Newbie 20 yo AM goes to riches! (44)
Hi everyone,
I just joined the forum today. For more about me, read the thread I posted "20 year old app developer goes AM full time".
I plan to post here my progress and be accountable! I will focus on mobile since a veteran AM friend recommnded it to me.
I'm completely newbie, and my plan right now is to learn the basics using a guide from the forums, find a follow along method and execute it.
Right now I'm a bit overwhelmed by information so I have to stay focused and take action!
To success!
Dvir
Hey Dvir , welcome to STM I'm from Israel to .
Good luck ahi 
Hello and welcome to the forum!
If there's anything we can do to reduce the info overload or put it all in context, let us know.
Wow Caurmen thank you, I appreciate it. Funny enough today I read the getting started guide you posted, all the 13 or so parts.
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...TION-AND-INDEX
Then I followed your cookbook appetiser for mobile, the easy version since I'm a newbie haha
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-The-Appetiser
Got accepted to 1 affiliate network, waiting for best offer list by volume to pick one. Got accepted into Decisive.
Super excited, and I want to keep the momentum going!
Tomorrow I'll wake up even earlier than today, 4:30 instead of 5 haha.
Going to stay focused and keep myself in an information diet since I know how distracting it can be and this entire forum screams out information overload for a first timer
Goals for tomorrow:
-pick one offer
-set up campaigns like you said
- start testing once approved
Edit: I even edited my goal which is based on "think and grow rich". Creating a clear vision!
lets make shit happen,
Dvir
Ok, woke up today 4:30am (I love the morning), ready to kill it, and I found out I forgot to ask my affiliate for top offers by volume. So 14 hours later he gave them to me, I found an offer and I'll start the research part tomorrow and launch some campaigns.
While waiting for the god damn list I messed around with PS to learn basic banner editing. Read the more advanced guide to mobile, bought a domain and set up the hosting for it. Right now no lander pages but I'll probably use them soon. I'm guessing next week.
Tomorrow I'll go to get my Thai visa, I miss thailand and plan to move to live in Bangkok for 3-6 months and work my ass off. Currently living with my family. I need more like minded people around.
see ya!
good luck dvir!
Congrats dude! I am a newbie too. I'm basically in the process of doing exactly what you're doing. Good luck -_-
Good luck!
Ten ba rosh!
Thanks everyone!
Brainstormed an offer, and decided to try another one since I saw other STM members already on it. Followed the recommendations for angle choosing for the campaign. Came up with lots of angles and I'm going to try a few since I'll start direct linking first. Went to get my Thai visa, looking back I should have outsourced it to my sister. Oh well.
Tomorrow I'll translate the app banner text and finally launch my campaigns. I hope from here on things will run faster.
Needless to say I'm very excited as every newbie is when first starting out. But the ultimate measure of a man is not when he stands in moments of temporary excitement at a new activity, but rather when he is faced with multiple ongoing challenges 
Spend a few days reading a LOT, then decide on a traffic source and a few offers recommend by your AMs. Then TEST hard and share progress here and we'll give you tips
Thanks Stackman. Let's get down to business!
Waiting for my first campaigns to get approved. I decided to share them here while waiting.
So I chose a gaming offer that's on the top offers list right now. I created 8 banners and tried to make them as varied as possible. Some have no text, some have buttons, some only images, different colors, etc.
I'm a bit emberresed by them, using PS is kinda hard for newbie. Some of the banners also make no sense, I had hard time making them logical for some reason.
EDIT: Approved it's running!aghga excitement
With that said, I'd love to hear your feedback, I'll share the results here when I have them, until then, hit me with your opinions!
The banners look good enough to test and learn from! Looking forward to your first results.
Don't be disheartened if your results aren't too good straight away - it's a learning process.
Thanks Caurmaen! I did get 0 conversions for 500~ clicks. I decided to drop gaming atm, feels like not a good fit. I've gotten my first 2 conversions ever from a different offer yesterday but didn't track it right, setting it now with prosper trying to make sense of stuff.
I just want to get the setup right to be able to systimize a process for testing multiple offers until I find a winning one. Like they say "goals are for losers, winners have systems".
Got distracted today, waiting for traffic source to approve my ads, etc.
created my first landing page for mobile, it was nice, nothing special. Sent 130 clicks to one offer direct linking, got 0 conversions haha, from now on I do DL only while I'm also split testing a generic lander!
Chose 6 offers I'd like to test, the fun begins tomorrow, 2 angels, 2 landers and 5 banners for each offer. Let's see what sticks!
worked a lot today but didn't get much done. I'm finding it difficult to create mobile landers because of design, but it's an excuse easily solveble by taking action.
