38 year old dad makes money online using one old trick (30)
Hey STM,
TL;DR Post #1 is my backstory. Post #2 is a present state analysis. Skip to the post #3 for the actual follow along.
It’s my time to start the follow along thread here. This might be a bit different from what you would normally follow though but full transparency actually worked really well for me before, so why not do it over here. This forum is sufficiently paywalled and hopefully will stay this way, so I have not reason not to do so.
I’ll break this thing down to manageable chunks and, before I go into actual campaign(s), let me introduce myself.
My name is Egor. I am male. Live in Sydney, Australia. I am going to hit 39 next Sunday. It seem to me, it’s a bit above average age over here. I posted a bit of a backstory in my introduction thread and here is the short version.
I came to Australia in 2005 essentially with nothing, actually, negative to be precise (I borrowed a couple of thousand dollars back in Russia that I needed to pay back ASAP via my parents).
After mocking around in corporate for a few years, I registered my Pty Ltd in May 2008 with the goal of writing desktop video tool for Mac and Windows, which I did around 2009. Well, I built it, they didn’t come. This pushed me towards sales/marketing and I finally discovered affiliate marketing. Holy grail of money making. Why would you even want to deal with the product if you can sell crap for commissions? Lol. Pretty naive, I know.
Fast forward 2010 I become one of the founding members of PPVPlaybook. I went by the nick name eneset there, if anyone is/was a member. I run some outrageous dating campaigns on Traffic Vance, Lead Impact and Media Traffic. One of the lander was an, to be politically correct, extremely heavy-weight lady in bikini with massive, to be polite, curves with a headline “You’ll be dating her when you are 40 if you don’t act now”. It got insane CTR, to my surprise but shitty conversions.
I got my first 50% ROI bizop campaign running on PPV. Converted like clockwork with pre-popped email so I could spam afterward (until GetResponse shut down my account). Unfortunately the network was infamous EWA run by a less than stellar individual that used to be a member here as well so I never saw the money.
Here comes the lesson for me. I was around break even point for quite some time and I quit because I got interested in SEO. This is where I went all in. I invested heavily in tools and training and developed a bunch of systems for spying on ranking and automated link building that worked really well.
I was hanging out on BHW a lot under a nick name of cash202. Although I wasn’t as crazy successful as, say, this dude http://inbound.org/post/view/confess...google-spammer, the business of selling links was pretty lucrative. It quickly eclipsed all my affiliate income and I ended up hiring two employees in Philippines that are still with me to this day and systematised the whole business to run as a well oiled machine… until Google zoo (Penguins and Pandas and other Hummingbirds) fucked it all up.
Anyways, if you are interested, you can always go to BHW and dig out my posts and the whole story.
Right after SEO business started to decline and most clients were more interested in link penalty removals that in actual SEO I went into partnership with a local guy from Sydney I met on BHW. We started a SaaS project with him being sales/CEO and me being product owner/CTO. We worked on this thing for more that a year.
I wasn’t making jack in terms of income during this time burning my saving when it come to the point I run out of cash and the SaaS didn’t fly. We broke up and I went back to dreaded IT consulting to rebuild the cash flow and backpay taxes I own to the government from the SEO business (yeah, I re-invested tax money back to the business that failed at the end).
This all brings us to today.
Now, before I continue, I know there are plenty people here who are way smarter than me in regards to affiliate marketing (and not only affiliate marketing). So, if you have any advice in regards to what, in your opinion, I should do or try, I am all ears. I fucked up too many times before to reject help. If you think I am doing or going to do something stupid, please say so.
Here is what I got now.
