Part #0 - The ultimate guide about POP-traffic! (20)
I wanted to write some articles about POPs for a long time. In the end, it all has grown in the large manual. I want to say that all you will read here - it's absolutely my thoughts and my experience. My opinion may not coincide with your, and it's ok!
All guide divided into parts to make you more comfortable to read it and accept the information. Each part - it's a certain level of the development of skills of the Affiliate Marketing. I recommend you to start from #0 part and move to the last, but if you feel that you already know what I wrote, you can skip this part and read the next.
This manual will be about POP-traffic, because it's my main way now and 90% of my time is POPs now. And I want to tell you how to start with pops, how to be successful. Because I think, Pops - the best way for newbies now. But before we will start working with pops, let me write a little bit about Affiliate Marketing in general, because you need it if you want to be successful person in AM. So, Let's start!
Affiliate Marketing = AM - buying traffic in Traffic Sources and subsequent monetization it in Affiliate Networks. If you are a newbie you can see a lot of unknown words, but it's ok, we will consider all of them! It will be a little later, let me tell you now what is a traffic in general terms.
Traffic = people. Do not worry, we won't do a slavetrade! Traffic source - it's a place where we can by traffic. Affiliate Network - it's a place where we will send our traffic. It's a company where we can find offers.
What is offers? Offer - company that have a site and want customers for their site. And this company is ready to pay us for each customer who do a required action on company's site. And we will work with CPA (Cost Per Action) model.
Example #1: There is a company that owns the online game. And they are ready to pay us for each person who signs up in this game. And we will get a fixed sum for each customer. It calls"payout". But payout can be not only fixed.
Example #2: There is a company that sells diet products. They have some products from $99 to $399. And this company will pay us 20% from each order. So if person buy a product for $250, we will get $50 from this offer (from this company).
So offers - it's companies which we promote and they pay us for each person who do an action (Registration, Mobile Subscription, Install, Order etc..). But on the other hand we buy traffic for these offers and a difference between spending and revenue - it's our Profit! So if we spent $50 for traffic and earned $100 in an Affiliate Network, our profit is $50.
But what Affiliate Networks do? They collect offers and combine Affiliates (us) and offers (companies that needs customers). How Affiliate Networks (AN) earn? They take 10-30% from each lead (action). So if an advertiser (a company that need clients) pay $100, we will get $80. And it's a normal thing. AN do a good work. Affiliate Marketing can't work with AN.
I want to warn you right away. Practically all affiliate marketing built on the aggressive advertisement. What it means? It means, that I will have to use rather aggressive images, text, description etc in your ads.
No one buy a product if you write "This product can help you to lose weight". But the text: "Doctors in shock! You can lose 15kg for only 2 week! Just try this product!", I think you guessed it, that this text will work much better than 1st. And if we want do get profit we need "embellish" our text and sometimes to say not an absolutely truth. I won't tell you about + and - of it, I just want to say that 95% of successful people who work with POPs use it. And if your morality does not allow you to do these things, stop read this thread and try to do sth else.
We are all - Affiliate Marketers or Affiliates of Affs. But not all people can be successful in AM. Next I will try to tell you what qualities do you need to be a successful person in AM. But! Don't worry if you don't have some of them, when I started to work I didn't have even 50% of them.
- The ability to analyse a lot of data and information. This is perhaps the most important quality that you need. After all our tests we need to check the statistics and make an optimization. What I mean by analysis? In our work we will use many different parameters: Offers, Landers, Networks etc... And also we will receive different traffic (different OS, Browsers, Carriers, Devices etc...), and we need to check how it's performing, because different parameters have different profit. You can run iOS, and it give you +40$, but you can also run an Android, and it give you -40$. So your total profit will be 0$. So we need to check it and turn off elements, which give us a bad ROI (a bad profit).
Under optimisation I mean campaign settings change after analysis. - The ability to take risks. After your 1st test about 80% of your campaigns will give you a negative ROI. And after we spent some money for test, we collected data, we can do an analysis and optimisation. But how you can collect this data? Only to spend money for test. And a big part of these tests will be negative, because you don't know what offer/lander/targeting to use.
- Sociability - it's one of the best skills which can help you in your work. In an Affiliate Network you will have an Affiliate Manager - it's a person who will help you with your questions, approve your offers and do other things for you to achieve a good revenue in this network from you. A manager has a lot of data, he knows what offers are the best, what sources you can use for the best performance. And you have to speak with him, ask questions, tips etc. And sometimes he can give you good tips and help you a lot! You have also to speak with other Affiliates on forums (like STM
), help each other and ask question. - A base knowledge of English. But I think if you read this forum and understand my English (which is so bad
), you have a good knowledge - The ability to create your own creatives (texts, images, banners etc). When you start to work in AM, you will see that 80% of people are using same Landing Pages, Banners etc. Is it ok? Yes, it's ok if you're just starting and don't know what works good. But if you want to get a real success in AM you need to think differently than other people to create something new which people didn't see yet. And be ready for a extremely good ROI
- A base knowledge of HTML/CSS. Only basic things! If you want to create sth big, you can find a lot of programmers who will make it for $ (not too much).
- Patience. That is what I don't have If you want fast money - you're not on the right place. Before you get a good profit you need to work a lot, make optimizations. It' takes from 1 to 10 days. And you need to wait some time before your camp give you a good ROI. That is not a secret that about 20-30% you can't optimize and it will be turned off. It's a part of our game.
