My New Journey of Learning to Be a Proper AM (45)
Hi all,
Just a little background. 12 years ago I had a quite successful eCommerce store, with email marketing craft taught by Rakuten.
I had to shut it down because back then payment gateways in Thailand were very limiting. They take big cuts, don't protect sellers from scams, and it takes 45 days to get withdrawal.
With some months making a lot of sales mean totally running out of cash flow. Banks also reluctant to give loan to "online business" back then.
After that I did freelancing, using simple landing pages and fb ads to get leads to realtors and seminar providers.
Recently I've been focused in Trading, which I really enjoy. However to trade for living creates tremendous stress.
My goal right now is to learn proper AM. I could work for online offers, as well as offline offers here in Thailand.
It is my wish that I would run an eCommerce store with my daughters selling "green earth" products (Solar Cell, straws and plates made from plants)
I'm very excited to stumbled upon STM. And I love the step-by-step learning.
Please feel free to comment, advice on any parts that I do. My English is not the best, but I will try my very best to be clear and concise.
Cheers,
Pon
I have completed Day 1 of Volumm tutorial.
Somehow
- Finished Signed up Volumm
- Bought a domain from NameCheap. Got it for just 1$ per year with whois guard included. This is something new to me already! :P
- Finished domain setup in both Volumm and NameCheap
- Installed Skype in phone so affiliate manager can contact me.
Completed Day 2 of Volumm tutorial on
- Picked 5 offers with payout $0 - $2
- Picked 1 offer with highest EPC
- Recorded that offer onto Google Sheet.
Although the interface on
Feel very empowered and lucky to have found this forum and tutorial.
Completed Day 9 of Volumm tutorial
- Done setup one offer from
- Checked that domain were propagated correctly under Volumm's domain setting
- Went back to Day 1 to complete the "Reading" part (read 5 success stories and a the secret of high volume affiliate posts)
- Got an email from ClickDealer's AM, added his contact in Skype
- Finished the Explanation and Reading sections of Day 9.
Not certain if I fully understood the tokens and variables in tracking yet, but I think I'm getting there.
The 2 posts in the reading section really helps. Again, kudos to Amy and STM.
- AdMobo approved
- Clickdealer approved
Having a skype chat with AM was my first experience, it feels refreshing and I get to be presence how lucky I am to have choices in life and the reward of taking actions.
On the side note, I'm an old dad (40+ now) who's really addicted to playing MOBA. But since I found STM and the 40-day tutorial, I haven't been playing AT ALL 
Hey man! What offers are you currently running and on what ad format?
Completed Day 2 of Volumm tutorial on Clickdealer
- Picked a randon offer with max payout of $2, mobile content vertical, developing country geo. Waiting for approval.
- Done reading the explanation and learned about various ways to pick, research for good offers.
- Browse Admobo for offers, there's no offer in developing country geo, so I'll get back to their offers on the later stage of tutorial.
Completed Day 10 of Volumm tutorial
- Deposited $100 to PropellerAds.
- Created campaign on PropellerAds for
PropellerAds's support told me that for Costa Rica, they only provide traffic from 2 ISPs: Claro and Movistar
However in
So I contacted Mobidea's AM to verify if that means only traffic from ICE is allowed?
Therefore I've excluded traffic from Claro and Movistar until I can confirm answer with Mobidea just to be safe
Originally Posted by am2015
I'm still in the first few days of the 40-day tutorial. So only picking random offers to learn about tracking, direct-linking.
Redo Day 9 and Day 10 of Volumm tutorial again
- Since the offer I picked from
- Picked an offer from Clickdealer, added to Volumm and created a campaign in PropellerAds: Mobile content | Thailand | Direct-Link pop under.
- Set $10 as daily + total campaign budget.
Originally Posted by mrhaste
We have recently made a small research about our push and pop traffic and are sending out there what we saw that worked on our traffic:
Pop Traffic Verticals
Push Traffic Verticals
Hope this helps a bit
Originally Posted by am2015
Thanks very much for reaching out.
