Having hard time coming up with motivation to keep going (12)
Hello, I have a bit of a problem here, maybe you guys can help me out.
I joined this forum in January and started reading a ton and also testing some campaigns around May-July. I was reading so much and trying that I kinda got burnt out.
I just couldn't grasp the entire concept of how to create profitable campaigns from scratch, I couldn't understand the exact testing framework from start to finish (for example test angles first or landers and budgets for each testing approach, testing methods, etc) and I couldn't really find a mentor who would "hold my hand". I was able to make profitable only one campaign on one placement, but the traffic soon stopped there.
I started in Australia and US geos, I think this, maybe, was my mistake... I lost around $2000 so far (not counting
I suppose my question is how do I get back that motivation to keep going and how can I best learn the testing methods to go from scratch to profitable campaigns? Also, how do I speed up my campaign creation process, it takes me days to launch even one campaign that will probably fail anyway.
I'm actually willing to make an offer: if I can find someone to help me and guide me in creation of a profitable campaign, I will give you 50% of the profits from it.
5 months ago my brother introduced me to STM and AM. Honestly I didn't know anything about AM, Domains, servers, ANYTHING. I rarely asked for help from my brother and went my own route. If you told me to rip a lander or track a campaign, I wouldn't even know where to start. After wasting money and many hours I kept going. Than 3 months ago I hit my first conversion...than 2 months ago I hit my first $100 a day...than some more. Campaign died, but it only took 3 more weeks and I was back at 2xx profit a day. That campaign died, 3 weeks later back at 3xx a day. Finally had a big day at 4xx. The awesome thing was I was learaning from all the failed campaigns and that is not something you can read on STM or have someone teach you. LOL That campaign also died! Today I am more motivated than ever...I've hit more verticals and offers now than ever because I SEE THE POTENTIAL! I think I may have broke even this month since I started. I think what I am getting at is keep going but learn from your campaign, if you sit idle for too long you will forget what didn't work for you and you will continue to make the same mistake. Hope this made some sense man...its late pzz.
Originally Posted by ocean25
You won't make the breakthrough if you don't launch campaigns, right?
The motivation has to come from within.
It shouldn't be as hard as you are making it sound -- if you are genuinely invested in the process.
If you are only interested in the end result, then everything will feel like an impossible slog.
The people who see positive results are generally those who are invested in the process and enjoy it for what it is.
My advice?
Pick one small detail in a campaign; any campaign; and get passionate about improving it. Force yourself to make a difference in some tangible way that gives you confidence to move on to the next variable.
Tip: Buy the guide in Finch's sig
I know its probably not what you want to hear (more reading), but I bought and speed read it yesterday and there is some brilliant information which will clarify the whole process for you. It literally covers everything you could possibly need to find a profitable campaign and then some more.
From a tough love perspective you also need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and man up, this whole industry is cut throat and full of sharks and any weakness is punished in an instant. You need to develop a winners mentality and then good things will start to happen. Negative thoughts only attract negative results so made a concerted effort to do positive things and it will start to happen for you.
Set yourself some little goals that are achievable and go from there, create a follow along and everyone will jump in to help you out.
Oh and you haven't lost $2k so far, you have invested and learnt valuable lessons which are the basis for going forward.
good luck 
Great advice in here already!
Especially in the beginning, but even now, sometimes I just feel like shit, like nothing works, just discouraged and down. It happens a lot.
What works for me is telling myself whatever is necessary to keep going. Sometimes I go logical - what you feel is just an emotion. Literally if someone would give you some pill changing the chemicals in your body, suddenly you would feel super optimistic and like you can change the world. So just embrace the loss of motivation and keep going with your brain, your rational mind.
Other times I tell myself stories of how it'll be when I have succeeded. Or even embracing "bad" emotions, like anger and greed, whatever it takes to keep going.
Or just going to sleep, in the morning it will at least feel neutral again.
Then start again , and again , day after day. And at some point it'll just happen and you'll succeed. That's just what it takes. Affiliate Marketing works. The one who can keep going even through phases of bad emotions and lack of motivation is the one who deserves to succeed. So do you want to be that guy, or not?
