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Are you overprotective of your campaigns? Afraid of being copied? Stop it! (17)

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This thread is my 3rd follow up from this thread posted by Amy (Vortex): http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...Avoid-(Part-2) and particularly the Mistake #10: Being Overprotective of One's Campaigns.

The previous 2 follow ups were :

1.Mistake #5: Challenging Competitive Geos : http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ve-TIER-1-GEOs
2. Mistake #7. Maximizing ROI Instead of Profits : http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ad-Why-is-that

So let's get started with this one:

ARE YOU BEING OVERPROTECTIVE OF YOUR CAMPAIGNS?

We see it all the time here on STM, on networking conferences, in mastermind groups … affiliates love to act as mysterious people, revealing as little as possible about their campaigns. We are doing business in a world, where revealing ones traffic source equals to having sex in a public place, in front of a large audience

Newbies quickly adopt these habits, refusing to give out any details about their -80% ROI campaign, even if they life depended on it. They spend hours on making blurred screen-shots, copying data into excel to not reveal their affiliate network and whatnot … But how are we supposed to help them, when we don't know what they are doing?

There are good reasons for hiding info about your campaigns and there are good reasons to share that info too. You need to realize when is the right time to start hiding stuff and when you are just being overprotective and effectively slowing down your own progress.

NEWBIES DON'T NEED TO HIDE PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING.

Are you just starting out, learning the ropes and trying to understand the system? Please, be as open as possible at this stage. We want to help you and trust me, we are not looking to steal your campaign, certainly not when it's -90%.

Your banners and your LP's are most likely bad, this is pretty much guaranteed, we can help you improve them … if you show them to us.

You most likely didn't discover an affiliate network with some super secret offers either … don't be afraid to share what offer you are testing, what network they are from … maybe you're pushing a re-brokered offer that is available “direct” somewhere – but we won't know unless you tell us what you're pushing.

As a newbie, you are looking for help from experience people and you are offering NOTHING in return! These people want to help you, but DON'T make it complicated for them, they are busy with their own campaigns and don't have time for solving your puzzles.

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU BE HIDING?

Even thou I advice to share as much details as possible, when asking for help, the golden rule is to reveal only as much as you have to. So for example, in case you're trying to solve cash-flow issue, we don't need to see your banners. In case you're looking for a host, we need to know something about your volume and traffic type, but offers or banners are not important now. Use common sense here

Obviously, once you have something that works well for you … this is the stage where you need to keep as much information as possible a secret. Because, let's admit it, affiliates love to rip stuff left and right and revealing your profitable campaigns in a place where everybody can see them, would equal to inviting your competition to go medieval on your ass

NOTE: With the ever improving capabilities of various spy-tools, you stand pretty much 0 chance to completely hide your stuff from your competition. Once you have something that works, make sure to scale the fuck out of it as soon as possible, instead of wasting time by trying to protect it. It's like fighting the windmills, you can't win. You have to act faster and smarter.

WHAT ABOUT THE BAD BAD NETWORKS, THEY STEAL STUFF ALL THE TIME!

Another very popular topic is whether affiliate networks or traffic sources steal affiliate campaigns. Many affiliates blame sudden campaign deaths on their funnels being stolen by someone.

So first of all, your campaign really can die in case someone copies the whole funnel and takes it to the same traffic source. This ripper could bid higher than you and that's about it.

But, this is something newbies shouldn't worry about again and the reason is very simple – whoever is looking for campaigns to rip/steal, they will look after LARGE campaigns run by experienced affiliates.

Only an idiot would steal a campaign that is 10 leads per day “large” and loosing money. The fact that you are starting affiliate with only small volume, actually protects your campaigns from being stolen by those who could see the data (the networks).

On top of that, stealing a campaign is not THAT easy. The networks see your data, but they don't know all the details.

Affiliate network can see what you are promoting, but they don't know exactly how you are promoting it. They can reverse engineer LPs, they can also browse the known sources and look for your banners, but they still won't be able to get your complete targeting.

Traffic sources see more, they see your creatives, they can click through to see your LPs and even check what offers you are promoting. But they still don't see how many offers and LPs you are running, they don't see how often you are changing them. You might have better payouts too …

Tracking is another step where the data could leak, they see a lot of stuff too, including offers, LPs, traffic sources. They could even analyze what kind of traffic is working well for you, including placements … if anyone, these guys have it all on a plate.

BUT – trackers are also the ones that could suffer from a data breach affair the most. One proven case of a stolen campaign and they are done. They would be risking the most. Any major tracker now is paid monthly, so their income is the most stable, without having to worry about campaigns dying … I'm pretty sure they don't want to risk loosing it.

But it all comes down to the people, right? There is no way to be 100% protected against possible campaign leak, but you can minimize the odds of this happening – don't pass data to the networks that they don't ask for – banners or LP ids … keep them to yourself. Don't use conversion tracking offered by traffic sources, unless you really have to …

Let me repeat one thing tho – this is something you should worry about, only once you become a BIG affiliate, sending volume large enough to get noticed.

On top of that, every campaign will die at some point, so instead of worrying about my current campaigns to get stolen, I always test new ones. So once some stop converting, I can come up with new ones quickly. If someone want's to steal the dying ones … well more power to them

SHOULD YOU EVER REVEAL YOUR PROFITABLE STUFF AT ALL?

Remember how I said you need to be as transparent as possible, in order to get help from experienced people, that you're offering nothing in return to?

This could change as soon as your experience level reached theirs – now you have something to offer them.

