Home > > Newbie Follow-Alongs

---

from minimum wage worker to fully self employed the journey (54)

---

I hate my job I hate my income time to change it!

8/9/2019

I signed up to the stack that money forum a few days ago

I have went through and got signed up to a few affiliate networks/traffic networks

I am in the process of purchasing a yearly Voluum subscription (talking to support)

I will edit each day as I go along and will not post more then once a day

---

Hello @workhard662
Welcome to the family
Wish you all the best in you journey!

---

Do you have shitloads of capital that you're buying Voluum annual? The savings you make there are probably a) vital for your tests and b) can be made 100x by simply reinvesting and scaling your ops

Good luck tho! It really is possible.

---

Yes I really want to commit are you saying its good or bad to go annual? on my income I thought it would be best to go annual and get savings to improve the amount of money I can add to the business monthly. I am currently in the process of getting my Voluum set up.

In the 40 day guide today I will move on skipping the set up tracker and domain part in day 1 as it is currently getting set up. I will finish the rest of day one and do what is possible for me to do in days 2-8.

Just recognised I posted this thread in the wrong section and shall move it

---

All fixed for you mate!

What he means is if you're on a budget you're probably better to initially use that money for campaign budgets and testing then spending more on tracker in the beginning.

Sounds good dude! Patience to get these steps done right, then you can begin to get into the campaigns themselves. So you're going to try some push traffic?

---

Wow - committing to an annual subscription! That's impressive @workhard662!

Let's take it out for a spin soon! Looking forward to seeing stats!



Amy

---

10/09/2019 or 10th of September depending on time zone

I have got Voluum set up so I have completed all of day 1 I need to wait for my "redirect domain" to propogate


for day 2a I am struggling find certain options such as sort by date (although I believe it does this automatically) I also cant see the section to modify "EPC"

Whist waiting for a response to my question regarding Mobidea (posted in the "questions and awnsers section of the newbie zone) I have moved ahead and done some reading

---

11/09/2019

I have selected 5 offers without picking the exact filtering options Vortex recommends as some of these options appear to be unavailable on the "offers directory" webpage, I believe because the website has been updated.

When clicking the apply button to apply to the 5 offers nothing is happening.

I have contacted support.

My internet browser was a bit glitchy with the website they are fixing it.

Using Chrome worked perfectly fine for me and I have applied for 5 offers.

---

12th September 2019

continuing day 2 a

I did not know how to determine the EPC of the offers selected from Mobidea so I chose to write the details for the approved offer with the lowest payout under the assumption it would be easier to get at least one conversion from a lower payout offer.

I have finished the readings which finishes 2a

I have been told the following "

---

Choosing lower payout offers is fine for our purpose - direct-linking to these 1/2-click offers is only meant to give you some practice with setting up your first 1-2 campaigns. It's difficult to make profits by direct-linking to this type of offers in recent months. I wouldn't suggest wasting too much time with them - basically just set them up, run a little bit of traffic, then move onto the lessons on landing pages ASAP.

And yup - interfaces on aff networks, trackers, CDN etc. etc. change a lot faster than I could update the lessons. This tutorial is due for another update soon - just need to find the time, which has become an increasingly precious commodity these days...

Looking forward to seeing some stats!



Amy

---

14th of september 2019

I have started 2b by applying for a offer and asking my affilate manager to suggest a offer.

I will move on to 2c whist waiting for my affilate managers response

I have applied to a offer for to 2c

I feel like I haven't done much today tomorrow hopefully all the offers are approved I will put them in the spreadsheet finish 2bs readings and start working on day 9

---

15th september 2019

I had accidentally not saved the excel offer log from yesterday so I wrote in the offer from Mobidea again and I also wrote in the offer for Gotzha.

I am still waiting for my click dealer offer to be approved, and to receive a click dealer offer from my affiliate manager.

I think I am getting some details wrong/not being able to find details for the "carriers, OS's and other restrictions/notes" sections.

I have read the explanation for 2b so besides waiting on clickdealer offers I am all ready for day 9 and can move on.

---

Not every offer will have a description. Sometimes you'll need to get the details from the offer name itself, or ask your AM.

If you're eager to move onto the next step, you can download and fix up landing pages while waiting for offers to get approved.



Amy

---

16th september 2019

Click dealer affiliate manager wants to know what trafic I will use how should I respond?


