Home > Adult Traffic (NSFW) > Follow-along Campaigns

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1k to 10k With Exo/TJ (37)

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Hello, I have 1k USD and I want to invest it in (finally) learning to do CPA/Affiliate marketing with paid traffic.

Before starting I'd like to ask you for advice about it.

I'll do Exoclick. I like the low prices per click I paid before and the volume it provides. I can do too Traffic Junky.

I have 2 paths in mind so far of what to do:

I. WEB CPA 300x250 to EU (less competition + higher payouts)

II. WEB CPA 160x600 to US (less competition, nice volume)

III. Would you recommend any other strategy for me to follow according to my 1k budget?

Here are my questions:

1. Which path would you recommend of the three above?

2. Please be brutally honest: 1k is enough to get a profitable campaign? What is the best use for my 1k budget? What advice would you give your son, if he had this same idea?

My Goal: turning this 1k into 10k.

Rafael

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Hey buddy!

If you're just getting started I would definitely stay out of the US, very competitive, mostly slim margins.. not really the best learning ground for a new affiliate you'll probably just wipe your budget. However option 1 is not to bad, Europe is a much better choice, but even then breaking Europe down you have more competitive vs not so competitive countries. Maybe to get your feet wet, pick one of the smaller countries, like sweden or denmark or norway get a good converting high payout offer (Try not to use the 30+ offers, unless you cover the other ages with another offer for 18-29).

Also, try playing around with different placements in these zones. Don't just go straight to 300x250s... goodbye $1000 very very fast. Seeing a lot of success with people lately Ive been helping using the placements mostly overlooked by affiliates with low comp, (maybe because affiliates are lazy and there is not many options to rip) we are talking very nice ROI's.

But $1k to $10k in your first go, not impossible, but quite hard. You've got very high expectations, I would firstly focus on turning your $1000 into $2000, you're gonna become negative first off, don't know how strong your mindset is but lets hope it is strong! You're gonna have to walk a different path. Make sure you,

Define your testing: Don't just throw up campaigns, know what you're looking for.
Stick to low comp placements and countries: $1000 is gonna blow fast on tier 1 countries, US is no dice, 300x250's hmm you can do better then that. Put in the work and find that ROI.

Why Exoclick?: If I was you, I'd be going to somewhere like trafficforce or trafficfactory, much less comp on these, and personally seen and heard lately of those nasty ROI's everyone dreams of. You know the spend $20, make $200, not just gonna fall into your pocket mate, but if you go hunting, testing with a defined outlook, you may just get that $1000 to $2000. Obscure placements, low comp countries, high payouts = ROI & mostly longevity

But really man, entering Adult with $1000 is gonna be a hard time, it definitely could be enough, but you've got little room for error. Also cashflow will be an enemy for you

Hope that helps mang

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Hey Rafael, I hope you took maynzie's advice and didn't decide to go to Exoclick > USA with that budget bro if you don't have experience with Adult Dating.

Exoclick is a beast and USA is a monster, you are going to battle a 10 headed dragon with this small sword, of course some semi-god heroes have had success and BIG regards. But make your life easier bro

I can't give you too much insight with Web camps, since mine has been mobile all the way, but sure with Web you will have less variables to test.

But everything else holds true to web, please try those traffic sources Maynzie just recommended since you will need bigger budgets for Exo and TJ, it is not that these sources are not good, on the contrary, their quality is great! and this means a lot of competition, brands and affiliates pushing PPS offers bidding really high.

As for the GEOs, if your name is Rafael is because you know Spanish, right? Go for Spain, you will see most banners in this countries are in English, cuzz most affiliates are lazy and some bad translations, so Make your own banners and destroy them!

But read that post above carefully, many tips from Maynzie, pay him some respect and TRACK properly, this is the most important process you should develop.

Don't test so many landers, find the good ones for USA, translate with your own words (local slang for ES will do better), try 3 different type of landers with at least 10 different banners,, why? the more factors, the bigger your budget will need to be. Cut losers with not mercy and make new ones based on the winners till you hit a really good one (good CTR+good CR).

