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Network changing offer flow (14)

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Hi!
I'm following Vortex's 40 day challenge.

The flow of an offer Mobidea recommended for direct billing, SOI has been changed to SMS Billing, MO Flow with Click2SMS.
Does this flow convert as well as direct billing, SOI?

Should I expect the networks to change the flow anytime without notice and monitor the change every now and then?
If so, what should I do?
should I switch to new offers with direct billing, SOI? or just stick with what I already set up? If needed, then how should I change the campaign settings, traffic sources?

what metrics should I check to determine which geos to target first?...

Many thanks!

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Mobidea didn't change it. The advertiser does and they can do whatever they want with their products and services ofcourse. Changing flows often means they got a warning because their flow was not following the rules in that geo.

MOflow/clicks2sms are shitty flows in general, but maybe with cheap traffic it's worth a try.

In general, go connect with way more networks and advertisers, so you can switch/rotate/replace offers if they don't perform (anymore). As AM's which offers do well.

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To add to what stickup kid already posted:

- you don't need to watch the flow too much, when they change something in the flow, the conversion rate will change too... so if you see a well performing offer going down all of a sudden, that's the time to check for possible flow changes. In case they swap to a harder to convert flow, it's time to move on, unless it's still backing out for you. Certain specific flows need a specific approach being used on the LP, so without making those changes, it won't convert good.

If your funnel is build for a specific type of offer, including vertical and niche, you need to stay within that area and switch to an offer that's a good match.

To give you some example:

Typical SOI converts upon email submit, that's why many LP's contain some sentence like "Enter your email and hit submit"... or something along those lines. Now if they switch to some SMS flow and the user has to enter their phone number, there is a mismatch with the LP copy, because they won't have to enter the email, but rather their phone number. SO you can either find another SOI offer and continue with the same funnel, or make changes to the LP and replace the "email sentence" with a "phone number" sentence.

Please note that this was a very simplified example, just for the sake of clarification of the basic principle.

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Thanks so muchfor youradvice! That really clears up my head.

Also noticing today that a few offers I saw yesterday got paused today without any notice and seems like offers come and go, change frequently? How do pros mitigate such risks when they've already invested time money energy in building or are already running campaigns with a considerable amount of budget in such a case?

Thanks a billion! :-)

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Offers come and go pretty frequently, that's one of the annoyances we have to deal with

Some verticals are more prone to this, some are more stable, you will learn that with time.

Usually, when you're actively running an offer, your AM will give you a headsup about the offer being pulled and there will be some period left to pull your links. Unless there is some serious problem and the offer has to be paused immediately.

When this happens, any solid network should redirect the traffic to a similar "backup" offer, to minimize the loss for anyone sending traffic to it.

When building a campaign, I personally focus more on the vertical I'm promoting, I do not try to match the funnel with one single offer. Whenever possible, I rotate at least 2 offers in one campaign. So when one offer get's paused, I switch to the other one and start looking for more alternatives that would be compatible with the funnel.

For example: I'm promoting dating, so my funnels are about specific niches/angles within that vertical. Let's say mature women, local women, asian/black women etc... so when I lose an offer, I just have to find another one in the same niche.

To be fair, sometimes it's hard to find a replacement quickly as not all offers are equal and some simply perform better and the better converting ones are often also more "fragile".

You simply have to be looking for new ones all the time, because every single offer will die at some point. So milk it for what it's worth and spend part of the profits on testing new offers so you're ready when a replacement is necessary.

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Thanks for sharing your insights. As I've guessed, this seems like a unsustainable business(?) model far from passive income dream, it seems more like a potential golden handcuff/rat race if it all works out well. Just curious if you are in it because the compensation is good enough to offset the cons?

If feasible, do most or some successful/super aff create a process, manual so that most of the hands on work can be outsourced ultimately?

Many thanks! :-)

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Mediabuying, so working with paid traffic, is definitely not a passive business model. It involves a lot of optimizations, tweaks, you gotta launch new campaigns all the time... but yes, the rewards can be very big. As with any other business, you gotta work for it, in order to reap the rewards. I'm in the affiliate business since 1998, so you can bet the gains outperform the cons It's the only "job" I ever had

I started with organic traffic, so running sites of all kinds... that approach is more passive, if all works well, you don't have to touch the sites for months. But there are cons too, once google decides to ban your ass, the income is gone. That's why I moved into paid traffic in 2013 (I believe) and been doing that ever since.

You can still mix it up a bit, do some organic, do some paid, focus on what suits you more. Affiliate marketing is not just about running POP traffic and promoting sweeps, there are SOOOO many ways to go at it. Just find the approach that you like the most and focus on it.