Originally Posted by mrhaste
Originally Posted by am2015
Originally Posted by HenryW
Completed Day 11,12,13
Starting to learn how to code in Day 14.
Starting to notice my little voice, dreading the coding as well as creating landers.
I keep telling myself that doing creatives like banner, copy writing, landers are the hardest. And I can never do it right.
I will have to let go of that little voice, and push on.
Cheers,
Pon
Completed Day 14 html class in CodeAcademy
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html
I have completed first chapter of CSS class in CodeAcademy
Started day 16
Already sent message to AM requesting suggestions on sweep offers.
1. already converted reasonably-well for a few other affiliate
2. In tier 3/4 geos
3. Any sweepstakes prizes
4. SOI leadgen sweeps offers
Will subscribe Adplexity and check out the landers forum today.
Had a very educational, exciting day.
- Got a Digital Ocean's droplet setup.
- Pointed a domain to the droplet.
- Signed up a
-
- Completed Aff.Networks, Traffic Sources, Global Postback settings on Binom.
Completed Day 16
- Got 9 offers from AM
- Logged all 9 offers into the offer spreadsheet.
- Decided on which prize, and language.
Hi Pon! Apologies on my late arrival! Just got back from Bangkok for AWA + vacation + got all caught up on sleep and urgent work.
It sounds like you have an impressive set of skills!
May I ask why you're not doing more lead generation on FB? That area is still wide open - in fact that's something I'm beginning to get into.
The 40-day tutorial is perfect for learning the basics, but please do not dwell on pop traffic. Doing so would be a step backwards for you. FB can be so much more lucrative, and certainly more promising in the long run.
It is my wish that I would run an eCommerce store with my daughters selling "green earth" products (Solar Cell, straws and plates made from plants)
I'm on the same mission as well: To promote products and services that benefit the end user.
Which is another reason why I wouldn't encourage you to dwell on pop. Vast majority of offers that can convert on pop traffic, are scammy/spammy offers. In the very least, you'd need to use misleading angles on your landing pages in order to make those offers convert.
If you'd like to focus on pop for a while, I will do my best to help. I'm just saying that with your skills, it may be better to only run pop to learn basics like tracking and split-testing, and then focus on FB in the long run.
By the way your English is more than great! I just came back from Bangkok - I go every year for the AWA conference (affiliateworldconferences.com, which started as an STM meetup and grew into a twice-a-year conference). I also had the opportunity to stay there for a few months back in 2015. I don't normal enjoy traveling, but every time I leave Bangkok I would miss it. It's not just the food or the shopping, it's the people and culture that really impresses me. Nobody yells, everybody is courteous and civil to everyone else. People are considerate - no cutting in line or littering in the streets. And even in a packed train in above 30 degree weather, I never smell anything unpleasant, because everyone's big on personal hygiene. And everything is so convenient and efficient. Plus there's almost never any major crimes like murder - I feel safer walking in the streets of Bangkok at 3am compared even to Toronto (where I live). I could go on with how impressed I am with the Thai people and their ways, but still stop here and get back on topic.
Where in Thai are you at? Would be lovely if you could join us at the conference next December!
And you can always ask questions here if you're stuck!
By the way I'm 40+ as well - and so is @matuloo.
(Sorry buddy - gotta bring someone down with me!)Looking forward to seeing some campaign stats when you have some!
Amy
Hi Amy @vortex!
Thank you for writing back, and sorry for taking a while to reply as well. My daughter's team was in a dance tournament, and I just drop everything to support her.
If anyone wants to see her team's performance, here's the video.
1. Offline offers require good "closer" / people who help with selling, closing.
All my real estate deals were "Revshare". I started first with offline, warm leads, that I've qualified myself (income, interests). But the conversion were extremely low. I noticed that the property owner / his rep have poor sales skill. Turned out I had to bring in another "closer" to help and share profit with.
