I have decided to start my first few campaigns and document them for help, support, accountability, and maybe someday inspiration.
I currently work in marketing for a music venue, utilizing FB/Twitter/Email among other avenues.
However, I have always wanted to be self employed, and have the freedom to travel while working. Thus the journey into affiliate marketing. I know my way around photoshop, although I would not call my self a master. The rest of this I am just now learning from LP creation to tracking to testing. I had spent a month trying to learn general information about affiliate marketing through popular blogs like Attila/Charles Ngo/ Malan Darras and forums like affiliate fix. However, was still super confused but determined. STM has really got a great framework to work off of and I thank everyone that has contributed to it!
I have decided to follow the Pops/Redirects 101 (A Step-by-Step Guide) as a guideline for my first few campaigns.
Traffic Source: Zero Park
Vertical: Surveys was also considering doing Sweeps
Tracking: Prosper (for now)
I have been having quite a time creating my first landing pages from scratch. I haven't had too much luck using a VPN to spy on LPs pertaining to the Vertical I decided on. So I think I am just going to use some of the premade resources here and just launch some stuff while I continue to get a feel for Muse and search for relevant background images.
Even with my inability to create an LP I just wanted to jump in and start getting my feet wet earlier this week.
So I did a direct link with a stock banner on my first campaign.
Day 1: 9/16/2015
Impressions: 39 583 Clicks: 249 Conversions:2
Cost: 6.20 Rev: 1.60
I had got my first conversions, on my first day and was super pumped. Cue Rap Music.
My CTR was .6%.
I figured if my conversions were almost 1% all I had to do was get more clicks at a more focused rate.
The next few days I spent about $2 a day trying to hone in on who was clicking on the ads.
Fast forward 4 days later
Saturday 9/19/2015
Impressions: 11 203 Clicks: 253 CTR: 2.2583% Cost:2.2406
I was able to improve my CTR %, however I have had no conversions.
With a 1% conversion rate I still would have had a -ROI, but I was happy that I had got the CTR up.
I've Paused the campaign and spent the entire day trying to learn adobe muse and just ended up never being happy with the background I had.
Anyway over the next 1-2 days I plan on creating about 3-5 LPS running them as either pop up/ pop unders and testing them and looking at results. I will probably post them here for feedback/suggestions.
Also, if any other newbs read this I would be interested in forming a mastermind group with some extremely driven individuals.
Anyway that's all for today, back to Muse and the attempt to create some LPs.
Cheers!
Your lander needs some work. I think at this point you would be better off spying as much as you can and copying something to start with. Right now it seems like you don't really have the experience just yet to create a lander from scratch. Things like writing copy and making your site look 'professional or easy on the eyes' comes with time. If you want a good shot at making money from the start, just spy for something so you can get a decent head start and learn from that. Otherwise you will be fighting an uphill at the base of a giant mountain while everyone is starting at the halfway point.
@beerbelly you still need a lot of work on your lander. What is the offer name? Does the offer page look like your lander?
@beerbelly - Is that the first lander that users will see popping up? If so, I'd recommend changing its focus and simplifying a lot.
Remember, on a pop source, you're interrupting the user. You need to GRAB their attention and do it fast.
That second lander isn't terrible by any means, and once you have more interested traffic it could work. (The "Can you use websites like Facebook?" line is really good as a qualifier for the demographic.) But you'll probably find it's nowhere near aggressive and grabby enough to work on pops.
You could try a lander that opens with "Can you use websites like Facebook?", thinking about it. That's a good opening hook - people love answering questions. Then dive right away into the value proposition, presented as strongly as you can.
Hope that helps!