Affiliate network accounts:
* Peerfly
* Neverblue
* MarketHealth
* Rakuten LinkShare
Other income sources:
*AdSense account in good standing
* Mgid (active as publisher)
* Content.ad (active as publisher)
* Approved YTZ account
Traffic sources:
* Adon Network (balance $200)
* ZeroPark (balance $200)
* ExoClick (balance ~$170)
* Decisive (no deposit yet)
* AdWords and Facebook accounts in good standing
* Mgid (as advertiser)
* Content.ad (as advertiser)
* Old PoF account (still can login there)
Tools:
*
Assets:
* Ignored dead mailing list of old SEO customers and prospects (~400 emails)
* A few old affiliate minisites monetised variously (MarketHealth, AdSense, Mgid/Content.ad) making very little and managed by my wife (yes, I am married for 15 years already) and two employees in Philippines she currently manages.
I sold approximately 1000 PBN domains, so don’t have these assets anymore 
Technology:
* Two dedicated servers (in Canada and France)
* Extensive IT experience (can code virtually anything, automate servers, VPS, web scraping, you name it)
I have budget to test offers but not as big as I would want. I am still paying off the tax debt plus need to rebuild the saving nest to some extent. I took an extra freelance project for a quick cash that should bring approximately $6K in a couple of weeks so I can shove at least half of it in testing.
I also joined a white hat STM Skype group.
As I am starting from scratch again, it’s recommended here to pick the traffic source and vertical and stick to it.
There is one verticals I would like to avoid though.
Adult is out.
Will be hard to explain to my 12 year old daughter (yeah, I have daughter as well) what daddy is doing for work, hahaha. What if she sees me in the middle of the “research” session?
In regards to traffic source, I am in for a long run and to build a business, not just “stack money”.
I want to run clean and compliant. I am using my real name on Skype and here on forum. No cloaking, no dodgy iframing, no cookie stuffing so things like cloaked diet on AdWords or cloaked Facebook dating are out too.
The rest is good to go.
Now is the worst part. I need to figure out how to make it work with very little time on my hand.
Let’s do some accounting. At most I have two hours per day Monday to Friday (day job plus commute) plus the whole weekend. Which leaves me with at most 30 hours per week if I am not to massively ignore the family and start skipping gym sessions (I do CrossFit session in the morning 5 times per week)
I’ve read a post here by the guy who moved to Sydney from Germany and worked his arse off (12 hours 7 days a week) and got to four digits profit per day in three months.
It’s a bit different to me. When I was 20 I could do feats like this, no worries. Not so much after 35. If I sleep less than 7-8 hours per day or skip the gym session, I am fucked.
Also, having no time off at all for months in a row gets you at the end. At least this is how it is for me. I know myself enough to know I will end up in nervous breakdown or go binge drinking and be out of the game for a couple of days because of it.
In the next day or two I need to decide on the following:
* Do I go the “pick traffic source and vertical” and “rip landers and banners” route to test, optimise and generate revenue? Or do I suck it up with a day job for awhile and start the long term asset building from the day one? (I have an idea to model a viral site fuelled by native ads or throw all traffic into list building and work with that).
* Depending on what I choose in the first step, lock the traffic source and model to work with (affiliate network or mailing list building, etc).
* I need to figure out what to do with my employees in Philippines. They are trained in SEO and content and follow directions very well. I need to figure out how leverage them or to let them go.
The step after that will be to set some goals for the next 1-3-6 months and go from there.
I’ll be checking in here with progress reports. They won’t be that lengthy though. I spend my whole two hour time slot today writing this post.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Piece,
Egor
OK, as it should be a real follow along, I run a quick warm up campaign.
Traffic source: ExoClick
Targeting: Non-adult RON, display only
Offer: Free Choice (AU) - win shit
Offer Payout: $5
Network: Peerfly
Geo: Australia
Type: Direct linking (no tracking)
Creative: 300x250 banners provided with the offer ("you are a winner" type)
Spent: $11.58
CTR: 0.56%
Unique hits: 450
Conversions: 0
Revenue: $0
ROI: -100%
Other actions taken:
I contacted my affiliate manager at Peerfly and get recommended a few offers for ZeroPark.