2. Some of the offers turned out to be problematic. I did a campaign with a Condo in Chiang Mai. I've sent many leads, many converted (with the help of my "closer" friend), but it turns out that Condo don't finish building as promised. In other words I would need some expertise to verify, some form of contract to control the real estate offer.
Up to today I still get contacted by a few housing projects in Chiang Mai, and I'm reluctant to do marketing for them. Housing is very important to people's lives, and I do not wish to send people to bad deals unless I can verify / lock the property owners with strong contracts.
3. In many cases, a lot of the leads who didn't convert right away in the RE offers, converted later "behind my back".
4. Similar to number 3. I was doing some campaigns for offline Nutra company. It turned out that a lot of people will google that Nutra brand, contact directly to that company's FB page, and that company sell directly to the customer. Later, that Nutra company run their own ads and sell directly to customers, cutting out affiliates.
5. With seminar providers. I've sent many leads to their front end which was a free full day seminar, in which they'd later upsell to a bigger course, or some would have the students open an account with Forex broker. It turned out that many courses they sold were sub-par quality, the Forex brokers later closed down or worse turned into a scam. Thus same reason as number 2, I really am regretting sending people to those deals.
6. I have friended many Thai AM on Facebook, and to be honest I don't understand anything when they discuss AM terms. All these CPR, CPM, CPC etc. Additionally, I have always struggle with tracking. And I have a very strong feeling that proper testing and tracking is the key that's always missing from my skill set. So right now I'm very glad your 40-day tutorial will be filling that gap.
I'm aiming to complete the 40-day with improved tracking/optimizing skill. It's my strong belief that to be good at something, you need to "get in the field", and I bought it when you mention about taking out the "decision-making" part and go right into action.
(Sorry buddy - gotta bring someone down with me!)
Try Nutra.
Started Day 17
- Signed up Adplexity
- Completed reading the Explanation section
- Downloaded some landers from STM's lander depository.
Completed Day 17
- Downloaded some landers from Adplexity
- Decided to just go with EN version and will translate the TH myself since the TH version on Adplexity seems a little off.
- Finished setup AWS bucket, uploaded and tested the sample LP provided by tutorial.
If anyone wants to see her team's performance, here's the video.
I will visit Chiang Mai one day soon - I know it's a beautiful place.
1. Offline offers require good "closer" / people who help with selling, closing.
All my real estate deals were "Revshare". I started first with offline, warm leads, that I've qualified myself (income, interests). But the conversion were extremely low. I noticed that the property owner / his rep have poor sales skill. Turned out I had to bring in another "closer" to help and share profit with.
2. Some of the offers turned out to be problematic. I did a campaign with a Condo in Chiang Mai. I've sent many leads, many converted (with the help of my "closer" friend), but it turns out that Condo don't finish building as promised. In other words I would need some expertise to verify, some form of contract to control the real estate offer.
Up to today I still get contacted by a few housing projects in Chiang Mai, and I'm reluctant to do marketing for them. Housing is very important to people's lives, and I do not wish to send people to bad deals unless I can verify / lock the property owners with strong contracts.
3. In many cases, a lot of the leads who didn't convert right away in the RE offers, converted later "behind my back".
4. Similar to number 3. I was doing some campaigns for offline Nutra company. It turned out that a lot of people will google that Nutra brand, contact directly to that company's FB page, and that company sell directly to the customer. Later, that Nutra company run their own ads and sell directly to customers, cutting out affiliates.
5. With seminar providers. I've sent many leads to their front end which was a free full day seminar, in which they'd later upsell to a bigger course, or some would have the students open an account with Forex broker. It turned out that many courses they sold were sub-par quality, the Forex brokers later closed down or worse turned into a scam. Thus same reason as number 2, I really am regretting sending people to those deals.
6. I have friended many Thai AM on Facebook, and to be honest I don't understand anything when they discuss AM terms. All these CPR, CPM, CPC etc. Additionally, I have always struggle with tracking. And I have a very strong feeling that proper testing and tracking is the key that's always missing from my skill set. So right now I'm very glad your 40-day tutorial will be filling that gap.
