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Follow Along Amy’s 40-Day Step By Step Guide to Profits (40)

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Hey so I joined this awesome forum about a week ago. It’s fair to say I’m experiencing information overload. With so much information it’s pretty easy to end up in a revolving door, where you’re moving but not really going anywhere. So while jumping from post to post and thread to thread I luckily came across Vortex' 40-Day Tutorial 2019. What I liked about this guide by Amy was the way it encourages you to take action first then figure out why later. I was sold when I read “this course takes almost all the decision-making out of the process.”

So I figured doing a follow along for this guide would be a great opportunity to help others while helping myself. All the while holding me accountable.

As I go through this process PLEASE feel free to chime in, offer feedback, ask questions. I’m here to help if I can and I need as much help as this forum can offer.

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Day 1: Applying to various networks (Voluum version)

Today was dedicated to signing up to some affiliate and ad networks. Also getting a tracker and a dedicated domain.

Level of difficulty for these task…? Probably 1 on a scale from 1 to 10.

Prior to starting day 1, I applied to a few networks.

• Mobidea - Approved me immediately after the application.
• Advidi - Connected with me via Skype chat and asked a few questions. I was approved immediately after I gave my response.
• Clickdealer - Connected with me via Skype chat and asked me a few questions. was approved immediately after I gave my response.
• MaxBounty - Applied but we’re still trying to schedule a phone interview. Applications for MaxBounty will be rejected if the phone interview doesn’t take place.
• Gotzha - Applied but still waiting to hear back.

Signed up for the 2 ad networks suggested in the Amy’s tutorial.

• PropellerAds - Signed up and answered the application questions with the responses given in the tutorial. Approval was instant.

Note* If you use an adblocker you may need to disable it while attempting to register for ProPellerAds.

• ProAds - Signed up and approval was instant.

Note* If you use an adblocker you may need to disable it in your email account to view the activate account link.

I chose Voluum for my tracker. Mainly because I was introduced to it first by Charles Ngo. I’m currently on the entry plan for $69/month. After doing some research I realized it would work well for me at this stage and at scale.

The things that were important to me in no particular order:

1. Cloud-based
2. Several data center regions all over the world
3. Minimum 1 million events per month to start
4. SSL dedicated domain
5. Live webinar trainings

I felt good with my decision for those reasons.

Setting up the custom domain for my tracker was fairly simple and straight-forward. My domain hosting company is Godaddy and I had a domain already registered that wasn’t being used. Inside the Voluum documentation, there was an article titled, “Godaddy: Setting up a custom domain.” The article was very thorough and detailed. Following that article I had no issue setting up my dedicated domain.

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Day 2-8: Picking offers

Today I was able to pick several offers to promote.

Level of difficulty for this task... also a 1 on a scale from 1 to 10.

Mobidea - Approved all 5 offer instantly.



Advidi - All 5 offers went into pending status instantly and were approved the next day.



Clickdealer - The offer I selected was approved in under 24hrs. Still waiting to hear from my AM on a recommended offer.



At the moment I’m still waiting on Gotzha and MaxBounty to review my application and accept me into their networks. I’ll give them both another 2 days before moving on.

There was no real science to my selection process. I just chose to promote the offers with the highest epc from each network. I just want to get these offers up and tested as soon as possible for the experience.




Well that’s it for today. As I stated earlier, I’m still waiting to hear back from 2 networks about my application for approval. While I wait, I’ll continue to the next lesson which is Day 9: Setting Up Tracking On Voluum.

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Day 9: Setting Up Tracking On Voluum

I was pretty excited about this lesson because I was having a difficult time wrapping my head around everything trackers. I mean, I understand their importance and they being crucial to our success. But the technical side of tracking is beyond me. At this point I’m still no expert but what helped a little was this post. https://stmforum.com/forum/showthread.php?44832-Light-bulb!-When-tracking-links-and-postback-URLs-finally-made-sense

The above post helped to make sense of what the token id accomplishes. By using an analogy to a registration form. I guess what’s still a little confusing is which affiliate network, ad network, tracking software uses/requires what?

So with that being said and without really knowing why I was calling this token that on this network or that id this on that. I’d say setting up the tracker was a 3 out of 10 on the difficulty scale. I can see if done enough it will become second nature.

