Mastering Mobile Through Baby Steps (13)
This really started off with an open-ended success story I posted.
In between trying to soak up information like a sponge, I've also been trying to talk to people, building up stronger better business relationships etc. I've set up a request for mastermind peers in another thread. Between that and meeting a couple affiliates in real life over the past few weeks, I've learnt quite abit about the different structures affiliates can work together.
My daily productivity system is a mix of GTD and Agile Results via the Omnifocus app. It's been working out really well and I'm looking forward to write more about it when I get a chance.
I have too much going in my life right now and staying organized and productive isn't a luxury, but a must.
So that was a long-winded introduction. I've got my low $XX's on a few days over the past few weeks and I'm going to keep funding new traffic sources and learning and making my VA so busy I have to hire a couple new ones.
Looking at my forum age (4 YEARS, dammit) I thought I would have known everything I needed to know about affiliate marketing but darn, I've picked up so much over the past few weeks, and even suffered subtle jabs from AM's from a couple places for being so dense lol!
My rev is now pretty consistently in the low $XXX's and I'll be updating in that success thread once I hit the various milestones I stated. Way to put artificial pressure on yourself eh.
Aside from talking to people, I've also got into the habit of actually thinking much harder about why we do what we do, i.e the intricacies of tracking, tokens, how passing of parameters work, actually digging into LP codes, the tricks like browser trapping and vibration, printed out network newsletters and traffic source volumes and CPM's to study, thinking about how DSP's work, reading voraciously and getting my mind blown everyday!
Last but not least, this thread was actually inspired in large by kepe95 and MrHardwork by their very inspiring follow alongs. I always thought of follow alongs like "follow along campaigns" but they really gave new meaning to the genre: this is more like a "follow along through the life of an affiliate from noob to proficiency".
I'm not the type of person to be able to diligently type out daily spend and revenue etc (I really admire people with the patience and discipline to do follow-alongs like that, I wish I could do it too!), and this shall be a loose follow-along of my journey getting back up on my feet.
Look forward to sharing my learnings, and I'm pretty sure I'll get a ton of help and ideas along the way too with this thread!
Gogogo!
Have a great luck!
Its sometime tricky to people with loaded of knowledge in the past, but also huge advantage
Hope you can make it!
I'm sure this will be an epic Thread. Good luck
Originally Posted by memori
Originally Posted by omrikos
Hi Epicskillz!
Wow, i read your thread in success stories and it is really inspiring and motivating!
I am from singapore as well but had to give charles workshop a miss (partly due to the costly price and partly due to time constraint with my local business).
I want to widen my AM network with more affiliates! and would like to add you into my skype contact 
@socceralien sure thing, let's connect!
Having a team seems to be the common thread in the workflow of the bigger guys.
Being very busy myself, I committed to taking that route myself in order to accelerate my progress.
Last night, I spent an hour teaching my VA how to spy, as well as how to generate reports which would allow me to optimize campaigns super easily.
First step in utilizing my VA in the affiliate marketing business, and it just hit me hard in the head.
This ONE hour I spent one time is probably going to allow me to save one hour PER DAY at the bare minimum!
PLUS taking away that grunt work is going to make me enjoy my work even more and to spend my time networking and setting new campaigns up!
Next up I'm going to be teaching her more and more things and eventually when I hire more VA's, she could take charge by being their manager.
If you're still struggling with AM and are not hiring, I highly encourage you to step outside your comfort zone and do it right now!
I have been putting time aside everyday for the past few days pro-actively handing over tasks to my VA to do.
They say teaching makes you better at the process yourself and that is so true!
Today, in the middle of handling some admin work etc I just did a count and realized I've actually launched 9 campaigns.
It can actually be really, REALLY fast to launch campaigns!
Shall leave them to gather data, and work on optimizing the 2 campaigns that have begun to show potential, and see how I can scale them up.
Getting into the groove of things, and looking forward to hitting my next milestone!
On a side-note, I missed out on pre-sale tickets for Affiliate World Conference at BKK which was a bummer 
Brilliant work so far. It sounds like you have understood how important outsourcing is and how much financial sense it actually makes! Time is money. If you can save time in the long run, your money is well spent on VA's
What other kind of tasks have you got your VA on to other than organizing translations/reports etc?
Not that it really matters, but have you chosen a vertical like sweeps/utility apps or are you going more niche?
I've enjoyed reading your threads over the past few days and look forward to hearing where your story goes
Originally Posted by laurencestanley
Not that it really matters, but have you chosen a vertical like sweeps/utility apps or are you going more niche?
I've enjoyed reading your threads over the past few days and look forward to hearing where your story goes
So far I've made her:
1) Make adjustments to landers
2) Do translations for me with OHT
3) Generate campaign reports
It might sound mundane but that's precisely the point.
As I mentioned, the actual process of "STARTING" campaigns is really very quick! With my VA doing the above for me, I can focus my time more on chatting with people and getting info, as well as putting up new campaigns to gather data.
