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Family guy pursuing financial independence - my shot at affiliate marketing (27)

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Hi there everybody! First of all, I would like to thank all the members in STM forum for creating such a helpful and informative community. I have been lurking around in the forum for some time now (joined in mid july 2018) and decided that in order to boost my progress/motivation and hopefully give something back to the community, I will start my own follow-along. I will try to be consistent and document my thoughts, actions, worries etc regularly.

Personal background info
Before jumping into the affiliate marketing world, a short introduction about myself, so that you know where I am coming from and also heading towards. I am a 30 year old male from Eastern Europe, married to my loving wife, with whom we created the most beautiful living being ever - my currently 6-months old baby girl. I love them both to pieces. We also have a cat, who most of the time is a gigantic ***hole. But I still love her too.

After graduating university in the field of information technology in 2010, I started work in the same specialty. I think it is worth mentioning that I am not a programmer by occupation, but over the years I have still obtained knowledge that has definitely helped make the start in affiliate marketing easier.

When I was a bit younger, life was all about partying and having fun. And those were good times, no denying that. However, somewhere around the end of 2015, I became fascinated with the thought of financial independence (FI) and my thinking and actions become much more focused. At current point, I feel that FI is not the end goal anymore, but rather a tool that would help me achieve other goals in life. The most important resource FI can provide me, is time. Time to spend with my family friends. Time for self-development and learning new skills in whatever fields that interest me (without having to worry about money). Time and financial resources to travel and see the world. Time for physical activity - I have always been keen on doing sports (cycling, running, volleyball and weight lifting). Time and freedom of choice - this is what I want and where I am heading.

My initial means to achieve FI was to work hard at my 9-5 job, constantly increase my salary and try to save and invest at least 50% of it. In general, I was successful in doing so. In the period of 2016 to 2018 I was able to raise my net salary from 1650 EUR to 2500 EUR, which is more than 50% increase in two years. For some of you in the US and other richer countries, these sums probably don`t seem all that much, but in my country it`s actually a very good salary. For perspective, in the months where there were no bigger unexpected expenses, I was able to live on about 700 EUR / month (and setting aside up to 1800 EUR). Keep in mind though, that my wife also works and we share housing, food, etc expenses.

Anyway, since I also had some savings from before 2016 and additionally inherited a piece of land, these are the financial assets I currently own:
* 5000 EUR emergency fund (sitting on separate bank account, earning 1% interest). Only for use in the case where s*** hits the fan. Since I am also invested in stocks, this is a sort of cushion that I would not have to sell my stocks at bad times, etc.
* 20000 EUR spare money, earning 1% interest. This money is set aside for various investment opportunities. The stocks have been on a 10 year bull run, the same with housing. My thought is to have some money around when good investment opportunities arise. This is now also the bulk of money I will use to finance my affiliate marketing learnings and ongoing costs.
* Inherited piece of land, worth about 22000 EUR. I am planning to sell it in the near future (within a year), as the prices are quite high at this point.
* 42000 EUR invested in globally diversified index exchange traded funds (ETF-s). For the last 2,5 years (up to 2018 september), every month I poured my savings left over from salary into buying new ETF shares. I did not spend my time and effort on picking single stocks, hoping to make a better return than the market (statistically this tends to be the opposite way), but rather as mentioned previously, focused on increasing my income.

Total Net Worth ~89000 EUR

Change of work-living arrangements and approach to achieving my goals

Lately (last year or so) I was feeling a bit unmotivated at my 9-5 job and quite often found myself slacking, instead of putting in the effort and advancing towards my goals. This was not beneficial for either side and I felt that it was time for a change. In july 2018, I was researching ways to make money online and this is how I bumped into affiliate marketing. I initially planned to create a niche website about a certain topic, write useful/long/detailed articles for the users and with that, hopefully gain organic traffic through SEO and keyword research. The plan was to later monetize that traffic via affiliate products (related to the site`s topic) and also paid traffic. I have actually not thrown this idea away and might still take it up some day. I have all my research and ideas documented in GoogleDocs which can later be revisited. By the way, if niche websites + monetization sparked interest in some of you, I would recommend this site (and their youtube channel) as an intro: https://incomeschool.com/

Anyway, at some point I switched my efforts and research into affiliate marketing with paid traffic and ended up here in STM forum. I have been trying to chew through the information load, document things for myself and make progress. The thing is however, that with a 9-5 job and baby in house, I was usually able to start affiliate marketing related activities after 11 PM, when first the baby and then my wife went to sleep. Understandably, so late into the day, the mind is not sharp anymore.

I thought of possible solutions how to overcome this. Was first contemplating to quit my job and temporarily live on the savings while pushing forward with learning affiliate marketing. In the end, I actually found a much more low risk and better solution. In our country, either the mother or the father can stay home with the baby up to 1,5 years after birth and up to certain maximum limit, the country welfare system pays you about the same sum as you previously earned in your job. We discussed this with my wife and after some initial disagreements reached a compromise. We would both be stay-at-home parents - me officially and her unofficially. The welfare system will be paying me about 2300 EUR monthly. Out of this sum, 1500 EUR will go to my wife (she was previously earning about this much) and 800 EUR will be for me. This sum is about enough to pay for my housing, food and affiliate marketing ongoing costs (adplexity, STM forum, tracking server and software itself). If I spend more, it will come out of the savings. And in reality, I will spend more, because we are planning to take advantage of the situation where my wife and I are both stay-at-home and we plan to go on two to three vacation trips. The first trip is actually at the of this month already and will be staying in Malta for 2 weeks. When the new year comes and the baby is a bit older, we want to explore Asia but haven`t yet decided on the specifics.