Simply you first make sure your affiliate network has your postback url (which is in your tracking platform and only has to be given once). Next, grab your offer link from the affiliate network. Create a new offer in your tracker and paste that offer link. Finally create a campaign for the that offer you just created. If done correctly you end up with a final campaign url to send traffic to.





Offer 1 Mobidea
http://track.unemployabl.com/c144bde3-cce7-4dc7-95a0-354f9b714167?zoneid={zoneid}&device={device}&brows er={browser}&os={os}&country={country}&region={reg ion}&isp={isp}&useragent={useragent}&language={lan guage}&connectiontype={connection.type}&cost={cost }&visitor_id=${SUBID}

Offer 2 Clickdealer
http://track.unemployabl.com/d0ccac09-728c-40a1-8de2-b3f8f4494064?zoneid={zoneid}&device={device}&brows er={browser}&os={os}&country={country}&region={reg ion}&isp={isp}&useragent={useragent}&language={lan guage}&connectiontype={connection.type}&cost={cost }&visitor_id=${SUBID}

Offer 3 Advidi
http://track.unemployabl.com/d7371119-a3b1-40ba-87ff-032edba3f924?zoneid={zoneid}&device={device}&brows er={browser}&os={os}&country={country}&region={reg ion}&isp={isp}&useragent={useragent}&language={lan guage}&connectiontype={connection.type}&cost={cost }&visitor_id=${SUBID}

That’s it for this lesson.

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Day 10: Setting Up a Campaign In PropellerAds

This lesson was straight-forward. I got through it pretty quick once I was able to add funds to my PropellerAd account. For whatever reason I had to go through 4 credit/debit cards before one was accepted. After that, setting up the campaign was a breeze. I decided to create campaigns for all 3 offers.



Everything was good until I get this “Your account has been suspended” email in the morning.




So after emailing support. They replied…


I sent the required information and the response I received was that they will forward my information to the responsible department and contact me when the procedure was complete. While I wait for that to get cleared up. I’m moving on to Day 13: Setting Up A Campaign In PopAds.

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Hi Jafar!

I think the reason is that you tried multiple credit cards, our system detected you as a carder. Our team will check your details asap and be back to you if everything is ok, don't worry!
And every time you face any issues please contact our Support team asap (via live chat). We're online there 24/7.

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@proppeler..
It makes no sense to use you any more, if you give out instruction such as these.. on 1 day notice
"Please note: all Push Notifications campaigns focused on collecting subscribers on the target URL page (push subscription offers) do not comply with our policy anymore. The changes are taking effect August, 12. Please read more for details."

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Great thanks! I actually emailed into support again just now, before I saw your reply. Haven't heard back yet but I'm patient.

Thanks again.

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Day 13: Setting Up a Campaign In PopAds

Over the weekend I set up a campaign for one offer with PopAds. The process was similar to PropellarAds. Fortunately there were no issues this time with adding funds. I was able to use PayPal.



The campaign was approved in under 24hr.



Here are my Voluum stats from the traffic I was able to run to these offers.



Not much to see here as expected. Now off to Day 14-15: Introducing Landing Pages!

* Affiliate Network UPDATE - MaxBounty got back to me. After a brief chat messenger exchange via skype, my application was approved. Still haven’t heard from Gotzha.

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Good stuff @Jafar! Welcome to STM!


Thanks for that tip!


Yes their entry plan is great for beginners! Good choice.


JUST Clickdealer and Advidi should provide you with more than enough offers for the first few months.

Of course Gotzha and Maxbounty are fantastic networks too! But you'll be fine for now. I'm very impressed that you were able to get yourself accepted into all these networks - especially Clickdealer and Advidi both of which I know to be harder to get into.

It's not necessary to try to get into more networks for now. Do some volume first, then you'll be able to get into most any network you apply to.


That's it! One more step: You need to add tracking tokens to the end of the offer url before pasting it into the tracker. For Voluum, {clickid} is mandatory, and I would also suggest adding traffic ID and campaign ID.


You were wise to proceed straight to lessons on landing pages! As far as direct-linking to 1/2-click offers goes, just setting up 1-2 for practice would be enough (which you've done).