I'm aiming to complete the 40-day with improved tracking/optimizing skill. It's my strong belief that to be good at something, you need to "get in the field", and I bought it when you mention about taking out the "decision-making" part and go right into action.
You now know exactly what to avoid when doing lead gen going forward!
E.g. Avoid promoting real estate properties that haven't been built yet.
E.g. Avoid working with real estate agents that can't close deals. With your experience, you can put together a persuasive proposal you can use to approach established real estate agents that KNOW what they're doing. I don't know anything about that industry over in Thailand, but here in Canada there are real estate agents that are spending lots of money putting ads in newspapers, billboards etc. Those would be the people I would hit up if I could generate real estate leads.
To avoid being cut out of deals: Sell leads to MULTIPLE bidders (I recently learned this from the legendary @kjrocker). That way you're not at the mercy of a single company. You can sell leads for cheaper since you'd be selling to multiple buyers. And that way, the buyer(s) that are the best at closing will be able to afford to continue buying leads from you, and the ones that aren't as good at closing deals, will naturally drop out.
Another suggestion: Do due diligence to find out the quality of each product/service before promoting it. Nowadays, a business can't scam too many people before you start seeing negative reviews everywhere. In the end, we may still end up promoting some scam products by accident. Nobody's perfect and we can't expect ourselves to be - the best we can do is, well, to do our best! You're a good person for feeling guilty about that, but at the same time, think about all the GOOD products/services you've matched buyers up with!
So - yeah - I feel that because you've "paid your dues" with all those "failures", you're now in a position to really succeed with lead gen. But that's just my perspective of course.
All noted on your need to learn AM terms and all about tracking! And glad my 40-day tutorial is helping you to achieve some of that.
Regarding AM terms, these posts may help:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...n-the-IM-World
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ocab-explained
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ypes-explained!
Have fun setting up campaigns!
Amy
Completed Day 18
- Bucket, CDN, DNS, SSL all configured and run properly. (Though it took 2 days lol)
Ran into the problem when trying to add SSL to CloudFront, the option would grayed out even though the SSL certs were already issued. Also couldn't add "Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs)" in the distribution settings as well.
Turns out it was because I requested SSL from the certificate manager under "Europe Frankfurt" server (which was where I picked my S3 location).
Solved the problem by clicked https://aws.amazon.com/certificate-manager/ which take me to a N.Virginia (where it shows certificate manager with *blank* certs.
After got SSL issued from the N.Virginia Certificate Manager page, everything else just worked.
- Finished reading the Explanation part, went through all the posts under reading. Learned about domain flagging, domain health checking, spare domain and how to switch them quickly.
Will start Day 19 today.
Hi Amy @vortex!
Thanks again for dropping by. Wanna thank you again for your guides, it's very thorough and mindful.
Your tip about multi bidder is extremely valuable! I didn't think of it at all, especially the part that the not so good closer will be eliminated out. I will certainly work on this.
About real estate deals, 5 years ago Chiang Mai lands were booming and price rises very quickly. Flipping property preemption certificate we very lucrative. But of course at the risk of the property not actually being built, or delayed. Yes it's best to work with already completed / used homes now.
I really appreciate your positive point of view and encouragement. Believe it or not, before I stumble upon STM, I was working hard to get out of depression.
I only saw so many failures in my life, and I just paralyzed, playing games all day, burning whatever cash I have left. Too afraid to move on. And so much pain every time I think of the people who bought those bad condos / lost money from the Forex broker.
What I can tell myself now is that. Things happened for a reason. I met those terrible fate, so that now I can tell others not to repeat the same mistakes.
I can even teach people to spot scams, bad deals.
Also like you said, I must remember the good deals that I arranged for so many lives as well.
One important thing that I've learned since joining STM that I can strongly say: Is how NETWORKING important in AM, and any other businesses.
Thanks again Amy. I feel very empowered, and will continue with the tutorial with so much energy now.