As a newbie it's difficult but after that initial learning curve I know it gets much easier! I see so many "guest" accounts on STM from people that were new to AM, asked a lot of questions, and then disappeared and probably quit. I'm not going to be one of them!
I attached a landing page I created, very basic, let me know what you think
@dvir0776,
You are really inspiring. I got motivated reading your post.
I got a bit slow this few days due to sickness. Gonna back on track now!
All the best! =)
good job for the consistency , this landing page is for anti virus offer ? it looks really nice but won't work .
First your CTA is very weak it looks like next page is going to be an article or something don't use learn more , instead of use strong call to action , tell the visitor what you want him to do like "click here" always do the job .
Try to always think what is your angel if it is anti virus you may want to scare little bit the visitor , give him a good reason to install your anti virus .
That lander layout / colors / icon looks good.
I would work on the copy and make it stronger to get users to complete the offer.
Thanks for the feedback. The CTA is very weak indeed, and I think you're also right about scaring them a bit.
Good to know the layout looks good! The copy and CTA were def the weak spot
However since then I decided to focus on ONE offer in a different verticle, I know newbies who bounce around won't get stuff done but I'm sticking to this one! Created a short jquery quizz using the stm tut was sweet! Now I have 3 landers I'll text, pretty different and I'll test both text and banner ads this time. Very excited about getting data to analyze this time, especially since I'm trying more than one lander, and I'm going to follow through and optimize this time, unlike the anti virus offer.
Thanks for reading!
First day I worked in bangkok. Really good, no distractions is really awesome.
So right now I have two offers ready to run, awaiting manager's approvel.
Keep reminding myself that the bottom line is what counts - i.e. how many campaigns have I tested, how many times have I allowed myself to win? Gotta increase it to more than 0 haha
Awesome determination man. Definitely will be following this as I'm just getting started myself and doing a lot of reading. One thing you mentioned in a post in this thread was "the recommendations for angle creation." Could you provide the STM links where you learned about that? I need some help with angle creation as well..
Look, i really don't like use banners that is not clear to user for 'what' the are clicking.
So, for example, one of yours banners is 'Join the WAR'. So, if i didnt see the anime pic i should suppose that this banner will leads me in any 'Join The War' thing related. For example even an ISIS sympathizer interested in join in the IRAQ/Siria war interested in join to fight would click in your banner if you don't put that anime picture, lol.
So my advice, be more clear in your banners if you want quality traffic that converts. So if you are promoting app download offer, qualify the user on your banner like 'DOWNLOAD' 'INSTALL' '#1 APP'. Be more specific.
Thanks for the answer Alex, I'll keep that in mind!
Ok so launched 2 campaigns for 2 different offers, got 1 conversion at -60% roi, which I'm VERY happy about. Now it's time to optimize shit! Of course I was too excited so I didn't track the conversion lol, I set it up now with
Steps from now is cutting the losers and gathering more data for statistical significance. Holy shit 1 lander has 3x CR than the other one lol, banners have 2-3x more than the others. Gotta test test test!
^^ Thats the second time i heard you mention you got a conversion but didnt track it...
When people say they are direct linking they usually mean putting it through
Make sure you don't get distracted by the scenes in BKK as the city is famous of distracting you from working.
Damn i just saw now it didn't upload my last update.
Got excited from 1 conversion spent 20x payout testing, didn't get another one, did optimising first time was great.
Got another conversion different offer, I'm testing now to see if has potential.
But I also decided to focus on creating a system for testing offers, meaning I have 11 landers atm that I just need to test on browser stack but beside that they're ready, and I got a nice banner swipe file. Constantly reminding myself not to procrastinate by trying to perfect stuff.
Next steps:
- see results current campaign, if nothing I'll decide to drop or change angle.
- Finish making landers for mobile, text each lander on 4 browser stack devices different sizes.
plus, I adopted a tip maynzie took from caurman and modified it a bit, I set alarm every 30 min, and then I must walk to the other room in front of mirror, and answer: what did I do last half our? that's pretty tough to be honest
That's a great idea.
I periodically run software that forces me to report what I've been doing for the last 15 minutes. Very useful stuff.
If there's one modification I'd make to your approach - record what you say somewhere. You can extract a lot of data that's very useful for improving your productivity if you keep tabs on what you're doing every half hour for a few weeks.
shit caurman, that's a great tip! It sounds so good I'm a bit intimidated with the result I'll get after a few weeks, but I guess that's a sign of growth potential haha. I will do it thanks!
P.s. what productivity software you use for that? I was thinking about trying rescue time as the ngo recommends it
awesomely productive day, last offer I'm still waiting for ad approvel. chose offer, brainstormed angles, created ads and landers. need to send to 1ht. I need to find a way to test faster offers. I wish I'd stop babling here and actually post some testing data. That's the challenge for tomorrow!
ok, I failed the challenge to post here roi, nonetheless I'll post it now!