You also said you did not launch since June. What have you been doing? There must be quite some distractions, if you'd be fully focused on AM, you could not possibly spend so much time without launching. I'd recommend to get rid of any distractions, to set priorities what's more important to you, why and how you want to make it happen.
You can't just throw shit against the wall and hope something will stick.
If you don't believe in your camp, don't even launch it. But it has to be honest thinking.
That's probably why you burned through "big" budget already.
My advice will be sweet and short:
1)believe in yourself/your camps
2)do your best even if takes days
3)keep going..you will fail before success that is 100% proven.
Originally Posted by ocean25
The positive thing though is that you are now looking to team up. You just need to change your approach doing this: Start networking!
Signing up to STM was a good start, because you can join or start masterminds quite easily, but don't stop there. Keep in touch with the good guys you meet during these masterminds. Lack of motivation? Try to invest some of your $$$ and visit a meetup or conference. A lot of these nowadays being organised around the globe. Why not set a goal for yourself to make it out to Bangkok during early December? Seeing hundreds, if not thousands of likeminded people together exchanging ideas and such, definitely can give you a huge motivational boost. If you network effectively you might also bump into that guy (or gal perhaps) with whom you can build those profitable campaigns with...This might sound cynical, but I'm being dead serious: Teaming up is the way to go.
Hey!
You mentioned you lost $2000... you don't lose in this business, you invest. Every moment you spend reading in this forum or anywhere else, creating landers, banners etc etc is an investment towards your success. You may have not profited in your bank account, but you profited somewhere MUCH more important, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE.
When someone is ready to succeed in something, they don't need the motivation to move on. That's what I learned. There comes a time for everyone when they just want to get things done (I said WANT not "have to"). That time came for me in 2015. I want to have a kid but we struggle a bit with financials as we are now. My wife and I want to travel and see new places, we can't because of money. But we will, we promised ourselves that!
I love affiliate marketing and haven't made a single dime yet. As a matter of fact, my first campaign had 1 conversion (0.32c )out of the 600,000 impressions I sent. Did it matter ? No! Actually, I couldn't have wished for better results because that one campaign taught me 10 different things I SHOULDN'T be doing in a campaign Thomas Edison said " I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." That's when he invented the light bulb.
It's a big ass ladder you and I are climbing and the more we know, spend, see, experience, learn, lose, takes us higher up until we eventually reach the top and start hitting 1k-10k per day campaigns. Getting off that ladder right now will just make you climb another one right from the beginning again. Why would you do that when you're already half way up?
You can try teaming up with someone. I teamed up with my wife and she does all the photshop stuff and we discuss angles etc it's funner then you think.
"Losing" $2000 and failing forward is well worth it and we are doing the same thing right now and loving it. Even though every penny counts for us, we still love it and fail forward as hard as we can Keep investing, keep learning and look back at this post one day and laugh at it.
Keep it up buddy just keep moving forward.
Aris
$2000 is peanuts compared to what I've had to lose before I found my first profitable campaign.
I'm neither proud nor embarrassed about it. We all learn at different speeds. There's no need to compare with anyone else. I'd like to share with you the two facts I kept reminding myself of every time I felt like throwing in the towel:
1)As long as I don't give up, success is inevitable. The only way to "fail" would be to quit before I found success.
2)There are only so many major variables that jointly determine ROI. As long as I continue to split-test each variable continuously, the overall ROI must go up - and the combined effect of improving several variables at the same time is compounding!
Allow me to elaborate on that last part...(we learned this in zeno's 6-week AMC course)
The overall conversion rate, from impressions to conversions, is calculated as follows:
Ad CTR x Lander CTR x Offer CVR = Overall CR
Now, say you were to split-test each of these 3 variables. After one round of testing, say you were able to improve each variable by 15%. Just 15%. You can certainly achieve that and probably more!
And what do you think the overall CR would improve by as a result?
1.15 x 1.15 x 1.15 = 52% increase in overall CR!!
And that's if you're playing with display/banner traffic. For pop traffic you only mainly need to test landers and offers. And you're not going to stop after just the first round of testing - you'll test again, and again - and after a few rounds of testing you'll likely find yourself at least breaking even, or even in the green!