They are mobile dating, BBW dating (mobile and desktop), iPhone app for hotels, Android app for jobs, iPhone game.
Wow what a followup intro!
Being 40 in 71 days I'm your biggest fan Egor, wish you all the best and subscribed to follow your journey mate.
Btw, could we have a chat on seo some time?
Good luck!
Mac
First quick thing I'd recommend: sign up for a bunch of additional networks.
You've got a background in the industry, you know what you're doing and you have infrastructure - I can't imagine there are many networks you'd have trouble getting into. And more networks = more offers and more chances to split-test offers between networks.
Pretty much regardless of the vertical you go into, that'll help you out a ton.
As far as verticals and traffic sources - I just wrote up this guide to what's working in 2015, drawing on the collective knowledge of STM's brain trust. You'll be pleased to hear that Adult is not at the top of the list right now!
Hope that helps, and looking forward to hearing how it goes as you progress forward!
Lunch break. Applied to A4D, MUNDOmedia and mobvista.
Nightly update.
Also applied to Convert2media and AdsMills, following the direction in the caurmen's getting started guide.
F5media wants me to stack at least $1000 per week to apply, so didn't apply there.
Few decisions made:
- I am not going to be smart over here and jump into something complex like content based site with multiple offers. I am going to play it dumb and do fundamentals like if I never did it before. Just following caurmen's getting stated guide.
- I will run mobile, simply implementing the caurmen's mobile cookbook to start with. I'll niche it down when I am finished with the cookbook.
- I will use ZeroPark as a traffic source to start with (again following the caurmen's what's working guide).
- Employees stay on backburner working on old SEO properties until I come up with at least one repeatable process that can be reduced to a checklist (deadline is the end of August).
I got myself an accountability partner. He works in a personal development company but launching his own online hypnosis coaching course. We set a very basic goal for ourselves - $100 profit by October 2015. This includes covering all the expenses incurred between now and then plus these hundred bucks.
Further actions:
- Speed read Getting Started (in the middle of it now) and Mobile Cookbook
- Follow up with network applications (some of them want a Skype call in US time zone which is a middle of the night here)
- Set up a first campaign with proper
Voluum tracking (goal is to learn how to setVoluum )
I hope it's fine with everybody that I use this thread as much as my personal journal as follow along.
Have a good one. I'll check in tomorrow.
Damn good start! Waiting for tomorrow news 
Originally Posted by egorpe
She is fricking awesome with recommendations and industry knowledge
Originally Posted by customs
She is fricking awesome with recommendations and industry knowledge
Good call on keeping it simple!
One thing to note - ZeroPark isn't a DSP (Demand-Side Platform), which is what the Mobile Cookbook was designed for, so you'll need to do some interpretation in order to make it work. However, there are lots of people doing pops/redirects around here, and some great guides (check out Ruby Tunes' guide to pops too), so you should be able to get it all going without too much trouble!
Lunchtime update:
Got a response from three networks. Sent out a few emails. I want to line up all three interviews to fill Friday morning from 5am till 8 am (goodbye morning gym session). Trying to match Californian time to Sydney is a bitch. It’s either early morning or late at night. Learning to love Mac Calendar app.
Calculated my monthly fixed business costs (excluding traffic, obviously). It comes down to approximately AU$1400 per month, including hosting, software and memberships (just STM for now). Half of it is wages, that’s why I need to figure out how to repurpose my outsourcers ASAP (or let them go).
I’ve talked to my accountability buddy this morning. The deal is to make $100 profit over fixed monthly expenses by October 2015. So, essentially the goal is to make AU$1500 (US$1200) profit in a month (fixed expenses plus 100 kangaroo bucks). That’s pretty bold, totally makes me uncomfortable at the moment since I am doing something new and the learning curve might be steep.
I am currently 90% through the Getting Started guide. Only reading main posts. I am pretty sure there’s some gold buried in responses but for now I am applying Pareto principle to everything as time is short.