I have added my click dealer offer to my spreadsheet I need to add a recommended offer as well once it gets approved

I have begun day 9 and did some of the initial parts.

how do I go about deleting traffic sources and campaigns from Voluum? its not a big deal but I noticed I couldn't delete the rows of info and I imagine it could get cluttered in the future.

---

Pop traffic. Following the 40-day tutorial on STM.


You'd want to retain as much data as you can - you may want to refer back to them later. There's no need to delete anything.

Don't worry about info getting cluttered - you can always do a search on offers, networks etc. by typing in the first couple/few letters.

But if you really want to, there's an option to archive campaigns.




Amy

---

17 September 2019

I have added one of the offers recommended by my affiliate manager into the spreadsheet.

I have completed the first section of day 9 finishing the Mobidea part and being up to the start of the click dealer part.

---

18th september 2019

I think I took part of the guide too literally and have made the click dealer Global S2S post back URL literally the following


How should I change my click dealer Global S2S post back URL to fix it

I changed the Global S2S post back URL to what Voluum told me to change it to in another thread. In the future if that post back url does not work I will be sure to try what you posted thanks Jaybot.

Tomorrow I shall likely try to edit a post back URL until I get the same final result as you guys so I know I understand how to do it.

---

Almost! Adjust the end of the address to this:

That should get it working for you.

---

19th of september 2019

I have finished day 9 minus the explaination and readings

I have not asked my Gotzha Am for a global postback URL as I lack confidence with post back URL's and would like to make sure I have created a correct one before he sets it as global.

I am going to read some of the explanation/readings for a few minutes and call it a day.

---

The day 9 explanation and readings went completely over my head. I think I will move on regardless and hope I understand tracking ect over time.

---

Woot I have set up my first campaign as I have done day 10.

It has really made me feel more motivated and confident.

---

I made 2 conversions woot

I had honestly assumed my tracking skills would be so bad if I made a conversion it would not show

I did day 11 I was only able to sort with one of the "choose typing's" not all 3 to go 3 layers deep.

I need to go to bed for work tomorrow so I may look back into it later and will hopefully finish day 12 tomorrow

---

Very nice! I'm proud!

And don't worry too much if you don't completely understand the materials in the "explanation" sections - just do your best, then take some action to get some experience, the refer back to it at a later time.

It takes both action and reading to grow your knowledge. So you read some, take some action, read some more, take more action etc. It creates an upwards spiral. There's no need to be a perfectionist when it comes to most aspects. Sure you'll make mistakes along the way - but as long as you make sure that conversions are being passed back, and that you're setting a reasonable budget on all campaigns to limit losses, the rest will sort itself out over time as you gain experience.

Speaking of which: Are conversions being passed back successfully now?



Amy

---

in regards to if my conversions are passed back my campaign under its details on Propeller ads now says it has a smart CPM of $1 which makes me assume propeller ads is aware of the conversions would this be correct?

Note the campaign has a zero in the conversions column on propeller ads however it also states "for S2S tracking the waiting period for conversion is two weeks".

---

I read day 12 which was all explanation/readings, I didnt take all of it in however I did learn a bit.
I will keep moving on and start working on day 13 next.

---

Smart CPM is different from CPA. Smart CPM only means you're choosing to let PropellerAds bid differently for each zone on your behalf. It has nothing to do with conversion tracking unfortunately.

Wow I never knew about the 2-week waiting period! I'm hoping this is not the case (or that we've misunderstood). Will ask our PropellerAds rep about this. Will update if I find out.



Amy

---

Still no conversions appear on Mobidea it obviously hasnt been 2 weeks tho

I took a break but now I am going to keep moving forward with this hopefully I discover the reason why no conversion showed shortly


I have done day 13 action the offer I chose from my spreadsheet did not have OS's and carriers listed as I didn't know at the time.

so I just had them all left on with pop ads as I am not too worried given it is a $2.50 bid

---

I read about half the day 13 explanation and readings and alot of it was going over my head so I will leave it and move on and come back to it when needed when I have a bit more experience hopefully I do day 14 after work today.


So it looks like day 14 is about learning to code. I am probably going to learn basics of coding for the next few days and re read day 13.

---

Wait - are you not seeing conversions on Mobidea? Or just Propellerads?