Good luck!

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@maynzie

Thanks for the fast advice.

I've sent a package to transation to Nordic languages and signed up with TrafficFactory.

Yes if I can get at least that 1k back by spending this 1k, it will be amazing.

I actually want to learn.

@cosmeivan

Thanks for your great help too man,

I'm Brasilian but I get get it with Spanish too. And yes, same in Brasil: most translations are horrible. I wonder how they stay there running so long.

I would use Exo because I've used it before and I managed to get consistent, wonderful volume for US and Germany with CPMs as low as 0.13.

But ok I'm going to use TrafficFactory instead.

These questions just came to my mind:

1. I got a free newsletter from STM that advices us to use very targeted Facebook strategy, like targeting Campus people study, or in the company they work, etc. Do you think the best way for me would not to do Adult, but instead do these highly targeted Facebook campaigns?

2. I like doing the autoresponder thing too for affiliate offers, providing value, the whole thing and get the sale. Do you think it would be easiest to learn, or to get a positive ROI?

3. Games on FB require a potential lower budget?

And don't worry if at any time you need to give me a "rude" advice. Go ahead. If I'm doing an obvious error I want to know from who've been there done that.

Thanks

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Hey Rafa, it is easy to lose focus in this industry, I see you are over analyzing and wanting to change direction before starting.

You can make money on any of those source/bizz model you mention, the thing is you gotta go one step at a time, one niche, one traffic source, one GEO.

If you have some experience with Adult traffic, it would be better for your to stay on it, you even sent the translations already and sign up with TF.

Of course FB is a huge traffic source with lot of potential, but it is also a bit unstable with all the bans and restrictions, I myself wanna go back there and start some gaming offers, I know how to make FB work, but I hate dealing with account flags and bans for minimal bullshit. I sure will try it again in the future, but for now Im focused in my adult dating camps and scaling, I'm tented to try every other kind of traffic and niche (PPV, FB, etc) but I learned to be PATIENT and stay focused.

Look at why Chinese are so successful, the come here to my country and start really small and end up with a chain of fast food branches making other local business go broke.
What I learned from these chinese merchants? They are patient, they think big, they help each other set up a business, they prefer to sell at lower price than the competition, but they make a killing because of the volume of sales everyday, makes sense huh?

Please don't spend $500 in FB and then $500 in Adult, you won't learn a thing if you don't stay focused and determined, your mindset is the first step, is like 80% of your success.

Think like this "Since I cannot pay a 4 years course with these $1,000, instead I will take this Specific Specialized small class on How to Make Shoes for Fat People, and then I will start making those shoes that are quite cheap to make and will sell them for $10 bucks a pair to that small demography of fat people living in that weird obscure and small town, my ROI will be 500% so I can grow my capital really fast, then when I have $5,000 bucks I will keep reinvesting $1000 weekly on this bizz, and will start investing $1,000 or more on another small bizz like this, after I have bigger budget I will start chasing bigger towns and will expand with other products" at the end of the year you will be rich and those other guys taking the 4 years Generic Course wasting money, will be probably broke and wont have learned any specific thing, just generic bullshit (that is college in my country).

Sory for the big block of text bro, is 4 AM here and I' hungry, Good luck

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@cosmeivan

Thanks man . Yes I have some experience with adult mainly with Exo and TJ.

Thanks man that analogy really is awesome. I tried adult niched before (Asian) but it was not very good but the conversions came faster.

By the way every newbie ask you this guys, how much you lost when you first started in Affiliate marketing to be able to get a profit?

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Well I had 80 USD on Exoclick and while I don't receive my Nordic translations and while people from TrafficFactory don't answer my application I decided to run again a Germany Campaign I once had. Why? I wasted 90 USD on first try weeks ago, with 2 conversions only. Today I noticed this campaign was RON. So I decided to go for a premium placement 320x250.

