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The $1,000 Challenge - Let's Play Quitting My Job... :-) (28)

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Hey everyone!

2nd post on STM!

I mentioned in my intro that I have a $1,000 to spend to really learn AM. I
want to use mainly fb ads with that $1,000.

My hope is I break even, my big audacious goal is a 2% ROI - the goal is
so low because I probably will make a lot of mistakes in the start

My ultimate goal is to quit my job, which I need $3k a month to replace
my current income.

So any ROI from this $1,000 all 100% of it will be going back into the AMing
business.

The Loose Battle Plan...

I'm planning on using Social Lead Freak to help me build custom audiences
that are super targeted to my offers for best conversion, but I hear SLF
makes it difficult to scale up.

Going spend $40 bucks a day n my budget split between two campaigns.

1 is a clickbank product with really high gravity and is in what I believe to
be a pretty uncompetitive niche relative to things like losing weight products.
It's a hobby niche so I think I can exploit it in a few different ways.

The other campaign is a MaxBounty offer that pays up to 20 leads
successfully converting (it's a fb game offer) which comes out to
around $90 a day earning potential with them.


For the PPC stuff outside of split testing a bunch of ads for each
campaign, from what I've been hearing it sounds like having a
"bridge page" is the best option.

A presell page that sells the visitor on the offer before they get
to that page.

I'm assuming facebook doesn't allow direct linking, so I was going
to use leadpages to create my bridge pages.

I was planning on tracking using the various CB hoplink customizations
they allow, and using prettylink for the maxbounty offers to see CTR
on the bridge page.

I'm currently in a desolate region of Alaska, otherwise I'd watch a video
about Prosper202 since I hear that's a good free tracking solution.

A couple questions I have for successful affiliates...

1. Does running 2 campaigns sound right, is that too many or too low? And
how about the spend limit of $20 a day for each campaign?
2. Should I scrap SLF in favor of other targeting methods?
3. What are the best (preferably free) tools to find out about demographics? I saw
something about Quantcast I believe, but haven't looked into it.
4. I hear starting with low priced offers convert better and thus more newb friendly,
is this true?
5. What are other considerations that will help me decide on what an "easy" offer
might look like?
6. Finally... any other tips?


I'm hoping this $1,000 will be my seed money to be able to make $5k a month. Replace
my job income, and have an extra $2k a month to experiment to grow more.

Thanks in advance to all that answer! :-)

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Hey man same here, 1k is also my budget.

I don't have enough experience to help you with your questions but I'd suggest you to subscribe to STM newsletter. They sent me an email with great tips for Facebook and I think that email can help you a lot. If it's ok for the moderators I can paste here the email.

Wish you success man!

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I would suggest not quitting your job right away... unless you really become a master of affiliate marketing...

With affiliate marketing I only believe that the best teacher is "EXPERIENCE"... you will fail a lot of times.. and a lot of your campaigns will not work...

but you learn from those campaigns... from failure comes great success... (lol.. i sounded like spiderman movie...)

and while learning... you need to keep up with the adspend... and if you quit your job head on... you won't have any good amount of money to learn...

save at least 10,000 with a daily ad spend of $50...

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I'm not planning on any rash job quitting scenarios. But I do hate my job, it is literally destroying nerve endings in my lower back and all the chemicals I breathe in really suck the life out of me.

Probably literally lol.

I would love to be able to quit my job before winter hits, because winter is when I'm working outside in the -50 to -80 degree temps (Fahrenheit).

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Hey brother, first of all welcome to STM and thanks for getting into the community!

^ That post above sounds very brutal lol I really hope you can get out of that man,

I think you should stick with 1 campaign and really focus on it, you've only got $1000 and you don't wanna be testing 2 things at once and overlooking vital aspects of making your money go as far as possible. $30-40/day on 1 campaign is going to get you a lot further in terms of analysing the data and keeping your paralysis analysis away.

