Beginner Series Part 1: Set Realistic Goals (39)
I would like to make a series of posts for beginners that hopefully help to get a better and easier start and that also shall clarify some stuff.
It´s not necessarily about specific offer verticals or traffic types or so.
It shall be a rather general guideline to help to form a good and winning overall mindset and to develop a better understanding about affiliate marketing in general.
Probably one of the biggest motivations to start affiliate marketing is the money that you can earn so this is what this first post is about.
Often rather sooner than later the reality kicks in and people realize that affiliate marketing is no free ride to wealth and fortune.
One reason is that many people start with wrong and too high expectations so the disappointment when they don´t make 4 figure profit per day on their $500 starting budget in their first 60 days is real although it could be avoided with more realistic expectations.
In this post I will try to show you a more realistic impression about earnings and goals in affiliate marketing and tell you my personal thoughts about it.
First Lesson: Stay Realistic
Of course it sounds great to get rich in 2 months just from sitting in front of the PC and running affiliate campaigns.
But you don´t do yourself a favor when you fall for exaggerated claims or when you start with a „Get rich ASAP“ mindset.
The top level of such mindset is when people don´t even have the needed skills yet to really succeed but they already dream of 5 figures a day because they heard or read that such earnings are possible.
No idea what a tracker is, no idea about landing pages, no idea about testing/optimizing/scaling campaigns, no idea about doing research and so on and so forth but still expect to earn more from affiliate marketing than probably 95% of all people worldwide in their jobs?
Come on bro...
Every beginner in affiliate marketing with such high expectations should ask himself „What sets me apart from the millions of other people who want to succeed in affiliate marketing to justify my expectations“.
The thing is that many beginners read blogs or watch Youtube videos where people tell you that getting rich from affiliate marketing is easy and everyone can succeed there in short time.
Some of these people who tell that it´s easy to make 5 figures a day with affiliate marketing in short time and that everyone can do it earn their money rather by selling courses or stuff than running successful campaigns themselves.
A big problem with it is that it creates a wrong impression about making money from affiliate marketing.
Let´s see how affiliate marketing really is so that we avoid some disappointments.
We also have beginners here on STM from time to time who start posting highly motivated and they tell us that they already read alot and now they are ready to take action and they are 100% confident that they will have their first 4-5 figure profit days on pops in the next few weeks or something like that.
Usually my inner reaction then is „Ok, try it, fail with it, complain and then give up because affiliate marketing in general doesn´t work anyway“.
These users are mostly also the ones that are not long here and also not long into affiliate marketing in general.
The sad part is, they often would have a much higher chance to succeed when they would keep their stuff realistic.
I can´t say it often enough, you don´t do yourself a favor when you start with exaggerated and unrealistic expactations.
The higher the expectations and the lower your skills the better the chances to fail.
You can be sure that here on STM we really are interested in helping our beginners to get started – Your success is our success!
But even when we have many highly experienced mods and users here we are still no magicians.
So when you want to succeed and need our help the first thing you should do is to set realistic goals that you really can reach.
Seeing and helping a beginner to succeed slowy, step by step is so much better than seeing someone trying to go all in from the very beginning and going all out just as fast as he popped up 
Ok twinaxe, but what do you recommend instead?
Well, making 5 figures a month sounds fantastic but I recommend to rather make a plan that matches your personal situation.
$10k in Canada is completely different than $10k in Bolivia.
Also make a difference between what you want and what you need.
Ask yourself do you want to be on a neverending road towards more and more money even when you don´t really need it or do you want to work towards financial freedom.
Ask yourself, do you want to work on something where you fail with 99% probability or do you want to work on something where you have real chances to succeed?
For me personally affiliate marketing is not about making as much money as possible.
For me affiliate marketing is the perfect work to have maximum freedom, financial as well as time-wise or any other kind of freedom that I can´t have in other jobs.
I try to focus more on what I need and not what I want, that way it´s much easier to reach my goals and it helps alot to work more relaxed.
Once you have your stuff running reaching the „What I want“ point is even easier.
There are beginners from countries where the average wage is only $400 or $600 or $800 per month.