And once you find a good offer and have some optimized creatives, simply cut everything that don't give you the ROI you're shooting for - placements, devices, OSs, whatever else have you - and then scale that same offer + several of your best creatives to other sources, and get them translated into other languages and test other offers in other geos for the same vertical.
**************** WARNING: LONG TEXT AHEAD *******************
To further elaborate - since you mentioned not having a solid testing/optimization strategy - here's my quick and dirty campaign optimization process - which you can use as a base and modify as you gain experience:
1)Choose a Vertical, and a Suitable Traffic Type
Talk to your AMs, read some of the recent threads in the "Success Stories" and "Follow-along" sections. Also see this thread and this thread for suggestions.
Choose a vertical, ask your AMs for the best offers in that vertical, decide on a geo to start with, and find out what types of traffic work well with the vertical and choose 1-2 sources to start. Don't avoid competition at this point - choose sources that have lots of traffic. You'll be needing that for testing purposes.
2)Spy and Rip (uh...I mean "borrow")
For the type of traffic you've chosen (or even the specific traffic sources you've picked), do some spying either manually by browsing to sites and/or installing popular apps and opening them up (don't forget to set your VPN to your chosen geo), and/or by using spy tools/services. While spying:
a)Verify that your vertical is indeed popular on that type of traffic/source (which indicates they're likely to be a good match).
b)Click through the ads to see which offers from your chosen vertical are being pushed, and note down how many times you've seen each offer. If there are offers you're seeing again and again, you may want to sign up to them as well and add them to your testing. (To find out which affiliate networks carry which offers, search offer aggregators like http://odigger.com, http://www.offervault.com, http://www.affplus.com, and/or http://affbuzz.com.)
c)Make a note of the angles you're seeing people use. These will get your creative juices flowing for when you make your own creatives.
d)"Borrow" landers. Cast a wide net by picking ones that are entirely different in appearance and functionality.
e)"Borrow" banners you're seeing the most often.
Note: The reason I almost always suggest for new people to spy and "borrow", is so we can minimize chances of running into a catch 22 where the conversion rate turns out to be bad, and we have no idea whether it's the offer or banners or lander that's the problem. By including offers and creatives we see the most often while spying, we can better-avoid this problem.
3)Add Your Own Creativity
Do your own research on the offer type and come up with your own angles (there are a million and a half threads on that topic so if you're stuck just read some of them for inspiration). Create your own banners and landers, from scratch and/or model them after some of your "borrowed" creatives. For landers you may want to use the same themes and rewrite the ad copy to reflect your own angles. Read some threads on how to increase banner and lander CTR/CR. There are scripts / code snippets you can add to landers to make them more effective as well (go through this section). Make sure landers load fast (look up caurmen's guides on how to do that; and use a CDN).
4)Initial Round of Testing
-Set up a camp using 1)offers you found through spying + hottest offers recommended by affiliate managers, 2)banners and landers you ripped + those you created. (If there are too many offers / creatives, just pick some for the first round of testing. You can rotate the rest in later.)
-Can blacklist placements that look like budget-drainers (i.e. spending money without making revenue) - don’t need to cut using statistical significance at this point, but remember you may want to re-test these placements when you have better creatives and offer later. This way you can minimize testing costs. However, try not to cut so many placements that you’re left with too little traffic for testing. Exception to this “rule”: If you’re working with a traffic source that has massive traffic, you will want to blacklist aggressively from the beginning, or else testing could get expensive.)
-If you don’t have a bidding strategy, just try to bid higher than average to improve your chances of getting better-quality traffic. Set frequency to once every 24 hours to keep traffic quality high. In terms of campaign targeting, try to target broad at first to cast a big net - you’ll know what to cut later when you have enough stats.
-Use split-test calculator to cut under-performing banners, landers, and offers. Keep cutting until you’re left with the best few banners (if you only run one banner you risk fast burnout), the best lander, and the best offer.
5)Set Up Separate Campaigns to Optimize Major Variables
-Use the original campaign to test offers. Ask your AMs for more offers in the same vertical and geo.
-Set up a separate campaign to test banners. Use your current-best lander and current-best offer. Come up with a bunch of new angles, create a few banners per angle, and just mass-test them in this campaign. Also observe which angles did well in the initial testing, and create more banners for those angles.