Anyway, the important thing here is that starting from october I am off my 9-5 job (maximally up to mid-summer next year). This frees a large bulk of time each workday, that I can now allocate to doing affiliate marketing related activities. My goal for most monday-friday periods is to start early and put in at least 4 to 5 high focused working hours each day. The rest of the day is for my family.

Affiliate marketing + progress so far

This far I have been able to achieve the following:
* Scoured through various topics and tutorials in the forum, while trying to categorize and document relevant information for later use
* Chose POP traffic + Sweepstakes offers as the primary focus in the beginning to learn affiliate marketing
* Started Amy`s 40 day newbie tutorial. Currently still in progress (at fixing up landers). Will proceed and complete the whole tutorial. Cheers to Amy for creating the tutorial and being helpful to others through out the forum.
* Set up landing page hosting using Amazon S3 (hosting) + NSOne (DNS) + Amazon Cloudfront (CDN)
* Signed up to Traffic sources (PropellerAds, PopAds)
* Signed up to various affiliate networks (Mobidea, Addiliate, Clickdealer, Gotzha, Monetizer, Peerfly, WeWe Media, YepAds)
* Subscribed and set up FunnelFlux self-hosted tracking software
* Subscribed to AdPlexity, learned how to use it and documented various useful filter + search settings.
* Launched two direct linking campaigns
* Downloaded 30+ landers from Adplexity for Iphone/Samsung and shopping voucher offers. Fixed up and optimized 5 of them. Tested that I know how to use and pass tracking parameters.
* Worked through advertising book Cashvertizing. Created 22 pages worth of notes and remarks for later reuse, which I am also sharing here (https://www.dropbox.com/s/qoeh69xncd...ng%20notes.pdf)
* Read through Charles Ngo free e-book about affiliate marketing + have also been reading his blog articles + watching youtube videos. Making notes and process description in my master Affiliate GoogleDocs document.
* Found STM user Mr Payne`s website AffiliateSuccess.com who seems to have very good knowledge about POP + Mobile traffic. Currently reading through his whole web site + integrating and documenting the knowledge into my affiliate master document.

At this point I am also actively compiling my offers list document - browsing the offers in networks manually + asking AM-s in different network for recommendations about well-performing sweepstakes offers. The list is already quite long and I think I have several GEO-s for which I could mass test various offers from different networks.

Starting from october, I have also documented all my study hours and what I did/achieved for the day. I plan to continue this diary in the current follow-along. Hoping that this helps myself as well others reading the posts. Here is the summary for the first 9 days of october.

Wish me luck! But above all, wish me the motivation and grit to steadily and regularly push forward and climb through the trials and errors, learn and evolve. So that I, nitramrevkar, would one day be a profitable affiliate marketer. So that affiliate marketing could be a tool in my toolbox to achieve my life goals. Cheers!

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Hey Nitram, welcome to the forum! That's quite the opening post, very transparent!

Looks like that technical background has REALLY helped. Some of the items on your progress list have stumped newbies, like hosting, Funnelflux setup and/or landers, so you've definitely got a great advantage there.

As far as I know, Amy is reworking the 40 day tutorial since some things have changed (I'm sure she'll reply soon, she's everywhere on these forums), and has noted that pops isn't as hot as it used to be, but regardless, it is still a great starting point to AM and understanding how the whole process works.

Anyway, keep it up, best of luck and looking forward to seeing your progress and success! Will be monitoring this thread

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Wow, what an opening post
Seems you have a good plan.
About the 40 days tutorial, be aware that some things have changed since the tutorial was written.
For example Propeller Ads now has SmartCPM bids and you should definitely use it when you start running campaigns

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rolandb, thanks for the warm welcome. I have also heard that POP might not be as hot as earlier (although it seems that many affiliates are still making solid profit with it) But as you said yourself, it still seems to be the cheapest and best way to learn the basics. I have promised myself, that I wont jump around too much between different verticals/traffic sources, but if anyone has better alternatives, then shoot

twinaxe - thank you for your welcoming message and recommendation. While reading other follow-alongs, I have picked up that SmartCPM is now the way to go for PropellerAds and there is a note about it in my documentation as well. But thanks again for the recommendation.

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Question + plan of action for tomorrow:
I currently have 25+ different potential offers (4 aff networks) for Poland, most of them being iPhone sweeps. There are also some Samsungs and then some of the more popular shopping vouchers.

What do the people here think about the Polish geo for a begginer to start with? To my mind it should be big enough that it is worth the effort and on the other hand maybe not as competitive as some of the other Western European countries.

Hopefully I can get some opinions, but the plan would be:
* Dive into Adplexity again - see if and what landers there are in Polish. Look at the most popular landers overall (english and other languages) that are currently doing well - rip/edit them. Use fiverr, etc service to translate some of them.
* Look through my current ripped landers, fix up and optimize the best ones.
* Start moving towards launching my first mass testing campaign in Poland - see if and what offers have potential.

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10.10.2018

* Ripped 5 different landers in polish for iPhone offers. Fixed them all up and optimized for speed
* Had a spare domain for which I configured a subdomain to use with Monetizer smartlinks. Created my custom smartlink to use with landers backbutton traffic redirecting
* Applied for 8 different iPhone X offers

Questions:
* Is it worth to use smartlinks in landers? Eg, redirect backbutton traffic like I currently did? I seem to remember from some thread, that it might cause problems with the campaign being rejected (due to the unkown nature of the offers it sends the end-users to?
* When you test the ground for a new geo (offers/landers) is it ok to settle for landers with unknown quality that have been ripped from Adplexity? While fixing up the landers today, I used google auto-translate to see what the copy text says and for some I did not like it. But on the other hand, it is quite hard to fix it as well when the text is not in your native language.