Check THIS WEBSITE for a rough overview about the average income per capita but keep in mind that mostly the majority of people earn even less than average.
Nonetheless many beginners talk about making 4 figures a day, in lowest case this would result in $30k per month.
Now tell me, how realistic is it for someone who is just starting with affiliate marketing to make a multiple of the average wage in his country when he still has to learn
- The absolute basics like what are offers, what are trafficsources, what are the different traffictypes and so on
- What is a tracker, how do I use it, how do I connect all the different technical things
- How to setup campaigns in the trafficsource and tracker
- How to test, optimize and scale campaigns
- How to clean and edit landing pages
- And much more…
The result is that we have a beginner who doesn´t really know anything about that stuff yet but still expects to succeed with it very fast – often because that´s what is told on Youtube, Facebook, blogs and wheresoever.
Can you imagine how much pressure you put on yourself when you want to sound smart and cool and talk about such big numbers without having the knowlegde or skills to achieve it?
This is also why I wrote few paragraphs above that you shall make a difference between what you want and what you need.
The average monthly wage in your country is $900?
Ok, what do you think about setting $900 per month as a goal that you want to reach?
This would be only $30 profit per day.
Remember, the majority of people makes even less than the average income so even with average income you are already on a very good way.
And $30 per day is a realistic goal that is pretty easy to achieve but is enough to earn more than many other employees in the country.
Of course most people don´t want to have an average income, they want to make more than the average Joe so let´s boost the numbers a bit.
Average monthly income in the example is still at $900 so when you make $2.7k/month you already earn 3 times what the average is but it´s still absolutely doable.
We talk about
$90 profit per day as a realistic expactation vs 4 figures (which is at least $1,000) per day as an unrealistic expectation.
Can you see the difference?
So why do you want to make 4 figures a day when you can have a very good income for your country with only $90/day?
Really man, don´t make your life harder than needed.
When you succeed to make a stable and good income you can still think about ways to make more.
But when you just start it´s much better to keep the operation as simple and easy as possible.
This helps to avoid huge disappointments and at the same time your chances to succeed skyrocket when you focus on stuff that is more or less easy to achieve.
It also gives you the chance to start much more relaxed without all the pressure you have when you try to make the impossible possible.
Making a fulltime income from affiliate marketing is not as easy as many believe but it´s also far from being impossible.
And yes, it´s definitely possible to make 4 figure per day from affiliate marketing.
It´s also possible to make 5 figures a day from affiliate marketing.
But not in the beginning.
Probably also not in the first few months.
So before you start the hunt for such high numbers ask yourself if you really need it or if it´s maybe better to slow down a bit and work with way less pressure but much more fun 
Often it´s just your mindset that makes the difference between success and fail.
Let me know what you think about the post, I somehow had the idea to start such a series for beginners but I have no idea at all if it´s good or not.
When you like it I will write the next post about some ways to make first stable and good income as a beginner
It's funny how some things never change in AM, or maybe in any business.
I felt exactly like you do, shortly after I've become a moderator here on the forum, so I actually wrote a similar article to this one of yours where I suggested to set realistic goals and take it one step at a time... but if you check some of the replies to that thread of mine, not everyone agreed with that approach, some people simply prefer to set the bar higher
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...table-XX-first!
But I don´t only see the amount the people want to earn, I also consider their level of knowledge and when someone is just starting and has no knowledge at all of affiliate marketing and has to learn everything from scratch then it´s just unrealistic to expect $x,xxx/day from the start.
It´s a different story when they know all the things that are needed to run campaigns already so that they are a bit more experienced already.
And recommending a real beginner to set ridiculous high goals for motivation or so is not really smart in my opinion, especially when he doesn´t even need that high earnings for his living.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
It´s not necessarily about specific offer verticals or traffic types or so.
It shall be a rather general guideline to help to form a good and winning overall mindset and to develop a better understanding about affiliate marketing in general.
Probably one of the biggest motivations to start affiliate marketing is the money that you can earn so this is what this first post is about.
Often rather sooner than later the reality kicks in and people realize that affiliate marketing is no free ride to wealth and fortune.