I just want to tell you that work in AM - it's not an simple thing. In fact, there are many pitfalls which can discourage you. But let's talk about pros!
- You can work from anywhere. You need only computer/tablet and internet.
- You can work with any country. For example: Asia, EU, US etc. All countries are open for you.
- Big opportunities of earning. The more you spend on advertising, the more you get from Affiliate Network. You can easy make xxxx$/day and more.
- The relative stability. If you have some optimized campaigns if you can just top up the balance and get stable profit. But not in 100% cases! You still need to work. There are no stable things in our life.
- Work in AM can really develop your creativity, intellect, because that is not a simple pressing the button. You need to think a lot and work with big volume of information.
Now let's speak about cons:
- You depend on AN and offers. If offer stops you have to stop your campaign. So you won't get any profit and you have to search new offers. But it's a part of the game.
- Risks. You can easy get a bad ROI. Even after optimization. Especially if you're not thinking what you do. Therefore you need at least $500-1000 on start.
- You need to work, work and work again. That is not a simple pressing the keyboard as I said. You need to analyse every day, think a lot about your campaigns!
But if you're just starting to work with AM and if you are full of wish - TRY! I and STM will help you to achieve a good result. You won't get a good profit if you don't start.
So guys, it was only 0 part of my guide. I'm working now on other parts where I will tell you about traffic, LPs, Servers, Trackers, Sources etc.
You can ask all your questions here. And sorry for my bad English.
Next part: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ut-POP-traffic!
Very much looking forward to the rest of this series mrbraun. I just read one of your other guides and it was excellent, as is the start of this one.
And please stop saying "Sorry for my bad English" after writing such a great piece ! Nothing wrong with your English at all.
Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into teaching us noobs. It's highly appreciated.
Originally Posted by simant
Appreciate you sharing your knowledge, thanks
good stuff!! looking forward to the next part!!
@mrbraun - This is a good basic overview for beginners and I'm sure it will help the newer people, thanks for the contribution. I did want to mention a small disagreement or perhaps more clarification on your statement..
"Practically all affiliate marketing built on the aggressive advertisement."
I understand your post is tailored to pop campaigns but your statement gives the perception of affiliate marketing as a whole. While a large majority of CPA ( cost per acquisition) affiliate marketing leans to the aggressive side, of course not all of it does. And there are other methods of affiliate marketing that certainly fit honest strategies and you do not have to juggle the morality line, such as CPS (cost per sale).
In the end, your morality level and approach is set by your personal preference. There are pros/cons to either path and with either path you can make good money.
To the new affiliates reading.. I just wanted to balance mrbraun's statement to show that you don't have to cross any moral lines and can still make affiliate marketing work. The most important aspect is to understand the principles and learn how to market, then you can apply these skills to many methods that can make you money.
Thanks mrbraun for the contribution!
Andrew
Thanks so much , just have question where can i get traffic source?
For anyone worrying about needing aggressive marketing to run affiliate campaigns - I wrote a post a while ago about ethical, white-hat affiliate marketing, and what verticals work with it.
Here it is: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...light=whitehat
FYI, I know some VERY large affiliates who run white-hat, not black-hat, campaigns. It's still doable and it's still doable at scale, although you may have to step outside the usual affiliate verticals to do it.
Nonetheless, this is a very useful post, regardless of your shade of hat!
(And I agree, the English is perfectly OK - I've seen writing from plenty of native English speakers that's substantially worse than yours!)
Love it. I look forward to the next part.
Every newbie needs to read this!
Thanks mrbraun for yet another fantastic post!
Amy
Fabulous post. Was a much needed read.
I cant wait to read the rest of the guides!
add me skype: tzula44
I wanna pitch with you
thank you so much, i can not wait to read the rest contents.
What is sth?
Originally Posted by intheflow
Amy
Hi
Thanks for putting this guide together. I see that this was created in 2016. I’m also following Amy’s 2019 guide.
She also has done a great job. I just want second opinion. 2 questions:
1)Is your guide relevant today i.e 2020.
2) Are you still doing POP and is it profitable as I have noticed lot of affiliate move to PUSH.
Thanks
Sanjay
Originally Posted by sanjay
While waiting for @mrbraun himself to chime in, here are my answers to your questions.
1)Most of it should still be relevant. However, pop has become a lot more competitive/saturated in the last 3 years (since the guide was originally written). You'd need to do a lot more testing and become efficient in optimizing your campaigns.
2)Yes, a lot of affiliates are doing push as it's all the rage (it was throughout 2019). But there are affiliates that are still making consistent profits. See @jaybot's follow-along for example:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ead-guaranteed
Also: Pop and push are similar, so for a very green newbie, it may be good to learn pop first anyway, and then graduate to push. Basically, pop = lander -> offer, and push = ad -> lander -> offer, so push = pop + ad. And it's easier and cheaper to learn pop first because it a)has one fewer variable (i.e. the ad), and b)is cheaper to run as offer payouts are lower and traffic is cheaper..
Hope that helps!
Amy
Thanks Amy!
Another question. I read jbot thread. I assume he was doing POP. I know AM is going to require a lot of testing and optimize but jbot was playing with pop is that why it took a lot offfff testing and optimization. Would PUSH give better results with that much of effort.
Again thanks Amy for answering all my questions.
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