Noob needs advice, i am kind of lost :( (23)
Ok guys, I have been part of the forum for 2 days and reading as much as I can but since I am a noob and dont know much about IM but the basics I really confused.
I have no idea where to start and I just wanna get started and start learning, the quicker I lose money learning the quicker I will make money (at least thats what I think)
This is what I have and you tell me what I need or should change.
1000 dollars each month from my job to invest
some time after work, and even at work to check on things 
I have a Dell server at home with 64gigs of ram and 24 virtual processors that is running vmware and i have a few Linux VMs on it running centos that i can use for whatever
I have Linux sysadmin experience (thats what i do for a living)
I have knowledge of how to run websites on wordpress, running basic campaigns on FB that i was running to send traffic to a blog i am trying to get to go viral, but Facebook is killing me with the organic reach crap going down by the minute.
I have passion and i am eager to learn and put all the time and more into this
What i want.
I want to set up my first campaign but i am not sure where, i have no clue, my guess is that i need to start off with something simple and that would teach me the basics and from there I would scale up.
Can i just keep using my server at home or do you recommend a rent one or collocate mine in a real data center?
I am confused about what domain to buy for the landing pages as well, is there a rule?
Any other advice that you think i would need to get started would be awesome.
Thanks in advance - I cannot wait to quit my daytime job I feel miserable.
First thing is that you can't run any serious campaigns or business from a server at home, not because the server performance but because the bandwidth.
Hosting is so cheap now and will be a really low % of your new business fixed expenses.
By your questions I think you should expend more time reading and learning before investing $1k on any campaign.
It's normal to be so excited about starting, but it's better to learn first and to set an strategy than to start too quick and get frustrated because you burn your money for nothing.
AM is not as easy as it sounds, take your time to learn and go step by step.
I have 50 down 25 up in my house, i thought that would have been fine to get started since I would not be running as many clicks at first, am i not right on that assumption? I can always get a vps if need be that's not a problem.
Also i understand what you mean by learn more, but i feel that the best way to learn is to start taking baby steps. I have read some of the stickies in the getting started part, at this point i am left with a bunch of questions and eagerness to get cracking on this.
What would you recommend i read or do in the mean time?
Originally Posted by yohn1985
If you are a beginner, I would suggest you spend a month reading a lot of the STM posts ... affiliate marketing and offers are still going to be around one month later.
In the meantime try to get trained up on a number of a core traffic channels. There are a lot of courses and certification programs for Google, Facebook and other traffic channels. Learn how conversion math works (caurmen has a brilliant post on this) and read a lot of the other beginners' follow alongs and see what advice some of the more experienced folks give ... and after you feel like you have a decent grasp of how things seem to work, you can run your first campaign and make sure you post that as a follow along.
any particular server you recommend for when the time comes? you know server stats, OS version, company etc... also does it matter what domain name you chose to server your landers? or you get different domains based on the offer?
Originally Posted by yohn1985
Just get a cheap VPS from DigitalOcean or Linode, preferably in the continent/area that you will be running traffic. A $5-10/month VPS will suffice when starting out.
Domain names should just be relevant to the vertical, i.e. epic.gaming-offers.mobi or dating4u.org, etc.
Thus get different domains for different verticals and a different one for your tracking system as well. You no doubt know exactly what your doing with domain/DNS stuff so consider domains as throwaway items. Get one for $4-10 with free WhoisGuard, use it, throw it away later and/or if it ever gets burned or blacklisted by any site/service.
Thanks zeno that was exactly the answer i was looking to hear. I guess is my sysadmin side that was trying to convince me to run at home that way i can have full control and all the power of my servers, but i have to let go of that and start thinking more like a A-Marketer..
@zeno i looked at both digital ocean and linode and they both look really dynamic which i love, now based on experience would you recommend one of the two? or just pick one and go?
Thanks
I think DO is easier to use and they have a cheap $5 VPS, but I would go for Linode for performance and due to your experience. They also have slightly different data center locations. TBH, you'll be fine with either.
I ended up going with Digital Ocean (my VPS is humming away)
prosper installed as well.
quick question, the domain names that i chose for my verticals must be relevant to my offers, but what about the one to access prosper, that one doest matter right? that one is not seen by anyone?
That one will mainly be seen by your traffic sources in your ad URLs.
It doesn't matter much at all. Just use something generic. Like endmixtrack.com or something.
When you do volume it is also a good idea to burn through domains and change them several times a year, just to leave a smaller footprint and make it more difficult for people to spy and use competitive intelligence tools.
^^^^^ thanks mate
On a side note Zeno, I am thinking of a dedicated server (I am starting out and currently running traffic).. My question is, for hosting my landers etc for mobile campaigns, would a VPS suffice for now if I'm not doing tons of volume? Or will a dedicated server make all the difference for loading my mobile landers?
If you are doing HTML-only, host it all on a CDN.
If you need PHP or local hosting, if doing low volume, the VPS should be fine.
You are virtually always going to get better performance out of a dedicated but the question is, will it be worth it given the volume?
If all you want the VPS for is hosting landers with PHP functionality, then I would opt for VPS's geographically close to the location of your traffic.
Ok thanks a lot for the reply Zeno...
I will search out a good VPS for the time being and work with that. I have rackspace CDN also, but my new landers are php and html...
Will give that a try - thanks again...
@dancastro i went with DO and i love it, you can deploy a new droplet quick and they are very cheap. Just know that they are unmanaged and you have to know how to administer them...
Hey Yohn,
Thanks - I am currently trying to figure it all out - have one set up for closes to the GEO of an offer I'm running...
Not sure what else I need to do, but I guess I will cross that bridge when I get to it!
Thanks dude - appreciate the input
By the way, for digital ocean, is it best to install a control panel? If so, which one?
I am getting an outsourcer to teach me full setup so I can do it thereafter - lazy... maybe, but it will save me a ton of time.
Anybody chime in to the best setup for a digital ocean vps? Have gone through as much as I can and pointed my domains back to the server, but that's about it right now...
@dancastro I have been a linux sysadmin for years so i know how to do all of this things already. About the control panel, i have never used one, i just installed the server then installed a LAMP stack and prosper202 on it and thats what i am using to track my click and host my landers. At some point i will clone this dropplet into a second one and separate prosper from the landers.
If you are not technical or familiar with Linux at all then installing some sort of control panel or outsourcing the work would probably be a good idea.
I am still pretty new at all this and learning, it can all get very confusing, just keep going at.
I wouldn't recommend using a control panel like ISPmanager, Vesta, etc. as they generally lock you into confined builds - i.e. webserver, mysql and php versions, installing extensions can be a pain and things like the STM tracker will just not work and you will waste a day trying to figure out why. Do not recommend.
Setting up a LEMP stack is pretty easy and as long as you are comfortable with a Linux console, you can learn as you go!
Anyway, for DO, I'd recommend doing a plain OS install, setting up from there, then saving it as an image that you can redeploy at will.
^^^^what he said
spend some time getting a good build that has all the features you need and its solid from a security stand point and save it as a template that you can quickly deploy as needed.
Ok - my outsourcer set it up for me last night... I was close to switching from the advice of an affiliate friend of mine, but am going to give it a chance...
I need to find out technically what he has done, but load times are great for optimised landers and no problem with GTMetrix grading - He said he's put apache or something on there (you can laugh at me now at my lack of technical knowledge!)...
Not sure about security - any advice on what he should be doing for this. He has also saved it as an image for me, so when deploying another droplet it can be replicated...
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