Know Yourself or How I Learned Paid Traffic Is Not For Me (6)
Disclaimer: I want to make it very clear, there are A LOT of excellent resources to start out in paid trafficking on STM. Not only that, but there are also great tips members share publicly. My aim is not to belittle that STM only is here to inspire - without them, I wouldn't be able to kickstart my campaigns to run. Hence, why we pay membership fee for such knowledge.
Few days ago, when I received a notification about STM membership renewal I made my way to PayPal and confirmed to cancel it. After a few moments of deliberation, I thought, what the hell, been lurking these forums and sometimes writing a post or two, might as well share my thoughts about this whole AM thing or to be more precise – paid traffic.
I am by no means a veteran or a super affiliate, so you can take my thoughts with a grain of salt. As everything you should do with in life. Well… except the exclusive guru courses that will make you $1234 per day. Those you should follow with blind and obedient faith.
To be honest, at this point, I just want to entertain everyone and myself included with this post, maybe also remind why we are climbing this Jacob’s ladder.
It’s money. Why the fuck else would we start dabbling with this? And when I say dabbling, I mean me and many of the other newbies who start out, usually with an intro post in the newbie section, sharing all of our aspirations. It’s all about that financial independence. We aim to become the best version of ourselves, so we start working towards the allure of riches. And then we see that newsletter from STM about some guy ‘killing it’, I don’t know about you, but my blood starts boiling. I start reading it, with my mouth open, repeating ‘shut the fuck up’ and powering through the post, looking for that secret method to print money. All I get are some bullshit stories how you should never give up, shoot for the moon and hope for the best. N word, please. I ain’t paying 100 dollaroos just to get inspired.
Or maybe I am? Maybe I do need a hot, burning fire of passion within myself, a denial of belief that will most likely fuck me up financially, but that which will allow to reap those juicy benefits. How else am I going to ‘kill it’?
Alright, so I armed myself with few of those traits of mentality. I launched myself at pops campaigns first. After getting my whistle wet and a roughly losing a grand, I said to myself – fuck this, let’s do what the cool kids are saying – PUSHing my campaigns. A grand later, I start considering if I should add to my morning routines a crying in the shower.
I take a break for a while, couch potato mode engaged. The only thing that I promised myself, when I started doing paid traffic, was exercising and I keep my word to it. If I haven’t mentioned yet, I quit my job and used my savings to bootstrap this beautiful idea. At some point during my break, my lovely GF, who believes in my success blindly and supports it, even she starts doubting me and asks when the fuck will I stop moping around and do something. And that is when I start thinking HARD - why did I really stop? I end up with this list:
- Exchanging money for information is boring for me. Paid traffic strictly speaking is a numbers game, nothing else. You do a tweak, gather data, repeat and continue doing so until you hit red/green/moon profits.
- The dopamine hits I was getting from CPA conversions, quickly disappeared. I no longer enjoyed seeing any sort of progress.
- With the way things I was doing, I did not see any foundation I could build upon and further expand things. Literally, its pick an offer/lander(s) and use it on a source you have the best blacklist created.
- The verticals/angles I worked on were depressing and uninspiring. (Contrary to popular opinion, sweeps was a bad idea for me to start with, just for the fact of what a fucking idiot customer has to be)
- The lack of engagement with an actual customer. All I know is that my funnel goes through some magical algorithm that traffic source assigns. That's it. Everything else feels exactly the same. I am just staring at numbers and blasting tons of variables, seeing if any of that shit sticks to a wall (and profits).
- Probably the most important one – I was selling someone else’s product. It was not mine.
To most, it will look like a list of excuses. And to some extent, you are right. However, if we go back to talking about burning passion and believing in yourself, I think it paints the picture clearly, that I am not enjoying myself. And if I don’t like it, how the fuck am I supposed grind my teeth 8-16 hours a day doing this shit and smile at the same time?
So I get back to asking myself why did I start with paid traffic affiliate marketing? Again, it’s money. I admit, I got curious at one point and consumed knowledge superfast (albeit, it being technical knowledge) and even convinced myself I will enjoy doing this. But deep down, knew I am a creative person and I’ve actually been doing creative shit all my life. I had to pivot. It had to be money+fun.
And in that way, I ended up in e-book self-publishing business. I have already spent more time doing this, than paid traffic. And I chose this, because I have been writing a lot. I am actually a big nerd who owns a lot of board games and I very often used to write reviews for them on this popular platform.
Some of the technical skills (tracking, promoting, etc.) have transferred over and now I can use that knowledge to promote my books. So not everything I’ve learned from here went straight to a garbage can. That and now I have the knowledge that there are too many men out there, insecure about the size of their dick (at least that’s what the spy tools showed me). Which definitely makes me feel better about my member. (But that Titan Gel will definitely work, right??)
All in all, I hope you got the memo – know yourself. Give some time to think, what’s exactly not working for you. It might not be the unsuccessful campaigns you are running, it could just be a problem rooted inside you. But make sure to act more, than to think first. I did a lot of stuff first, then it took me some time to process everything (because I am a slow dumdum). Getting stuck in analysis paralysis sucks, so its better to do things and then look at the results.