As an experienced affiliate, you can form mutually beneficial relationships with many other affiliates. Are you running POPs and want to learn Facebook? Find someone who knows Facebook and want's to learn POPs … show them how to profit in your area and demand the same from them.

If it requires revealing some of your profitable campaigns, so be it, just make sure you're getting a COMPARABLE amount of value back. It's advisable to double check who you are making a barter like this with, but it can really push you further.

Masterminds are another prime example of when it's crucial to play with all your cards revealed. Hiding stuff from the other group members will effectively kill pretty much any mastermind. The core idea of a mastermind group is to work together on the same goal, which can't be achieve when secrets are involved.

LET'S SUM IT UP A BIT, SHALL WE?

As always, there are some basic rules or best practices that you should follow, so let me sum it up for you again.

1. Don't worry about being copied when you are starting out. You're not worth it, yet! And I'm not saying that to insult anyone. That's just how it is, those that live by ripping stuff will copy profitable guys, not newbies who are just learning.

2. When asking for help, reveal all the data that is RELATED to the problem you need help for. Don't spend hours on blurring out stuff on LOOSING campaigns, nobody wants to copy those. AT the same time, don't give info that is not needed … keep it simple and don't confuse those that are willing to help.

3. Don't be obsessed with protecting your stuff from affiliate and traffic networks. It's not that easy for them to copy everything. And on top of that, there are spytools that you can't really fight anymore.

4. Consider revealing even your profitable campaigns to those who can return the favor and provide similar value. Same goes for masterminds, its a game to be played with your cards revealed.

5. Place your focus on working smarter, harder and more effective. Always think one step ahead, instead of wasting time by protecting what works for you for the moment. Every campaign dies at some point, be prepared.

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Good tips Matej, finally someone wrote it down.

Someone who is starting out should really not worry about being copied, no one wants to copy a campaign that's losing money and the point of follow along is to help you out guys, not to copy you. Seriously.

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amazing! Great work Matuloo!

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matuloo your posts are on FIRE!

Awesome.

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I could not agree more with this. Indeed, I'd argue that being overprotective of your campaigns is the biggest mistake you can make as a newbie.

When you're running a follow-along, you'll progress so much faster if you show the banners, landers, offer, whatever that you're using. I've seen so many Follow-Along campaigns where someone's been failing to get conversions, they finally showed their landers, and there were a dozen or so easy tweaks and improvements they could make that they could have added weeks before if they'd showed their landers from the start.

There are people with massive expertise here on STM waiting to help you - take full advantage of that opportunity!

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I start to enjoy writing more and more Just the topics are harder to come up with ... I wish people would suggest some more often

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Great post, Matuloo.

Well then my friend, if you don't mind here is one topic you could touch on...

Banner creation & optimization - I know there's a couple threads on this topic already, but none of them go in depth and talk about how they create or optimize banners after their first run.
Note: By "create" I'm not talking about how you make them in photoshop, I'm talking about how you decide to put a banner together, the image, headline, layout etc...
Things you could write about = What variable/s do you pay the most attention to on your banners - How do you decide on how many sites/placements to run the same set of banners - What do you change on your banners when you optimize. -- (I'm suggesting this topic because I'm personally finding it stupid difficult to start a campaign because i can never decide on how many banners to start with or how many times do I test the same headlines, images and layout of the banner, or what variables to change on the banners once I have data coming in.)

Would really like to see how you approach this process. I think other newbies, like myself, would find this very useful.

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Solid thread topic for sure, let me think if I can put something like that together

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Also, what are the top 10 common mistakes people make on landing pages that are guaranteed to lower conversion rates

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I'm not sure I'm skilled enough for this, maybe shishev would be more qualified for this one

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Great post! Should probably be stickied in all the follow-along sections.

I'm definitely not hugging every follow-along in here, but when I do post something and it turns into one of those cases where the OP starts PM'ing half of the info to the mods, then... yeah it's hard to stay committed to such a follow-along.

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Could be a good idea actually, hiding data in followalongs really makes it complicated to help someone.

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Thanks sooooo much, I just beginer affiliate. I read and did feel pain but i realized that all of these were RIGHT. I will keep my mind open and never hide any details. STMforum right here for help all beginers.

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Great read and everything you said it's true. I think my "fear" would be not sharing enough valuable information to the point no one could offer advice but like you said on another post, less is more if its worded correctly.

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Yup, we don't need to see literally EVERYTHING, but we need to see all the important stuff

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I like this advice very much, I just bumped into this thread and I will definitely go through previous ones as well to see which mistakes you have highlighted there. I especially like the part where you explained some rules of transparency when it comes to sharing some affiliate marketing-related knowledge. It's absolutely true that many affiliates are hiding their campaigns and method they use like someone is chasing them, and it's really hard nowadays to get to some useful, real-life experiences. I never saw it that way, as you said in the conclusion, rarely who is that special that can't be copied at least at some point, and if someone will copy you, that doesn't mean you'll lose your profit, it's just proof that you're doing something well.

Also, some good suggestions for newbies can be found here as well, as they really sometimes can't find the perfect measure and figure out what they should share and what's not that important, it seems like this is something that they often lack to do, so this article as some sort of a guide can be really helpful to them. It's not always easy to read this, but it's necessary, it's the only way for us to improve in what we're doing and change our tactics while communicating with other affiliaates.

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Thanks

Yup, while it's true that experienced affiliates definitely don't want to share all the juicy details such as creatives, offers and sensitive data (totally understandable btw), it's absolutely not making sense for the newbies to follow this trend

True, some things might be "hard" to read, but thats the way it is.

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