intermediate newbie questions (2)

Hi All - I recently joined STM forum and am really impressed by how helpful it is. I'm also glad that it seems very realistic, lots of good info with way less hype than most such AM forums.

So I'm starting to take a serious shot at AM and I'd like to get some advice/recommendations on a couple things. My situation is as follows: I am a very experienced software professional (Principal SW Engineer/Sr Director level) so I have no problem with the technical side of things (hosting, web development, any form of SW development, etc) and I can afford to invest a moderate amount of money to get things going. (What is "moderate" you ask? If it takes $5-$10K invested before I become profitable that's ok - I'm wouldn't be thrilled about throwing away $20K but I'm not going worry about a few $K, anyway you get the general idea). I have done some paid advertising and AM in the past, years ago it was banner ads and Adsense on my sites, more recently it was mostly some Clickbank programs run on Facebook and Bing, but my limited efforts were not terribly successful. I hope to change that using better traffic sources, and better strategies like those I have discovered here.

Bottom line: I'm not a complete newbie, and certainly on the technical side I'm pretty experienced, but I'm pretty new to some of the AM strategies that people seem to be using in 2017.

So after spending a bunch of time reading through the great tutorials and forum posts here, my initial plan of attack is as follows, with some questions:

1. I will focus on mobile offers like PIN submits. It looks like two good choices for affiliate networks here are Mobidea and kimia. Are these two good to start with or are there others?
2. Traffic source is popups/popunders, since apparently this is the easiest lowest risk way to get started. The two networks that people seem to recommend are PopAds and propellerads. So, two questions: (1) Is this still the best type of traffic to get started with, and (2) are these the two best popup networks to use when getting started?
3. Since I will be focusing on mobile, my spy tool should have good mobile intelligence. I got a trial to whatrunswhere.com, but it looks like this is much more focused on big brand advertisers. It does not look that great for affiliates. I see that many people here recommend adplexity. It appears that adplexity has 3 versions: mobile, desktop, and native. I assume I want the adplexity mobile? Is there a single adplexity version that gives me access to all 3 (mobile, desktop, native) or do I have to buy each separately?
4. Since it appears that for mobile offers, it is good to start out using GEO targeting to level 3/4 countries like Malaysia or Turkey or Brazil, I will want tracking software that is GEO load balanced. I am leaning toward using Thrive Tracker hosted solution. Is this a reasonable choice?
5. I will almost certainly do direct linking (ie not use my own landers) for now. I have no problems creating and setting up landing pages and I have a VPS account at DreamHost I can use, but for now I'm leaning toward direct linking. Is this a reasonable strategy in the PIN submit space or will I have better results with my own landers?
6.From what I read here on this forum, mobile offers with direct linking are good to "learn the ropes" of AM, but tend not to be very profitable, at leat ot without lots of testing and even then only for a short while. The tradeoff is you learn what to do without spending too much money. On the other hand, I'm not a complete newbie (more of an early-intermediate but thus far unprofitable AMer) and I'm not operating on a shoestring budget. So in my situation, is there another strategy that might be more appropriate and/or offer higher probability of success, even if I have to make my own landers? At one point I thought I should start with Native Ads and I joined RevContent, but I hear it can get expensive quickly to learn the ropes there. What about Desktop?

Anyway, I'm open to any advice/recommendations that more experienced folks here can offer.

Originally Posted by westofpluto

Hi All - I recently joined STM forum and am really impressed by how helpful it is. I'm also glad that it seems very realistic, lots of good info with way less hype than most such AM forums.

So I'm starting to take a serious shot at AM and I'd like to get some advice/recommendations on a couple things. My situation is as follows: I am a very experienced software professional (Principal SW Engineer/Sr Director level) so I have no problem with the technical side of things (hosting, web development, any form of SW development, etc) and I can afford to invest a moderate amount of money to get things going. (What is "moderate" you ask? If it takes $5-$10K invested before I become profitable that's ok - I'm wouldn't be thrilled about throwing away $20K but I'm not going worry about a few $K, anyway you get the general idea). I have done some paid advertising and AM in the past, years ago it was banner ads and Adsense on my sites, more recently it was mostly some Clickbank programs run on Facebook and Bing, but my limited efforts were not terribly successful. I hope to change that using better traffic sources, and better strategies like those I have discovered here.

Bottom line: I'm not a complete newbie, and certainly on the technical side I'm pretty experienced, but I'm pretty new to some of the AM strategies that people seem to be using in 2017.

So after spending a bunch of time reading through the great tutorials and forum posts here, my initial plan of attack is as follows, with some questions:

1. I will focus on mobile offers like PIN submits. It looks like two good choices for affiliate networks here are Mobidea and kimia. Are these two good to start with or are there others?
2. Traffic source is popups/popunders, since apparently this is the easiest lowest risk way to get started. The two networks that people seem to recommend are PopAds and propellerads. So, two questions: (1) Is this still the best type of traffic to get started with, and (2) are these the two best popup networks to use when getting started?
3. Since I will be focusing on mobile, my spy tool should have good mobile intelligence. I got a trial to whatrunswhere.com, but it looks like this is much more focused on big brand advertisers. It does not look that great for affiliates. I see that many people here recommend adplexity. It appears that adplexity has 3 versions: mobile, desktop, and native. I assume I want the adplexity mobile? Is there a single adplexity version that gives me access to all 3 (mobile, desktop, native) or do I have to buy each separately?
4. Since it appears that for mobile offers, it is good to start out using GEO targeting to level 3/4 countries like Malaysia or Turkey or Brazil, I will want tracking software that is GEO load balanced. I am leaning toward using Thrive Tracker hosted solution. Is this a reasonable choice?
5. I will almost certainly do direct linking (ie not use my own landers) for now. I have no problems creating and setting up landing pages and I have a VPS account at DreamHost I can use, but for now I'm leaning toward direct linking. Is this a reasonable strategy in the PIN submit space or will I have better results with my own landers?
6.From what I read here on this forum, mobile offers with direct linking are good to "learn the ropes" of AM, but tend not to be very profitable, at leat ot without lots of testing and even then only for a short while. The tradeoff is you learn what to do without spending too much money. On the other hand, I'm not a complete newbie (more of an early-intermediate but thus far unprofitable AMer) and I'm not operating on a shoestring budget. So in my situation, is there another strategy that might be more appropriate and/or offer higher probability of success, even if I have to make my own landers? At one point I thought I should start with Native Ads and I joined RevContent, but I hear it can get expensive quickly to learn the ropes there. What about Desktop?

Anyway, I'm open to any advice/recommendations that more experienced folks here can offer.