Here the results of today (Day1):

11 variations. All "virgen" to Germany, including the LP.

1 banner x 1 pl x 1 offer:

Banners:

1 investment:$2.50
2 inv:$1.17
3 inv:$1.04
4 inv:$3.04 return: $ 8.50 (1 conversion)
5 inv:$3.96
6 inv:$0.74
7 inv:$1.41
8 inv:$4.68
9 inv:$3.79
10 inv:$3.79
11 inv:$1.99

Total invested: $ 28.11

Return: $ 8.50

Total: -$19.61

I still have 50 on Exo.

It was just a very tiny step but to see this conversion gave me enthusiasm.

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Definitely man, with such a high converting offer you have to just keep running traffic man, 2 more conversions and you're basically break even there is no where near enough data on any of those campaigns to render any results. I would aim for 1-1.5x offer payout per banner at least man, you're probably on your way to a profitable campaign already just trust the process of buying data, thats what it takes to become a successful affiliate, spend spend on data!

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@maynzie

So I have your blessing to keep that Germany campaing on exo? It would be great .

I didn't trusted the buying process before I think this why I didn't had success before. Just like you can see here:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-Data&p=158194

Thanks man, I'll keep you updated of this campaign.

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Yes of course, you've spent $28 and made back $8.50, you also have 11 banners still to test properly, like I said you wanna spend 1-1.5x minimum of offer payout PER BANNER before you can start to cull and see how things look its FAR FAR too early to call any shots right now champ

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Hey rafa, you started with the left foot on the camp back them (German is a big GEO + RON = Decent budget to test).

So now that you have chosen a premium spot, this makes things easier, remember, the less factors, the less of a budget.

Ask Maynzie told you, keep running man, you have 11!! banners, so let the camp run for another 100 bucks at least.

Pausing your Camp so often is a bad idea, let it gain momentum.

Did you choose/make 11 random banners or did you choose a theme/angle for them? is the LP a generic angle that goes well with all of the banners?

You will find out this soon after you have more data, but YOU GOTTA KNOW what your are testing.

The weekend is good, so let it run to get more data and come back and post results, lets make this camp a winner

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Btw, is that offer DOI? that is a nice payout!

Remember with DOI offers conversions might come at a later time.

What is your LP CTR?

After the camp has ran for at least $200, post at least basic data here (nothing confidential), Banner CTR on the Traffic Source, Your CPM, LP CTR per Each Banner, Banner CVR, Spent per Each Banner.

Here is a little tool that could help do the numbers really fast with CPM camps: http://adcalc.net/cpm/

Good Luck!

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I'm digging that calc cosmeivan, thanks for the share.

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@maynzie

Thanks maynzie, I kept this campaign and here are the status.

@cosmeivan

Yes, I were not aware of it. Sudenly I had a huge spend on RON traffic at that time.

I pause the campaign around midnight at Germany time, because I think at that time people with money will go to sleep to work in the other day (I think it means better quality to the merchant). It is a good move?

Yes the offer is DOI. Yes I like EU because of big payouts .

The stats of the LP today is this one:

404 clicks >>> 155 Clicks To Offer

Here's the total of the campaign, including today and yesterday results:

1: $9.36
2: $9.23
3: $9.15
4: $9.17 return: $8.50 (1 conversion)
5: $9.78 return: $8.50 (1 conversion)
6: $0.74 <<< I stoped it earlier it had 0.02 CTR
7: $10.96
8: $10.7
9: $14.46 return: $8.50 (1 conversion)
10: $9.36
11: $3.28 <<< I stoped it earlier it had 0.04 CTR

Invested: $ 96.19
Return: $ 25.5

Total Day#1: -$70.69

Details:

8 banners have 1 angle (angle A): Only pictures are different, but headline, text and CTA are equal.
The 3 conversions came from this angle.

2 banners have Angle B: one of the banners got 0.02 CTR

1 banner have a Angle C. I spent $9.23 made 0 on it.