Come to think of it, maybe I should have condensed this post to just that –“‘I did not enjoy what I was doing, now I found what I enjoy doing. Bye STM”
Anyway, hope you liked reading this. I am actually still deep into AM (YouTube, IG etc.), just not the paid traffic stuff. If you want to hit me up, my Telegram is @daliu5 . We can chat or even meet up at the upcoming AW Barcelona. We can drink at that sexy afterparty I’ve been getting spammed about in my email.
See ya,
-daliu5
Solid post, and so true. I come from an industry where the next logical step for everyone is to build their own offers and sales funnels. I know a lot of people who are absolutely killing it doing that, and it makes sense. I gave it a good year myself and just did not enjoy the process, at all... and on the flip side of that I completely fell in love with paid traffic and promoting products as an affiliate.
There's so much money to be made in so many different areas online, it's best to find a particular area that speaks to you, and then make a killing doing it.
@daliu5 I'm both happy for you and a little sad to see you go!
It's been quite a journey you had since you joined half a year ago - I remember your intro post, then follow-along, and now your good bye post.
I think it's awesome that you've found your true calling. I COMPLETELY agree with you when you say:
The FOMO is real. Sometimes we're so caught up in the "wow that guy made it big - I want to do that too" that we fail to slow down to ask ourselves "is that how I want to make my money too?"
There are a million ways to make money and affiliate marketing using paid traffic is just one of them.
I've seen others with the same experience as you daliu - grinding for months but not making headway in affiliate marketing, because their hearts are just not in it.
When your heart isn't in something, it's so much harder to make it work. Plus it's not fun. "It had to be money+fun" like you said.
The rest of my post will be to clarify some things for other members who may be reading this thread - I think there are several important points you've made that deserve to be highlighted or explained further, that can really benefit aspiring affiliates/marketers.
Mayznie summarizes how he's keeping ROI decent for BH camps: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post372983
I laid out exactly how I do product research to write sales copy and ad copy to promote ecom products, and how to target: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post372882
Mrbraun on how to use generic images to run push offers: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...h-Push-traffic
jonte_ on how CC submits in the sweeps and adult dating verticals can work very well on push traffic: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...00-Revenue-Day
otaskaya's step-by-step on how to collect and monetize push subscribers: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-with-push-ads
twinaxe's detailed description on how he ran online surveys on classifieds: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Surveys-90-CR
xesturgy on how to collect and monetize push subscribers: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...on-Subscribers
cawovt's tips on how he went from zero to 6-figure months in ecom within a year: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post369545
stickupkid's tips on keeping FB accounts alive: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Accounts-Live
Todor's method on WH viral content monetization: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...t-Monetization
...and of course the many green follow-alongs containing lots of details on type of offers, geos, etc.
I know you were sharing your story - just wanted to point this out to other members who may be reading.
See this is exactly why I always suggest not to invest one's last savings into this enterprise. I've said that so many times in so many posts I'm sounding like a broken record.
There are never any guarantee how long it would take to succeed. And psychologically it would create so much unnecessary stress - which can really affect a person's ability to make sound campaign-decisions.
If you're an aspiring affiliate reading this - let this experience be yet another example of what NOT to do.
@daliu5 though: It may have been a part of your necessary journey - all's well that ends well. You're still in the same industry and finally doing something you like now.
The dopamine hits I was getting from CPA conversions, quickly disappeared. I no longer enjoyed seeing any sort of progress.
With the way things I was doing, I did not see any foundation I could build upon and further expand things. Literally, its pick an offer/lander(s) and use it on a source you have the best blacklist created.
The verticals/angles I worked on were depressing and uninspiring. (Contrary to popular opinion, sweeps was a bad idea for me to start with, just for the fact of what a fucking idiot customer has to be)
The lack of engagement with an actual customer. All I know is that my funnel goes through some magical algorithm that traffic source assigns. That's it. Everything else feels exactly the same. I am just staring at numbers and blasting tons of variables, seeing if any of that shit sticks to a wall (and profits).
Probably the most important one – I was selling someone else’s product. It was not mine.
Many affiliates enjoy the kind of shady, misleading creatives you described. Stats excite them, and selling other people's offers provide them with the freedom of not getting stuck with their own product.
So - many of those points are only cons because they're not something you enjoy, and not because they are intrinsically negative.
Thank you for your post - you've given a lot of great advice. Best of luck with your ebooks, and thank so much for having made STM a part of your online marketing journey. It was nice having you!
Amy
Hi @vortex Amy!
Just added a disclaimer, to clarify that STM is definitely the go-to place for a newbie to learn about paid traffic. I just wanted to poke fun at how for the past few months I've been getting newsletters from you guys, where most of the cherry picked topics more or less were about getting inspired 
No bad intentions, though, I really appreciate your kind words and your great effort at helping everyone out!
Originally Posted by daliu5
Just added a disclaimer, to clarify that STM is definitely the go-to place for a newbie to learn about paid traffic. I just wanted to poke fun at how for the past few months I've been getting newsletters from you guys, where most of the cherry picked topics more or less were about getting inspired
No bad intentions, though, I really appreciate your kind words and your great effort at helping everyone out!
I understood your intentions perfectly - it was just to clarify for other members. But your gesture is appreciated just the same!
See you at AWE!
Amy
Sent from my SM-G930W8 using STM Forums mobile app
Sad to see you go.
But it's good that you got to this realisation.
Much better then blindly going and losing time and money.
Wish you all the best in your other ventures and see your around in BCN!
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