Giving back to the community: My learnings so far (8)
Hey guys,
as a noob, I have a one directed relationship with STM so far. I have so much to learn and not that much to give. But I will try with this post. This is for all noobs out there that may make the same mistakes I made. So here we go:
1) While a proper tracking solution is crucial, also make sure it's working properly. I'm still having issues with imobitrax sometimes. But any additional data you can get out of it is like gold. In retrospective, I may have decided for
2) If you are serious about an offer, try to get in directly. My very first adult dating offer I was promoting ran through a decent network with a $1.75 payout. I was having a hard time to break even until I found out that you can sign up directly with them and they were paying $3.5 for the same requirements. Seriously?? It's pretty much impossible to break even with HALF the potential payout.
3) Nowadays, there are many in this game that pretend and teach instead of really do. Yes, they may still be somewhat successful but not as successful as they pretend to be. As an original SEO affiliate I know this already and know where to look for. When you have people pretending success and actually focus on making money with their courses, forums, books, etc. chances are they are not on top of their real AM game. STM is the best resource I found so far. I have been member in various other forums. I would drop all free and public forums anyways and consider it a pure waste of time. Don't get me wrong with this one please.
4) When running RON on Exo, make sure that you target according to your budget. A budget does not mean anything there especially when your bid is the highest and there is a lot of volume. Also try to scale it down for testing and finding those sites that are useless or full of bots EARLY. I would say that such a list is the most important asset when running RON. If you always had to fight those sites and block them during the campaign, it's hard to make it worthwhile.
5) Try to build a team for banners and landers. I'm still struggling with this and wish to have a reliable team to outsource basic banner and landing page works to make my processes more efficient.
6) Don't even bother with 1st tier GEOs in adult especially on networks like TJ. I'm not sure how the big guys are doing it and how they can manage to pay that much (often with crappy banners too) but this is a game you can't win as noob. They must have twice the payout and 1000 times the budget to always force you to get out. Just my impression and I learnt early that this is not my playing field.
7) Establish a good relationship with your AMs. I do not have this on every network but I wish to have one. This is something I learnt in SEO affiliating very early. Treat them as business partners instead of your own employees.
8) Adult is a beast, I will try new verticals in October. Any advice is appreciated.
This is my short list of advice. I was starting exactly 1 month ago so I'm really a noob. But if someone had given me this on my very first day, I would have thanked him 
Cheers,
AJ
Thanks for the advice AJ ! Very good tips!
9) Develop a growth mindset. Enjoy failing and learning from it. I developed this early in my affiliate career. It is even more important with CPC than it is with SEO affiliating. I can't imagine being in this game for more than 2 days without having that mindset in place. I'd also consider myself lucky that someone handed me the book to learn about that.
10) Focus. Just focus. I'm the type of guy that enjoys doing a lot of things and this is my biggest burden. I have to fight this in CPC AM especially. I mean, there are so many opportunities. You have like 100 ad networks, 100000 offers, 25 verticals, mobile, desktop, redirects, popunder, and so on. If you can't focus, chances are you will try too much. So I ended up trying one campaign, did not like the results. Tried other ad networks, switched from mobile to desktop back and forth, etc. Yes, you have to test a lot but you must not lose focus. Otherwise you'll just hop from one station to the next and never really get into it. I hate to write this because it makes it obvious to me what is holding me back.
Thanks AJ! Very solid advice!
Amy
8. im always very surprised when people say this, somehow we find adult is easier than mainstream? is there something we dont know about mainstream???
4. for bots on exo, they mainly exist in the redirect and pop traffic
7. yes they are very important, why not build a system to work with them that would not require you as the owner to be present all the time?
6. alot of my friends keep testing tier1 when they dont even have xxxx/day profits, everyone should take effort to avoid this mistake and test tier 3 and tier 2 geos, they can give u that xxxx/day profit!!!
2. wow i didnt know there is such a big increase, going direct has not yet worked for us, maybe u can also try asking for bumps? maybe u could get more than 1.75, maybe 2.5? not close to the 3.5 u get, but sometimes going direct can take some time so this payout increase could hold out in the mean time.
Very good advice!
I'd offer a word of caution on going direct, though. Whilst it does offer much higher payouts, that's offset by higher risk to you. Most direct offers will pay out a lot less frequently than affiliate networks, for example. And wheras if you're with a network the network should pay you even if the advertiser vanishes / goes broke / decides they don't want to pay for some reason, if you're direct it's just you and the offer owner.
Search around STM to see a bunch of threads on going direct - here's one: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...dvertiser-Help!
None of that is to say that going direct is a bad idea. It can work very VERY well. Just be aware there are reasons that you get the higher payouts!
Originally Posted by caurmen
At this stage I do not care much but obviously you need to test offers across networks later.
11) Going the extra mile. I'd still consider myself a noob but what I learnt so far is that every campaign you want to set up "real quick" or are too lazy to do your research is doomed to fail. Sometimes, you get so excited with a new offer or because you see some affiliate pulling good money with a certain offer/ad combination through a spy tool, that you forget to think it through. Instead of leaning back, think about what you can do better, if the traffic source is really the best, if there might be an angle you have not thought of yet, doing some research about the offer first etc. - you just want to take action now and most likely you fail as quickly as you started.
Note for me (and others): While taking action is a fundamental step in AM you should still take your time and don't let your excitement get in control.
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