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Tips on Developing a Budget to Begin in Affiliate Marketing (11)

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Hi All.

Any tips on alternate revenue streams to build a strong enough budget for my first campaign? I've been reading that a good start is $1,000.

PS: Looking to start my first campaign in Mobile.

Cheers

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If you want to have a stable cash flow you should stick with one affiliate network and try to generate more than 1k weekly and ask them to switch your account to weekly payments.

1k budget is enough if you think that you will build profitable campaigns from first day of your media buying but it is unlikely to happen
Maybe if you add one more 1k to your budget you will feel more comfortable

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Get a job

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Getting a part time job is probably the easiest way. There's no guarantee that you'll be profitable with your first $1k, so if you've got some stable income you're less likely to make bad decisions without having the data to back it up.

You could also try selling some services online. When I started a few years ago I wrote content for $0.02 per word to get the money to start campaigns. It was really competitive, but if you can write fast it's OK as a temporary thing.

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Don't rely solely on AM for your income if you are a rookie.

The stress of losing money will drive you to making poor business/campaign decisions.

It would be much better, both in terms of mindset and financial prudence, to be working at McDonalds and hating it but every day thinking "I can't f**kn wait to get home and throw $20 at some campaigns".

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Thanks guys. Zeno you're the man.

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One very valid approach to this problem is to start developing the skills you need to do AM in a way that makes you money on the side.

So, for example, start learning to make banners in Photoshop. Get reasonably good at making attractive banners. Then start running a Fiverr gig making banners. Then start applying for Elance / oDesk / whatever gigs doing banner creation.

You'll get loads of practice making banners fast, you'll have a whole heap of designs that you've made in the past to draw inspiration from, and you'll have a small income too! Plus you'll get practise selling things whilst you're selling your services.

Other areas you could apply this to: copywriting (work up from generic web copy to sales copy), lander design, Javascript coding, system setup and administration, etc.

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Amazing. I guess it helps that I'm a full time graphic designer

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@beenskilled - Ah, that rather changes the situation, then! Apologies for the misunderstanding.

In that case, the best approach is probably to keep doing what you're doing, put money into AM as you can afford to, and prepare for the horrible experience of discovering that badly-laid-out banners using Comic Sans convert better than beautifully-designed masterpieces

( Sometimes. )

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That's good to know, because I would say on a scale of 1-10 my design skills would be a about -3. -_-

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I think you will have a big advantage. I don't know how to use Photoshop although I will learn!

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