4-weeks challenge to profit! Join me! (11)
Whaattt uppp guys! 
I am Marvin from Hamburg, Germany.
My story:
I worked a 9 to 5 as a project manager for media systems for a couple of years now. My company and collegues were great but those huge projects would always require me to stay in other cities from Mon-Fr for at least half of the year. After a time the hotel life wasnt exciting anymore and home didnt feel like home anymore, coming back on Friday 10pm, excausted, I would spend the weekend to wash clothes and get ready for next week... I've had enough of it, and I QUIT in december 2014!
Then, I took everything I learned the last couple of years and started running Teesping Campaigns on Facebook. I did the right research, found a great target group and got some seriously viral campaigns but no conversions due to my lacking "angle research skills". During that time a friend who I met at STM BKK was recommending me to try mobile. I knew he was travelling the world for more than a year so it sounded promising.
On february 11th, I finally took the step to sign up to the STM forums aaaanndd WwwooowwW! Soo much knowledge, so many awesome how to's, case studies, motivational posts!
The next 3 weeks I spent turning my life around:
I really studied the threads from the forums, I printed them, highlighted, wrote down questions, I bought notecards to learn abbreviations, formulas but also just to train my mind into the right thinking.
For example: What are EPC, DOI, SOI, RTB, RON? What are common click discrepancie percentages?
When do AMs give you a payout bump and WHY? Whats better a XX/day campaign or a XXX/day campaign?
Answer: It hurts much more to fail a XXX/day campaign and see those reds than mastering a XX/day campaign for constant greens! (Wise words I think I found in Kepe95's follow along)
Another thing I did was to get back to sports (jogging and table tennis), eat healthy, wake up at 08:30 EVERY DAY even on Sat/Sun and cut back on partying/drinking.
I think I have never been that disciplined in my life before and so far it has been really hard to keep these habits.
There were a few mistakes made like on Thu 19th: I went to a party and ended up at my friends place at 6 in the morning, the next day was completely screwed..
Two steps forward, one step backwards, two steps forward and so on.. "Keep on! Get up on your feet!", I am saying to myself and (thanks to this awesome community) it works better than ever so far!
So whats the 4-weeks challenge to profit?
Think of it like a newbie mastermind = newbiemind? 
The goal is to find a steady profitable campaign during the next 4 weeks.
It doesnt matter how many X's/day, once the campaign is profitable, the goal is achieved!
And I would like you guys to join me! Here are a few reasons if you cant think of any:
- Having no friends in real life who understand AM sucks! I really think having people to talk to, getting feedback, will kill that "lonely" feeling while working as an affiliate.
- We can "grow" together. Even if we are not super affiliates (yet), everyone of us has different and valuable knowledge, bringing that together = Profits for everyone.
- Once you get out there to talk to other AMs it will be harder to quit! If you really want to make this happen, make it impossible to quit! (Also on of Kepe95's words if I remember correctly 
)
To join, simply send me a private msg with your skype id and I will add you to the conversation.
Edit: After reading the forums mastermind section I realized that a mastermind is a lot more than just a chat group in skype 
. And another thing I realized after a couple of people from the forums hit me up via PM is that it takes a lot of time to seriously get to know each other and build up trust to work together. I am really sorry but I will not start a mastermind with random people from the forums because I met so many great people in London in person which I feel very comfortable to work with. However I can still put you in a skype group with the people who do hit me up via PM and you guys can get to know each other and see if you can get something going.
Alright now that I have spent almost 2 hours on this post, I need a break.
I'll be back ASAP to post the results of my first mobile campaign EVER, which is running since yesterday.
And of course I already have some questions prepared!
Okay there seem to be some timezone differences with the reports of Decisive.
Still
I am damn tired right now, I'll look further into it tomorrow.
Originally Posted by marvster
- We can "grow" together. Even if we are not super affiliates (yet), everyone of us has different and valuable knowledge, bringing that together = Profits for everyone.