Definitely never be shy of low paying offers, they generally convert very high and give the illusion that they won't stack up but they do. I'm not big on FB so I don't know too much regarding this one but hopefully some others chime in, but definitely keep your focus on 1 campaign and just go through it step by step defined outlook on testing and make sure your money goes as far as possible with your testing you have little room to waste any money brah

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If you are currently making $3k a month in your job, it would be foolish to quit just because you one day think you can make $3k a month in IM.


None of this is to discourage you by any means. I personally am all for intelligent risk taking and entrepreneurship. However, you should fully understand the concept of opportunity costs and how this works... unless you do, you will almost always end up making suboptimal decisions.

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Hey CMDeal,

I am very much aware of the entrepreneur costs. My dad is a real estate licensee, so I see that struggle but there is also a lot of benefits.

I believe the benefits outweigh the opportunity costs.

I have a lot of plans outside of just AM in the IM niche. Jobs are not all that safe either. My company just laid off 23 people. I know people who were banking six-figures a year suddenly drop down to nothing from downsizing as wel.

The only true safe thing out there is building a skillset that allows you to build value to the market place regardless of circumstance (Whether in a job setting or entreprenurial setting).

That being said, I will be doing a myriad of different stuff once I have more money and working knowledge.

AM is one piece of a many-slices pie.

My main goal is geographically free income, and no more of this chemical laden manual labor haha.

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Very specifically - unless you are certain that your Clickbank offer converts like gangbusters, I'd avoid it. Higher-payout offers mean much higher testing costs, and you're quite limited in available budget.

Go for the lower-payout offers and test lots of them!

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Hey Caurmen!

I just reaf your getting started affiliate guide. Very good learned a lot!

What would you say is a good clickbank product worth the testing? Do you have preset qualifiers like gravity and so on?

The product I am looking at has been around for a long time, and has a really high gravity. I know some other affiliates have some pretty decent sales volume on it (not sure what their net was) because it is the only product of its kind until recently on CB in a hobbyist-style niche.

I've seen other affiliates talk about it loosely and pretty positive it is that one. I got the product for free to do a review of it for my marketing as well.

What kind of offers do you suggest are best in general for the newbie? (Obviously not CB I assume)

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That is definitely true.

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This is something I'll tell my son. Great post.

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Speaking of pie slices... I just sent out a proposal to a lawyer in the healthcare niche for SEO

He asked me, so that's always a good thing.

Small price quote though of only $2,000 a month. The nice thing with SEO is once everything is in place, that is really hands-off and pure profit pretty much.

If only I was better at getting clients! It's one of my main drivers actually to learning and mastering paid traffic more, cause I know how to target business owners fairly good on fb, but I am not yet a seasoned Master Splitter of Multiple Testings... but soon I shall join such a hall of heroes...

Well... maybe. lol

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You can tell your son about the cost of a dollar earned from a business versus a traditional job is worth 3 times less as far as real estate is concerned. I learned that lesson pretty early from my dad. Basically I make $50k roughly a year right now, which means I'd have to make close to $150k a year (and for 3 years in a row for it to even count) to be able to qualify for the same real estate loan if I was fully self-employed.

That's why I pained it out at my job for the last 2 years (job held for 2 years or more is highly attractive to lenders). Now I got the house and want out of the job badly lol (well always did).

Don't forget to tell your son of the amazing benefits that can be had as a business owner though.

It is unlikely you'll ever find a job where you have the potential to make $20,000 a month to even six-figures a month. And even scratching that, the ability to have geographically free income is the #1 key to living a life full of just awesome stuff. For $3k a month I can go to a lot of cool places and live like a king. While retirement is good and all, I never really have the goal to retire. I would rather have mini vacations in my youth before I get to the golden years... there is a lot of rust in those golden years.

And living off social security is pretty mediocre, which the vast majority of job people will look forward to, but why? My granma lives off it, it's a $1,000 a month or so and if she earns any extra money they take it away. Sounds pretty lame.

