Should I focus on Facebook, POF, or Mobile as a newbie? (8)
Okay guys. So, I joined this forum but was doing some SEO stuff as well and after a bit of what Charles Ngo calls "chasing the shiny object", I realized I need to focus on one thing and work on it until i can make it work.
I am spending the next 1-2 weeks taking in all of the information I can on this thread, then from there, I am going to focus on taking action and learn from my mistakes/testing.
My question is what would you advise me for starting out? My total budget is $8,500.
Facebook: My concerns with this are getting banned and obviously starting out, I wouldn't be able to just go buy another ad account. I do have a small amount of experience with the platform, and really enjoy it.
POF: I know that many say this is great for beginners, but there isn't as much traffic so you quickly have to move to other sources.
Mobile: I do not know anything about mobile traffic as I am just starting out, but hear more people talk about it consistently, and feel like this could be a big opportunity to scale in the future. This is the most exciting and interesting of all three for me personally.
Adult: I don't really wish to go into Adult if I can help it. I know there is good $$$ in this, but I would rather focus on one of the other traffic sources.
I realize there is no "best option" and it will take lots of hard work, as well as lots of willingness to make mistakes and fail. I realize that, and am willing to work as long as it takes to make it in affiliate marketing. I am currently 20 years old, and have set aside everything else in order to focus solely on affiliate marketing from selling a small business back in June, to lightening my classes drastically. I have the drive, and will do whatever it takes to succeed in this business.
If any of you have advice on what you think would be best for me, that would be great. I really appreciate all of the amazing information I have read so far, as well as everyone's willingness to help out.
Looking forward to your replies. Thanks everyone!
I think you already know the answer:
Originally Posted by claytonbradshaw
Im on the same page as you man, been doing seo for awhile and now reading alot on this forum and taking it all in and slowly starting to take action. I personally think of trying POF and will see how that goes! You have probably seen there is a whole guide on mobile marketing by The Angry Russian and it looks awesome
Mobile's going to have a steep learning curve for you, and it requires a larger budget than anything else - but you're right, it's the new frontier. If you go for mobile, make sure you have strong tracking in place from the start. Your budget will go less far with mobile than other sources.
Facebook: bans are the problem, although it seems that they've cooled off with the banhammer a bit recently. If you're prepared to run very clean, you may escape them - and there's great volume there.
POF: It's very friendly, it's very targetable, and there are some great tools for it. Downside is the volume, but it's a good place to start out and build up to $xxx a day.
Adult: If you don't want to go there, don't. Your other three options can all work, so there's no reason to force yourself to do something you dislike.
The choice is going to come down to your income targets vs your risk preference. Facebook is great, but can suddenly cut off for very little reason. Your budget is pretty solid for FB. Mobile doesn't have that problem, but you're going to have to spend to get results - is $8,500 the most you can afford ever, or will you be able to top that up after a couple of months? And POF will cap your maximum income from that source, but there's no downside other than that to testing it - and you've got a very good budget for POF.
@caurmen Thank you so much for your input! It sounds like for me personally, I think I will work with POF and build up to $XXX/day and then start moving into mobile from there. Also, that will give me an opportunity to really practice with tracking and creatives more yet have the ability to transition into what I would like to focus on in the future (mobile).
Hey Caurmen,
Can you go into a little more detail about the budget needed for mobile? I see a few mobile follow alongs on this forum and others where the budget is $50-100 a day. Of course, the returns from these campaigns aren't huge but they seem like good starting points. Whats a realistic budget for getting started in mobile?
@redhill - I'm not nearly as much of a mobile expert as other people on this forum, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.
Having said that: the issue with mobile is that you've got a lot more variables to test than Web campaigns. You've got to eliminate carriers and handsets that do or don't work. That means you need more data and campaigns are slower to optimise, which means you need to spend more money.
Personally, I'd consider $8k an absolute minimum budget for learning mobile properly without having to depend on luck, and probably more like $10k - $15k to stand a reasonably decent chance of getting the swing of things before my funds ran out.
Of course, a lot of this DOES depend on other factors in your campaign, primarily the payouts you're working with. Mobile has the advantage of a lot of low-payout offers: if you stick to those like glue and are very rigorous in your testing, you can reduce your necessary budget a lot.
Also, it'll obviously depend on the price of your traffic. I've just been discussing this with Mr Green, and he surprised me by saying that in his experience, if you can optimise both of those factors - CPC and payout - you might actually be able to run mobile on the same or even less budget than something like POF!
Doing that will require you to be very, very disciplined, though. It's very easy to be lured by a high-payout offer - and at that point, it ain't going to be cheap to test AT ALL.
Mobile also comes with a higher technical overhead: mobile landing pages require some specific techniques (although I've gone over those in some depth in these forums before, so you can follow those guides), you'll need more LP variants to cope with the different handsets, and IMO server and LP optimisation is more important. Of course, if you're highly technical, these disadvantages become strengths.
(oh, it's worth noting: you can actually run mobile ON POF, of course.)
Would be interested to hear what other people's experience has been on this one too!
start with POF & learn the basics of ad tracking and measuring traffic..
if you can spend $100 & make back $40 your off to a damn good start...
learn how to track, measure traffic, and master split testing
_RA
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