-Set up a third campaign to test landers. Rip more landers, create more original ones, mod ripped landers, take the promising landers from initial testing and make variations.
-Every time you find a better lander than your current-best, replace the landers in the other 2 camps. Do the same when you find better banners, or a better offer.
-Keep optimizing creatives + offer until you’re breaking even or better, then proceed to next stage.
6)Cut Everything Not Doing Desired ROI
-Once you have a good offer and good creatives, cut placements that don’t meet your minimum ROI (do not set this ROI to 0% - take costs into account such as taxes, fees you pay when you make deposits to traffic sources and receive payments from affiliate networks, subscription fees you pay for tools like a tracker/hosting/spy tools). Note: When cutting placements, only look at stats for your best offer + best creatives. Also, if you’ve blacklisted placements before this stage, you may want to “unblacklist” some of them to retest them, and some of them may be profitable now that you have a better offer + better creatives.
-Once the worst placements have been cut, you may want to cut other stuff: OSs, devices, browsers, carriers, etc. (Note: For traffic sources that have massive traffic, you may want to cut these starting from the beginning to save on testing costs and to reach green more quickly. However, know that doing so will restrict your traffic volume, so only do this if volume and/or scaling is not an issue.)
-Once you have at least a month’s worth of data, you may want to day-part by time of day and/or day of week.
7)Scale to Other Sources
-Scale to other sources with the same traffic type, and test other traffic types.
-For each new traffic source, test the best few landers and banner angles - because creatives that perform the best on one traffic source won’t necessarily do the best on another.
-For each new traffic source, repeat the last step “Cut Everthing Not Doing Desired ROI”.
Other Notes:
Since you've already got $2k's worth of test data, this is what I would suggest you do right now: Look through your data, identify the best creatives and offers you've tested thus far, and start from step 5 above where you start one camp to optimize each variable. After a couple rounds of testing there's simply no way your ROI CAN'T go up (excuse the double negative)! If after a few rounds of testing for all variables you're still not getting satisfactory ROI (e.g. 30%+), repeat the process for a less competitive geo. It would be the equivalent of training and sparring with black-belts and getting your ass kicked, and then trying to fight a green/orange-belt instead. The traffic volume may be less but at if you expand to multiple sources and geos the potential to make big bucks is there.
***************** WHEW! ******************
Take it easy my friend! As you can see, everyone here is rooting for your success - look at all these people taking the time to leave words of encouragement and valuable guidance and advice the same day you started this thread. There's no need to get all serious about this - no need to give yourself pressure. Just do a little bit every day and keep feeding new test candidates into the optimization machines (i.e. your test camps) to continuously beat your controls and the ROI will head in the right direction. Everything will happen in good time. No need to rush anything. And for all we know, you may be a lot closer to success than you think you are.
Have fun with all this my friend! If you have further questions, we'll be here for you.
Amy
Go to a tony robbins 'unleash the power within' seminar
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/events/u...-power-within/
....oh, and man up and stop whining 
Wow, amazing responses, I really wasn't expecting such amazing advice. Thank you everyone! I'll get to work as soon as possible.
As for why I wasn't launching campaigns, I got a bit burnt out + at that time I had some personal stuff I had to deal with and only now I'm getting back into it again, however, I lost all momentum. Almost feels like I'm starting back at zero, but that's understandable. I know it sounds like excuses, but it is what it is.
I also have been barely going to the gym these past couple of months and I think this is also part of the problem, gym gives me focus, drive, resilience and motivation... I'm going to start going to the gym regularly again.
Thanks again for all these awesome responses!
What a bunch of ... no, just kidding I think most of us have been where you're at, at least I sure know I have. What I found immensely helpful was to start writing down my process with campaigns. When you're hands in the mud trying to find the first profitable campaign it's so easy to just keep refreshing stats and "optimizing" too early based on too few conversions. This happened to me a lot when I tried with geos that don't have firehose of traffic. Writing down your process, whatever it is, helps with this because now you've "rules" to follow. And here's the not so well-kept secret, the key is to iterate your own process from what you learn, not simply trying to fit other people's practices on you. STM is full of guidelines other people use but instead understand why something is recommended, test it and then integrate what works for you into your process.
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