There is a crap ton of headaches with running and starting a business, tons of risk, possible stress, possibly lose your shirt. But there is also the huge possibility of getting to live an insanely awesome life (and an insanely awesome life can be lived for less than $10k a month).

Sure, some people say "Oh that's one in a million people who succeed!"

My answer has always been, "There are a lot of millions in a billion, those odds don't sound so small."

Anyhow, that's my rant :P

I remember a lot of my friends calling me an idiot for choosing not going to college. I haven't spent my youth all too well so far, just turned 25. But I do own a 4 bedroom house, and my two buddies who got engineering degrees rent from me lol.

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@eidlon yeah man I do agree with all that you said. The thing on cmdeal's post is to always measure how you get your money. Always thinking on the long run. And yeah, having "just a job" is not a good thing for the long run.

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I agree.

Most of the time a good paying job cares about you as much as a good paying campaign I imagine haha.

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i think i would always choose working for myself... A dollar at a job is slave wages under the command of someone else... .50c you earn on your own is just a few steps away from a lifetime of opportunity and freedom that awaits you....

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At the end of the day, everyone is someone's slave, to a greater or lesser degree.

If you are an affiliate marketer you are a slave to Google, or Facebook, or the advertiser. If you are CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you are slave to hedge fund managers. If you are president of the United States, you are slave to special interests and big business. If you are a fashion model, you are a slave to the inevitable ravages of age.

The only way that someone can really work for themselves is if they live in an island all by themselves. Even then, they will be slave to Mother Nature.

The much more important point here is not which life choice is better, but that when you weigh important life choices, you should always think in terms of opportunity costs.



The concept of opportunity costs is one that very few people really understand.

But unless you do so, you will almost always end up making decisions which are suboptimal and NOT in your best interest.

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true, but why do we have to look at it from the view point of someone in india? If you take the average motivated college kid in the US, one of the any millions that graduate every year in a shitty job market (they didnt go to med school and become nuero surgeons).... Making 30k/yr, in debt and if he's lucky to have a job his boss constantly reminds him how "lucky" he is to have said job and the yearly 2% raise...

I think the opportunity cost of NOT trying to start your own business/side hustle is a much higher opportunity cost than working 9-5 for someone else no matter how much your getting paid.... You only get one chance at life, you dont wanna be the 50 yr old who hates his job, life and nagging wife....

I'd rather be the guy that grabs life by the balls and lives it on his own terms...

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And you don't want to be the 50 year old grunt still moving pipe like a 25 year old. I work with them a lot. I just turned 25, and I'm way sick of this stuff.

I think we are all slaves too as said earlier. But opportunity costs cannot be weighed down by money. In the neurosurgeon's case, say he was making that stable income but he fucked up a surgery that left someone a derelict of a person for the rest of their life. Is that something that will negatively affect the surgeon? How many of those might happen over a long illustrious career?

Some people talk about the stress of AM, what about the stress levels of a neurosurgeon plucking away at the brain of another? That is some high dollar stress.

Giving up a $500,000 education may be worthwhile to the surgeon if he can make $100k a year, live anywhere he wants, and automate the process down to only 20 hours a week or less of actual work needing to be done unless he scales.

Once you factor in life conditions, the costs always change.

People ask why I want to quit my job in oil, working 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off. You can travel anywhere they say!

But they do not realize the vacuum of fulfillment I lack with the job, nor the chemicals I breathe, or the nerve-damage in my lower back that will come to haunt me later in life. Is it really such a sweet job after all these are factored in?

Meh, I'd take a paycut to be a full time self-employed person and leave it behind pretty quickly. Especially knowing one does not need that much in monthly profit to really live life "high on the hog" as my dad once told me.

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Oh and BTW, alot of my friends are doctors... I wouldnt trade my choices for theirs no matter how much they make.... Their life blows... working 7 days on 7 days off.... No Social life... One of my good friends is a doctor and works soooo many hours that he actually lost much of the ability to socialize (those are his words)...

