Saving Cash As A New Affiliate! (10)
As a new affiliate there's always ways to save cash. The most common thing new affiliates do is pull offers/campaigns to quickly before thoroughly testing them. I've had campaigns really start performing after a few days of being in the red -- just takes some minor tweaks. You can't expect campaigns to perform right away, because that usually is not the case.
So rule #1:
Don't pull your campaigns to quickly!
Also you want to start off with campaigns that have smaller payouts! This is by far the best way to start off with affiliate marketing without emptying your bank account. You want to start out with offers that have small payouts because it takes less testing cash to see results and conversions. (I'll be showing you all campaigns that have smaller payouts at first)
When testing a new offer your supposed to test it by the 10x payout rule. Which means technically when promoting an offer your supposed to test the offer with atleast 10x the payouts sum.
ie: Your running a campaign on Facebook for lasik eye leads which pays $21 per lead. That means you should spend atlas $210 testing your campaign. Lets say you get 4 conversions, and you decide you want to change the demographic from men to women, well now you have to spend another $210! If you spend any less it's not an sufficient test and it's a complete waste of time. To solve this problem, all you have to do is start with cheaper payout affiliate offers, such as dating leads, mobile campaigns, downloadable games, online games, etc…
So rule #2:
Try not to test offers that are over $10 payout.
Your best bet when starting off is under $5!
If you follow rules 1 & 2, you'll:
- Save cash by not wasting money on campaigns you can't test out thoroughly
- Save cash by not spending all of your saved ad spend on 1 campaign test
I agree even I never go up until the 10x rule. I mostly use 3-4x of the offer payout, is this a bad thing? How did you decided you follow the 10x payout rule?
The 10x rule is a common practice in affiliate marketing. There isn't a specific reason why, but it's a good measure for testing offers. Sometimes testing only 3-4x the payout can be risky, especially if you have 1-2 conversions.
I totally agree with Jordan. You can,t judge a book By it's cover too. If you set a budget that is 3-4x the payout, you might leave out a lot of quality targets.
For instance, if you have a new campaign set up on Monday, but your budget already depleted and you pull it out, at which in fact the campaign will only perform on weekends. Of course, I am talking about highly specific targets.
Great info!
Thanks for the tips. I wonder how many campaigns I've pulled the plug on too early. One campaign I had on TV only worked on Saturdays, for some reason. So if I hadn't tested it on Saturday I wouldn't have realized this. But when I ran it on Saturdays it made at least $50 profit...Whoohoo...
Thanks these are great tips for me when I get ready for my next pof campaign. I only loaded $100 for testing a few offers. One thing though, when I'm splitting up campaigns into different demographics, I have to set each one with its own budget right? So if my offer paid out $2 per lead I would set each one at $20 demographic with a total of $60 for the whole campaign?
I am brand new to this and was thinking about launching a campaign where the payout happens to be $40, lol.
Very timely info, thanks!
Oooh good thing I read this! I will definitely follow this rule and hopefully be able to get a solid data 
Another important thing to look out for...
On many ad networks your first burst of traffic is often from placements/carriers/device (or any targeting for that matter) that has lots of volume but poor performance. NEVER judge a campaign by the results you get initially especially when you get the majority of traffic from one segmnet of your targeting.
great tip~
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