoshop so far. It's been awhile since I've used Photoshop, so I am brushing up on it, but I feel that i'll be able to go through these landing pages pretty quick once I get my short-cuts and hotkeys back up to speed. And the tutorials on http://ipyxel.com have really helped a lot.
I've selected my vertical, which will be dating, and my traffic source will be Facebook. I've read that this is a tough traffic source, but the volume is there and I want the challenge. My offers will be focused on offers between the amount of $5-10 dollars and ones that have a high EPC. I will have a daily budget to begin with of $10/day for each ad and will increase it as I find ads that are doing well.
I am going to continue to read and learn through the STM forums and other blogs that I've come across for all programs that I am using. I feel that I am focusing too much on technical things at the moment and just need to start throwing ads out there. So, that's what I plan to do. Even if I don't have my landing pages fully set-up (partly becasue i'm still figuring out how to upload them on the correct domain within my server), I am still going to launch my ads. I figured, as long as I can track them in Prosper202, I should be able to get the data I need. So, my goal is to have a few ads testing by the end of this week and my next post will be talking about the data that I have.
It's taking me a while, but once I get up and running, I feel that I should have things more automated and be more up to speed. Staying positive and I know that first dollar is around the corner (and hopefully my resignation letter to this job as well).
Please let me know of any tips you guys may have, thanks!
George
Passive Concepts
Hi George,
With regard to your issue setting up tracking and LP's on the same domain -- they way I do it is I put my tracking software in a separate subdomain. I'm not familiar with DigitalOcean, or if you have added something like cPanel to your server, but adding a subdomain is cPanel is easy!
You could have your LP's at: georgesawesomeoffers.com
And then add a subdomain called 'track' or 'tr' or 'mileycyrus' or whatever to georgesawesomeoffers.com. Then what you'd have is a tracking domain at 'track.georgesawesomeoffers.com'. Then on the server side you might have:
/foldername/foldername/public_html/ <-- put your lps here:
/foldername/foldername/public_html/track/ <-- put your p202 stuff in here (might have to redo the config.)
Some people take this a step further and buy a separate short domain name just for tracking.