If you're not seeing conversions on Mobidea, it means that conversions aren't being made, period.

But if you're seeing conversion on Mobidea, and just not seeing conversions in your tracker and/or Propeller, it means one or both postbacks haven't been set up successfully.

If you're just running CPM campaigns (as opposed to CPA which isn't covered in the tutorial), then you don't even need to post conversions to Propeller. But you WILL need to post conversions to the tracker, or you won't be able to optimize your campaign.

Are you at least seeing impressions/clicks in Mobidea's interface?


You mean a $2.50/day budget?

Happy coding!




Amy

---

Hey, just propeller ads my bad sorry.


"As a BARE MINIMUM, you should go through the beginner's tutorials at Codecademy.com:

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-css

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/make-a-website

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/lea...ponsive-design

https://www.codecademy.com/learn/int...-to-javascript"


The coding courses are very long with code academy stating the first course you have listed should take 8 hours and the second course listed should take 15 hours ect.

With a few hours I think I have learned the bare basics of HTML. Should I move on and continue through your 40 day tutorial going back to code academy when needed or should I really hunker down and get through the rest of the lessons.

---

---

Slow and steady wins the race!

---

The things listed in the "how to fix landers" posts are the most common things to look for and fix, yes.

But there may be other things that need to be fixed as well - it would be hard to list ALL the case scenarios.

So I would suggest to start by fixing what I've outlined in my posts, and then just basically browsing through the lander yourself from different devices and clicking everything that CAN be clicked (basically mimicking visitor behavior) to make sure that everything works.

And if not, then go back into the code to figure out how to fix glitches that still remain.

Aside from making sure the lander's functioning as intended, you should also quickly check that it displays well on the major devices, and that it loads quickly enough (preferably < 1s, and not beyond 2s) to give the offer a chance to convert. Otherwise, you'd be losing a lot of the visitors (people will click back or close the browser because nobody has the patience to wait around for an ad to load).

In addition to that of course, you should check for sneaky redirects. I'm not an expert at this, but I've included some simple checks you can do to catch the more obvious redirect attempts.

Best of luck - and feel free to ask further questions. If you have specific coding questions, it may be good to start a new thread to ask them - just to get more eyeballs on them from people that are good at coding (which is my weakest area).



Amy

---

My lander code is in Spanish I am sure there is a easy way to view it in English so I can find and delete old time data but I thought it was worth mentioning as I am writing a post here anyways if you guys chucked me info on how to view the coding in English instead of Spanish that would be amazing.

the minimum time I have to spend on affiliate marketing today is 68 minutes and 20 seconds, adding 1% time each day is letting it creep up.

I feel half asleep and confused as soon as I look at that fixing up landing page stuff haha, I expect my first lander will be fixed incorrectly but I will get it down pat and then understand what I am doing with future landers.

---

The code itself is not in Spanish, it's either HTML, PHP or maybe javascript ... based on what lander you downloaded. These coding languages have their own syntax, it's not spanish nor english

The actual copy is in Spanish... you could use some translator tool to translate this to english, but it will mess up the whole code in the process for sure. The length of the sentences will change, maybe some of the characters will change to special ones etc ... I wouldn't do this.

---

I havent really achieved anything in the last day or two I don't really understand anything in the fixing up landers section.

Should I go back to learning coding?
from memory I only did a small amount of the lessons listed on the guide

I am going to make a decision on if I should go back quickly (within 24 hours) to not waste too much time

---

Perhaps posting the code of a lander here and working through it together would help?

I'm bad at coding as well, but I can spot the usual stuff that needs to be fixed.



Amy

---

I put off working at affiliate marketing for a while I presume I found the current part of the toutorial frustrating put it off and ended up forgetting about it.

I fully understand that I am quite frankly being a joke my account was made months ago and I havent finished a "40" day toutorial. I have to man up now and progress constantly or just throw in the towl.

So right now I guess what I need to do is go to the start of day 19-25 or maybe even day 18 or earlier to re reacquaint my self with what I am doing.

I am also going to give my self a 50 day timer to get this toutorial done or give up.

50 days is more then the tutorials expected 40 days time frame and I am up to day 19-25 already, so a 50 day timer is still being quite easy on my self.

I'm not being negative if I come across as so, I am being realistic, dropping my ego and putting this out there so the time limit on myself is more real.