One reason is that many people start with wrong and too high expectations so the disappointment when they don´t make 4 figure profit per day on their $500 starting budget in their first 60 days is real although it could be avoided with more realistic expectations.
In this post I will try to show you a more realistic impression about earnings and goals in affiliate marketing and tell you my personal thoughts about it.
First Lesson: Stay Realistic
Of course it sounds great to get rich in 2 months just from sitting in front of the PC and running affiliate campaigns.
But you don´t do yourself a favor when you fall for exaggerated claims or when you start with a „Get rich ASAP“ mindset.
The top level of such mindset is when people don´t even have the needed skills yet to really succeed but they already dream of 5 figures a day because they heard or read that such earnings are possible.
No idea what a tracker is, no idea about landing pages, no idea about testing/optimizing/scaling campaigns, no idea about doing research and so on and so forth but still expect to earn more from affiliate marketing than probably 95% of all people worldwide in their jobs?
Come on bro...
Every beginner in affiliate marketing with such high expectations should ask himself „What sets me apart from the millions of other people who want to succeed in affiliate marketing to justify my expectations“.
The thing is that many beginners read blogs or watch Youtube videos where people tell you that getting rich from affiliate marketing is easy and everyone can succeed there in short time.
Some of these people who tell that it´s easy to make 5 figures a day with affiliate marketing in short time and that everyone can do it earn their money rather by selling courses or stuff than running successful campaigns themselves.
A big problem with it is that it creates a wrong impression about making money from affiliate marketing.
Let´s see how affiliate marketing really is so that we avoid some disappointments.
We also have beginners here on STM from time to time who start posting highly motivated and they tell us that they already read alot and now they are ready to take action and they are 100% confident that they will have their first 4-5 figure profit days on pops in the next few weeks or something like that.
Usually my inner reaction then is „Ok, try it, fail with it, complain and then give up because affiliate marketing in general doesn´t work anyway“.
These users are mostly also the ones that are not long here and also not long into affiliate marketing in general.
The sad part is, they often would have a much higher chance to succeed when they would keep their stuff realistic.
I can´t say it often enough, you don´t do yourself a favor when you start with exaggerated and unrealistic expactations.
The higher the expectations and the lower your skills the better the chances to fail.
You can be sure that here on STM we really are interested in helping our beginners to get started – Your success is our success!
But even when we have many highly experienced mods and users here we are still no magicians.
So when you want to succeed and need our help the first thing you should do is to set realistic goals that you really can reach.
Seeing and helping a beginner to succeed slowy, step by step is so much better than seeing someone trying to go all in from the very beginning and going all out just as fast as he popped up
Ok twinaxe, but what do you recommend instead?
Well, making 5 figures a month sounds fantastic but I recommend to rather make a plan that matches your personal situation.
$10k in Canada is completely different than $10k in Bolivia.
Also make a difference between what you want and what you need.
Ask yourself do you want to be on a neverending road towards more and more money even when you don´t really need it or do you want to work towards financial freedom.
Ask yourself, do you want to work on something where you fail with 99% probability or do you want to work on something where you have real chances to succeed?
For me personally affiliate marketing is not about making as much money as possible.
For me affiliate marketing is the perfect work to have maximum freedom, financial as well as time-wise or any other kind of freedom that I can´t have in other jobs.
I try to focus more on what I need and not what I want, that way it´s much easier to reach my goals and it helps alot to work more relaxed.
Once you have your stuff running reaching the „What I want“ point is even easier.
There are beginners from countries where the average wage is only $400 or $600 or $800 per month.
Check THIS WEBSITE for a rough overview about the average income per capita but keep in mind that mostly the majority of people earn even less than average.
Nonetheless many beginners talk about making 4 figures a day, in lowest case this would result in $30k per month.
Now tell me, how realistic is it for someone who is just starting with affiliate marketing to make a multiple of the average wage in his country when he still has to learn
- The absolute basics like what are offers, what are trafficsources, what are the different traffictypes and so on
- What is a tracker, how do I use it, how do I connect all the different technical things
- How to setup campaigns in the trafficsource and tracker
- How to test, optimize and scale campaigns
- How to clean and edit landing pages
- And much more…
The result is that we have a beginner who doesn´t really know anything about that stuff yet but still expects to succeed with it very fast – often because that´s what is told on Youtube, Facebook, blogs and wheresoever.