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Lol. Tell that to the solo affiliate @twinaxe who can disappear for 3 months at a time while passively making 30k a month when he feels like it.

Sounds like you’re searching for a fake because.

If this were easy, everyone would do it.

There is a definite grind, for everyone, in the beginning.

It can take a few months. A year. Two years even. Until you get it.

The longer you survive, the higher your chances of success.

Hell, I’m still surviving at this point.

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Just curious if you have contemplated or tried creating, promoting your own offer?
That seems like the end game, creating own offers/asset/brand and possibly exit? just curious what's been stopping you from retiring already?.. :-)

Fyi I've been selling monthly subscriptions for IG growth packages mainly promoting via cold email since FB, google don't like the biz model and am just exploring new opps to learn new tricks since email involves tedious manual work and is not scalable all that much even though fulfillment is pretty passive... Would you recommend focusing on applying what I'd learn from here to expand my SMM biz or earning money from aff marketing?
Also wondering if it'd be something I can offer to affiliates as an advertiser?
I haven't seen IG growth stuff offered on networks.

Thanks for your time! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

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In all honesty, the reason I'm not retired is pretty simple... I'm an extremely lazy person and I suck at finances. So, I refuse to dedicate all my time to running a "proper" company. I know what I'm good at and I learned how to get things done FAST. On top of that, I tend to spend way more money than I should I make more than enough to provide for my family and I work as much as is needed to secure that. Not more, not less.

Running a company, own offers, managing staff... that would require 100% focus and sacrificing my personal time and that's something I don't want to do plus I'm having a hard time to stay focused on one thing for a longer period of time, I get bored and need to start doing something else. And AM gives me the freedom to do that. I guess quite a few of us here are the same. I'd rather make less and retain my freedom than focus on business entirely and making more.

And one last thing, I got 3 kids and I prefer to watch them growing up and spending time with them, instead of sitting in the office all day long

It's quite hard to tell you what to do, after all it's your business and you need to decide what to do with it. It also depends on your goals and what you want to achieve.

The knowledge you can gain here on the forum is transferable to many business areas, paid ads and the affiliate concepts are present in any business these days. So yes, that would be one option.

You can also take the advertiser route and work with affiliates to get traffic from them. But again, there will be work involved as you need to setup the offer, test it, make changes to it as necessary and you need to figure the monetization out too.

None of these is a passive model that you seem to be looking for.

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I can understand your concerns but maybe you can answer the question yourself...

Do you think there would be long time affiliates who make their living from running campaigns for many years already when it wouldn´t be worth it?

I am doing affiliate marketing for 15 years and for 11 1/2 years I am doing it fulltime as my only source of income.

So yes, the compensation is good enough to offset the cons.

And btw, many of the "cons" that you are facing now will dissappear anyway or you just learn how to deal with it.

For you this is all new so of course it looks and probably is much harder for you to run a campaign than for experienced affiliates.

Who told you that it´s passive income?

You want to earn real money? - Then stop dreaming about passive income and work for it

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To clarify I meant "passive" as a business model that can almost run on its own ultimately at least for a few months (meaning having a process, system, manual you can have workers follow) as a true definition of "business". If you gotta be in it to run it, then it'd be a well paying job...

If this is something that an ordinary person can make enough money with to retire within a short period of time then great. Otherwise, if money is more likely to stop coming when you stop working, then I'd be worried about what to eat when I ever get hit by a bus..

And from a business perspective, a few million usd /year isn't all that extraordinary for a small business in tier 1 countries especially in my area. So I wanted to get some perspective to know what I'm getting myself into, evaluate this opportunity properly.

Many thanks!

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There are definitely larger/big affiliate "operations" that function just like any other proper business... employees, systems, automated workflows, virtual assistants.

But for a large part of affiliates, it's the freedom that attracts people. You can work on your terms, wherever in the world you are etc...

In the end, it's up to you... work as a lonely affiliate or build a business around the affiliate concept. Both approaches can work and both are being used by affiliates/marketers around the world.

And don't forget that affiliate marketing is actually an industry on it's own... affiliates are just one part of it. There are traffic networks, affiliate networks... there are tools that affiliates use and companies that develop them. There are companies that need their ad campaigns managed and there are teams of people who take care of that.

Want to be a lonely wolf running campaigns? Fine, you can do that in AM. Want to build a company and serve the community... fine, you can do that too There are many options for you to explore.

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Exactly this is why I chose affiliate marketing for me.

Total freedom, I can work wherever I want, whenever I want, I can promote whatever I want, run campaigns wherever I want and so on.

Basically every person worldwide with internet access is a potential customer and I can run 24/7 without any limitations.

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