Don't read this Follow Along (15)
Newbie level: Very noob
Budget: 6 figures
Time available: all day every day
Experience: I did affiliate marketing briefly in 2011/2012, even worked with Mr. Green himself for a couple months. Had some pretty good success but opted to pursue software engineering instead, because it wasn't so damn skeezy. Found a bug in InMobi's campaign scheduling algo that got me (basically) free traffic. Ran that for a few weeks before they caught on 😂 Peak on that was about $7500/day for $50 ad spend.
After reading a bit these traffic sources / offer types seem hot:
FB, AdWords, Native
Ecom, leadgen in finance/solar/insurance, sweeps, dating, health
Due to ease of implementation and affiliate friendliness I will likely start out pursuing Native + Sweeps or leadgen. Video ads seem interesting but I'm trying to get cash moving ASAP.
Rough to-dos:
-- Create website & set-up email for my "agency"
-- Explore "Duston McGroarty - Native Ads Academy", "iStack Native ads" & "Justin Brooke - Bulletproof Native Ads" for pointers.
-- Sign up for spy tools
-- Sign up for traffic sources
-- Sign up for affiliate networks
I think I got my first profitable campaign within about a month of starting back then? Let's see how long it takes this time!
I hope I'm allowed to post this in here, even though I'm not going to follow the -- very well written -- 40 day guide verbatim.
Any pointers are appreciated..! I'll be happy to share my progress on here.
Very cool man- look forward to seeing how things go!
I'd also highly recommend the James Van Elswyck course if you are interested in native, as well as the MAD Society forum- similar to stm but pretty much all native-focused.
Thanks dude..! Yeah I did actually make it through about 7/11 of the modules of James Van Elswyck's course (until he started diving into optimization). Solid stuff. He emphasizes putting work into your presentation before you approach traffics sources/aff networks.
Todo for today is as such:
Set up my website (half done)
Set up my email (done)
Amend my LinkedIn to be more affiliaty
Sign up for traffic sources
Sign up for aff networks
Buy adbeat & a tracker (will most likely be Funnelflux)
Nice. I'd also recommend
Yeah haha I actually wound up signing up for 
Also the realization is setting in that I have just a shit load of split testing & data gathering ahead of me. Also don't like that the first offer that James recommends, Memory Repair Protocol, is just some bullshit snake oil that takes advantage of old people with alzheimers. I might wanna switch to mastering FB + ecom, or perhaps I can find some offers that are not outright garbage to promote on native.
EDIT: I also uninstalled my adblocker for the first time in years -- ahaha I didn't realize how much worse the web is without one. And then I looked up the stats to find that only 25% of people in the US use an ad blocker O_O. Really goes to show that extrapolating of how I use & spend money on the internet is not how the rest of the world does it!
Hmm.. yeah, I'm not an expert on that product beyond seeing it all over the place but I actually think a lot of those Clickbanky products get a bad wrap. I've written VSL's before and I know a number of Clickbank vendors, and a lot of the time the VSL's end up taking on a tone like that because that is what sells, but once you actually get the product a lot of the time there's really good info in there.
Its like all the myriad weight loss vsl's. Yeah- the hook on them is ridiculous most of the time and caters to a the lowest denominator- however if the info product can trick them into counting their calories or even just taking a picture of everything they eat or making some other basic behavioral change, that right there will lead to results that are worth their money.
Maybe I just have an overly rosy view though!
But yeah, I have never done Facebook ads although I plan to eventually. I really like native but it is definitely competitive. It's a much smaller world than one thinks. At first it felt so massive when I would look on Adplexity and see all the various ads and url's and affiliates, but now that I've been doing it for awhile I feel like it's both more competitive than I thought it would be but also reassuringly figure-out-able. Less like searching for some super rare butterfly in the Amazon and more like wrestling a jaguar, if that makes sense lol
But yeah, hope whatever specific paths your journey takes you to leads to high profits man!
James' beginner offer recommendations
If that's the type of stuff that works best on native then native is not for me. I'll continue to explore Ecom today, it appears a deterrent to Ecom seems to be upfront capital requirements, but that shouldn't be a problem for me. How to build and run an Ecommerce store is actually something I'd be interested in. Anything in this business requires determination, so it's probably best to pick something you can imagine yourself to commit to!