Can you imagine how much pressure you put on yourself when you want to sound smart and cool and talk about such big numbers without having the knowlegde or skills to achieve it?
This is also why I wrote few paragraphs above that you shall make a difference between what you want and what you need.
The average monthly wage in your country is $900?
Ok, what do you think about setting $900 per month as a goal that you want to reach?
This would be only $30 profit per day.
Remember, the majority of people makes even less than the average income so even with average income you are already on a very good way.
And $30 per day is a realistic goal that is pretty easy to achieve but is enough to earn more than many other employees in the country.
Of course most people don´t want to have an average income, they want to make more than the average Joe so let´s boost the numbers a bit.
Average monthly income in the example is still at $900 so when you make $2.7k/month you already earn 3 times what the average is but it´s still absolutely doable.
We talk about
$90 profit per day as a realistic expactation vs 4 figures (which is at least $1,000) per day as an unrealistic expectation.
Can you see the difference?
So why do you want to make 4 figures a day when you can have a very good income for your country with only $90/day?
Really man, don´t make your life harder than needed.
When you succeed to make a stable and good income you can still think about ways to make more.
But when you just start it´s much better to keep the operation as simple and easy as possible.
This helps to avoid huge disappointments and at the same time your chances to succeed skyrocket when you focus on stuff that is more or less easy to achieve.
It also gives you the chance to start much more relaxed without all the pressure you have when you try to make the impossible possible.
Making a fulltime income from affiliate marketing is not as easy as many believe but it´s also far from being impossible.
And yes, it´s definitely possible to make 4 figure per day from affiliate marketing.
It´s also possible to make 5 figures a day from affiliate marketing.
But not in the beginning.
Probably also not in the first few months.
So before you start the hunt for such high numbers ask yourself if you really need it or if it´s maybe better to slow down a bit and work with way less pressure but much more fun
Often it´s just your mindset that makes the difference between success and fail.
Let me know what you think about the post, I somehow had the idea to start such a series for beginners but I have no idea at all if it´s good or not.
When you like it I will write the next post about some ways to make first stable and good income as a beginner
Working with realistic expectations makes life easy because when you achieve your realistic goal, it helps you stay motivated and work towards your next goal. Having realistic view, expectations helps prevent heartbreaks later lol
I like it, I want more posts in Beginner Series
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Originally Posted by twinaxe
"One Step At A Time" - I personally believe in this approach, helps in achieving bigger goals
Thanks @twinaxe, great post.
I think the real killer in AM isn't not knowing the tactics, it's mindset.
If you have at least 1 eye open you can learn the a lot of tactics just by spying and reading FAs now and again.
The biggest challenge I've faced was not getting some steady profit - I'm now making about $10 per day profit (not incld testing). The biggest challenge was just putting in the grind in itself, building campaign after campaign and watching most fail, despite trying my best w/ landers and offers.
Of course I don't think that is a challenge exclusive with affiliate marketing, it is a challenge in most things in life.
However with most things, such as cooking or coding you can observe some improvement every time, which makes it easier to adjust/improve and stay motivated.
Affiliate marketing has a lot more variability in the "reward" where sometimes you just throw up some random b.s. and it succeeds and other times you try really hard and just end up burning cash. Psychologically speaking this makes it a lot harder to stay motivated .
I think especially with paid ads the big difference is that you invest not only time to learn it in theory but also real money.
When you really want to succeed there you not only need to learn how to run campaigns, you have earn real money back and this can be quite stressful.
It´s hard enough anyway so in my opinion it´s good to keep the additional stress as low as possible.
Some thoughts from me:
1. I started with a goal of making $35,000 a year. I figured $35k a year could give me an awesome life traveling in South East Asia. It was a small goal. In my mind, I had a 0% chance of failing. If I dedicate 4 years a day for the next 10 years, it'd be impossible for me to fail at affiliate marketing.
If I had set a goal of $10k a month within 3 months like some threads I've seen here, I would've given up.