I don't know if you have a subscription to Adplexity yet - sooner or later you'll need it if you're running pop or push (or native or adult), but for starters, you can check out the new Lander Depository on STM for some free landers:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...age-Depository

I'm writing a guide on how to succeed with sweepstakes offers, which will be posted in 1-2 weeks' time. It would be the perfect guide to "graduate to" from the 40-day tutorial. Please stay tuned!



Looking forward to further updates from you!




Amy

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Thanks! I'm excited and happy to be here.



Yea I was able to share my Shopify and Facebook Ad experience with the networks. I'm sure that helped me get accepted.



Yea I subscribed to Adplexity Mobile!



I'm looking forward to that. I feel like sweepstakes would be a great starting point for myself to build upon.



I really appreciate you taking the time to read through my follow along and provide your valuable feedback. So thank you for that!

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It took just short of 3 months before I got a response from them ��

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Day 16: Picking a Vertical and Applying to Offers

This was a straight-forward lesson. I’d say the level of difficulty was a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I chose the Sweepstakes vertical as per the lesson, “Sweeps is a very good vertical for newbies to start with. There are lots of good offers available for running, lots of good landers available for ripping, and you don't need to struggle too much between making landers really aggressive (i.e. scammy/misleading) in order to make them convert, and getting them approved by traffic sources.”

Why make things difficult! Sweepstake offers sound good to me. I contacted 3 of my affiliate managers for recommendations as per the lesson. Haven't heard back from any of them yet. I'll be using Adplexity in the meantime to find lander to run.

UPDATE: My PropellerAds account was unsuspended!

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Was it worth the wait LOL? I'm not stressing over it. So many networks to work with.

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Day 16: Continued & Day 17: Downloading landers from Adplexity

Heard back from 2 of my AM’s with a handful of offer recommendations.





I decided to run 2 offers. One with an iPhone prize and the other a Rossmann gift card prize. Here’s a look at some of the landers I downloaded via Adplexity to eventually run with these offers.



That’s it for today!

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Great - I actually have a Rossmann lander in Polish that's all fixed up you could use (you may already have a similar one fixed up by now but here it is just in case):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jbygtpxzyr...urvey.zip?dl=0

(I've put it in the Lander Depository - make sure you check there in the future before ripping more landers - should save you some time on fixing/modding.)

Eager to see you show some stats!




Amy

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Day 18: Setting Up Hosting and CDN

Going into this lesson I was sure it would be a breeze... WRONG! Level of difficulty from 1 to 10 was a solid 9. Found myself confused with what WAS WHAT and what was FOR WHAT. I think my problem was remembering what each AWS product did... The explanation section really helped me wrap my head around that part.

Did I mention the error message that drove me insane? I spent the entire day trying to get rid of that.



I found myself getting even more confused after reading the 3 posts that were provided to help with the error. What helped me to get rid of this message was 2 things. First, by reading the explanation section I gained an understanding of the AWS product flow. And second, because I understood the AWS flow, ACTUALLY READING the error message made sense of why this was happening.

So the message says, “to add an alternative domain name (CNAME) to a CloudFront distribution, you must attach a trusted certificate that validates your authorization to use the domain name.” Which meant the alternative domains I was trying to use needed to FIRST be added to a ssl/tls certificate.




*Note that both domain variations should be added to the same certificate.



Then I clicked “Create record in Route 53.”



Waited 30 minutes for the changes to propagate.



Lastly I went back to CloudFront to enter the 2 alternative domains and create the distribution. And NO MORE ERROR MESSAGE. After some time the distribution status went from processing to deployed.





So everything above seemed good. But now when I check my name servers on dnschecker.org, my domain with the www randomly changes locations every time I refresh. And this is even after 12 hours of waiting.





I’ll give it even more time. Meanwhile the show must go on to Day 19-25: Fixing Up Landers. This should be fun as I actually took a 10 week coding course with codeacademy.com in preparation of me entering the affiliate marketing space. So it’s time to put what I learned to the test.

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I REALLY need to update that lesson on hosting and CDN - moving it higher in my list of priorities. Things change so much as fast, it's hard to keep the guide up to date with all the changes. So sorry you had to go through all that!

But in a way though, you've now gained valuable insight into how things work. So I guess in the end it's all good.

Knowing some coding will definitely save you a lot of headache! You're getting to the "fun" part!



