Hi guys, name's randomman.
I've kind of reached a sort of block point, where I'm not sure what i'm doing anymore. I signed up for this forum hungry to learn about affiliate marketing after finding out people were making life changing money doing it and learning is what i did, I read a lot of stickies and went through a ton of "follow-alongs" and among other things. I was intensely motivated to get off my foot and start into AM. I signed up to a bunch of different aff networks and decided to settle on one, ClickDealer, which ended up being the best safest and easy to join network for newbies. I got my first offer from my AM and kind of procrastinated til I decided to just do it. I created several different banners, not really knowing what I was doing but it was definitely fun setting up my FIRST campaign.
So my first campaign was started, I followed the mobile appetiser, loaded up decisive, and watched the little stats go (conv rate, clicks, etc.) I didn't really understand what they meant yet but I just knew that my campaigns needed to reach $15 spend. I slept like a baby that night, this AM thing is so interesting, at work the next day, I couldn't stop thinking about how my campaign was doing even though I knew fully well i wasn't going to get any conversions, the data was the juiciest part of it all.
I came home and BOOM, couldn't log into my decisive account. I had $500 tied up in there, so naturally I was panicking. Why did I put this much money? I don't know, I didn't anticipate something like this would happen, I figured it was safe as anywhere to put my money. So I e-mailed and then messaged a decisive admin on skype and found out my campaign was redirecting traffic from out of geo to some anti virus or adult landing page that I had absolutely NOTHING to do with. Naturally this was against their terms of service, so they suspended my account. I had to really make it clear to the decisive admin that I HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. I definitely should have been more aware but I went back and forth between my AM and the decisive admin trying to figure out what to do. Finally my decisive admin said that he freed my account and cancelled my campaigns giving me a warning that if it ever happens again, i'll lose all my money and my account. So I decided to withdraw as much money as I can while leaving just enough in there.
During this time, my AM became really cold and unresponsive. I guess I wasn't a very promising "lead" so i'm not really surprised at that nor am I angry. It's normal. He eventually got around to finding me another offer, low payout, good conversion rate, etc. and again I went through the whole process, this time i targeted brazil and had my AM switch off the redirects. Bought some translation service to translate my banner texts and set up everything AGAIN on decisive. Then I got e-mails from the app/offer site telling everyone to NOT run their campaigns and make sure it is approved by the aff network. So it took me another day to get my AM to approve it, which he did. Then the next day I find out that he says "i need landing pages, only banner won't work", so I paused campaign and tried to figure out how to deal with landing pages. And then BOOM, my offer gets paused from the site, apparently they paused the offer entirely and it's a dud.
I wouldn't give up, tried getting my AM to send me another offer but he's been very unresponsive yet again, it's been a couple days and I still haven't really gotten much from him, he only said "i'll get on it". I'm clueless as to what to do now, should I
A) find another affilate network
B) read as much as i can in the meantime
C) work on things like my landingpage / banner creation skills
I'm starting to hear from people that banner/landing page stuff for app installs is very saturated, which is kind of discouraging. I want to go all out on this AM thing, I just don't know where to start or what to do. Should I look for other tracking sources instead of decisive? I have yet to run a clean campaign yet and it's always because of some unforeseen setback.
Help.
A) yes, find more
B) yes
C) yes
Also find another traffic source besides decisive.
What you experienced are just minor set backs.
Always get approved before you run anything. Try to get approved for multiple offers and prepare for multiple offers so that you can keep on going testing.
Thanks yeah I figured I would need to have multiple offers handy. I thought that once I get an offer I can't ask for more.
The only problem with looking for affiliate networks is trying to find reliable ones that are good for newbies and trustworthy like clickdealer.
Well, everyone starts off as a newbie but nobody likes newbies.
Just be confident when signing up and try not to be annoying by asking silly questions to which you could easily find the answer to on this forum for example. Do understand that your average AM is not an affiliate marketer and doesn't have the affiliate marketing mindset or knowledge.. which isn't strange at all. If you were a carpenter and have a question about a certain design, you wouldn't go to the accounting department with your questions, right?
You shouldn't be too picky with networks at this stage. Just try to get in. Get denied? Too bad for you... or them. Just move on.
Like I said before, if you are serious about this.. get over it because these kind of problems are peanuts compared to what you will encounter later on.
So, now you know what to do and by doing it, you will automatically solve your problem related to where to run.
You don't really need to ask your AM for offers, you will be sent reports and you can choose offers yourself. Actually, you don't need to go by the reports because the stuff that's in there is mostly generated by experienced affiliates and you're a n00blet. You'll probably lose money no matter which offer you choose. This is no problem as long as you learn from it.
The posts above already contain a lot of good suggestions. Here are mine:
1)Definitely join more affiliate networks! And don't worry about being a newbie! The more networks you try, the more will accept you! Here are tips that will maximize your chances of getting accepted:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-First-Network
Some great networks that are friendly to newbies include Maxbounty, Adsimilis, A4D, and Affiliaxe. If you want app download offers, try Appflood, Avazu, Glispa, and Tapgerine. Check out the Affiliate Network Skype Directory to find a TON more networks you can sign up for. You don't need that many - just a few that will accept you. When applying, know that just by telling them you are an STM member, a lot of doors will open for you!
2)Don't dwell on temporary setbacks. Lots of things can go wrong, but if you worry about them you will attract more bad things. You're trying to accomplish great things in AM. Surely to achieve something that great, you'll need to pay a bit of price in exchange? Just see these setbacks as valuable lessons and part of the learning process. Learn from them and move on without a backwards glance.
3)Saturation is a myth. There's people making good money in every major vertical. Remember - you don't need to be the best in order to get a small piece of the billion-dollar pie! Skills like marketing, writing powerful ad copy, making effective banners and landers, optimizing a campaign etc. - are all transferrable skills you can apply to any vertical! Don't get discouraged!
After you get accepted into some more affiliate networks, talk to your AMs to see which verticals are hot right now, choose one and start testing. If you need someone to bounce ideas off of, PM me to ask for my skype so we can talk more. I'm far from being a big dog in this industry, but I have all the basics down and will be able to at least point you in the right direction.
You've come this far already - don't give up now!
Amy
Good advice above. Its rare for the 1st campaign to work out. There are plenty of other networks and offers... and other AMs within Clickdealer.
Great advice, I've come this far so I'm not giving up...hopefully my persistence will eventually pay off.
Yeah man, i'm in the same boat as you. It's all a learning process. I feel that I've spent so much time and money already on this with only $6 profit LOL. I've had my share of misconfigurations (
I'd also say to make sure you pick a vertical where there are several similar offers. Once you have a good campaign set up (good ctrs and a good lander) you can easily swap out offers on the back end till you find a winner and easily replace offers that get paused or killed. Having half a dozen offers to choose from on half a dozen networks will make life much easier. Keep plugging away!