Finding Good Offers vs. findind Good Ads (4)
Hey Stackerz!
It’s been a month and a half since I signed up and I’m really falling in love to AM, it’s kinda the alter-ego of philosophy in business!
Things are a lot, but at the same time…. concepts keep repeating themselves.
Sure, variables are endless; but if you narrow down the important things, the “To-Do List” is pretty short.
I'll soon start my journey, but I've got a question stucked in my mind at the moment:
Why people crave so much about “finding the right niche(s)”?
I get the connection between personal knowledge and passion, but I almost see it as an obstacle... Isn’t staying flexible better? Is it just an advice for beginners (to focus on few things) or is it more convenient in the long term too?
I get the importance of following a method, but I also got the idea that testing offers is maybe more important than testing 324 banners on a single offer. Right?
How much effort do you put in finding the right offer, and how much in finding the working banners?
I guess that “TEST, TEST, TEST” would be the right answer to my questions but hey, is this not the place of Big Minds?
I'll take a stab at your questions - would be interested in seeing other people's thoughts on these. 
-What angles work
-What kinds of images work
-What ad copy works
-Which placements convert the best
Having this type of experience can give you a real edge over less-experienced competition.
How much effort do you put in finding the right offer, and how much in finding the working banners?
Testing offers is important for sure, but without at least half-decent creatives and decent-quality traffic that is suitable for the offer, even the best offer won't convert very well. So your question on "how much effort to put into finding the right offer, and how much for banners" is really one question and not two - because the "right" offer will often only convert for the "right" angles. So you can't really find the right offer first and then find the right angle. (Exception is if you're promoting a product that already has very high demand, and the benefits are very obvious - those offers may still convert well in spite of crappy creatives.)
The exception to that is if you're running pop traffic for popular verticals like sweeps or browser apps or antivirus. For those, you can quickly test offers by ripping a bunch of landing pages from a spy tool like Adplexity and running some traffic to gauge promise. At least SOME of the most popular landers must work to a certain extent, so if the offer is good, it should at least get some conversions using these landers. So if I don't see at least some conversions, I'd just ditch the offer without a backwards glance.
A common problem for people starting out in AM or even in a new vertical, is they would test a single offer using a single landing page and a couple of ripped banners, and when they don't see conversions they wonder which link is the problem. If you choose a niche that has many offers you can test, you can minimize that problem by split-testing offers and creatives from the start - by including only proven offers and the most-often-used landing pages you see from spying - in order to maximize your chances of success. Once you see a promising offer (e.g. -50% ROI before any optimization), you could then run several rounds of offer split-testing and lander split-testing to drive the campaign into green or at least break-even, and then cut placements etc. that don't meet 30-50% ROI for example.
Banners though are a different beast. I don't know about other people, but when I rip banners they rarely work, which is probably because banners burn out quicker than landing pages do. But if you come up with enough angles, and create multiple banners from each, and test enough angles until you know which ones work - then you can churn out more and more banners using the same angles to improve conversion rates and combat banner burnout.
So then, for banner traffic, how many angles do you test before giving up? I know some of the big dogs would take an international app install offer and test a shitload of angles until they make it work, because they know the app has potential and the potential rewards are huge, and they have a team that can produce banners at the speed of light, and a big test budget to test them all. As for the rest of us who aren't at that level yet, I would recommend to set a sort of limit for yourself - for example if the offer is very solid and you know other people are doing volume, you may decide to test 20 angles x 3 banners/angle and call it quits if none of the angles show promise. This would be the better approach compared to what I see many new people do: Spend a couple of minutes to come up with all of 2 angles and 3 banners and launch the camp, then when nothing converts they're left with the question: What do I do now?
I haven't really answered your questions have I? So much would depend on the particular vertical you choose and other factors. But I hope I have at least provided some food for thought.
Amy
Wow Vortex! Thanks a lot for the answer, you've been more than exhaustive!
In fact, the "direct" answer to my question is here: the "right" offer will often only convert for the "right" angles. So you can't really find the right offer first and then find the right angle.
Anyway, you definitely gave me some more brain food 
Hi lukeexperience,
You are 100% right. When you are starting out in AM its better to test as many offers as you can than to test 300 banners on one offer. You are looking for gold and will have to filter through a lot of shit before finding it.
The chances of finding gold are bigger if you test as many offers as you can on a variety of (big) traffic sources. Its important to have a disciplined and structured approach to testing and to cut your losses once you see its not working. First Test, Then Invest. Equally important is to upscale any well-performing offer as fast as you can. Eventually every campaign will die out so its important to milk it when you can.
See losing money not as a failure but as a learning process. Once you have tested enough and are getting more experienced in the AM field, stick to one or max a few niches and traffic sources.
Home > General > Affiliate Marketing Forum