Im about to dive deeper into traffic. I feel like Im missing something, my plan is roughly as follows.
Research my niche
Find some offers
Compare offers and traffic source, research more to make sure that everything should work.
Research banners, and landing pages. Look for something that may work with my offer, traffic source and demographic.
Build 20 banners, 3 or 4 landing pages.
Set up into my tracking, double check landing pages, set up conversion tracking.
Test everything with a small amount of traffic ($10 or something) Looking for any initial problems with my configurations.
Turn up the volume to get the data that I need. . . .optimize...
At this point I may or may not be profitable, I may need to make major adjustments to the campaign, the campaign may not work at all.
...So am I missing something? Is this all about right?
That's as simple as it is!
My advice would be to start with proven sources and offers, don't shy away because you think it's too competitive. It just means that's where the money is.
Start taking action now, and buying some data!