So in theory - would you use ENG -> PL translation service from fiver etc right away (for english landers that you know are proven) when trying out a new geo?
* I only currently have 8 iPhone X offers. Will look more closely tomorrow, but it seems that at least some of them point to the same end offer. So in reality I have less offers than that. I do however have more offers for iPhone 9,7,8 etc. Do you think it is still worth testing those as well, even though they are already for older models (and probably been run by maaany affiliates?)

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11.10.2018

* Started re-reading Wakeboarder`s POP Follow-along to extract useful information about how and what he was doing. First note for self is that he did a lot of simultaneous testing in lots of geos to find potentially good offers.
* vortex`s 40 day tutorial - days 27-32
* Read about bot testing, implemented bot catching in landers
* Tried to launch my first test campaign with 2 landers / 1 offers (to see if bot-catching part works, learn about FunnelFlux statistics). I currently have a problem with Landing page -> Action link resulting in FunnelFlux HTTP 404. Read some documentation and it seems to be because referring is not working correctly. There is a workaround, but I contacted FunnelFlux support to see what they think.

* Got some answers for my questions about what should one include in the backbutton link:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...o-maximize-ROI

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Hey Nitram!

This is probably one of the longest intro's I've read

I've been following IncomeSchool on YT, did you also have any of their paid materials/courses? Is it worth it?

Anyway, welcome to STM!

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About landing page translations, when the landers received lots of volume on Adplexity they probably work more or less.
But I also checked some texts and sometimes they are really terrible.
For a quick test it should be enough to use them but when I want to use them more often or for higher volume I get them translated.
In the end you only need to translate them once and can use them again and again for other campaigns so when you see potential its worth it to get a good translation.

About the Funnel Flux 404 error, I don't know funnel Flux but I have an idea about it.
Does the error happen when you visit your lander directly and then click through?
Then it can happen because the tracker did not set a cookie from a campaign and don't know where to redirect you.
In this case visit your campaign link and check again.
If you have the error when you visit the lander through the campaign link then it's probably something else.

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Hi Erik, I did not sign up for their paid materials, so can`t comment whether it is worth the money. It seems to me though that if you follow their videos and take note, they are actually giving out all the information you need for free. Some other links on niche sites worth looking at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/ - niche site creation follow-alongs (like in STM)
https://www.nichepursuits.com/how-to...niche-website/
https://nichehacks.com/

twinaxe, thanks again for jumping in and commenting. Your approach / explanation regarding translations seems very logical and reasonable
Regarding FunnelFlux HTTP 404 - I navigated to the landing pages through campaign link - so in theory it should work. Could the problem be that the Tracker and Landers are hosted on different domains? (and the cookie isr domain-based?). But then again, this seems like common scenario that landers and tracker are hosted on different domains? In FunnelFlux it is possible to append various parameters to the action url, so that it works, but I wouldn`t want to do that if possible. I will wait and see, what FunnelFlux support thinks about it. If others have had similar issues, then you are more than welcome to comment.

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No, it´s no problem when tracker and landing pages are hosted on different domains.
But it can be a problem when campaign URL and clickthoruh URL are different domains.
Anyway, I guess best is then to wait what FF support says about it.

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The problem with lander CTA links resulting with HTTP 404 is now solved.

For the first lander I had to remove the following meta tag:
<meta name="referrer" content="never">

The second lander CTA link had rel="noreferrer" which had to be removed. Both of these parameters were preventing the action link passing the referrer back to FunnelFlux, which caused the HTTP 404.

Tomorrow I will proceed and hopefully launch my first campaign with landers

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12.10.2018
* Launched my first (bot)-test campaign with 2 landers and 1 real offer. In the end, I sent 5000 impressions to the campaign via PropellerAds and got my first conversion! Yay! The conversion was registered in tracker and everything seems to work on the technical side
* Fiddled around with FunnelFlux statistics to understand, how to catch zones with lots of bot traffic. The bot catching implementation is from Caurmen:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Live-Campaigns

It doesn`t seem that obvious in FunnelFlux to get required info in this case (Alexander from another follow-along also had problems). The best I could currently come up with is the following filter:

I also contacted FunnelFlux support to ask for some hints. There probably is a better way to do it.

Today will be shorter work-day for me, because we have plans with family and going on a trip for the whole weekend. I probably will be back in action on tuesday next week (meaning practical actions + launching campaigns). If I have some spare time, I will read STM forum topics + https://www.affiliatesuccess.com/ and make notes for myself.

Next week, I first plan to launch the Poland Campaign fully with all the landers + offers I have and see how it goes. It´s highly unlikely that i will stumble on a (potentially) successful campaign right away and most probably will have to start looking for new offers-geos to test. Next week I also plan to read manuals about FunnelFlux statistics and get more familiar with different (useful) filter combinations.

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Welcome to STM!

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17.10.2018
* Removed Caurmen`s Bot testing solution and added FunnelFlux`s pagespeed feature which monitors how long users stay on landing page. Since it is also implemented in JS, then for those users who dont have JS enabled (quite certainly bots), the time is shown as N/A. In addition to testing whether the user has JS enabled, it is possible to see engagement on the page and possibly optimize further based on that information.
* Launched Poland iPhoneX campaign with 5 landers + 3 offers. The average payout for the offers is ~1$ and after spending 12.65$ I got 3 conversions total. 2 of them are for one offer. This offer also got a conversion from last weeks bot test. Pausing other offers and continuing only with this one.