Well certainly nothing wrong with ecom! And building an ecommerce store is definitely more of a long-term 'business' that can gain momentum of its own and later be sold/outsourced/etc, so that has benefits that regular front-end media-buying doesn't.
I did want to add- just for anyone who reads this in the future while researching the STM Natives course that we've been talking about- that it is primarily on lead-gen (mortgage, life insurance, solar) rather than vsl-type offers, although the above (multiple of which I have run) are referenced as good beginner offers and good Revcontent offers, and in my opinion the course does an excellent job of providing a high-quality/high-integrity/best-practices approach to succeeding on natives in the entire range of offer-types, without cloaking or anything else.
But yes, I certainly would not try to convince you to run natives against your better judgement! The wonderful thing about IM is you can turn it into any kinid of adventure of your choosing, and based on your prior successes you referenced I'm sure you'll succeed at whatever you do
Hey,
if you change your mind and want to try native, feel free to ping me for the latest traffic insights.
Also, here's our thread about VLM DSP - All you need to know & Ask us anything.
Thanks and good luck with whatever path you decide to go with! Fingers crossed
Justyna
Thanks for the kind words Jack Yeah I'm not writing native off totally, I'm sure it'll turn out an awesome traffic source once I've got my store up and running.
Completed yesterday:
Went through caurmen's Ecom course and wrote out a huge list of hobbies / interests.
Picked out one product that I know the internet is hot for, yet no one seems to be producing (it's in the space of customized mobile phones). My very first business I started at 17 was actually repairing Xbox 360s so I have some experience with customizing/modding hardware.
Registered a new domain
Set up rudimentary
Rest of today:
Continue watching Scott Hilse's "Simplified Dropshipping 3.0". Have only gone through 15 minutes of it, but it's already such a massive time saver.
Set up Facebook ads to validate the idea. Though with the margin I'll likely have on this product ($50-$200) I don't see how FB ads could be unprofitable. The actual tricky bit will be scaling the phone customizations.
Subscribing to this one! Welcome back to the forum @tunatek!
@tunatek @jack_l - loving your discussion!
Looking forward to seeing how you crush ecom!
I'm moving this follow-along to the Ecom subforum - please let me know if you'd like me to move it back. I think you'll get more feedback from other members that are also doing ecom if I move the thread there.
Amy
Thanks @vortex
I've set up FB ads, they've garnered 13 clicks and 0 sales so far (I've set up the I've rushed out "get-shit-done-style" a bit a few days ago but am slowing down a bit in order to actually build something that I'd want to own in the long-term..!
Originally Posted by tunatek
I've set up FB ads, they've garnered 13 clicks and 0 sales so far (I've set up the
I've rushed out "get-shit-done-style" a bit a few days ago but am slowing down a bit in order to actually build something that I'd want to own in the long-term..!You don't actually need to build an authority site first.
You can pretty quickly come up with the first couple steps of a sales funnel and implement them now.
Example:
-What is my target audience? (A list of attributes - what are they interested in?)
-Come up with a lead magnet. (What can I offer that would really appeal to my target audience?)
-Set up an opt-in page (could even be the homepage of your new site until you build it out) for the lead magnet.
-(Optionally, can make a 3-5 page site to show off your credentials, experience, services you're providing....)
-Write up an autoresponder series to give them solid info, plus a bit of selling of your software consulting service.
Of course this is just an example. Instead of a lead magnet, you may want to offer a free consultation - can even link to a calendar from the FB ad, where people can schedule a consultation on the spot.
I don't really know the exact nature of your business, so the above example may be way off, but you get what I'm trying to suggest.
Also worth mentioning is FB's relatively-new (well - for 1-2 years now) ad format: Lead Gen. You can collect leads right from FB without sending prospects to your site. I've seen those convert very well.
Looking forward to seeing what you'll do!
Amy
I'm down with a pretty nasty cold / cough but pushing forward anyway. I've binned the phone customization idea due to it just being a business model / niche I don't see as particularly appealing. I'm going to attack eCom more broadly by going through amazing.com's "Amazing Selling Machine" course. As said above, having capital to pump into product launches is an asset so I see it as a good fit
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