Amy

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Day 19-25: Fixing Up Landers

How To Edit Amazon S3 Files/Folders Using AWS CLI (Command Line Interface).

I went a different route for uploading edits to Amazon S3. This seemed a lot quicker but does require you know a little about command line commands in terminal.



First go to brew.sh, copy the brew install command and paste into the terminal. Press ENTER.





Once the brew script install is complete, it’s time to install AWS CLI (Command Line Interface) by typing brew install awscli. Click ENTER.



While brew automatically installs AWS CLI, log into AWS and create the permission keys to gain access to your account from the terminal. Navigate to Identity and Access Management (IAM).



From the dashboard, dropdown on Activate MFA on your root account and click Manage MFA.



Click Continue to Security Credentials.



Drop down on Access keys (access key ID and secret access key). Click Create New Access Key.


Click Show Access Key to copy, paste your keys or download key file. I recommend you download for sure because you’ll never be able to view the secret key again.



Copy and paste these keys. Open the command terminal and type aws configure. Paste your access key, then press enter. Paste your secret key, then press enter. Then press enter 2 more times.



Done! Now you can upload edited files and folders using AWS CLI. Here’s a link to the command that will be used the most.

Examples:

Use aws s3 cp yourfilehere.txt s3://yourbucketaddresshere/ to upload a single file.

Use aws s3 sync yourfolderhere.txt s3://yourbucketaddresshere/ to upload a folder.

NOTE: If you make an edit to a file/folder and re-upload. The file/folder in AWS S3 will be updated accordingly.

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Wowsers!!

Thanks so much for explaining everything in detail and with screenshots!

I'm going to link to your post from the lesson - this will certainly help other members!

Thanks again for taking the time @Jafar!



Amy

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No problem!

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Way off-topic, but that fixed up Rossmann lander is/was so good (the simple quiz), that it's now used on most network's offer page. So... you may want to check the offer page first, otherwise you'll be sending the customer to the same quiz twice. This doesn't work well for obvious reasons

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Update Day 19-25: Fixing Up Landers

I learned a valuable lesson in coding this week. YOU’RE NOT A CODER BRO! Taking a 10-week codeacademy.com course doesn’t make you a coder! I took one look at the code for a couple landing pages and found myself lost. So with that said I decided to just hire someone off Upwork. I’m sure this will save me time and a headache. I’ll let the professionals code.

I use the job posting provided my Amy with some minor tweaks. Now I'm waiting for the proposals to come in. I really feel good about taking the coding off my plate so I can focus on what I’m good at.

2nd Update Day 19-25: Fixing Up Landers

I’ve hired a web developer and gave them access to my AWS S3 bucket. I want them to fix a landing page for me and I’m trying to show them how the page is supposed to operate. Unfortunately I’m getting ERROR SITE every time I try to load any landing page for this particular offer.





Anyone know what the problem is?

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Which link are you trying to load exactly? Can you provide a step-by-step?

Did you download a lander and upload it to your S3? Did you make access public?

Let's do some troubleshooting.

Alternatively: If you're provided your dev with access to your S3 account, then they should be able to solve this issue for you, no?

Good call on hiring a dev! Just curious though - how much are you paying? I know someone who's good at cleaning up landers that has some free time to take on more clients, who charges extremely reasonable rates. If you need his services please let me know and I'll hook you up.



Amy

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The last link in the redirect chain and outgoing link in Adplexity.

Originally Posted by vortex

Can you provide a step-by-step?

The 2 offers with with arrows won’t load or get redirected. Even with the VPN I purchased.


I’m trying the last link in the redirect chain.

Originally Posted by vortex

Did you download a lander and upload it to your S3? Did you make access public?

Yes I downloaded all my landers and uploaded them to AWS S3. The access is public. From the S3 I don’t have a problem viewing but they don’t function

properly. As you will see in my next post, the issue is I need to show my web designer how the pages are supposed to work. Either the page won’t load from

Adplexity or it gets redirected to a page that is not the offer.

Originally Posted by vortex

Let's do some troubleshooting.

Let's! Please

Originally Posted by vortex

Alternatively: If you're provided your dev with access to your S3 account, then they should be able to solve this issue for you, no?

