Where to start? (10)
Hi all,
Just joined earlier today and started reading through a number of the guides.
I have some experience direct linking based on the lessons taught on the arbitrage conspiracy way back in 2009.
I have $5000 in learning ad spend that I'm willing to lose, and another $17000 in credit lines that I can use for ramping up--although I cannot afford to lose that sum.
I have a full suite of testing tools and a nice powerful amazon aws server to handle the tracking and click distribution.
Strengths
- Strong software development. I can write lamp apps for my own automation purposes, particularly scraping.
- experience building out large clustered server tracking and distribution applications to help me distribute clicks to websites that are likely to give me the highest epc.
Weaknesses
- I suck at design. Making things look pretty is well outside my ability. I realize this is likely good for building a landing page.
- Photoshop and similar photo editing applications are not a strong suit with me. When it comes to photo editing, I use apple keynote and a screen grabbing software to take the correct sized image of whatever it is I manage to create with keynote.
- original thought / angles / creativity in general eludes me. I spend more time finding what works, and scaling it up primarily in terms of efficiency, or some other optimization.
I much prefer to--at least starting out--use offers that are just on max bounty. My main reason why is that they pay out in a week this is especially useful to me for cash flow purposes. Faster turnaround for affiliate commissions means I can reinvest the money faster. Not sure if there are other affiliate networks out there that have similar payout terms for lower volume accounts.
As for the type of offer, I have personal knowledge when it comes to trading (stocks, options, forex, etc), weight loss--primarily because I sold 100k of the stuff over the last two years through YouTube generated traffic, and muscle building--again more because I sold about 40k of that stuff.
Looks like you have some experience. Then probably this will suit you better http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...tion-And-Index
I'm sure other guys here can give more solid advice!
Enjoy your stay here 
Sounds like your in a great position to eventually outsource these tasks.
For now though, I recommend grabbing a subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud and just getting balls deep in Photoshop, Muse, etc.
You'll no doubt have little trouble with ripping lander code apart, uploading, integrating tracking and all that jazz but as a marketer you definitely need to first bolster your creativity, ability to sell, and willingness to test batshit crazy ideas in the form of landers and ads.
Get to it!
I have Photoshop cs2. Too old? Or good enough?
As for bolstering creativity and an ability to sell, any resources that I should read through?
I saw a couple international mobile campaigns on Max bounty. Just not sure how to put an angle on surveys.
Old! Get the creative cloud subscription - it is cheap and includes everything so is a no-brainer in terms of software investment.
I would recommend doing a lot of reading here and taking notes from some follow-alongs before trying some campaigns.
It's hard to recommend things for bolstering creativity - books would be the main thing, but with ability to sell its really copywriting that you need to get a mind for.
Check out http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...rnet-Marketing as a starting point if you want book recommendations.
Anything by Ogilvy, Schwartz, Caples, Halbert etc. is worthwhile. Cashvertising is nicely succinct.
One minor point - unless you're sure of the I/O performance of your AWS server, I'd consider getting another VPS somewhere else. AWS instances have a tendancy toward terrible, terrible I/O performance.
I'm using an m3 from AWS. SSD-backed hard disks.
And frankly, web performance IMO is a combination of CPU, RAM, Disk I/O, and network. For the money I'm spending on AWS, I'm getting a good balance of those four elements.
I also have a small army of VPSs that I buy off of LowEndBox. I host a lot of my private network websites on VPSs from there. Easy way to further eliminate footprints. Just extremely difficult to keep track of--so I wrote a web app to keep track of everything for me while allowing my VAs to add to and update notes about the various properties.
@jennatalia - Completely agreed. However, affiliate-style tracking specifically batters the crap out of the I/O of a box, which is why I mention it - loads of database writes. SSD performance should be fine though.
You seem to have enough experience beyond a newbie status!
You're very kind humbleaid. Perhaps there is a way for us to merge skill sets and get more done.
Home > Questions and Answers > General Questions