Traffic Cost: 12.65$ (PropellerAds + SmartCPM + bid above average).
Revenue: 2.88$
ROI: -77%

Question:
* Currently I got 2 conversions for a single offer and will proceed with that one to start cutting landers down to the winning one. Let`s assume however that I did not get 2 conversions for the single offer. How much would it have been reasonable for me to wait and spend? (3 offers, 5 landers, 1$ average payout). Could the reasonable amount be 3 offers x 5 landers x 1$ payout x 5 times offer average payout = 75$?
* Currently I am buying traffic as a person (and not as company) and therefore paying 20% VAT right away. It seems that continuing this way is only reasonable for learning purposes. If the intent is however to make profit at some point, I should establish a company with VAT number and continue further actions as a company.

TODO:
* Dive into FunnelFlux statistics. Understand how to use the PageSpeed statistics to cut bad placements. Understand how to see OS / Carrier / etc performance
* Continue Poland campaign with single offer and test the landers in the rotation further.

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18.10.2018
Shorter day. I tried using FunneFlux PageSpeed functionality to do bot testing. When diving into campaign statistics it showed me wierd information (most LP visits had N/A instead of real time on page). Thought this was my bad and I don`t know how to get relevant information from stats. After contacting FunnelFlux support it turns out there is something wrong with getting the correct "time on page" data, but the reason is currently unknown

Watched FunnelFlux Youtube videos to better understand the software. Analyzed my campaign statistics to get more familiar with the data being shown.


19.10
* Continued Poland campaign with single best offer. Cut 2 landers which had no conversions and 0,3% and 1,4% CTR. I don`t understand why the CTR was so low for them, there must be some technical problem with them. But looking at screenshots from BrowserStack they seem fine, and when testing manually I am able to complete the flow. The remaining 3 LP have about 30% CTR.
* Today`s results is 1,68$ revenue with 11,65$ traffic cost (-86% ROI). This does not seem very promising.

In total I have now spent 28$ for the campaign and received 7 conversions (about 0,9$ average payout). What do you think, is it worth testing this campaign further or should I move on? I haven`t cut any placements so far. At 30k total visits, the biggest placement is just starting to reach 2x payout without conversion. Although Poland should be a big GEO, the traffic also doesnt seem to come in as quickly as expected (even when bidding above average).

* Additionally, today I read affiliatesuccess.com insider tips to e-mail and made notes. Read and reminded myself about campaign optimization:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...considerations
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-of-my-methods

* Contacted an acquaintance to ask tips about establishing company with VAT number + operating further affiliate activities from a company.

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Good luck for your journey, Nitram.




LeadCloak

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22.10.2018

* Dropped Poland campaign and started preparing landers for campaign in new GEO. I need more experience and comparison points about how different campaigns perform and why. The way to achieve it is by launching and testing more campaigns.
* Asked AM-s for offer recommendations
* FunnelFlux support + getting "Time on page" functionality to work. Still in progress.
* Talked to my acquaintance about the basics about establishing a company with VAT number. Will read a bit more on my own and in the close future actually establish the company
* Watched video about POP traffic from AWEurope 2017 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-_WxykxrIA . My notes from the video:

• Ask AM for top revenue generating offers. Start testing them from top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top approach
• Do something that others are not doing. Be Creative!
• Find a good lander - test it with MANY offers
• Language based landers (single file for several countries) - need to investigate how to do it
• Sounds and notifications can improve CVR
• Be on top of the food chain - try new things and be an innovator
• Things that a good lander has
  
  • Clear CTA
  • TIme pressure
  • Clear message (what does the user get with the offer)
    
    • Convey one message
    • Before the browser fold
    
    
  • Use short sentences
    
    • Can be translated via G Translate
    • Quick testing
  
  
• Pop up loads in a way, that the actual page also loads on the background
  
  • add pop-up js to the end of the source code
  
  
• Automate processes, create systems
• Bidding
  
  • Start with below-average bid
    
    • Blacklist, Increase bid and repeat
    • Make a separate whitelist campaign where you protect these placements with a proxy bid
    
    
  • Dont bid too low
  • Bid average (or above) while doing initial testing
    
    • When good-lander offer combo found, do staggered bid campaigns

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Welcome Nitram! Love your introductory post!

I am in a similar situation, with some level of financial independence from real estate investing/house flipping the last few years but not enough to be truly 'free' and certainly not as much wealth/freedom as I want to have.

I am an entrepreneurial geek of high-magnitude and have messed about in a number of business niches, and while I am still only diving into paid traffic, it seems to me based on all my knowledge/experience/research/observations the #1 entrepreneurial opportunity that exists right now (speaking generally of course). Due to how 'new' it is and thus how not-institutionalized it is, how ubiquitous it is and how fast-growing, and also its inherent scalability. These are the reasons I have put my other ventures on hold to attempt to master it.

Will be gladly following along your progress! I am about 4 campaigns in but focusing on natives, so we are in similar spots

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This man.... This man is going places.


- Jeremiah

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Hi Jack! It seems to me that although affiliate marketing has been around a long time, it is still a bit unknown to the wider public and can offer good returns on your time and if one takes the time to learn it. Let`s see how it in real life

I have also been following your journey in your follow-along. Wishing you determination, motivation and good luck on your journey!