Nightly update:
One interview confirmed (A4D).
Got myself some tools. Adobe Photoshop CC is 10 ozziebucks per month, so got that one right away on a 30 day trial. I know Adobe Muse gets recommended here but I found a similar tools from Google that is free (Google Web Designer). Will stick to it or suck it up and hack HTML by hand.
First campaign progress.
The GEOs I’d like to stick to are Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, UK, USA, Russia (I know the languages) and Philippines (my employees can handle Tagalog and Cebuano).
After I’ve only got to the appetiser of the mobile cookbook so the first campaign is simply following the appetiser to the letter (well, almost, as I want to add
I emailed my account manager at Peerfly for a list of offers as per mobile cookbook.
It looks like Neverblue has been rebranded or sold to Global Wide Media. My account is still active but there is no assigned account manager, just generic email. Sent email anyway. I have a bit of a worry about them as they haven’t even updated my postal address in the account area in a few days. Still status pending.
Can’t find a proper offer on Peerfly and Neverblue for my GEO (I exclude USA and UK for now).
The closed to the cookbook I found are Neverblue/GlobalWide’s “Filrchi - Mobile - PH,AU,RU” with $0.52 payout which is a casual dating offer, “LEO Privacy Guard - RU,PH” on Neverblue and Peerfly but they want to manually approve all creatives.
Peerfly also has "Aviasales Cheap Flights - iPhone (RU)” with $0.50 cents which is an app install but EPC and conversion of a zero across a network is a bit of a worry and "DaterSearch - Mobile - SOI (US, AU)” with $0.60 payout.
Since appetiser is direct linking, I’d like to avoid dating as they require a lander (slap me if I am making a stupid assumption here).
If I don’t get a sound response from affiliate managers tomorrow, I’ll be launching Aviasales in Russia on Decisive.
Having so little time to work on this stuff is frustrating. I thought I’ll be able to create a whole campaign, lol.
It looks I am going to be hooked up to your follow along journey for very long time One thing I liked about you, being experienced IT guy you know how to get around with coding, designing and server stuff which most marketers find it most difficult at the beginning.
If you want to jump into Mobile, then please get into F5 Media, yeahMobi, ClickDealer, AppFlood. These networks have tones of Mobile offers and their top charts are filled with many converting offers. If you can eliminate banner part, you can reduce you campaign launch time greatly, that means you have to move to Mobile Pop and Redirect sources from Decisive.
All the best!!
Originally Posted by imsquad
One thing I liked about you, being experienced IT guy you know how to get around with coding, designing and server stuff which most marketers find it most difficult at the beginning.If you want to jump into Mobile, then please get into F5 Media, yeahMobi, ClickDealer, AppFlood. These networks have tones of Mobile offers and their top charts are filled with many converting offers. If you can eliminate banner part, you can reduce you campaign launch time greatly, that means you have to move to Mobile Pop and Redirect sources from Decisive.
All the best!!
Anyways, following the appetiser for now.
I got two interview lined up tomorrow 5 am and 6 am with MUNDOmedia and A4D, need to go to bed earlier so will make banners tomorrow.
Got reply from both Peerfly and Neverblue. Ex-neverblue is dead in this regard and Peerfly have too few offers and the suggested offers were app installs in the US (avoid for now) or dating (not ready to make “3 rules” lander yet).
Network: Peerfly
Offer: Aviasales Cheap Flights - iPhone
GEO: Russia
Payout: $0.50
The same offer for iPad pays $0.80. Keep it as a backup.
Traffic: Decisive
Creative: 320x50
Device: iPhone
OS: iOS
According to Decisive planner I have at least 12 million impressions with average CPM $0.2 depending on a city (which I want to use as an angle).
Offer research:
Looking for testimonials on Google and Yandex (I am Russian native speaker).
