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Goals and a question about them (12)

01-17-2015 09:42 PM #1 urbano (Member)
Goals and a question about them

I work 2 jobs (have debts to clear) and am trying to attend university classes.

My goal is to have cleared most of debt with in 6-8 months so hopefully the second job may not be needed then. But I will miss the income from the second job so am hoping to get my AM up and running. My second goal is to have an income of $50 profit in September from AM . I know its not huge as a profit goal but my budget is low so I can't throw heaps of money at campaigns. I have approx $500 (US) to pay for everything AM related , hosting, campaigns etc. Do you believe this is doable on such a budget or am I kidding myself ?

The other question is if the above is not realistic on my budget would I be better trying to get a blog going with the long term in mind (2 -3 yrs) and try to start getting traffic directed to it while for some online experience.

thanks in advance for any tips or advice

01-18-2015 12:48 AM #2 mattboy (Member)

yeah, it is probably doable. You could start out with some relatively cheap hosting, and a free tracking solution. So you will still have the majority of the $500 left for testing.

If your goal is to aim for $50 profit (which I think is a good goal, because small wins are important to progress), then I would even look at starting with some of the 2nd/3rd tier PPC providers. Places like 7search can be good to start out and you don't need to put down a big deposit initially.

Are you able to create your own landers/banners etc? Or will that be something you will have to pay for?

01-18-2015 01:55 AM #3 urbano (Member)

I've never tried to make a lander/banner but wouldnt mind jumping on fiver or whatever it is called to get some initial ones. In saying that I'd be willing to givee it a go myself as I figure they'd e useful to learn how to make

01-18-2015 09:45 PM #4 zeno (Administrator)

If your budget is that low I suggest using Voluum and a CDN and avoiding hosting all together, for the moment.

Stick to low priced traffic like PPV or even Facebook with T3 countries where clicks are very cheap.

You'll need to be particularly diligent with communication with AMs and keeping track of your progress to make sure you don't waste much of that $500 on poor offer choices.

01-19-2015 05:23 AM #5 urbano (Member)

How does making use of a CDN work ? Do I upload my content to a cheap host on a shared server (e.g. one of the basic Hostgator plans) and then upload this to a CDN ? Or have I misunderstood how they work .Is there a specific company you'd recommend dealing with ? I've had a look to see what is out there. Found a free one and the rest were paid (I was thinking the free one may not be up to scratch for the purpose)

T3 countries ? Is there a defined list people AM goes by ? or just a bit of common sense ?

01-19-2015 06:13 AM #6 mcsteve (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by urbano View Post
How does making use of a CDN work ? Do I upload my content to a cheap host on a shared server (e.g. one of the basic Hostgator plans) and then upload this to a CDN ?
I'm no expert, but that's what I've done for my first lander. Purchased a domain and hosting at namecheap, uploaded the HTML file there, then opened an account with maxCDN and set it to pull content from the namecheap server. I tried using XCDN but found it difficult to configure properly and wasn't impressed with the speed or support.

01-19-2015 06:23 AM #7 urbano (Member)

thanks. So in terms of hosting you just opted for basic hosting ? nothing fancy ? So I am guessing the cost of the basic hosting the CDN is a cheaper way for a beginner who can't fund a VPS yet ? How do you have your tracking set up ? Voluum ?

01-19-2015 07:53 AM #8 mcsteve (Member)

Yes, using a CDN takes the cheap hosting out of the picture. All the namecheap web server has to do is be available for maxCDN to pull updates from occasionally. There are different advantages to using a CDN vs a VPS, but I'm not someone who can explain that to you. Here's some threads that might be good reading for you:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...Do-I-need-both
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-CDN-on-MOBILE!
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...Lander-Hosting

Yes, I'm using Voluum for tracking.

01-20-2015 11:25 PM #9 zeno (Administrator)

I'm having a look at Exceda, MaxCDN etc. and one of the main problems is that most of these appear to be origin-pull only, which means you can't avoid using an origin server, and this isn't ideal as for HTML/JS pages you want to host entirely at the edge.

MaxCDN appears to offer this whole page hosting but only on enterprise plans.

CacheFly will let you do it but they have $100/mo minimums. Another way to go is using CloudFront + S3 though I really don't like navigating Amazon's services.

The good thing about Rackspace/Amazon is you can directly upload content for serving rather than using origin pull, which makes some parts of this easier.

I may have to aim newbies at CloudFront, ugh!

01-21-2015 12:57 AM #10 mcsteve (Member)

On MaxCDN, users are pulling my lander .html file from the cache, is that the same as whole page hosting?

01-23-2015 03:59 AM #11 zeno (Administrator)

Yes, it is. Odd, maybe they mean something different with their "cache entire page" option.

01-23-2015 07:30 AM #12 fooder (Member)

Rackspace Cloud Files is pay as you go, so on low volumes it will be like $2 a month. All you need to do is sign up for Rackspace, buy a super cheap tracking domain for Voluum and just upload all your landers to Rackspace. No need for a server at all. This setup can last a while depending on what you are running.

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