The landing page is pretty general. It is not very specific to any of the angles above. It has the rules "you'll see someone you know here".

Well if I were not here it was the time I'd move on to a new campaign.

What should I do next? Keep improving this campaign? Or I should try going targeted in Germany? Should I try Brazil, the offers here are 0.60~0.90, so it will be cheaper to test. I get Brazilian clicks for as low as 0.03 with consistency on Exo.

Thanks a lot.

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I get conversions in the early morning with my offer.

I'm pretty sure you should test it before just assuming people won't
buy your offer.

Test. Test.

That's what everyone will say.

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I told you to post the CTR for each banner for that reason man, based on your $ spend vs clicks you are paying an average of 0.237 per click, that is a lottttt.

Angle and cohesion is important in the funnel, but you should aim for decent CTR on banners and LP. Your LP CTR is good, this means that Angle A still has hope.

I recommended you and AD Calc for CPM camps there mate, did u even you even try it? Put all the vars here: http://adcalc.net/cpm/ and see what you get when lowering your CPM or CPC.

You have to go with the numbers man, zero emotions.

IF you want more help, try posting your CPM, CTR, for the banners. For now keep the banners from Angle A with decent CTR (with the lowest CPC) and the 3 that made a conversion.

Is this an NTVA or another placement? Get a proxy VPN, connect to Germany, close the door.. and go to spy on that tube you are bidding on, see what kind of banners other users are using. Maybe the kind of banners you are using doesnt work well in that spot. Try making at least coming up with 3 more banners, these should be different kind (im, chat, etc) but using your own pictures and your copy similar to the Angle A.

Then run the camp for at least.. $150 1.5 times the payout per banner. Today is Monday in Germany, so you could take Monday-Tuesday spying and making the new banners, then run the camp on Thursday to Saturday. Remember you are just running for one day and different days of the weeks will have different performance.

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Exactly, don't assume, only trust your numbers.

Sometimes I get more sales and CVR at weird hours and even on Mondays, but this is on mobile which is different from Web

It is best for spend $300 running for 3 days, than just running $300 for a day. I leave my camps run for a whole week all day until I start tweaking and culling banners.

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@cosmeivan

Thanks for the answer.

Yes I tried the tool you sent. I'm still getting used to it, as I always focused on Investiment and Return only. I'll now focus on those other numbers. I should focus on improving 1 number at a time? I mean, first the CTR, later LPCTR, Later Offers... etc?

Actually that number of clicks was just for today (I didn't included numbers from yesteday). Here are the whole SpendingxClick numbers from beggining:

621 clicks investing 96.19 = 0.15 CPC

Ok here is the CTR for each banner:

1 0.10
2 0.10
3 0.12
4 0.09 <<< converted
5 0.12 <<< converted
6 0.02
7 0.08
8 0.13
9 0.12 <<< converted
10 0.13
11 0.04

But the main question is: I spent this 1x the payout of the offer per banners 4 and 5. There's still hope to these banners? I should keep for next round, or I should replace it with new ones?

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Rafa, banners 4 and 5 are almost breaking even, keep only those 2. You will play now with your bids and make variation of those 2 banners, meaning u will keep the same angle but make different ad styles/types to get higher CTR hopefully.

Are you bidding on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd spot? what's is your offer CVR ? I suspect that offer has been around for quite long, so it doesnt make sense to bid high for fresh impressions with this offer.

Bid low bro, CTR won't probably be affected too much, but u will get cheaper clicks.

Now that u are sticking to one Angle with a set of banners revolving that Angle, you will be lowering your bids, your budget is small and will go fast if u bid high, bidding in the middle is a no no. You will get the clicks space out and cheaper with a low bid.

Remember every factor impacts the performance of the camp, since you are bidding for an European country, may I ask what is the setup for your server? (VPS, CDN if any, which tracking system) this along can make or break your camp.

Every penny adds up.

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@cosmeivan

Oh really I forgot to answer that part;

It's NTVA; I have a VPN and I've seen their banners. Mine are a little bit different; I see someone copied my landing page already (I paid do translate this landing page, it's same text).