Cheers,
Pon
Tried to configure Sublime + AWSCli to automate the S3 sync.
- Successfully installed Python, AWSCli, Sublime, but not able to get the build to work. The samples were for MAC and I'm confused about directories since I'm using Windows.
- Will reside the FTP way better.
You know, you can buy FileZilla pro and access your S3 buckets like any other FTP server. It could help when you need to upload many folders etc.
Originally Posted by diplomat
Hey thanks very much for the tips! Will definitely check it out.
Originally Posted by diplomat
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ing-Up-Landers
I only saw so many failures in my life, and I just paralyzed, playing games all day, burning whatever cash I have left. Too afraid to move on. And so much pain every time I think of the people who bought those bad condos / lost money from the Forex broker.
What I can tell myself now is that. Things happened for a reason. I met those terrible fate, so that now I can tell others not to repeat the same mistakes.
I can even teach people to spot scams, bad deals.
Also like you said, I must remember the good deals that I arranged for so many lives as well.
One important thing that I've learned since joining STM that I can strongly say: Is how NETWORKING important in AM, and any other businesses.
Thanks again Amy. I feel very empowered, and will continue with the tutorial with so much energy now.
I've been where you were at, and it would seem that we've both progressed to the stage where we understand that the "bad" stuff in life needs to happen for a reason.
And yes - networking can be so valuable! It's not mandatory for success, but will sure make things happen a lot faster!
I'm enjoying reading about your journey and progress - thank you for taking the time to document!
Amy
Completed fixing a lander. Took 2 days to make sure things are working correctly.
- Went to the length to translate English lander to Thai.
- Change avatars to look natural, comment wordings in actual Thai slangs LOL.
Hope I'm not spending too much time here. Will find a sweet spot as I progress surely.
It can happen that a publisher gets kicked from a network becaue of bad quality or bots or whatever reasons.
When he signs up with a new account and gets a new publisher ID it´s possible that you buy the same bad traffic from the same person again.
In the end you can´t do anything about it.
As Besmir said
Originally Posted by vortex
Nice progress!
Originally Posted by mrhaste
Simply duplicate the good camp and set the bid to 1/2 your good camp and another to 2x the good one. And run them all simultaneously. Unless it's a tiny geo, you won't be stealing traffic from yourself and you'll see which placements work better at which bids.
Sometimes you'll find that lower bids will actually get you better CR for your offer and I have no idea why this is
Originally Posted by jaybot
I'm not vortex, but I'll chime in and say: yes
Simply duplicate the good camp and set the bid to 1/2 your good camp and another to 2x the good one. And run them all simultaneously. Unless it's a tiny geo, you won't be stealing traffic from yourself and you'll see which placements work better at which bids.
Sometimes you'll find that lower bids will actually get you better CR for your offer and I have no idea why this is
I actually am having headache learning the last three lessons, mostly stuck at "testing bids" Since I wasn't sure as stated above.
Also when I started new camp, or any testing of new conditions, I run new camp for 24hr to collect sufficient data. Turns out there are so many information and I'm learning slowly to grasp which data is worth my time, or whether I should move on testing new offers.
Thanks very much again, really appreciate it.
Pon
Now I'm confused about the blacklisted placements.
So for this Geo, I've been running camp since 10th Jan, and keep cutting placements.
Now at a stage of testing bids with so many camps.
My question is: once I cut a placement in one camp, do I have to do it in all other camps? These are all under PropellerAds, same Geo.
It depends a bit.
Generally you can say that a placement that tanks completely in medium bid will also tank with other bids.
When a placement has 0 conversions after receiving enough traffic on a winning combination I wouldn´t test it on other bids.
Then it´s mostly not worth it.
But it can also happen that placements that are not profitable on a specific bid can be good on another bid.
When you have placements that bring conversions in your original campaign but are still running at loss you can have following situations:
1. The original bid was too high and you had to pay too much for the placement.
When you run it on lower bid and it still converts it can be profitable because you pay less for it.