That's what I assumed but they need to know how the original landing page in Adplexity functions.

Originally Posted by vortex

Just curious though - how much are you paying? I know someone who's good at cleaning up landers that has some free time to take on more clients, who charges extremely reasonable rates. If you need his services please let me know and I'll hook you up.

$15 per hr. And yea I'd love the hook up! I'm sure they'll understand the industry since they've cleaned landers before.

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Update Day 19-25: Fixing Up Landers

I hired a web developer and gave them a simple 1 landing page project to complete. After some back and forth before they started I realized they would need some direction. I could just say, “here, fix it please.” LOL! So as long as I’m able to explain exactly what I need, they can get it done.

With that said, the main issue I’m encountering is that some of the landing pages tend to be a multi-page process. And this processe tend to not function after downloading the page. I need to figure out a way to show my web designer how each page should operate. Unfortunately it’s not as easy a providing the with the outgoing/redirect link from AdPlexity because geo targeting won’t allow most pages to load.

After looking into it I realized I would have to get a VPN to change my IP address relative to the geo targeting. I purchased Windscribe VPN and was still unsuccessful loading these geo targeted pages.

If I can just figure out a way to show my web designer how each page should operate, I’d be set.

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Ah OK I see what you're trying to do - you're trying to access the landing page DIRECTLY, from the original affiliate's website.

This is not always possible. Sometimes the landing page is no longer at the same url. Also, some affiliates cloak their urls such that if you're not a part of the "legit" traffic, the lander wouldn't be shown.

This is why even with a VPN, you weren't able to access some of the landers.


If this is the case, then you've hired the wrong dev - typical pop landers are pretty straight-forward. One look at the code and they should have a pretty good idea what it's trying to accomplish. If you need to provide guidance on how every lander needs to work, you may as well clean them up yourself. Please see below...


The dev I'm using can probably do the job for cheaper - please PM me with your skype (and let me know you've done so by updating this thread - I don't usually check PMs because my inbox has become so hopelessly full that I could never ever reply to everyone). I'll hook you up. (Note: This dev is not affiliated with STM in any way - please hire at your discretion.)



Amy

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Private message was sent. Thank you, I really appreciate the help.

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Day 26: Optimizing Landers for Speed

Ok so I’m technically still working on the last lesson, believe it or not. Basically I hired a developer who does good work but I realized based on my conversation with Amy that they may not have experience with affiliate marketing landing pages. Per Amy’s advice, someone with experience with these types of landing pages should be able to look at the code and understand how the page should operate. With my developer I was spending a lot of time showing them how the pages were suppose to work.

So at this point I’ve only asked them to fix one landing page for me. Luckily I’ve been connected with a developer, per Amy's recommendation that knows their way around a landing page. I reached out to them yesterday. Still waiting to hear back.

I don’t want to stay stagnant so I’ll continue on with the one fixed lander for now. I don’t expect much, in terms of conversions. I just want to continue gaining experience.

Alright so that all brings me to this lesson which was super simple follow. Level of difficulty 1 on a scale from 1 to 10.

First I went to Voluum to grab my campaign url. Then signed up for a GTmetrix account and pasted my link.



Wasn’t able to select Chrome (Android, Galaxy Nexus)


Results came back as follows.



I’m no expert yet… but everything sure looks good to me.

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Looking good @Jafar!

When it comes to loading speed, nothing can be "too good". Try to google each of those items in PageSpeed's "recommendations" list. Every little trick you learn can shave off additional loading time to get you one step closer to perfection.



Amy

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Update:

The end of October I took a break from this follow along to learn about leadgen on facebook. I've recently been testing a few offers and wanted to share my progress.

Here are my stats so far from my first test.
Campaign budget is $100 per day.
The offer converts at $44.
I don't know what the offer EPC is yet, so I don't know if my CPC is too high.
My CFC is over 40% so I think that is ok.
My CPM is well over $20.
1 ad received all the conversions.




Before I could optimize this campaign the advertiser paused the offer on the network. So my affiliate manager recommended another offer for me to test.

Here are the stats for my 2nd campaign test.
Campaign budget is $100 per day.
The offer converts at $54.
The EPC is working out to be $7.71 and my CFC is $6.54 at the asset level and $5.11 on my best ad.
My CFC is over 23%… Needs some work.
My CPM around $14 seems decent.
Ad 3 received all the conversions.
Campaign has only been running for 24 hours but has reached 6,000 impressions.