I do hope they are good places and that you are right. Thanks for the warm welcome!

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23.10.2018

* Talked to 3 AM-s and got offer recommendations and spreadsheets about top-performing offers.
* Applied to offers in Malaysia and Italy. What do you guys think about Italy? There seem to be a lot well-converting offers at this point but I am a bit worried that there is too much competition for a newbie like me.

* One of the AM-s gave me very detailed Excel spreadsheet about last weeks TOP performing offers. I filtered the list and only included offers which had generated at least 50$ revenue the past week (that left 336 offers). I made to following outtakes from that listing

1) Most Popular Verticals by offer count:

2) Top Revenue generating Verticals among


It can be seen that Trials are very popular on this network both by offer count and revenue created on that week period sample. Lead-gens and various apps/toolbars are also doing good. This shows me that it might be worth to look into trials in the future after gaining some experience. At current point, since I am in the learning phase, the payouts seemed too high.

* I viewed the top performing offers preview pages and made notes, what I think makes them perform well. The idea is to find common patterns that I could possibly also use in the future to identify good offers.

Top Offers - What is common?

• Quite many top revenue offers are private - a reason to get along well with your AM
• Visually good looking (black, orange, white, green)
  
  • Contrasts (orange and pink on black, green on orange)
  
  
• Time countdown on the offer page (1day, x hours, y minutes, .. )
• Trial - advertise the subscription as an added bonus (iPhone + 1 Month Service Trial FREE! )
• Clear CTA button
• Value comparison - “Pay only 1$” vs “929$ value of phone”
• Added bonus item “Free Iphone + Wireless earphones just for 1$!”
  
  • End users feel that that the wireless earphones are extra value for them - driving the end-user towards taking action

Note to self - before choosing/creating landers, look at the offer page and try to make the prelander -> offer page transition as seamless as possible

When reviewing offers list from AM, offer number can be taken an as indicator how old the offer is (larger number offers have been added later). Most probably the numbers are generated from a database sequence, therefore increasing by each offer added.
(426777) Samsung Galaxy S9 (Trial) - Country

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Tomorrow we are going on a 2 week vacation with my family. For sure I will be doing less during that time, but I still plan to continue actions towards launching my next campaign. Will keep you updated.

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Hi There, long time no see! As mentioned in previous post, I was on a family vacation for 2 weeks. Although I did spend a couple of hours on affiliate related things there, it was not productive work. I have come to the conclusion, that I need quiet space (such as a library, separate office) away from family to really focus and tune in on work.

Anyway, I am back now and have been putting in some work. Today I launched a campaign in Italy promoting iPhone offers. In the rotation were:
3 offers for iPhone X
2 offers for iPhone XS
1 offer for iPhone XS Max
1 offer for iPhone XR

For each offer type, I set up 5 landing pages:
LP1 - Facebook style spinner
LP2 - ISP Loyalty + 3 Questions
LP5 - Facebook style spinner #2 with different copy text
LP6 - Italy flag + 3 "Know your country" questions
LP7 - Italy flag + 3 "Know your country" questions + my own copy text angle

I could not find that many different landers in italian. Therefore only 3 are totally different. Maybe it would have been better just to proceed with 3?

The landing page numbers match with the stats below:


Some remarks:
* LP1 and LP5 which are both FB style spinners, have quite trastic CTR% different. There is probably some particular reason for it, because I doubt the different copy text has such effect. Must look into it.
* LP2 has really low CTR%. I don`t know if this could indicate a technical problem. I created screenshots in BrowserStack when fixing up landers and they seemed fine. My hunch would be to cut LP-s with such low CTR%.

I have currently spent 27,35$ and got 1 conversion worth of 0.8$ (-97% ROI). I used SmartCPM, targeted Mobile with 3G Traffic, bidding above average.

The average payout for the offers is 1.2$. If I use the following formula for testing budget:
(average payout x 10) x (number of offers)

Then the estimated budget should be 1.2 x 10 x 7 = 84$ (of which I have currently reached about 30%). The stats dont look too promising however to continue. Suggestions?

....

I also tested an alternative Bot Catching solution provided by FunnelFlux support team. It works by testing user´s JS ability. The idea is to add a custom tracking field (js_test) to the traffic source description in the tracker. Then the following JS snippet is added to LP
<script>
setTimeout(function() {
fflux.ffq('update', ['js_test', 'passed']);
fflux.track();
}, 1000);
</script>

If the user has JS enabled then 1 second after the page has loaded, it updates the field to 'passed'. If a bot visits for example, which doesn´t have JS enabled, the field stays as N/A.

For today, it shows that out of 21416 entrances, 6041 (28,2%) were able to execute JS and update the field. Is such low human traffic percentage realistic? (Italy, Mobile OS, 3G traffic, bid above average). Below is a screenshots of the most popular Zones:

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I would just say, Welcome to STM and the AM industry.
Me personally i never had that good starting point as you. so i wish you all the best.
you have a great plans,preparation and strategies

you asked for IT and that maybe competitive, i would tell you from my experience that if you have the good budget then go for it don't worry you can make it work and IT specially performs well with Sweeps.
one last thing i want to comment on , is the number of networks you are working with.
never go with so many networks at the beginning as a newbie, because you may can't hit the minimum threshold for payments and you end up having money stored in networks then you face the cash flow problem.
Generally all newbies should start with 1-2 networks max, with only 1 traffic source to master it.
Cash flow is the most important dude. consider it


GOOD LUCK

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Great work man! Love following your progress!