2. It always feels like you're "too late" to enter a space.
In 2008, I felt like I was too late because I missed the ringtones boom. Then "rebills" happened.
In 2012, everyone felt like they are too late because they missed the rebills boom. Then Mobile / Native happened.
In 2015, everyone felt like they are too late because they missed Mobile / Native. Then
In 2020, everyone feels like they missed the eCommerce boom...then blank happened.
There's always a new opportunity happening.
3. Make the Circles Smaller
Break affiliate marketing down into first principles.
You must have a good offer.
You must learn how to set up tracking.
You must know how to write converting copy.
You must know how to make a converting landing page.
Those are the fundamentals. 10 years form now they'll still be relevant.
So take something like creating a converting landing page. You're not going to master that in a week.
Break it down into a chunk.
One week learn about headlines.
One week learn about writing bullet points.
One week learn about landing page structure and design.
Day by day keep adding a brick.
You'll end up with a house before ya know it.
Originally Posted by dr_ngo
Originally Posted by twinaxe
When I see people set these unrealistic goals for themselves, a part of me thinks that they're not really serious about AM at all. The impossible goal gives them an out, an excuse to quit when the going gets tough.
When you set realistic goals, learn as much as you can, and do the work, AM does work. When I first started, I just wanted to make enough to quit my job. Years later, I was able to raise a family and give my kids a good life thanks because of affiliate marketing. It's possible. You just need to see AM as it is. It's a business, not a get rich scheme.
If I had set a goal of $10k a month within 3 months like some threads I've seen here, I would've given up.
I guess a problem is that many people still think that affiliate marketing or making money online is easy, that everyone can do it and that you will make much money there very fast.
But often they forget that you have to learn many new things before and also that you have to invest money before you see the rewards.
When it´s not working then more or less instantly then it has to be the traffic, the offers, bad support or whatever but of course it´s not the fact that they didn´t put enough time in it.
In 2008, I felt like I was too late because I missed the ringtones boom. Then "rebills" happened.
In 2012, everyone felt like they are too late because they missed the rebills boom. Then Mobile / Native happened.
In 2015, everyone felt like they are too late because they missed Mobile / Native. Then
In 2020, everyone feels like they missed the eCommerce boom...then blank happened.
There's always a new opportunity happening.
And there are still people banking from emailing, there are still people banking from banners, there are still people banking from pops and so on and so forth.
In my opinion this also has to do with the mindset.
With a real winning mindset you are able to adapt to new situations.
Then you don´t really think about "XYZ is not working anymore", you rather think about new things to explore.
Break affiliate marketing down into first principles.
You must have a good offer.
You must learn how to set up tracking.
You must know how to write converting copy.
You must know how to make a converting landing page.
Those are the fundamentals. 10 years form now they'll still be relevant.
Before you start thinking about huge numbers it´s better to first take care that at least the requirements to make money online are given.
Then prepare to first spend, invest and lose some money and when all the basics are set you can start to really think about making da moolah
You'll end up with a house before ya know it.
About excuses, I know it from friends as well.
They only know that I make money online and of course some of them also would like to do it.
First everyone is excited but when I explain what skills they need, that they need money, that they have to be prepared to lose money and all such things it mostly doesn´t take long before they start to come up with excuses why they don´t start with it.
Of course it sounds great to get rich in 2 months just from sitting in front of the PC and running affiliate campaigns.
But you don´t do yourself a favor when you fall for exaggerated claims or when you start with a „Get rich ASAP“ mindset.
The top level of such mindset is when people don´t even have the needed skills yet to really succeed but they already dream of 5 figures a day because they heard or read that such earnings are possible.
No idea what a tracker is, no idea about landing pages, no idea about testing/optimizing/scaling campaigns, no idea about doing research and so on and so forth but still expect to earn more from affiliate marketing than probably 95% of all people worldwide in their jobs?
Come on bro...
Every beginner in affiliate marketing with such high expectations should ask himself „What sets me apart from the millions of other people who want to succeed in affiliate marketing to justify my expectations“.