43 visits, 1 conversion, so that's -73%roi. not too shabby!
Also I have another confession, I didn't track that conversion!! fml, forgot pass
I find that I really hate creating banners so I created some pre made ones to stop me from procstinating next time I'm faced with challenge.
I did manage to increase ctr by making more blinking attention grabbing banners, resulting in cheaper clicks, oh yea! Here's some stats:
average cpc 0.19 to 0.13$, no cutting on targeting!!
EDIT: Oh man I accidently deleted previos campaigns lost precious $$ data, so the 0.19$ is an estimation. Can't use this way to put food on the table
next steps:
- see best banners and make more variations of them.
- implement new lander idea (a game would be neat) and test it
- throw 6 more ads into the testing.
I need to create a more definite plan tomorrow, I'm feeling confused so I'll drop from 2 to 1 single traffic source. I'm also considering going from 2 to 1 offers as well.
Good night
@dvir0776 - Sadly I can't recall the name of the software in question, and I recently uninstalled it!
It wasn't terribly good, though - if you're going to do this I'd advise having a look around and seeing if there are any new apps out there doing the same thing.
do i managed to drive my average cpc to 0.03$ which is a great advance. Problem is my landers average ctr is 3.46%!!! That is terrible lol.
I tested on browser stack, yep it looked awful, but even after I fixed them ctr for one doubled while for the others it got even LOWER.
I also did some code edits, and changed ad copy, guess that's the reason.
spent 20x payment on this offer, total roi is -90% time to pick a new offer or switch angle. Think I'll change offer.
I must develop new landers with better ctr, I saw some guy follow along was able to get crazy ctr like 80-90%! Hitting half of that would be amazing
Hm - did you test the offer on direct link too? Might be worth trying to see if it improves things - that'll tell you if the problem is the offer or the lander.
Alright my top lander is at 12.46% ctr wooohooo! I believe the offer is converting because it's from the network's high volume list.
I have about 5 new landers I want to split test, think I'll use for another offer. I'll test them tomorrow. I'm also testing 2 traffic sources to pick 1 of them, I didn't see my vertical advertised on the previous source.
woohoo let's gogogogo
GOAL: 30% CTR on a lander.
EDIT: I did DL it and didn't get a conversion. I guess a thing called common sense should tell me to move on. Thanks for pointing out that!
Yep, on to the next offer!
What does your overall P&L look like?
thanks for the tips. You're right maynzie, I'm just trying to take this one step at a time banner-->lander--> offer
I'm still waiting for the god damn creative approvels. In the meantime I'm submitted direct link a win iphone 6 offer like a newb lol. If it'll work I have some landers ready in place I can modify for that.
Where's my data!!!!
cmdeal: the P&l was around 3.2$ revenue and 60$ spent. Not very bright I know. Got excited from one conversion.
Biggest dillema atm: not sure if stick with decisive as my traffic source for sweeps atm, since I didn't see any sweep ads advertised there BUT then again I didn't see it on other sources sooo... any ideas on this? Of course I'll split test sources but your opinion would be great.
Yes, test against other traffic sources.
The last offer failed sadly. Testing right now iphone 6 offer with two angles against each other, I need to contact my manager about tracking to make sure it's fine.
I notice all the time that my pace is slower than I expect, takes me more time, I guess it's the learning curve.
yo bro good luck man, keep updating this space, i'm following. will drop advice when theres a chance!
Originally Posted by dvir0776
Originally Posted by dvir0776
Good luck in your journey, looking forward to further updates!
Ok, It's been 7 weeks in the AM space, and I wanted to update what's up.
My sweeps campaign failed, I had it profitable for one evening but couldn't recreate that success for the next week. I'm pretty certain a veteran affiliate would have found a way to make it work, but it never reached statistical significance in the first place.
I decided to try pay per call, I don't like changing my "hats" because I know success is sticking to something and trying it over and over, but I figured since this is a new vertical it'll have more options for new comers. I'm worried though about adwords since it's linked with my apps, so I'll start with bing ads, and I plan to try in app banner ads for volume once I have a few profitable bing ads campaigns.
I'll start a new follow along for pay per call, learn from this follow along and commit to reporting daily on there.
Lessons from this follow along:
- I can set up tracking - finally
- Got 23 conversions! woohoo at average of about -90%roi but it's still an improvement
- designed landing page with geo
- split tested my landers for the first time
- I didn't test nearly enough campaigns as I should have, over 2 months I test maybe 7 different offers! That's my biggest failure --> biggest opportunity to improve.
the new follow along is here: having a go at Pay per Call -->daily reports
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