Home > Questions and Answers > Tracking Questions

---

Mastering the Basics (11)

---

Hey Bros and Sis,

I am extremely new at Affiliate Marketing. Just thought I'd drop by and say Hi to all the Bros and Sis here. I also have some questions regarding basic techniques of affiliate marketing which I am somewhat confused about at the moment. I have read many articles, blogs, and information here on STM as well and can't seem to summarize the basic skills which I need to attain BEFORE starting my first campaign (e.x. creating landing pages, using links, etc.) For my tools I have already obtained a VPS Server through Beyond Hosting, affiliate programs I have applied and will be connecting with an account manager soon, photoshop I have installed; are there any tools that I am missing?

I have came to the conclusion that affiliate marketing is all about trial and error and in the process of trying I will learn more and more; therefore I want to try small basic campaigns as soon as I can in order to learn more because I think the best way to learn is to actually experiencing it and trying it for myself.

Thank you ahead of time for all your sincere replies and knowledge. Please feel free to add me or PM me your Skype as I would love to make new friends in this community.

---

Have you applied to any networks? (Peerfly, CPATrend, etc?)

Have you chosen what traffic source you want to start first? (POF, mobile, media buying, etc?)

I think once you have some accounts on different networks and chosen your route, there are comprehensive guide on how you can get started on the AM journey.

---

you should read up on copywriting if you haven't already. you'll need to master this to write good headlines, banner text, and landing page copy.

a really good no-fluff book is "cashvertising".

---

Welcome, Lioncub.

I was in a similar position to you and I've worked on the following areas:

Coding: HTML
Design: Photoshop & Muse
Copy: As rabbitizzle suggested, Cashvertising
Traffic Source: Spent time on POF forum on here i.e. getting to know the traffic source.

For some reason, I found it easier to do the HTML in the morning straight after getting up.

For me, the Getting Started Guide was/is absolute gold dust.

---

Hey Bros, Thanks for your inputs. All are very helpful and much appreciated =)

Do any of you bros know how to set up the server with the campaign? I am a bit confused about that. For example if I chose POFpro, how to upload my ads and my landing page onto the POFpro? Also, how to bid for ad space and what is bidding exactly? Thanks so much bros!

---

You will want to spend a substantial amount of time just figuring out 'how everything works' before diving into a campaign.

AM involves a lot of moving parts and some are quite technical - and if you don't understand them it can really stifle your progress.

Once you have a server up, you get a domain to point to it and that server is now a computer of yours on the internet.

PoFPro is self-hosted meaning you need to install it on your own server, in the same way you would download and install Photoshop on your computer.

The platform's executables are a bit different - no .exe package that installs software to your Program Files folder but rather a collection of documents, scripts, etc. that software on your server can interpret.

You would upload this, and landing pages, using an FTP client like FileZilla. FTP is a way of connecting to a remote server for the purpose of transferring files. Landing pages you will upload to your server (or a CDN) so that they are accessible from the web. Creatives/ads you generally store on your computer and upload to the traffic source (e.g. Plenty of Fish) during campaign creation.

Once uploaded, you will have to visit those files, e.g. by going to hxxp://domain.com/tracker/install.php and let the tracking system configure and install itself.

'Campaign' is a loose term. You make campaigns in your tracking system to configure what to do with clicks that you send in. You build a campaign at the traffic source by uploading banners/creatives and setting targeting parameters for where those ads will be served.

Bidding is bidding. Just like at an auction, you place a bid on something. If you bid the highest, you win. Lowest, you get nothing. However there are thousands to millions of the same items available - impressions, or views, so in practice the highest bid gets 'first serve' and everyone battles for impressions.

How many you get depends on your budget, which limits the maximum number you can buy in a day, and your bid, which sets your place in the competition - too low, don't win enough to fill your budget. Too high, might spend all your budget in 2 hours. Traffic sources generally have algorithms to throttle your impression delivery so that you achieve what you want.

You should play with Photoshop, and Muse, and mess around with installing PoFPro on your server, uploading landing pages, setting up your domain and DNS, etc. and get comfortable with that before going much further.

For DNS, see my comprehensive tut - http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...Needed-to-Know!

---

Yeah dude best to get a little expertise in the basic areas, tracking 101, little photoshop skills, maybe a read of cashvertising to get into the headstate of a marketer, plenty of forum posts here. This forum really lays down a massive foundation, nearly every topic is covered here, but in the end of the day getting in and launching campaigns you will learn at godpseed compared to just endless reading.

Combine no making the common mistakes on this forum that people go through on the follow alongs, and continuously launching campaigns and you will make it for sure Fail forward bro

---

Thanks so much bro for your extensive knowledge! Very much appreciated! Also, I am a bit confused about the trackers and the tracking system. I know you mentioned I have to install trackers on my own for each campaign, how and where would I do that? And is there a step by step guide for starting a first campaign? I read up on the starter guide in this forum and still found it lacking some things for a completely new affiliate marketer like me such as terms I dont understand like "verticals" "CTR" etc. Thanks a million bro and sorry I am very very new at all of this!

---

Thanks bro, is there a more comprehensive guide of an ordered list on how to start my first campaign? And please feel free to add me on skype (PM me!)

---

You will need to get very good at Googling if you are very very new, otherwise you will sit around for hours waiting on answers that most forum members won't want to spend time on (this forum provides a lot of info for newbies, but we can only go so far).

You don't install trackers for each campaign, you install a single system and use that for all campaigns. Much like how you install Photoshop once, then use it to edit any number of images.

Since you are new, I would recommend just using Voluum since that will take away all the technical challenges of server setup and tracker installation. If you are running PoF campaigns then PoFPro is great but again that does require self-installation.

There are guides here for running campaigns on a lot of traffic sources (especially Decisive, see the mobile cookbook) but they do assume you know what you're getting into, i.e. what ads, bidding, verticals, offers etc. are and this is really fundamental knowledge.

You should also check out the glossary - http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...n-the-IM-World

Also, vertical = a 'genre' or 'area' of marketing, e.g. dating, gaming, insurance and financial services, etc. Again, le'google is your friend - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_market

---

Thank you so much bro and I appreciate the time you spent to answer my super noob and maybe stupid questions. I hope I will be a big part of this community and forum in the future!

---

Home > Questions and Answers > Tracking Questions