Mostly positive. This is an aggregator that collects info from multiple places and provides a cheapest airfare. They send you an email if the prices on your saved search go down. Also, some users reported that with Aviasales sometimes cheaper to book return ticket separately, essentially booking two one-way tickets instead of one return. It looks like they give you the cheapest tickets for real.
Downloaded Android app. Pretty easy to use. Found me a direct flight from Sydney to Bangkok for less that AU$600 with Emirates. Not bad.
One of the reported downsides is, it doesn’t include budget Asian airline like AirAsia, FlyScoot, Cebu Pacific Air and alike.
Also, it looks like the site and the company are pretty old so many people might already have an app.
I am going to bed now to be fresh for the MUNDO interview.
Tomorrow - angles and creatives.
Looking good!
Google Web Designer's not bad. It has some ... interesting choices in the UI department but it's certainly usable.
Good work on the research. That's where a lot of people fall down, and you're doing a good job with it!
Looking forward to your next updates!
Got approved at A4D. AM there is Sean said they don’t have much mobile but they will be brining more soon. I haven’t looked at the offers yet.
Sent an application to AffiliAxe and PMd the manager from there here on STM.
Just came up with these angles for the offer during the morning commute.
Angle 1: Weather in Russia is shit, flights to tourist destinations are cheap
Novosibirsk +3, Phuket +35. Fly now for RUB19000 (can also work on pops with actual weather forecast rotating different tourist destinations popular in Russia).
August in Yekaterinburg is shit. Rains all the time. Fuck that, I am flying to Spain for RUB10K (this is personal experience because I lived there before I moved to Australia).
I can use GEO options is Decisive to target top 5 Russian cities with separate banner.
Angle 2: Cheapest prices for premium airlines
Pay less for <premium airline> that you’d pay for <insert crappy airline here> by using this easy cool app.
To <destination> with <premium airline> for less than <low price>? Easy with this cool app.
I’ll be testing these two angles for now with 8 banners per angle.
I am going one extra angle comparing to the original appetiser to speed things up.
Hi Egorpe,
Sweet follow along mate.
I was amazed on a recent visit how common it still is for Russians to book package holidays, despite probably getting it cheaper doing it themselves through skyscanner and booking.com etc. So I think this type of offer is a great choice.
Greece is still mega popular with Russian holiday makers and maybe not as big a leap as say Thailand which might be too much for most.
I'd maybe try mentioning that the Ruble will go much further there. "Get more bang for your buck", "tight times? not if your in Greece" type thing.
Originally Posted by tomale
They have own planes fleet, own hotels and etc.
Even when I booked not their hotel (Centara Grand West Sands) at Phuket island, I spend like $5,500 for 12 days (3 persons, breakfast and diner included) + flights.
The booking.com price was $5,300
That's without flights.
And people that used booking complained that they don't have a free access to aqua park.
So, it's very hard to compete against big Russian agencies like Pegas and Coral.
Actually I once booked a very cheap package with so-so hotel in BKK through them and the price was cheaper the cheapest air tickets
One more thing: they usually provide direct flights from almost any medium Russian city.
I wish you all the best. Bookmarking the thread.
Let's catch up on Skype and see if I can jumpstart your campaigns.
Originally Posted by customs
They have own planes fleet, own hotels and etc.
Even when I booked not their hotel (Centara Grand West Sands) at Phuket island, I spend like $5,500 for 12 days (3 persons, breakfast and diner included) + flights.
The booking.com price was $5,300
That's without flights.
And people that used booking complained that they don't have a free access to aqua park.
So, it's very hard to compete against big Russian agencies like Pegas and Coral.
Actually I once booked a very cheap package with so-so hotel in BKK through them and the price was cheaper the cheapest air tickets
One more thing: they usually provide direct flights from almost any medium Russian city.
Originally Posted by miteshmuley
My Skype ID is egorp.eneset
I'll take all the help I can get.
Lunchtime update
A few learnings:
- I need to streamline banner creation. I reckon, a bunch of ready to use templates that can be quickly customised.
