I've been in affiliate marketing a few years, probably launched 100+ campaigns, out of the had 2 that made a few hundred $ROI. part of the problem is that I didn't stick to one source i was all over the place, I also didn't stick to on vertical so that screwed me as well (well screwed myself)
How many offers did it take for you to really strike gold in a campaign?
I actually did make some profit with the very first offer that I tried, but it was nothing consistent and it took quite a few campaigns and a solid dose of banners and LPs.
To really start making profits consistently though was a different story... it took me a few months, I had to switch GEOs too, but I didn't really test that many offers. It's been a while so I don't remember exactly, but I'd say it was 10-20 max.
I was kind of lucky, because the initial loses I had were with a pretty decent ROI, negative a bit but nothing that would totally destroy my budget. It probably had to do with the fact that I focused on a vertical I already had experience with from my SEO/webmastering days.
IMO you don't really strike "gold" with an offer...you strike gold after you have a nice set of ads, targeting, angle, sales funnel...etc.
If you just have a good offer it won't take you all the way.
I was lucky on my very first campaign, got over 100% roi. I was promoting Russian dating on POF. I was targeting a religious group of men, telling them that there were women on this Russian website of that religion. This was POF so over the next few months I made a full $100 lol. Then the offer stopped letting people search by religion, so I stopped the campaign before we got bad reviews.
I was also quite lucky and had some small profits here and there from my first days.
It took me around 2 months to reach $100/day with adult dating, just to wake up next morning to being back at ground zero..
BTW here is my first ever follow along with my $100/day goal: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Money-100-day
Though I was able to hit some profits quite early, I still missed 2 important things: right mindset and having a budget I was comfortable with.
I had to took 1 year pause, build up budget and confidence and then come back again 1 year later, the rest is history.
However, I think it's not about counting the number of offers till you strike gold.
Offers come and go, you IMHO need more than a good offer to make it.
There are ton of good offers on every network, but do you have the skill to run them successfully?
You need the right traffic source, ad creatives, bid, landing page, angle... all of these are important and crucial to making it work.
It's not just about copying that offer link from affiliate network and hoping for striking gold.
Wish you all the best!
P.S. Focus on profit, not on ROI.