The journey of a thousand miles (9)
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
My affiliate marketing journey started after I read that quote.
Hi everyone,
I'm a 26 years old guy from Vietnam. Three years ago, I graduated as an mechatronics engineer but I didn't work a single day as an engineer. I like movie, psychology and philosophy. (Yeah, I am a giant nerd!)
I have been interested in affiliate marketing since last year. However, just like all newbie fellows, I only read and read and did not take any action (because I love reading
). The more I read the more confused I got. There are too many things to choose, too many decisions that involve losing money.
Then, one rainy day in April, that one quote hit me hard. I took my first step, I registered with
I joined STM forum last month. Immediately, I felt so stupid that I didn't joint sooner. It would have avoid me some pain and save me a lot of time looking around if I had. The information here is gold!
My goal now is to reach Mr Jaybot level at the moment. I have read Mr Jaybot's epic journey for many time and it inspired me so much.
Here is my numbers since May:
You can see that my profit line is rarely above 0. Something must be wrong and I haven't known it yet 
.
Some green first:
These two 0$ cost campaigns is from the days I didn't know how to track cost 
. Literally, my green campaigns could be counted on the fingers.
And here is a part of my long long red list:
I found out that for me the clickloss cost is about 10% and the money transfer cost is about 4% so there must be 200$ addition cost. But hey, this one here can cover that:
Yesterday’s number:
I have been losing money like this for the last 5 days. Last week, I had 3 campaigns that earned me about 15$ a day. Then I think: Oh, let's test more to find more campaigns like this. I still think that's the way to go but I need to change the method somehow or else I will be doomed.
There is a campaign with 11$ lost. That 11$ gone in like 1 minute with very small clicks amount and it is the 3rd time I got that same mistake: testing new offer with CPA goal in a high traffic GEO (like Malaysia or Egypt). Stupid me.
Lately, I got stressed because of losing money and because of some personal problems that might affect my cash flow. Then, all the negative thinking flood in. Am I doing everything wrong? Is this AM things really profitable? Maybe I should switch to other traffic. Maybe I should give up and learn something else.
But then I think: this thousand dollars journey still has a very long way ahead. As long as I keep taking some steps everyday I should be fine. Even if I do things wrong, it will help me to learn what is the right thing to do. I just need to not give up and everything will be fine.
One more thing that I have learned is that isolating myself is not good for my mental health in this journey. That's why I started this FA hoping that I will get some support and hope that someday this FA would help someone keep their spirits up.
Sorry for the long cheesy post and for my poor English. One small un-righteous reason for me to started this FA is to practice my English writing skill .
-34% ROI is not the worst thing that can happen to you. It clearly shows that with few changes, you can get your stuff profitable.
Also, what's extremely important to understand, which will also reduce your stress once you fully understand it is that you are not wasting money, you are buying data. Sometimes knowing what not to do is as valuable as knowing what to do.
Just continue testing, and you will be in profits. Don't forget to create whitelist campaigns if you can. That's super easy money for a low cost.
You have to start looking at your data.. trying to find ways to optimize your campaigns. Your tracker is there to help you. It's an extremely important tool, if not the most important one.
You should NOT give up (if your cashflow allows you to continue). If you give up now, you have just wasted tons of time and money.. I have done this for ages, and I still see negative days, that's how it works. Not giving up is the key!
So here's what you need to do:
1. Don't give up
2. Understand you are buying data not wasting money
3. Optimize your campaigns, block bad placements etc (try offers from different networks too)..
4. Don't give up
5. Create whitelist campaigns for offers that perform well
6. Did I already mentioned that you shouldn't give up?
I am 26 too! Hehe
What's the average payout and what's the vertical you are focusing on?
I am assuming that the payout is below $10. So I would suggest to cut the losing variables faster.