I've been in a similar position as you are in terms of being self-employed/business owner husband+father for several years now, and I would back you up/encourage you very strongly re what you mentioned, in terms of being deliberate in doing your work someplace other than your residence with your wife and kids around.

I find that I work FAR more productively when I am in an 'official' location I have set aside for work, whether that is the office I now rent, or any other place.

It also helps you to be a better business owner and a better husband/father, because the separate locations allow you to be more deliberate and purposeful about your actions/mindset in each. When you are at home you can focus 100% on being the best husband/father you can be, and while you are at your office (even if your office is a coffee shop or library or detached garage) you can be 100% focused on running your business.

Some people like the idea of blending the two, but I don't think that is natural nor conducive to maximal fulfillment of those roles.

But yeah keep up the great work man!

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Thanks for the good wishes! I have not yet given up on Italy. I have prepared (and am preparing) new landers and will do some additional testing.
Regarding affiliate/traffic networks, I am currently working only with 1 Traffic source (PropellerAds) and mostly with 4 affiliate networks (YepAds, Gotzha, WeWe, ClickDealer). I have registrations with other aff networks as well, but these I have noticed these are generally recommended here in STM. Good point about cash flow, but in my case I dont think it will become problem at this point, because I have additional spare money should it be needed.


Totally agreed! I have been able to put in focused and productive working hours now when working from library again. And on the other side as you mentioned, I try not to take work home too much and focus on my wife and child while being at home.



UPDATE ON PROGRESS:

Bot catching
It turns out the FunnelFlux JS solution to catch bot placements is not working as expected for me. For many visits it does not successfully update the js_test field to "Passed". To find this out, I did a separate bot-testing campaign where I implemented two bot catching solutions for a LP:
1) FunnelFlux JS + updating tracking field
2) Caurmen Bot solution, testing JS ability with hidden iframe script (Parses Javascript dummy offer)

It could be seen that the results were very different. I actually had similar problems with FunnelFlux PageSpeed functionality too. Trying to resolve this with the help of FunnelFlux support team.

Progress
* Fixed up additional 4 LP-s
* Dived into the statistics and source code and tried to understand why my two FB Spinner LP-s had such different CTR%. I found some differences/problems and after modifying the LP, I run a test campaign to split test the original and modified LP. The actual reasons seems to be that for one of the LP-s I have backbutton redirecting enabled (to the offer), and for the other not. Will test this out tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will probably also be able to launch Italy campaign with the new landers.

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Hi Nitram! Can't begin to tell you how apologetic I am at having missed this thread! It just never caught my eye - I always thought it was a self-intro thread and never thought it was a follow-along.

But feeling apologetic won't help you - so I'll be practical and provide some feedback instead.

And thanks for telling your story - you're at a very nice point in life where you don't have to worry about money, and are focused on investing it into starting and growing your own business. That's a VERY good place to be, compared to having only a little bit of savings on your hands and holding yourself to making profits before it runs out. That kind of mentality can have devastating effects on the way you make business decisions (i.e. they'd be based on fear and worry, not positive expectations and good judgment).

Thanks for the website recommendation! Another really good one is Patt Flyn's site: https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/p...siness-models/

Your idea of an SEO site is awesome! Having online real-estate that can turn into a long-term business is always a good thing. It can provide a hedge against the volatile performance of paid traffic campaigns - which can be like a roller-coaster where one day you may be making 5 figures, and the next day go back to zero. We have great SEO guides in the SEO subforum. Here's one written recently by the Great GregMorrison (one of the very best SEO mentors I know - from OMG), that you can check out:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...nking-Tutorial


I always feel so humbled when I see people trying to make it while working a 9-5 AND caring for family. It takes a ton of will-power, a very understanding family, and a lot of compromising to make something work on the side. But I've heard amazing stories from members here and from students of the 6WAMC training courses I used to be involved in, so it's definitely, definitely doable! I remember this one gentleman who worked a 9-5 (to sustain family expenses) AND a part-time job (to fund his paid traffic campaigns) AND had kids to care for - but eventually found success. It won't be easy for sure, but this is what separates the men from the boys.


Ha! I really should have read the whole thing before commenting.

It may not be a good time to point this out (after the fact), but dipping into savings may be risky. But as long as you're prepared to lose that without any promise of returns, AND if it's disposable money that won't affect your lifestyle significantly by losing, then I'm not going to say anything more.

Psychologically though, it's a lot easier to spend money on campaigns when you have money coming in, versus when you're only dealing with a finite, stagnant pool of resources. It would be hard not to protect that money when you see it start to dwindle.

Also, it may be draining to spend many hours a day continuously working on campaigns. So if possible, perhaps consider finding part-time employment - that way you'll have money coming in to supplement your campaign spending, and it would be a nice break away from crunching numbers.

But it must be exciting to have all this free time to work on a new project!


Thanks for giving it a go! You must have noticed by now that a new version of the tutorial is being posted. A lot of the material is new - so if you can find the time, I would highly recommend reading the new version as well. I'll try very hard to finish it in the next 2 weeks or so.


I know a lot of your questions must have gotten answered already (either by yourself or in other threads you must have read since last month), but will answer them anyway just in case - it's the least I can do for dropping in so late!

Regarding smartlinks: Most networks are fine with them, and many affiliates do run them. However, I'd suggest to use for the backbutton, either 1)just reload the same lander because most visitors wouldn't even see it the first time, many people are intuitively closing pop ads before they even load, or 2)redirect them to the offer page, or 3)redirect them to another lander for a separate vertical or a related offer (for sweeps for example, a lander+offer for another prize).