The number of verticals actually only boil down to sweeps/AV/download/app installs so yea I'm pretty much involved in all of them.
Learnt so much about the intricacies of tracking and setting up campaigns over the past 2 weeks.
Game plan is to make pops profitable and systematic and I'll move on to display, where I'll perhaps hire another VA whose only purpose would be to churn out banners for me full-force.
More lessons I've learnt from the past few weeks of working on campaigns and managing my VA.
Gosh, 2 weeks since my last post, time really does FLY man!
1) You try, you learn
I spent hours teaching my VA how to create a super awesome and comprehensive report on excel that has a bunch of cool metrics etc.
After a few days of doing this I realized that true to 80/20, I didn't have use for most of the information she was painstakingly gathering for me.
I then proceeded to do another 30 minutes screencast and now I have a slick, simple spreadsheet that covers all my crucial campaign metrics in ONE sheet and which I go through everyday easily, and I'm able to work from it effectively.
2) Think about why people do things in certain ways.
All throughout my aff journey I've pretty much been doing things via "best practice" and not really thinking about why we do what we do.
Not in the philosophical sense of course lol, but in the pragmatic, logical sense.
Case in point.
There are blacklists floating around that allow you to cut out the fluff and save money on campaigns by cutting out "bad placements".
Blacklists basically refer to placements that "don't work". But how could they not "work"? Placements are basically sites.
More than one time I've found that some placements that were "bad" for one campaign, worked fabulously for another etc.
Therefore I don't think there's a cookie cutter "blacklist" and the only good "blacklist" is one you created through your own testing for your own particular campaign.
Gawd, how fast time flies, it's been 4 months since I posted this!
I'm just so bad at doing follow-alongs.
Wanted to make a post to close this and to kind of make a list of lessons I've learnt.
Over the past few months I've seen a handful of friends struggling; some have given up, some are still hanging in there but I can see how exhausted they are and how tiring this business can be at times.
Me, I guess I'm lucky I've got multiple sources of income so I don't stress as hard about the affiliate marketing biz as much as some of my peers do. (Which could be a good thing or a bad thing)
Right now I'm doing alright; nothing to be depressed about, nothing to be ecstatic about either. In no way am I saying I've "achieved success"; my numbers are definitely way lower than the ballers here but I'm happy where I am, and would like to have a proper full-stop to this thread, so I'd like to share some of my take-aways.
I've learnt that there are 3 types of campaigns in an affiliate marketer's portfolio.
1. Unicorn campaigns (everyone loves a unicorn)
Here's mine from 2 days ago:
I love 2,000% ROI's.
2. Workhorse campaigns - break-even/slightly profitable campaigns (low ROI; necessary evil)
3. Loser campaigns (determine ASAP and cut)
Assuming "stable" $1k per day profit, a breakdown would likely be as follows:
1. Unicorn campaigns +$800
2. Workhorse campaigns +$500
3. Loser campaigns -$300
If the elusive $1k/day is something you're striving for, apply the above breakdown and proportion, and you could have a pretty good idea how close you are to tasting it.
Here are 3 lessons I've learnt that have helped me a ton through this journey.
1. Take breaks
Staring at the screen for so many hours daily is super bad for your health. I always have a large bottle/cup or water with me when I'm at work. One, it keeps you hydrated; two, it forces you to go to the bathroom and guess what, you need to WALK to get there; bingo! Two birds one stone?
2. Learn to love working.
I love the monster desktops in my home office and "office" office. I love the Macbook Pro when I'm out working at cafes/the library. I also love the iPhone 6+ that allows me to get tiny bits of work (mostly email) done and for reading, when I have pockets of time.
Investing in the right gadgets is an investment in your business, so treat it as such.
I've also learnt to gamify working like the productivity geek I am; I basically use my Google Calendar every night to estimate as accurately as possible what I'll be doing for the following day. 8am in the morning till 12am at night, I try to fill it up as accurately as possible. And yes, "breakfast", "lunch", "dinner", "buffer" are part of the schedule, so it's not that hardcore.
So whenever each "activity" begins, my Apple Watch vibrates and I'll take a glance at it. My watch-face is also set to one that shows the "current" calendar event. I find that it keeps me really focused on what I'm supposed to be doing.
Would love to write more about my productivity geek tricks when I have the time.
3. Instability is to be expected. Learn to deal with it, or don't do it.
Number one thing about affiliate marketing that people hate is how "short term" it is. To me, affiliate marketing is all about boosting cash-flow.
Business.. "Stable" one that makes $100 a day for the entire 365 days of the year = $36,500
"Unstable" affiliate marketing makes $5k a day here and there. You only need like 7 days of that level of profits in a year to get to that same amount of profits.
Nothing "good" or "bad" about either.. Just different.
I'm super looking forward to AWA in about 2 weeks; looking forward to putting a face to the nicks I've known on this forum for a long time and achieving some breakthroughs!
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