Hopefully I will get this tutorial done within the time frame and move on to actually making money and leaving my job.

https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20200411T235959&p0=152&ud=1&font=cursi ve&csz=1

---

Getting started with coding isn't easy for everyone, especially if you don't have a technical background. I'd suggest checking out https://www.w3schools.com/ and get your hands dirty with small things first. Then once you get familiar with the syntax, things will get a lot easier to deal with. When I started out, I happened to struggle with coding a little bit, even though I used to deal with a lot of technical stuff on my previous jobs.

Also, in case it is still taking too long, you can always hire someone on fiverr or upwork to take care of the landing page cleaning process. There are a lot of affiliates and super affiliates around that don't even know how to place a tracker click url.

Try to be a bit more organized with new stuff you learn. Going through too much information in a short amount of time, can result in making things look more complicated than they really are.

Good things take time to be achieved, so don't put much stress on yourself. You can always ask questions here

---

I feel partially reacquainted with what I am doing after re reading day 19 - 25 I am now going to try and fix up my landers with some patience I can hopefully do this without backtracking any more

I now have 49 days and 6 hours left on my self imposed time limit

---

Good thing is that you don´t need to become a HTML/CSS/JS expert.

I can imagine that such stuff can seem to be very complicated in the beginning but I can assure you it isn´t

You just need to get used to it, when you get your first landers done you should understand already a bit better what scripts are used and what you need to change and so on.

And then it becomes easier with each lander you work on.

---

Last night I went through most of 19-25 (excluding the fixing the landers) I had already read through it yesterday, this time during the evening I was going through the actions but canceling changes so I didn't change anything.

In this work session today I should have gone through the last of redoing the actions of day 19-25 to feel reacquainted, I will re read the extra readings at the bottom as well hopefully this will be enough to refresh me and tonight I will have made progress on fixing up my landers.

Edit I think I think my mind is refreshed as it will get before actually fixing up landers I think the frustrating part of reorienting my self is over and I now where I left off and ready to actually finish this stuff

---

Sounds good, and when you still run into issues let us know.

Really man, we can´t let you give up before you even started properly

---

@twinaxe and @platinum has given all the advice there is to be given. I just want to add that if you're REALLY stuck with coding, just start with the free landers we're providing here:

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

Or, I could hook you up with a freelancer that can clean landers for $4/ea. If you'd like that, please PM me your skype and I'll ask the freelancer to contact you. (But please let me know here in the thread, so I would check my PMs specifically for yours. Otherwise I normally don't check PMs.)



Amy

---

$4 sounds great it makes a lot of sense for me to just pay the $4 or get free landers off the site. At this point I need to just get this toutorial over with and start running campaings I can learn less esentiall skills later from now.

Should I use new offers as it has been a while or just not worry and get the process done and be aware I will make a loss (my gut says the second option).

I will have sent you a direct message with my skype username within 5 minutes of this post

---

Why do you need HTML? you got tons of affiliate programs that are doing it for you. Could be more efficient. Anyhow, It's still impressive. Good luck mate

---

Thanks man, hmm that was a while ago I believe I was just doing the beginner courses in order. "you got tons of affiliate programs doing that for you" I am not quite sure what you mean

---

Edit as I looked forward in the guide a small amount, I think whist waiting for Vortexes contact (freelancer that fixes landers) I should do days 19-25 as normally would be done I am going to go ahead with that now

---

Just quoting as you may have not seen my post earlier I would love if you hooked me up with that freelancer I will send you another pm with my skype name in the next 10 minutes

---

When you have lots of landers to change on a regular base it can also be worth to consider a VA.

Few years ago I had a VA from PH to only work on landers for me.

He only wanted $80 per 5 days/40 hour work week.
I paid him more from the beginning and he did a very good job.

Had to explain him some stuff in the beginning but then he understood what was important for me and did a very good job.

---

Which resource do you find best for finding your VA?

---

Fiverr works great for one-offs, which can also lead you to people who would be great as a VA. I would start there.

---

I havent looked long on fiver but I am not seeing people that fix landers all I could see is people creating landers from scratch at a steep price

---

If you're just looking to clean landers, not rip them, then bannerandlanders and a few others on STM can do it for pretty cheap.

If you need ripping a site, then there are quite a few for around $10-15, you just need to search around, like this one.

---

Home > > Newbie Follow-Alongs