Here are my stats after 3 days running at $100 per day.
My winning ad has a good CPM of $10.61
CPC is pretty good at $1.24
CFC is $7.22. I think it may be slightly better than what shows only because I had an error in my funnel for all of day 2. It’s probably closer to $5. I probably missed out on 2 more conversions that day.
Right now I’m pretty much at breakeven. Even with the day 2 error.
I feel like there's an opportunity to get more conversions with this offer if I replace the 3 questions survey and email optin, with a one page lander then direct to offer. I realized the offer page had survey style questions already. So maybe giving them fewer survey questions to answer will increase conversions.



Right now I’m testing different landing pages to lower CPL below my EPC. If I find a lander good enough I’ll attempt to scale.

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Hey Jafar,

Are you using any tracker?

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@Jafar's using Voluum. He mentioned it in earlier posts


Karolina

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Thanks for reply Karolina.

I am just confirming for Facebook specifically

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You're safe to track Facebook campaigns in Voluum when you use direct tracking method (as it's not based on redirects).


Karolina

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Hi @Jafar! Welcome back! So happy to see an update from you! Thanks for the update!

It sounds like you're able to reach break-even without a lot of testing! That's very promising.

Testing more landers would be great! However, testing more ads is also important.

Something I like to do, is taking the best of one element and using that to test variations of other elements. For example:

-Using the best ad to test more lander variations.
-Using the best lander to test more ad variations.
-Using the best image/video to test more ad text variations.
-Using the best ad text to test more image/video variations.

You get my point.

Also: Although I don't know exactly what you're promoting, and what your targeting is like, the CPC looks quite high. This is just a "gut feeling" though - you may be promoting something I don't have any experience promoting. Nevertheless, I feel that there's opportunity for improvement there.

To lower CPC, increase CTR and/or engagement.

To increase CTR: Image/video thumbnail is ULTRA important! The image/vid thumbnail doesn't necessarily have to be super-relevant to what you're selling, but it needs to catch the audience's attention so that they can go on to read your ad and hopefully click through to your lander.

People are browsing FB not to be sold to. They're reading updates from their friends and looking for news and entertaining memes and cute videos, and you have to stop them by grabbing their attention. Only if you can grab their attention, would they go on to read your skillfully-crafted ad text and lander.

So, think: What kind of audience am I targeting? What types of images would stop them dead in their tracks?

Answer that question and you're halfway there.

And you can get inspiration from viral videos and images as well - they can work well no matter whether you're targeting a broad or niche audience. (Please note I said "inspiration from" and not "rip and use the same images/vids". Copyright infringement can be a big deal.)

To increase engagement: Asking a question in the ad can result in more comments. Putting a controversial twist on your ad text can also achieve the same (just be careful not to go overboard with this - FB doesn't like stuff that's overly controversial or anything too sensational).

Another thing to consider: Have you done extensive research on what type of people would convert the best for your type of offer? Targeting the right audience can have a big effect on your CPC and CR.

That's all I can think of for now. Please feel free to continue the discussion! And thanks again for coming back to update us on your progress!




Amy

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No tracker. I’m using the fb stats for tracking. Works fine.

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Have you tried asking the readers to write a comment for their answer to the question in the ad copy?

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Maybe I've missed it, but how are you tracking sales. Did they let you install the Facebook Pixel on their checkout page or you just count affiliate clics as purchases?

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FB doesn't like it when a post/ad explicitly asks users to make comments (or hit "Like" or "Share").

FB also doesn't like it when we call out users based on their attributes/situations.

But we can still ask questions without calling out users or explicitly asking them to answer in the comments - as long as we're asking questions that are RELEVANT to the audience we're targeting, on a topic they feel strongly about, then people will answer.

For example, try to craft an ad targeted at affiliate marketers, that says "Is affiliate marketing dead?"

Instead of making it personal, such as "Feeling like a failure?" or "Not making any money from affiliate marketing?" (Actually, even the latter MIGHT get approved - I haven't tested those exact words. I'm just trying to illustrate the difference between being personal vs. not.)

Hope this helps!



Amy

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