I'm bidding low but I'll try to lower even more.

About setup:

I have Beyond hosting 50/month VPS; I don't have CDN, I'm using the subid tracking of the CPA network.

Thanks bro, tomorrow I'll be working hard on it all I don't know if will have time to run the campaign but will keep you updated.

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I'd recommend letting each banner get to 2x the payout in spend before you cut them. That ensures that you're seeing at least some statistical significance rather than cutting banners which could catch up.

After that, cut the ones that haven't had a conversion.

Loads of other good advice in this thread too, particularly from cosmeivan!

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yep. that's a pretty high payout on an offer needing a significant amount of data.

there's plenty of offers for germany with a much smaller payout that convert very nicely

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Great tool! Thanks for the share.

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@cosmeivan
@caurmen
@angry old lady

My affiliate manager told me today to run a German offer with lower payout. So based on what you both told me, I decided to give it a try.

DAY#2

I lowered my bids in 20% related to yesterday and I still got huge volume + great CTRs thanks @cosmeivan

I uploaded 8 totally new banners (each banner 1 different angle. Totally different of each other). Here are the results:

A Spent: $5.75
B $8.43 return: 11.00 (2 conversions)
C $7.64 return: 5.50 (1 conversion)
D $0.65 (0.02 CTR, cutted earlier)
E 7.27 return: 5.50 (1 conversion)
F 9.30 return: 5.50 (1 conversion)
G 5.14
H 7.40 return: 5.50 (1 conversion)

Invested in traffic: $ 54.18
Conversions: $ 33.00

Total: $ - 21.18

This offer is DOI.

If the payout were higher I'd be already breaking even.

This is very encouraging thing. I'm happy for it. I learned lots of things today and the lesson was very cheap.

I'd love to hear your thoughs for next steps.

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The other campaign, from yesterday, however I'm still running. Here's what I did:

I kept banner 4 and 5 and added + three variations of these banners (new images + new text color/style; same headline, text and CTA). They are running:

4
5
12
13
14

The CTRs for the new 3 banners so far are amazing, better than before. I've not yet opened the network to see the results in conversions. I'll keep you updated.

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Nice mate!

This is they way to create profitable camps, you don't find them, you go and build them!

-100 ROI
-70 ROI
Breaking even
20% ROI..

With every factor you improve, u will be taking the camp closer to the green zone.

I find the new camp interesting, if you could post more info on banners CTR/CPC, it would be useful.

Another lesson you learned is that high payout is not always better, most of the mid-low payout offers will do better.
Higher payout most of the time means that the offer has been around for quite a long time and conversion rate has dropped, thus the merchant has to keep upping the payout in order to be attractive to affiliates. New offers will come out with a lower/base payout and great conversion rates, then u can get bumps based on the quality of your leads.

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Update to the 1st campaign:

4 $4.34 0.09 CTR
5 $4.77 0.10 CTR
12 $6.25 0.21 CTR
13 $0.54 paused because of 0.02 CTR
14 $7.34 0.21 CTR

Spent: 23.24
Return: 0.00
Total: $ - 23.24

0.21 CTR are my best CTR so far on Germany.

I got 288 clicks to this campaign today + 128 oclicks (clicks to offer) and still no conversions.

Because of that and because I have a limited budget, I paused this campaign to focus on the 2nd campaign. Do you think it was a good move? Should I reactivate it?

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Awesome post!

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@cosmeivan

Yes man, really. It makes all sense now. Also you need less money to test lower payment offers.

A Spent: $5.75 >>> 0.12% CTR
B $8.43 return: 11.00 (2 conversions) >>> 0.15% CTR
C $7.64 return: 5.50 (1 conversion) >>> 0.16% CTR
D $0.65 (0.02 CTR, cutted earlier) >>> 0.02% CTR
E 7.27 return: 5.50 (1 conversion) >>> 0.15% CTR
F 9.30 return: 5.50 (1 conversion) >>> 0.17% CTR
G 5.14 >>> 0.18% CTR
H 7.40 return: 5.50 (1 conversion) >>> 0.15% CTR

I got 633 clicks today for $ 54.18

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Yep, it was a good move to paused the lower performing camp.