Options 1) and 2) are very easy to implement. Option 3) takes more work, so is only advised when you have a high-volume campaign running that would justify all the extra work.


Regarding landers from Adplexity: This is why it's good to rip landers that have received a lot of traffic volume (you can see those when you select "received most traffic", and if possible, have a trend of high volume over a few days at least. Chances are, people would run high volume to a lander that is converting. This is also why I always suggest to split-test 5 landers or more from the start - it increases your chances of hitting on at least one decent one.

Once you have a benchmark winner lander and see a promising offer that converts alright, you can get translations done by a native speaker (Fiverr or OHT etc.) But getting translations done before that point may increase your testing costs by too much.

A different approach you can try, is do more extensive research before taking action. If you can find out which geo+vertical combos are hot right now - by chatting with AMs, browsing forum posts, analyzing stats on Adplexity etc. - you can get landers professionally translated before going in to conquer that geo. This would be like a more traditional investment approach: Doing research to identify opportunities that have the highest profits potential before investing in them.

But if you take the more typical "test lots of stuff and choose the best-performers to optimize and scale" approach, then ripping + fixing + launching is the way to go, or you'd go broke on lander translations alone.

Regarding older models: Adplexity and your AMs should be able to tell you how the offers are doing. If they're still going strong, then they'd be worth a test.


You must have figured out this one by now, but just in case:

My guess is that you were browsing directly to the lander url and clicking on the CTAs. That won't work, as the outgoing link is your tracker's click url and not the affiliate link. You'd need to create a campaign in the tracker and identify the lander(s) and offer(s), then browse to the campaign url. The tracker would then replace the outgoing link(s) on the lander with the actual affiliate link, so that when you click you'd be directed to the offer.


Ah so it was a more complicated issue - I'll need to remember this one in case other newbies run into the same.


That's very clever!

EDIT: Although it didn't work out in the end, it was definitely worth a shot! A for effort for sure!


Regarding how much to spend on an offer: $75 is DEFINITELY way too much to spend on a $1 payout offer. If you're confident about lander quality, I'd say spending $10 without seeing one conversion would be a good sign to ditch the offer. It doesn't mean you won't accidentally throw away an offer that COULD turn out to be profitable with heavy optimizing, but the 10x payout test should catch the more-promising offers.

It's easier to run multiple offers at the same time - that way you have better chances of "catching" a good offer. It's always nice to see what you did, i.e. one of the offers making 2 conversions within a reasonable amount of spend, so you could pause the others. Cutting by comparison is better than judging performance of a single entity.

It doesn't mean that the other offer you were running is inferior, because statistical significance may not have been reached. So once you have a winning lander, you may want to retest the other offer along with entirely new offers.

Regarding VAT: There are threads on this forum that discuss that - a simple search will reveal them. I'm Canadian so have little idea.


For a big geo like PL, it would be good to cut placements more aggressively - at 1x payout without conversions, or even 0.5x payout without conversions. Once (IF) your campaign turns green, you can always retest some of the blacklisted placements gradually in batches.

However, if you're running on a source that isn't giving you much traffic, then maybe cutting aggressively is not the way to go.

Secondly: You'd need to see what ROI your best lander+offer is doing, AND also look at placements stats for that best combination. You need to make sure there are enough green traffic segments (whether it be a bunch of placements, a major OS, a major browser, and/or whatever else you can optimize), before focusing on cutting your way to green. If there aren't enough green segments that are collectively giving you a high-enough daily profit, then no amount of cutting will get you that profit. It would be synonymous to blasting through rocks when there aren't diamonds in there in the first place.

If there aren't enough profits in the green segments, it means you're not making enough of the total traffic profitable. In this case, you would need to split-test more landers and offers (especially more offers) until you can make enough of the traffic profitable, and THEN focus on cutting the unprofitable segments to reach green.

That's campaign optimization in a nutshell!


More-competitive and expensive geos only means you have to invest more into the campaign. The process is the same as what I've described above.

You'd need to test a lot more offers and landers until you can make enough of the total traffic profitable. You'd also need to cut placements aggressively from the very beginning - at 1x payout or even 0.5x payout without conversions, and maybe at 1-2x payout in loss - to minimize the massive budget drain in the beginning. (You can always retest some of those blacklisted placements once you're green.)

It will take a lot more investment to cut placements.


This is fabulous!

Do keep in mind though, that many other affiliates are running traffic types other than pop.

Trials for example: A lot of those are being run on FB (blackhat) or adult traffic (in the case of male enhancement or ED products). Not to say you won't get them to work on pop, but the high payouts will require a ton of upfront investment to collect data - just imagine how much you'd have to spend on cutting placements even if you set the threshold to 0.5x payout.


This and your list of commonalities across top offers = priceless! Thank you!

However, just a gentle reminder of the 80/20 rule. For initial testing, it's not necessary to do all this extra work. But once you find an offer+lander that convert great, going above and beyond to make the lander look more like the offer can really pay off.


Consider looking into co-working spaces, where you can pay a monthly fee to just drop in at any time, find a spot, sit down and work. If you like routine, that can really boost your productivity levels.


*applause*


If you can find more that have received high traffic volumes for at least a few days, it would be nice to include a couple more! The translation quality may be different.


Wow - that's tough!

However, you're testing 7 offers and 5 landers - that's 35 combinations - so you haven't even spent $1 per combo. I would run some more just to see if more conversions would happen.

But at the same time, we should have a Plan B - because results so far DO look a bit disappointing.