What's terrifying is losing money. I hate losing money more than winning money, and this mindset is limiting. I genuinely thought I would get the hang of it within my first $200 in ad spend. After re-reading @jaybot pop FA thread I saw my spend was WAY TOO LOW and I wasn't testing offers. I had only put up 3 offers. Now I've gone back to the beginning to test 20 different offers over the next week because of @vortex's comment about volume below.
Day 3 - Cut 15 hopeless camps, testing more offers and landers for 5 remaining camps and increasing budget to $30/day to speed up testing, set up 10 more new camps -> spend = $250, rev = $100, profits = -$150
Day 7 - Cut 7 of the 10 recent camps and increase budget for the 3 remaining ones to $30/day, keeping the older 5 camps running, all camps now semi-optimized -> spend = $240, rev = $300, profit = $60
Day 8 - Scale 8 camps to 5 new networks at $20/day budget -> spend $1040, rev = $600, profit = -$440
Day 9 - Cut some of the camps on some of the networks and starting optimizing the rest -> spend $640, rev = $450, profit = -$190.
Day 11 - Campaign optimized and budgets increased -> spend $1120, rev = $1500, profit = $380.
But the 40 day tutorial is to teach all the basics you need and it´s a fantastic starting point.
Nonetheless the real journey starts when you finished the 40 day tutorial and when you have to put the things you learned there in action yourself and then grow your skillset.
Many beginners make the mistake to think that testing an offer here and there is enough to succeed but the reality is that you (mostly) need to test many many many offers.
SO true and so accurate as always @twinaxe.
Great thread!
@am2015 Thank you very much.
Just writing the next part, should be finished today or tomorrow
Originally Posted by twinaxe
The more time I spend reading on STM, the more I realize I don't know haha!
Great thread, really enjoyed the comment section here as well. Literally wrote the Vortex post quote in my notebook to make sure I do a deep dive on it!
Noobs association of CPA would once again like to express their deepest gratitude to sir kind sir @twinaxe
Also, If I may ask a question here or two -
(ended up with too many, apologies!)
Before COVID gave us lemons, Random_Noob001 was a happy BH marketer who ran some easy Native/Push cloaked BH campaigns, FB lead forms, Google call only ads and had run a few app installs, lead gen, other easy weezy stuff with barely any optimization.
Five industries, Fifteen clients, all collapsed! No love lost though, it was all short term quick bucks anyway. Covid yelled pack up and told me to eff off, just a tad bit sooner.
So, nomad Random_Noob001 decides to relocate to planet CPA. His fragile stubborn mind refuses to choose any Tier 2/3 geo. He swears on his life to do nothing but US/UK. CUPID rhymed with COVID, so he chooses Dating.
He dedicates two batshit crazy sleep deprived months on Push & Native spy tools, making the most elaborate sets of Native & Push CREATIVE POOLS & LANDER POOLS, so he's got a good Sharingham Eye now.
(The creative & lander depositories are so good, he plans on sharing them with the members of Noobs association of CPA soon so they can comprehend geo specific, all possible Verticals / Offer Types / Creatives / Ad Screenshots / Raw Landers / Clean Landers in well organized filters with top vertical guides. So that fellow lovies noobies can get there in 2 weeks instead of 2 months.)
Next up, he hires a front end developer for lander cleanup / customizing prelanders / creating listicles. Lazy nooby didn't want comfy, but an experienced devy here in India costs only about $400 a month on the higher side.
Meanwhile, Information avalanche happens and stage 4 of analysis paralysis is diagnosed.
He Spends another month on Creatives / Prelanders / Offers / Mental Mast*rbation.
Random_Noob001 is adamant and excuses that his Graphic Design / Copywriting / Funnel Flows / familiarity of Tier 1 bidding landscapes etc are superpowers to retain.
(Soon Enough - MGID tells him to eat shit when he tries his good old bids, myths and hopes get shattered into pieces.)
