Step 1: Figure out Step 1 (6)
I'm 3 months into my AM career. I focus on it full time. So far, I have little to show for it.
My process has typically been:
- Ask AM for recommended offers
- Review, Research, Spy (ineffectively?) Offer
- Make 5-10 Banners
- Let her rip, generally to no avail, not even to a point where optimizing may help
In my hours upon hours of digging through as much material as possible, I've begun to get the sense you don't want to start with the offer at all, it's a limiting factor.
But rather, you start with the ANGLE. You develop as many angles as you possibly can and then test as many offers with as many angles as possible, regardless of square peg offers through round hole angles.
What do those earning steady revenue say, is starting with the ANGLE for a vertical the better approach?
Hi Billy!
No need to feel bad about having "nothing" to show for 3 months of work. It's not unusual for new affiliates to spend many months before they hit on their first profitable campaign. As long as you keep learning and keep testing, success will come.
Actually, there's nothing wrong with picking an offer first, and then planning everything else around the offer. It really depends on what it is you're wanting to accomplish. However, even with picking an offer first, you'll need to start off by brainstorming angles, and THEN base your creatives on them. To me, I see 2 general approaches when it comes to setting up camps.
1)Offers that are almost "one-of-a-kind", that you won't likely find a replacement for once the offer ends. This is typical of a lot of mobile app installs. For these, speed of execution is important. I would do my best to brainstorm for example 5-10 angles, write maybe 3 headlines per angle and create banners from them, and direct-link to see if any of the angles show potential. If so I'll keep testing and optimizing. If not I'd just move on. If I can't make it work in a short time I won't keep testing because it's not worth it for me, and the risks are too great - if it takes me too much testing to make the camp profitable, I may not recoup losses in time before the offer gets pulled.
2)Offers that are in "evergreen" niches/verticals. Sweeps and Antivirus are good examples. You'll want to test many angles, many offers and many creatives - as many as you need to to conquer that vertical. Because there will always be new offers for evergreen niches, you know your hard work will result in profits if you test enough to make a camp green. In other words time is much less of a problem and you're not risking having an offer go on pause and not being able to find a replacement.
For either case, ANGLES would be the first thing you'd want to come up with, because they are what will drive your banners and landers. The only difference is that with case 1, it may be better to just do one round of angle testing (do your best to come up with angles and if they fail move on), whereas with case 2 you should probably test as many angles as you can come up with because time is less of a constraint, and all that effort will be well-rewarded once you conquer that vertical because there will always be offers available.
I really should learn to be more concise - but hope that was useful!
Amy
I feel you man, i only just made a profitable campaign after 4 months of grinding, but tbh it's not even profitable, i'm just breaking even, and that's occasionally, but i know if you keep going and don't give up your in for a chance at what your looking for!
All the best my friend
Jack
@vortex That's very thoughtful stuff, I'll take comprehensive over concise here any day! This will no doubt help shape my approach moving forward. Thanks very much Amy 
@jack_k Thanks for the support. I don't expect it to be easy. I expect my brain, ambition, and bone headed determination to carry the day. It sounds like you've found a campaign with potential - that's exciting, I'd like to be there. Optimize, optimize, optimize. Throw new banners and LPs into the mix every day or two, right? Do you have a Follow Along? I might finally start one..
bit of extra stuff at the bottom, but for a quick read:
A note on the optimizing... there's always something to optimize... ALWAYS. Never focus on the money at first, just focus on honing your process. You will make progress, just have to go through the problem solving waterfall. What is actually your problem? Is it at the traffic source level, the offer level, the angles, the ads, the landers, the technical setup (servers/tracking/etc..). Figure out what your problem is, craft specific solutions to fix them, test and see where you end up.
*** extra stuff ***
Your offer is always going to be the first thing you weed out.... you can have the best funnels in the world (ads -> landers) but if the offer sucks, you won't make any money.
That being said, you should pick a vertical to focus on, and a few traffic sources you know work well for that vertical (either from spying or asking friends/aff managers).
Once you pick your vertical and traffic source(s) you could then go to your AM's and say "hey, what's working well on Facebook for games" (I don't run that, just an example). Do this at a few networks, spy on the sources and see what offers are running what networks they could be leading too, the angles they're using, landers, ads, take everything.
Setup their exact funnel, along with variations of that funnel (new lps/ads/headlines/etc..) and then also your own angles and twists.
Without knowing specific of your chosen vertical/sources, it is hard to give other direction, but generally I like to find the highest weighted variables of the funnel (source/placements/bidding strategies/etc...) and test those first. Then test everything else, but make sure to follow/develop a process around it.
Originally Posted by Adamw
I had started by asking AMs for mobile offers currently performing well, so never with respect to any specific vertical. Today I'll research and choose a vertical to focus on.
Great advice, thanks Adamw - got a good laugh out of the profile pic too!
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