- Once you get out there to talk to other AMs it will be harder to quit! If you really want to make this happen, make it impossible to quit! (Also on of Kepe95's words if I remember correctly
)Hey cmdeal, thanks for encouraging!
This week I have tried to find a cheap flight and accomodation, I asked friends and family, I have messaged more than 15 people on couchsurfing and I stalked the forums for people sharing flats 
Airbnb is my last option but since I got so frustrated with this 2 days ago I stopped looking and focused on my campaign.
My problem is that I am on 3.5k testing budget right now, if its gone, its gone. So coming over to London would mean spending a huge chunk of that testing budget.
I know I should go, but running out of testing budget is a huge fear. Ill check flights again tonight and see if something cheap pops up, maybe I'll make it!
I am pretty sure that even at such late notice, you can find a flight from Hamburg to London and back for about 200 Euros. If you find the cheapest youth hostel around you can sleep for 30 Euros a night. A subway Tube ticket for a week will be maybe another 50 Euros and then if you skimp on food and buy bread and cheese from supermarkets, you can survive on another 50 Euros for the week. So all in, this will be 500 Euros.
Now, if you learn something at the event that helps you avoid making a stupid mistake on your campaign, or you meet up with a business partner, or you get an idea that you can apply to your campaigns ... that will be 500 Euros very well spent. At least that is how I would think about it if I were in your shoes.
Super. Gute Reise!
Gute Entscheidung! See you in London
Amazing cmdeal for the encouragement and huge respect to you Marvster for 1 stepping up and creating this thread and 2 booking those flights. You're gonna do well. Be good to catch up in London.
Quick update before heading to London:
Right after I booked the flight last night another awesome thing happened: Rubenskitchen hit me up via PM and told me they still had space for one more in their Airbnb appartment. It is cheap and really close to the speech venue, but the best thing about it is that I will hang out with 3 totally new people who try to make it in AM like me. This gives the flight I booked ultimate value and I am super excited to meet everyone. Besides, I was very inspired by their follow-along a while ago. They are 3 guys who seem to be able to put each of their specific skills into effective coordinated action! It will be very interesting to hear how they manage working together.
Back to my campaign, here comes the first beginner mistake: I didnt notice that Decisive creates reports in EST so my Decisive stats were 5 hours off from Voluums and Adsimilis's. Since I want to keep a daily stat journal, 5 hours can have a huge impact But even when I created new reports for the right timerange there is still a lot clickloss:
Clicks
751 Decisive
549
277 Adsimilis (another 50%)
I read that up to 30% clickloss is normal, but what about those other 50% between
Conversions all over the place as well, each showing a different amount of conversions on different days. Decisive actually shows 2 conversions today even though I didnt run any traffic today.
I notice these are problems that every beginner has to go through. I spend a lot of time on these issues right now but i think its worth it to fully understand, gather experience and get things straight, afterall the data is what I do my conclusions on.
Some of the ideas I had today:
1. Where do most singles live? I could try targeting by location: Large Cities may have more singles and singles who are willing to date. This is just an assumption but may be worth putting $15 on the table to find out.
2. What if I run this offer on adult traffic? There sure are a hell lot of desparate singles! I got this idea from lifetweak's bizopp case study. I will have to find out if running on adult traffic is allowed.
3. I have thought of trying lots of different ways to drive traffic. What about text ads? What about all those different banner sizes, interstitials etc.? I guess those all will show extremely different results and are worth testing.
4. Aren't different banner sizes also a great way to scale once my campaign is profitable? Its a lot of traffic left out if only running 320x50.
And some ToDo's for once I get back from London:
- Test spyed top banners for comparison and experience.
- Look for someone to outsource banner design. Its taking wayy too much time to do it myself. If I want to get profitable in 4 weeks this might be key to more productiveness.
- Find other traffic sources to run my campaign on. This will also grant me lots of experience.
Since Budget is small and funding new traffic sources is expensive I have to ask you guys to help me narrow it down to one traffic source.