Like literally, would ask me to approach a group of girls for him and make introductions, bc he (a good looking doctor) doesnt interact with non patients often enough to entertain/socialize a group of girls...

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I can understand your point but I'm not sure that's an opportunity cost argument. The cost of NOT trying to start your own business isn't really tangible, since that alternative doesn't have any intrinsic value until you pursue and potentially have success in it. It's a 'what if' situation.

On the other hand, if you did pursue IM and quit your day job, the opportunity cost would be related to the real value of the job you lost, i.e. the stable income.

By comparing the Bangladesh and US students, cmdeal was really comparing the value that their qualification holds in terms of income in their country, which is far less nebulous than the cost of not doing something that has unknown benefits.

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When discussing opportunity costs, it's important to realise that the term doesn't mean "How much does this opportunity cost me, in monetary terms".

It means "What opportunities will this choice cost me, and what would their effects be on my life?".

It's very important at this point to realise that money is an enabler of opportunity - one of many - not an opportunity in itself.

And depending on what your wants and needs in life are, the opportunities you seek may be more or less enabled by money, by connections, by available time, by freedom, etc.

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To get back to eidolon's original question:

In your circumstances, I would need very strong proofs indeed to test a Clickbank product. I'd probably need to know the offer owner or a major affiliate personally, and to have credible evidence from them that the offer definitely converts, in volume, on exactly the traffic source I was intending to test it on.

That's a level of proof you're unlikely to get.

Basically, if you test a Clickbank offer it'll cost as much as testing 10 - 20 lower-payout offers. So it needs to be at least 10 to 20 times as likely to work.

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That's what I've been reading over and over again.

But I think I can get some worthwhile conversions using social lead freak, but another member mentioned how it might be hard to scale using SLF if I do stumble upon a profitable campaign.

I'm undecided, still have 7 days to find an offer worth promoting for first campaign. It sounds like I should just focus on 1 campaign too.

Considering biting into my budget of a $1,000 for CPVLab, been hearing awesome stuff on it.

I've had "success" I suppose you'd call it now since I've heard -50% ROI is common in a good campaign starting out, wiht another clickbank product. I stopped selling it cause I didn't know the product as a user so felt bad if I was leading my traffic to somewhere that sucks lol.

But I spent about $80 bucks and made $28 off that product. Maybe I'll ask for a review copy of that one and go with it agian.

I had a small email sequence setup too fo rit (5 day drip). Unsure if I sold it after opt in right away or through a follow up email.

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If you are using SLF for a Clickbank product, ideally you would also be able to place your custom audience pixel on the thank you page to then build a lookalike audience based on the convertors.

This is one of the disadvantages of Clickbank - the advertisers really care about placing pixels for you and I'm not sure if their system allows for pixel placement at the affiliate level.

If you can get -50% ROI off the bat on a Clickbank product it certainly has potential but may be limited by your knowledge of Facebook and optimisation avenues available - there is a lot you can do with Facebook but some things require Facebook tracking, custom audiences and PMDs.

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What are PMDs?

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http://www.facebook-pmdcenter.com/

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Speaking of doctors though, sure it's a much safer bet and lower-risk for making steady income, *but* that's only if you think short-term (and very often, if you've been pegging away at med school for most of your 20s, you're the sort of person who cares a lot about what your friends/family think about you, so that really influences your personal decisions in life more so than anything).

Entrepreneurship and taking risks gives you unlimited upside long-term though. This "career path" is a value investment, doesn't pay off right away, very unsexy, and humbling, starting off... but you learn more, grow more, and it pays off in the long run if you stick with it. But it really depends on your personality type I think, you need to be really hardcore and super-obsessive to cut it in this game I think.

Josh Ogle, really smart affiliate and STM member, didn't quit his day job until he was totally crushing it with AM: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...nder-the-Radar

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