- I need some exposure to actual banners that work to spark the creative juices.
- Three hours a day fly fast. I need to figure out how to leverage my time ASAP. This probably means outsourcing and buying a few days a month off the day job in the form of unpaid leave.
- Momentum is everything. One lazy day can slow me down (even if it is my birthday).
Evening update
Everything is set up now.
I created a single campaign in
So far I have 12 ad groups in Decisive.
First four have two angle2 banners each plus I threw in the default banner provided by the network.
Geotargeted at whole Russia with WiFi/App, WiFi/Site, Mobile/App and Mobile/Site split as per appetiser instructions.
Another four ad groups target St.Petersburg only with WiFi/App, WiFi/Site, Mobile/App and Mobile/Site split with one banner.
Last four ad groups target Yekaterinburg only with WiFi/App, WiFi/Site, Mobile/App and Mobile/Site split with one banner.
This is due to banners having location info on them.
Let me know if it makes sense or I should’ve created all Audience/Connection combos as separate campaigns in
Set a smart bid as per appetiser instructions and default CPM to $0.26 (average for Russia on Decisive)
Hopefully the whole thing will start running tomorrow.
I can’t believe it took me so long to set it all up.
Going to bed one hour earlier to compensate for yesterday.
Now this is bizarre. The campaign is not yet approved but I am already getting some traffic.
The half of it is from the USA although I targeted Russia...
That traffic will be approval traffic - Decisive sends a bunch of clicks through when they're approving your ads. Not sure why they send so many, but you won't be (or shouldn't be) charged for them.
The whole campaign went to shit as Decisive don't allow direct liking to App Store.
I need to add some landers.
hey Egor, how are things going?
Been busy running stuff. Failed 3x banner campaigns, run one pop offer for a week, blew $200 on ZeroPark, got some data and tons of questions.
Will check in in a day or two with a report. Too focused on work now to do foruming
For now, please move away form decisive and zeropark, there is too much rubish traffic over there to get it in the green easy.
I'll be coming to Cebu soon.
It looks like my condo is going to be ready for turnover (if you live in Cebu you might guess which one is it).
PM me your contact, I'll get in touch when I am there.
Internet money in countries like Philippines is in the mobile, mobile and mobile again. They don't even have a computer but have two dual-SIM smartphones. If they are broke they will simply go to Ayala for a free Wi-Fi. Cebu is definitely less developed than Manila.
In Cebu you need to simply get an office with a fibre optic in IT park , like a friend of mine did. And buy XBox with few games. You employees will hand out in the office 24/7 just because the Interner is good and Xbox in allowed for one hour per day
I've taken completely different project in 2016, by the way, so this case study will be abandoned.
I've cancelled all the subscritions like
The plan I put in place is a content based site with a twist, combined with native ads and Facebook (I don't want to call it "viral" because "viral" was fucked to death already).
The site is only four days old but I managed to set up a little system for my two VAs and we are cranking two posts per day now plus a few shitty Facebook posts.
I set up a Facebook campaign for likes and got 150 for now. Was able to drive the costs down to 20 cents per like so far (beleive it or not, this is my first Facebook ad campaign ever). Lessons learned - people like boobs (and Facebook hates them).
Even with 150 like only, in four days I already see a few visits per day (and they click native ads, to my amazement).
The goal for now is to crap out content on a schedule without worrying too much about quality, virality or anything.
I set up a few campaigns on Mgid but nothing to report yet.
I have a few ideas how to monetise the site while I am building the audience so there's a lot of work.
The difference between this and shitty antivirus campaigns is it is fun, I can fully utilise my outsourcers and, at the end of the day, I have built some assets instead of simply flushing money down the traffic hole.
My membership will expire around 20 January. I will come back when I am profitable
If you want to keep in touch, my Skype is egorp.eneset and I am also in Native Ad Buzz group on Facebook (the only paid tool that I keep for now).
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