First of all, I'm going to ask the obvious: Are your landers optimized for speed? You've mentioned manual testing (clicking around landers) and checking them in browserstack - so I'm assuming you've optimized them for speed as well.

Italy isn't the easiest geo to crack for sure. But it sure does have volume! Not really a geo I would recommend for a newbie to try to conquer, but since we're already here, let's see what else you can try.

1)Try PopAds. You can sometimes get better traffic there depending on the geo. I've just finished the lesson on that a few days ago.

2)Testing more landers like you said you would, is good. When you see a lander showing promise - maybe when it has made a couple conversions - try to get manual translations for it and split-test them. I don't usually recommend spending money on translations upfront, but Italy is a tougher geo so we need more advanced weapons. Maybe even get 2 landers translated by different translators just for variety.

3)Cut placements aggressively. 1x payout without conversions, nix it. You can always retest them later on. For now, don't give them the benefit of the doubt. You have the volume and too many placements.

4)I know you're already testing a lot of offers, but it may be worth it to add more. Perhaps get in touch with more networks and direct advertisers to see whether they have good offers in IT. Recommendations can be found in these threads:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-in-march-2018

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...rce-in-germany

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ike-affluentco

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...pstakes-for-fr

You've thrown yourself into the deep end for sure, but if you stick with this campaign for a bit you can stand to learn so much from it. Just make sure to set a reasonable daily and overall campaign budget to avoid accidental overspending, and watch your placement stats like a hawk so you can cut potential losers quickly.

Alternatively, you can choose a simpler geo to target. Entirely up to you!

Now that I'm finally caught up with your follow-along - looking forward to your next update!




Amy

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Thank you so much, Amy, for all the time and effort you put in to help me as well as other STM-ers on their path of learning affiliate marketing. I made several notes and additions to my documentation and will try to put them into practice. Much appreciated and my hat goes off for you Regarding your comment about not solely relying on savings and trying to earn extra income - that is what has actually taken quite much of my time this week. When I went on parental leave, we agreed with the employer that I will help them if I can (and they need it). So the situation came and I agreed to help them (and will continue to do in some amount the following days) to meet their project deadline.

Although much of my time has gone to my IT related work, I have also managed to do a bit on affiliate side as well:
* Bot testing. We bounced back and forward information and tests with FunnelFlux Support team, but were unable to solve the problem at this point. The issue went to their developers for investigation and solution. At this point, I will continue to use Caurmen`s bot solution
* I reviewed the new landers that I had fixed up and found that I had mistakes and shortcomings in the process. Did additional fixes and optimizations. Note so self - dont´ be sloppy and half ass LP fixup
* I inserted all the LP-s with their dynamic parameters to FunnelFlux.
* I revisited my notes from the book cashvertising and made the following notes / guidelines that could be used for POP traffic as well.

• Make important things appear before fold
• Write to the chimpanzee brain. Direct. Simple.
  
  • Short words and sentences
  
  
• Short paragraphs
• Use personal pronouns
  
  • you, I, me, us, we
  
  
• Emphasize the benefit to the end user.
  
  • Biggest benefit to the headline
  • Shorter is better
  
  
• Dont make the copy text too wordy.
  
  • 1-2 short sentences max
  
  
• Page loading speed is important (max 2s, better if under 1s)
• Familiarity - tie the campaign to local event / famous person / news / …
• Text readability calculator
  
  • http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php
  
  
• Scarcity
  
  • Sign up while they last!
  • Offer expires Date X!
  
  
• Social Proof is important!
  
  • Testimonials
  
  
• Peripheral vs Central processing. Participating in sweeps is definitely Peripheral.

• Life force 8
  
  • 1. Life enjoyment
  • 6. To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
  • 8. Social approval
  
  
• Honest advertising?
  
  • For a chance to win, you will receive promotional e-mails.
  • You can unsubscribe any time
  
  
• Be specifc and visual
  
  • The first use of any product is first in the customers mind
  
  
• Rhetorical questions?
  
  • Who else wants a free iPhone X for just entering your contact details?
  
  
• Catchy headlines
  
  • WOULD YOU - Would you give your e-mail for a free iPhone X?
  • DO YOU - Do you believe in good luck? Answer 3 questions correctly, enter your contact details and win a free Iphone X
  • FREE, NEW, AT LAST, THIS, ANNOUNCING, WARNING, JUST RELEASED, NOW, HERE`S, THESE; WHICH; FINALLY, LOOK!, PRESENTING, INTRODUCING, HOW, AMAZING, DO YOU, WOULD YOU, CAN YOU, IF YOU, STARTING TODAY
  
  
• Initial Caps In Headlines
• Powerful visual adjectives
  
  • Help imagine the product in their head
  
  
• People love giving their opinion - surveys
  
  • “We value your opinion”
  
  
• Ad-Agency Secret #24: Power Your Ads With Pictures
  
  • Laughing people with the product
  • Pictures from official videos
  
  
• Ad-Agency Secret #37: Consumer Color Preferences and How Color Affects Readership
• Deminish the price/effort on the customer side
  
  • Only 2 minutes of your time!
  
  
• Make it believable
  
  • Why are you giving away free Iphone?

For some of them, probablt more context is required. But some maybe useful to others as they are, so I will post them here.

At this point, I feel however that I am postponing taking action a bit. If I prioritized other way, I could have already launched the follow-up campaign (but instead I decided to review my notes). Learning/reviewing is good, but it has no value when I dont actually launch campaigns and test things out. So at this point I am putting my effort to launch a new campaign. Will update the thread if I have any progress. Till next time!

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