Hi everyone,
I am still here and still haven't quit yet. Everything has been better for the last 3 days. Last Sunday, the universe gave me a big surprise:
All my campaigns turned green and I got 86% ROI. The bad thing is I don't know why it happened so this is just pure luck. Maybe the universe saw that I was so discouraged and decided to give me a sight
The 2 next day, all of those campaigns were still green but the performance went down:
I was testing some offers and realised one thing. Click loss can be really different with different GEOs so I need to always compare the cost between tracker and the traffic source (I always assume that click loss is about 10% with PropellerAds and add 10% cost in my tracker). That PropellerAds campaign cost 22.7$ above actually cost 31.3$ at the traffic source which is about 30% lost!
Monetizer is still working really well. Everyday, I am thinking about how to use this platform more efficiently but still haven't figured out any better strategy yet.
Originally Posted by diplomat
I have tried some WL campaigns but somehow they didn't work well.
Right now, I am building up my blacklist for each GEOs but I am not confident with the way I built it so sometimes I test those blacklist again. I loss money with those test obviously but my experience in identify bad placement increase everytime, I think.
I am thinking about making a global whitelist and blacklist but my data seems not enough yet.
Originally Posted by mantas
I start with 0.2$ offers and then increase it from time to time. Right now it is 1$ to 3$ payout. My initial plan is increase the volume or offers payout every month as my budget is become larger. But it seems like I have to stay here for longer because of cashflow problem.
I work with mainstream vertical. Games, sweepstakes, mobile content... I am not really focus on anything.
Awesome! Congrats on the green. Looking good. Following 
.
Hello everyone,
It's been 8 days since the last time. It was a very busy week for me. I was going around to solve my cash problem. The good news is that I might have found a way which is not involved selling my kidney 
. If everything is ok, I will have some extra money to burn every month.
The numbers this week are not very interesting because I did test any new offers. The main reason for this is that 3 million events of
+60 this week thanks to Monetizer. Since I didn't test any new offers, I'm not so proud. However, the number would have been a lot better if I hadn't make some silly mistakes:
- There was a problem with my funnel which caused my landing page to be unreachable. When I set up RedTrack's custom domain a couple months ago, I thought: "Hey, it will be better if this domain has a SSL certificate. But it is not really important so let's get a free SSL certificate for it to save some bucks". That 7$ saving caused me about 70$+ loss. July 9, the certificate was out of date without any notification. It took me about 16 hours to realise the problem and fix it. All the traffic from that time period was wasted. 3 CPA goal campaigns needed to be run from the beginning again because the algorithm was messed up.
- July 14, one offer was stopped by the affiliate network without any notification. I didn't know that and let the campaign run the whole day. About 15$ loss.
However, I feel very lucky that I learned those 2 lessons at a very cheap price.
This month is the first time I use Paypal to receive money from an affiliate network. Paypal held my money for 9 days and it made me nervous because they said the money would be cleared within 7 days.
I haven't found the best payment method yet. Paxum: not a choice for Vietnamese. Payoneer: not available for some networks. Paypal: money on hold. Wire transfer: I need to find a local bank with better service and lower fee. WebMoney: I registered an account but got a problem when linking it with my credit card.
What payment method is everyone using now?
Hi everyone,
Here is a quick update:
It took me 1 day to set up everything with
I tested some new offers but got no luck. My old campaigns seem to be dying too. It's okay, those green campaigns helped me understand more clearly about how things work in this game. That is the priority right now, to learn about this game.
I found a good local bank last week. It will cost me about 5% in total per 1 time money rotation. That is enough for money rotation issues. I will find a better way later.
My tasks list for next week:
1. Keep thinking and try new strategies for testing offers and optimizing campaigns.
2. Learn how to run adult offers.
3. Learn more about push traffic.
Which traffic source should I sign up for adult traffic?
Last month I signed up at Zeropark and got rejected and I don't know why. What should I do now? I feel like Zeropark is a must-have traffic source for everyone here.
Hi @goodwill!
Please send me a PM with the email address you used to register and I'll see what I can do
Magda
Hi! Nice results for the newbies! Wish you great profit and lots of conversions
We recommend you:
• Using spy tools to know which verticals and GEOs are trending now.
• Testing offers and landing pages and after first payouts exclude the worst converting versions.
• Start from the lowest bids and then increase them during optimization.
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