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How About A Mobile Follow Along From The Experts? (27)

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There are loads of follow alongs from newbies in here, do you top gun guys ever run follow alongs yourselves to show us how it's done? It would be really helpful.

Just an idea..

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I think there was something called the "Hunger Games" once where each of the Superafiliates Masters mentored am inexperienced team as part of a friendly competition. That would be great to repeat!

I nominate myself for @timtetra's team.

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@bernardk, we already document our processes in guides and manuals to help you guys with running mobile campaigns.

Follow along campaigns are supposed to be beneficial for the creator to get feedback rather than the people reading.

What exactly are you looking to get out of experienced guys running follow alongs?

@humbleaid haha that is something completely different.

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CTRL+C
CTRL+V

or

CMD+C
CMD+V

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Not campaigns that I can copy verbatim - no.

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As the vast majority of follow alongs posted on here are total failures, it would be interesting to see what you guys do differently. I'm already aware of the guides and processes and very impressive they are too, but I feel it would be instructive to get some real world examples of actual campaigns.

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The fail to win ratio of the follow alongs resembles the real world.

At least for me.

The majority of the campaigns that I start are destined to 'fail'.
But if I don't do the fails, I won't find the wins.


The only thing that different with winning follow alongs is that you can copy them and might end up with a cut of the profit until everyone else copied it and you still won't be able to produce a winning campaign by yourself.

I do understand that reading the failing follow alongs can be quite discouraging and to read about a few winning campaigns can boost your confidence. But I don't think that's the purpose of the follow alongs. It's more of a learning process.

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@benardk haha you would be surprised how many of those follow alongs were a success. I received a PM a few days ago from a guy saying thank you for the help because he got his campaign profitable. Even though his follow along thread went abruptly silent. Most of the guys who start their follow alongs are super new, last thing they want is people copying their first profitable campaign.

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I can understand people not wanting their campaigns copied, of course. I'm not actually talking about copying anyone's campaign. It is a pity, though, that the successful people aren't documenting their success a bit more - follow along threads going abruptly silent, as you put it, don't exactly give a positive impression.

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@bernardk

- If you want a positive impression - read the success stories section.
- If you want to learn how the experts do things - read our guides and manuals.
- If you want help with your own campaigns - start a follow along.
- If you want to make money - take action.

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Thank you Mr Green. As for taking action, would I not be right in saying that the chances are high that taking action will cost me money, rather than make me money? The ad networks, merchants and CPA networks are the ones that are basically guaranteed to make money when affiliates run their campaigns, even if the campaigns are running at a loss. Even if the affiliate gets zero conversions, the only one really out of pocket is the affiliate, am I wrong?

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Haha I don't think your mind is in the right place at the moment.

I am an owner of an affiliate network.
I am an affiliate.
I am very familiar with the economics of ad networks, as well as being a merchant.

If you want the lowest barrier to entry, and the highest chance of being profitable off the bat then stick with starting out as affiliate.

I've made millions being an affiliate. Bbrock has made millions being an affiliate. Stackman has made millions being an affiliate.

We aren't special, we just take action.

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All of these are quite different business models. While it is possible to make money either as an affiliate, or as an affiliate network owner, or as an advertiser, it would be a mistake to think any of the three routes is necessarily easy. All three will also require investment, either in money or in time (which I personally consider to be more expensive than money).

But even after investments in money or time, still only a small number of these ventures will be wildly successful.

That is just the nature of a free economy and the law of entrepreneurship ... almost 90% of all new businesses fail, about 8% are mildly successful and about 1% is a great success, and maybe 0.5% becomes an amazing success.

There are people on the forum who are also running their own merchant offers or running small affiliate networks. I am pretty sure none of them will say that is it easy work.

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Do you say this to everyone that asks tough questions, Mr Green?

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Thank you for taking my questions seriously - I appreciate your insights.

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Your mind is definletly in the wrong place....

An affiliate network has start-up costs, infrastructure, employees, getting access to offers, servers, etc... They add value. Bottom line, if you can add value in any field you can make an income beyond your wildest dreams...

Your value add as a network is the infrastructure and connections. Your value add as an affiliate is your ability to sell and craft creatives and landing pages in order to get cheap clicks and persuade visitors to take the desired action...

Two completely different things.... But, both with a value add...

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It costs money to make money...

For the most part affiliate marketing involves arbitraging of traffic and purchase intent. No one will give you that for free. Even SEO requires money to have any realistic chance of success - expecting things for free will get you nowhere.

Whether or not you make money is independent of the fact that you need to spend it first. If you want a profitable campaign, you need to input money first regardless of the risk of loss.