Something that I don't understand is why you made the new banners with different angles if you had a winning angle? I mean, it is good to test new angles, but remember you have just one generic landing page and each banner may perform differently because of the lander (LP CTR and CR wise).

Also, it will take more testing budget and you may feel discouraged if you don't achieve the same result as the 2 previous banners that did well.

I myself don't have a fixed rule went it comes to 2x 3x the offer payout per banner, I don't cull banners so early, I first try to know the audience of the tube/placement/GEO combo.

One banner may have spent 2x the offer payout with not conversions, but then with the next 3 clicks you may get 2 conversions. This could be because different hours of the day are better (Dayparting). So I just set the camp and forget about it for 1-3 days depending if it just one placement or RON.

I think you are on the right path and you already know that testing (getting structured data and then analyzing) is the main key.

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The second campaign is definitely looking more promising. Optimise to profit!

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Day #3:

Today I had to back to my previous bid. Another advertiser bid a lot higher than yesterday, and I could get volume only with my original bid.

Because of what you guys told me and because of what my affiliate manager told me, I decided to try the SOI version of this offer.

The payout is 2.50

This way I'd be able to test 2x payout for each banner.

I ran today banners B, C, E, F, H (they took a conversion)

I also ran today the banners from previous campaign: 4, 5, 12, 14 to this same offer.

Here are the results:

Each of these are 1 single different angle for each banner:

B = 0.13% CTR >>> $ 5.54 >>> $10 (4 conversions)
C = 0.17% CTR >>> $ 5.51 >>> $7.5 (3 conversions)
E = 0.11% CTR >>> $ 6.73 >>> $12.5 (5 conversions)
F = 0.14% CTR >>> $ 7.53 >>> $5 (2 conversions)
H = 0.12% CTR >>> $ 5.50 >>> (0 conversions)

All of these are the same 1 angle, from previous campaign:

4 = 0.12% CTR >>> $6.12 >>> (0 conversions)
5 = 0.15% CTR >>> $6.41 >>> $5 (2 conversions)
12 = 0.20% CTR >>> $5.61 >>> $10 (4 conversions)
14 = 0.18% CTR >>> $6.58 >>> $10 (4 conversions)

Invested: $ 55.53
Return: $ 60.00

Total: $ 4.47


Honestly after having to raise my bids I spent, I've seen the CTR low compared to yesterday. I was not expecting for this kind of result. I feel really like I'm starting learning this business.

I would appreciate ideas for next steps.

Special thanks goes to:

@cosmeivan
@angry old lady
@maynzie
@caurmen

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You're getting 2.50$ per conversation..you should go directly to advertisrs to get high payout.

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Good work!

Also, a big thanks to cosmeivan from the mods - I have been watching this follow along and it's great to be able to step back and just let community members provide a huge amount of support!

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That is not the real offer payout. Don't recommend him to go directly when obviously he's just starting, he needs to hone his skills, not just at the traffic source and camps level, but at getting sales.

Another thing is the cashflow, not every merchant will do weeklies and the ones that do, the minimum is 1.5k or 2k/week. On top of that merchants are a bit of a mess when working directly with affiliates, so the network is his best friend for now.

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I've read your whole post and result...Really waiting for your better success...

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Hey Guys, Thanks for this great thread. @Rafa13. How are things going generally now? a few more months in. Are you still finding AM the way to go? I played around with this 8-10 years ago without any great success. Very eager to get involved again but am worried about the risk.

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Aint no reward worth having without initial risk

Theres no way around not taking the first plunge buddy!

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Yeah, completely agree. Soo Many questions.. will keep this post clean though and start a new thread. Cheers Guys.

Still be good to know how your getting on @Rafa13

Cheers

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