2. The original bid was too low and you only received the not that good traffic from that placement (lower bid position for example).
In such case it can happen that you bid higher and receiver better quality traffic from that placement that also results in higher CR so that the placement now can be profitable.
But this is something you don´t know when you don´t test it.
So long story short, placements with no conversions at all are mostly not worth it to test on other bids.
Placements that convert on original bid should be tested in other bids as well, even when they were not profitable in original bid.
After many days learning while doing optimization, and understand about bid testing. I will complete day 39-40 today.
- Applied and deposited to PopAds, scaling traffic into the winning combo.
- Decided to use same targeting as previously done in PropellerAds: Android only. But for other targeting like browser, isp, etc, will check the stats on PopAds separately.
- Went to bed and one of the placement went way over 2x payout loss, already paused the PopAds camp and will see if optimization can be done.
- Did optimization on PopAds camp. It's good to go through the tutorial while actual working on it.
- Camps on PropellerAds no longer making profit. Still convert, but in red, no optimization or bids seem to work. So this is where I would cut the camp.
- Start reading Push forum. Honestly, without step-by-step guide, feeling lots of fear but will move on.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
I think I'll get better at it the more I do.
I can´t remember that I targeted only specific browsers or in leadgen campaigns.
When you have to run such tight targeting then the campaign is no winner.
Also remember, only the biggest elements have to be profitable.
When the biggest browsers are accountable for 85% or 95% of the traffic I don´t even care about the rest.
Just keep them running, it´s not worth to waste time and energy on such small elements that don´t have big impact on your campaigns.
And on Popads be careful, they offer so many different targeting options.
Way more than most other sources.
But in the end you don´t need them.
Country, conection, device type (mobile vs desktop), OS and maybe browser language.
That´s basically all you need for targeting.
Originally Posted by mrhaste
No matter what your ROI is - positive or negative - testing bids has the potential to get you more and/or better traffic.
But if you have a profitable campaign, you can choose not to test bids, but instead focus on blacklisting and scaling.
Another thing you can do is just continue blacklisting on the current campaign, and duplicate the campaign with a higher bid, but blacklist all the sites that were getting good amounts of traffic in the original camp.
You can potentially discover some high-converting placements this way - placements that in-demand (because they convert well and everybody's bidding higher to get more traffic from it), that would only give you traffic if you bid high.
But if you are to try this, please be careful and check your campaign regularly to blacklist placements often. Bidding high can get you a ton of traffic - some from low-quality sites that doesn't convert well.
Amy
- Completed day 39-40 of the tutorial.
- Took a few days to review, and jotted down important things, especially replies from @vortex @twinaxe @jaybot
I would like to say thank you again for Amy @vortex for this excellent, thoughtful tutorial, and for taking the time to answer so many posts in this forum. I could never get my head around having so many posts to attend. For me just keeping my wife and two daughters happy are taxing enough already lol.
I will be continuing my journey by creating a new follow along in the PUSH section. After all the years of using online as a mean to do business, this is by far the first time I learned a proper way to "track" "optimize" and "scale"
Looking forward to learn more, and eventually able to give back to STM community.
Cheers,
Pon
For several years I was also doing my AM stuff without even knowing anything about the industry.
I was already doing about €4k-€5k/month profit before I even knew what a CPA network is or what a tracker is or whatever.
At this time I was running my stuff for 3 1/2 years or so already and only with free traffic.
When I started with that stuff I just wanted to make money online so I did.
I also wasn´t really interested in other stuff besides what I was doing.
Then at some point I signed up at few forums and learned what affiliate marketing really is , it was like a whole new world opened for me.
That was also when I started with paid traffic.
- Completed @vortex 's Sweepstakes 101 guide. Will finish reading FB guides tonight and tomorrow.
- Have been very busy with real estate partner. I predicted that with the Brexit, more Europeans will come and stay in Thailand, especially Chiang Mai. I believe FB skill will be suitable traffic source for Real Estate offer.
Home > > Newbie Follow-Alongs