From your experience, which traffic source would you recommend for an offer like this?
Alright! Not sure how I am going to be able to sleep with all that excitement but off to bed now! See you guys tomorrow!
Also, wie war's?
Originally Posted by cmdeal
The time London has been a great experience:
I went from, being totally excited to being depressed, then back to pushing my limits until exhaustion and finished it off with lots of beers and whiskey.. And lots of espressos in the morning..
The decisive pre drinks on monday have been the first intense "speed dating/networking" experience for me. I think most people needed some time t warm up. The
So with AM language I would say that being in London definitely gave me a very high ROI.
I have met so many people in London that my phones notes are full of great advice they gave me! Staying with the guys from rubenskitchen, even though the appartment was very small, has been great and opened up a lot of doors for me. I collected 30+ new skype contacts and I keep contact with most of them now. But the most important part was that I have spent almost every single moment of the days in London with different affiliates to get to know them better and build real relationships. This builds up trust and makes it a lot more comfortable to share information on skype now. It just feels better if you have met the guys in person before.
In terms of moving further with my campaigns I lost a whole week, but I believe, would I not have made these relationships I would leak important knowledge that could at some point make me able to take my campaigns to profit.
I really got a whole new perspective at the industry and I feel I am just starting to really understand it.
When I came back on Thursday I was completely destroyed and had a looong deep sleep to process everything that happened to me. On Friday I allowed myself a slow start, sorting out all the notes I had taken.
Campaign Update: LOVOO - 18th of March
Actions I took:
1. I cut one placement: "Hill Climb Racing" which has spend 2.2 times the offer payout ($1.55) without any conversion and on top of that has a CPM of $1.78 and a low CTR.
2. In London have got a few insights that lead me to believe that Decisive is not the right traffic source to promote this kind of offer. But before completely pausing it I wanted to test if the banners that I spyed with WRW are performing better or worse than the ones I created. Results: My banners 0.9% CTR, Spyed banners 1.1% CTR.
3. I had a -75% ROI overall but I still couldnt give up. So what I did was pulling a list of all placements from the report, cloned the ad, and batch blacklisted all placements that did never convert once. The new ad is running since yesterday and I will let it run a couple of days to see if any placement might be the one that could bring me steady profits.
By doing all of this I realized that by finding 1 placement that converts and brings enough daily traffic, anyone could easily make XX/day. This changed my whole way of thinking about my campaigns.
Just a quick example: Payout: $1.55, CPM in GEO: $0.40, CTR: 1%, CR: 10%. If you could find one placements that converts 10% and lets say you win 40k of impressions a day for a manual CPM of $0.50. That would mean 40 conversions = $62 revenue/day = $42 profit/day. Now the CR and CTR become very important and the line to profit is hard to reach, but still I would say this example brought my thinking in the right direction to find profitable campaigns.
Other stuff I am doing right now:
I am preparing 3 Sweepstake offers that my AM recommended to launch ASAP.
Actions I took:
1. I really got into using WRW. First I looked at banners by keyword, if they do run longer than a month already I would rip their landers. I am currently translating them and adjusting the design a bit to fit to my offers.
2. I also checked the traffic sources and wrote down placements where the banners being run. I noticed that many only run on one specific placement.
3. I am currently talking to lots of guys I met in London on skype. They invited me to join their mastermind and we are getting started this weekend.
4. Got a Go2mobi account and some good advice on which exchange its worth to run on.
Current tasks:
1. Prepare the new campaigns: Landers, Banners, Creatives, Angles
2. Figure out which credit card is best for me right now and get it.
3. Still need to find a freelance designer.
4. Lander hosting research: Learn about what CDNs are and if I need them. Check if I can use the hosting that I currently use for my personal website.
5. Get a domain for my landers.
No questions so far! But I still would very much appreciate any thoughts or tips from you guys! Just spit it out!
Thanks again cmdeal for that kick you gave me to book the ticket!
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