What to do on facebook? AWA left me more clueless than before (5)
What to do on facebook? AWA left me more clueless than before
Hello hello,
i just came back home from Affiliate World in Bangkok, my mind is racing and i do not know what do think anymore.
No, not from the ladyboys but from all the cool people I met.
And all this information I took in.
I'm pretty new to AM (6 months in) but not that new to facebook ads(1,5 years in).
I had some success (15k$ in profit) that I consider as proof of concept that AM works.
That campaign died down unfortunately.
So my plan for AWA was pretty simple:
Get to know Affiliate Managers.
Get the cool offers.
Make $$$.
Now I have about 30 Affiliate Managers pinging me on skype that all have the best converting and directest offers.
HOW DO I CHOSE THE OFFERS???
I thought about picking 10 that have a shared pixel or where I can use my pixel.
Then throw around 350$ at each offer and see what happens. If one of them picks up - it should make all my money back + profit. Right?
My next headache is: white hat or black hat?
I guess that 60% of the offers are black hat and 40% are white hat.
Initially I wanted to do only white hat because it is more easy (is it?).
But after talking to a lot of affiliates I have the impression that black hat is where the real money is.
And what hardens my suspicion is that literally every Nutra affiliate told me 'hey man it is too late to get into it now'.
So they just want no more people join their secret club right? 
Is it really that hard to get into black hat?
From my understanding it takes the following to do black hat:
Buy facebook accounts
Buy VPN/VPS to log into those accounts
Get Funding Methods for those accounts
Get Cloaker
Find some offers
Find Landers and angles
Make $$$
I'm sorry for the rant.. but i am still so overwhelmed and have no strategy lined up what to do next.
Best,
Daniel
Offer-wise I suggest to rely on your FB and AM experience and focus a bit more with that as a certain base to work from. Whitehat or blackhat, you need focus on some niche or vertical which isn't total strange to you I think.
Running nutra is very difficult, not only because of the heavy competition and FB banning this quickly. Just to build a good funnel and find the best campaigns isn't that easy. You need to know your copywriting well, that also counts for casino/binary/crypto offers, which are HIGH cpa's offers in general and really need unique and convincing prelanders.
If you start off with sweeps, dedicated lead gen or gaming for example it's easier to convert in general. This will motivate you more to continue and optimize on every part possible. The funnels are most of the time easier to setup and easier to adjust to improve results. Even e-commerce is becoming quite a "newbie" vertical since there is so much to read about, with very in-depth cases. This you won't find easily with nutra or casino.
For blackhat you can go the way you are stating, but less complicated is possible too. At least you know your bits here and there, but I suggest you specialize somewhere/somehow based on your on experience or certain preference/passion for a niche/vertical. I am afraid choosing 10 offers randomly wouldn't give you the results you might expect, since you are not really focussing and might not have to exact knowledge to execute the campaigns properly. Although I must say if you have enough time and you are a good multitasker it might work out.
*edit: I forgot to add the part of your home country. It's most of time the easiest geo to start with since you know the ins&outs/trends/culture etc.
To add to Stickupkid's excellent advice - where did you come up with the $350 number for testing offers from? That's a loooooot more than I'd assign to an initial test of any offer with a payout much less than $100.
Usually, I'd recommend dropping any offer that doesn't convert after 4x spend on desktop or 7x on mobile, assuming you're running a lander you're reasonably sure works and you've got data across a reasonable spread of placements if you're using a traffic source where that's relevant.
Testing a lot of offers is key: many offers won't convert or won't convert well enough, so you really need a system to mill through them. Vortex has written some excellent posts about doing this in the pops world.
Pick a vertical and a geo, learn learn learn, test a load of offers, and you'll hit success with one of them - white or black-hat. Honestly, from my perspective on the industry I wouldn't say either white- or black-hat is easier: it just depends on what works for you, and how well you exploit the advantages each approach brings.
I agree with stickupkid - although my experience with FB is far less compared to him.
Blackhat is getting hard. To continue to succeed at blackhat, you would need to be CONSTANTLY testing new methods to get around FB's increasingly-stringent algorithm and manual checks. What works today may not work tomorrow, and what works tomorrow may not work the day after.
If you've been doing blackhat for a while, and you have an extensive network of the biggest blackhatters to get the latest tips and tricks from, then maybe it would be worth it to continue pursuing blackhat. Even then, you'd have to have a strong heart to sustain all the ups and downs.
So, if you're deciding between blackhat and whitehat, I would definitely recommend testing whitehat. Start with 100% white, make it work, then you have the option of pushing the boundaries outwards to see how far you can get without going past the point of diminishing returns. For example, getting an account banned once every so often isn't a big deal compared to the extra profits you could be making by running multiple accounts on lower spend to stay under the radar. But getting large batches of accounts banned on a regular basis and having to figure out new methods to get around the latest algorithm tweak may not be worth the effort.
Whitehat may not have as much profits potential as blackhat, but in the long run it's like the turtle vs. the hare - your profits can build consistently, instead of going from high to zero back to high and back to zero again.
Amy
Let me post my take here too 
1. blackhat or whitehat ... It's easier to make high amounts of $ daily with blackhat, simply because the ROI is usually higher. BUT, you need to master the process and get used to the constant hide&seek game, deal with daily bans etc ... I hate this, so I stay away from it. For me, running whitehat is easier, because I don't have to deal with all the crap involved, you could say I'm sleeping better at night. BUT, I do make less money than the skilled blackhatters So it's also about your preferences and what you are comfortable with ... the truth is, both BH and WH approach can work and make you a lot of $$$.
2. too late for nutra ... usually it goes like this, people start in a vertical, make it work and the money flows in ... then it gets harder, they lose traction, burn out, fail to adapt ... and the financial gains are getting lower compared to the amount of work involved. SO to them, it all looks way harder than it did some time ago so they might say the party is over and it's to late to join. But you could find people who went through the same stages even before them and in the same vertical. If you enter now, you won't be comparing your results with the past performance, cause you don't have any history to look at, so you can only grow right now These things keep on repeating themselves, but it's usually not too late ... unless we are talking about a dying vertical, which nutra certainly is NOT. Harder... yes
But yes, there are definitely easier verticals to start with than nutra, stickupkid recommended a few good ones for example.
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