I don't think your question is hard... it's just painfully naive. It's kind of like trying to flirt with someone in bars and saying, meh, there's a high chance I'll be rejected so there's no point in trying, and there's 5 other guys in the bar who are going to chat her up anyway. I'll get a girl eventually.

Every successful affiliate has gotten their because they have accepted risk to seek reward.

Furthermore, ad networks, merchants, CPA networks are not guaranteed to make money when you run an offer.

Fact: Merchants risk paying you for low quality leads that earn them less over customer lifetime than what they paid you.
Fact: Affiliate networks often float payment to you before the advertiser pays them. If the advertiser doesn't, they just took a bigger hit than you.
Fact: Merchants can be defrauded by affiliates.
Fact: We don't know what margins ad network X runs on or their operating costs or the specific risk they absorb. They could run on 2% margins but have strength in volume. 2 hours of downtime from a catastrophe one day, or a bidding algorithm malfunction, could flip their net profit upside down.

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It sounds like you're looking for validation/assurance that the allure of AM is real? That and you're not really willing to put the in the weight if you can't be 100% sure you're going to come out the other side on top.

There are very few guarantee's in life. You should already know that.

By virtue of the fact that you're here I'd assume you have some understanding that the scope of what's possible/out there is pretty wide. There's only risk vs. reward and what comes to those who hustle. No one on this board who made it never needed to be given 100% assurance. Check out this thread if you need convincing: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...00-month/page5

I think you just need to get on with it.

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Thank you Zeno - I didn't actually say anything about getting anything for free. As for SEO, that is how I make my current full time income, so I do know a little bit about that already. As for the questions being painfully naive, if that's the case, then getting a straight answer should not have been so difficult.

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Thanks for your interesting response. Well yeah, I know that there are no guarantees. On the one hand, there's hoping for 100% guarantee of success and on the other, there's wishing to avoid an absolute longshot and a lot of the time, that's what CPA marketing seems like to me. I know a few guys that have made a lot of money in various fields and they would consider affiliate marketing to be a very tough ( and highly unlikely ) way to make a fortune. Asking them to risk their cash to help make other people rich would be a hopeless endeavor, so I have to take what they say into account too.

I'm getting different information from different people and all of them have made millions, so I'm just considering every viewpoint.

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Thank you for your observations. My point is that affiliates are at the bottom of the food chain and that the money always flows upwards. I didn't say that running an affiliate or advertising network is easy, nor, contrary to what Zeno suggested, am I naive enough to believe that there is no risk of any kind involved in running an ad or CPA network.

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A further point about my 'painfully naive' question - if there is risk to the merchant with a CPA network, why does the f5 media website say that 'when you partner with f5 media, you only pay for results'? This implies a lack of risk on the part of the merchant, does it not?

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Hey bernarddk

You should look at this thread http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...obile-Cookbook

It is unintentionally becoming something like what you are looking for ... basically a 2-way follow along by a Superaffiliate and a team of newbies!

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Excellent - thanks for pointing that out, cmdeal. I'll go through it in detail.

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Hey bernardk,

I just came across this thread.

Successful affiliates will rarely do follow alongs. One reason is we fail a lot. It's just like poker or basketball. We fail most of the time, but we win more in the long run, and we know how to maximize the potential of campaigns. People don't want to put themselves out there and fall flat on their faces.

Another question you gotta ask is what incentive do people have to post a follow along? The industry's getting tougher and it doesn't make sense to directly help your competition that way. It's one thing to give advice in forums, it's another to share your processes with 500 people who want to eat your cake.

As far as the whole affiliate vs network debate, you should read my post on this (http://www.charlesngo.com/nextstep/). Trust me, the grass is always greener on the other side. I've had affiliate network owners and advertisers tell me they wish they could be an affiliate again. Why? Less stress and they have much, much more freedom.

Anyways good luck. I know the learning curve is frustration, but you'd wish it was harder once you make it.

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Sometimes i read follow up on campaigns that eventually started yielding positive roi, then all of a sudden the person stopped posting. I'm sure they hit it.

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Just read this thread now.

Mr.Green, CMDeal and everyone else pretty much explained how it is.

I would suggest you taking action instead of over analyzing.
Will it cost you money and maybe you will fail countless times? Yes it will.
No one ever said AM is easy and everyone will be able to become a millionaire overnight.
However if you put in the hard work and don't give up you will be increasing your chances of becoming successful by a lot.

As for your last question

If you read carefully that's on the advertisers section. That mean that advertisers pay only for results, i.e valid leads sent by affiliates and not for visitors sent to their page.

My last suggestion is start a follow along campaign as soon as you know the basics.
This way you will get practical advice and data will tell you if AM is real or not

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