Eventually, Random_Noob001 shortlists about 15 offers, some of which get pulled out, a couple face disapproval due to adult members area; giving him a mini heart attack and a major reality check. Also, his myths around low bid multi account strategy from the past on bait content get dusted. (MGID at it again, tells him SH*T D*CK PI*S DI*K S*IT P*SS DI*K)
Baffled and bamboozled, He swears on his life to not resume until he has a plethore of offers in his arsenal, the best of the very best and goes on a crazy spree of offer hopping and ends up applying to about 18 top CPA networks, covering all top ones. Gets admission in about 15.
He ends up with the best of the best dating offers and creates niche and theme based offer / lander / banner clusters for both adult and mainstream.
Sets up custom Backoffers / Push Subs Scripts / Custom Exit Intent thumbs. For mainstream, also starts building Google / Facebook remarketing list to bring lander abandoners to a Top 5 comparison listicle with a solid funnel.
He decides to go with -
Mainstream Dating for Native ( 25+ Generic / Academic / Senior / Asian / Latin / Ukrainian / Russian / Females )
Adult Dating Mainstream Landers for Push (Realizes the quality is going to suck bananas, so only decides to run two themes, low volumes for quality checks - Sexting / Locals on amazing unique creatives and self designed Prelanders that match the creatives and blend well with landers of each offer cluster)
Adult Banners - Limited Beta Test initially. Only one banner size. Custom banners and matching custom prelanders again. To be prioritized over push going forward.
Antivirus for Push - ( Norton / TotalAV / Mackeeper / $2Payout PC Cleaners)
$5K test for the month 1 (Based on offer of dedicated campaign management from a leading push network's manager because of an existing very high spend account)
Random_Noob001 decides to skip the top two ad networks on each format and to go with the third, fourth and fifth best ones.
His strategy is to get in one vertical but to stay in that game for long but be well diversified in there.
A thousand hours plus of snooping on spy tools and hopping across direct publisher sites, screening hundreds if not a thousand of dating offers on CPA networks, Random_Noob001 is super confident about the shortlisted offers / prelanders.
He's got a fat pocket and is looking to splurge about $10K-$15K in the first month itself, much much more if he hears some Cha Ching Cha Ching.
Random_Noob001 does not care much if he loses a decent chunk of what he pumps in during the first month of his common sense defying traffic experiments.
His mission is to identify RIGHT TRAFFIC SOURCES + RIGHT OFFERS + RIGHT PRELANDERS + RIGHT CREATIVES + RIGHT WL/BL + RIGHT DEVICE/OS/VERSIONS + RIGHT HOURS etc.
He decides to >
1. Test Test Test or suck testies. Remain disciplined with traffic trading, following all maths and formulas as defined. Ideate > Experiment > Measure > Optimize > Iterate
2. Understand the game of thrones of that one vertical on Three Traffic Formats with Three Traffic Sources each. (Only SOI & DOI & SOI + Event)
3. Rotate multiple best handpicked offers and identify winners, constantly keep churning and adding new ones.
4. Create self owned, self customized prelanders and identify winners.
5. Build WL & BL for dating. (Due to past heavy spending on Native accounts, also getting bit of extra pampering with a dedicated account manager, existing BL and optimization help.)
6. Use the data collected over decent spending to recoup reds and to remain in greener pastures rather consistently. Achieve stable 15%+ ROI!
7. Pull off some numbers, get access to ATR offer. Test PPS versions of winners & Scale dating to other geos, less competitive ones next time around.
Fresh out of his analysis paralysis, He Kamehamehas dollars into his campaigns from MONDAY!
(He isn't a lone wolf, has a partner, a developer & a couple of marketing minions.)
I understand that " Imperfect action beats perfect inaction"
But I am seeing it as - "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way"
Don't regret the months lost, for I learnt more than I could in a whole year, running campaigns alongside. Still a proper noob though.
Would you like to slap and spank some sense into this noobie so he does not burn his hands too much? He highly values advice coming from much respected living legends like yourself!
P.S - Wrote this book while trying super pooping hard to keep it short! Epic fail!
Wow, congrats to your first book
But cleaning and changing landers is not complicated so it could also be $400 more in traffic each month.
Btw, what kind of traffic do you plan to run?
It´s great to have accounts in many different networks but mostly you never need all of them and it´s better to focus on just a few good ones.
It doesn´t make sense at all to plan everything until perfeciton until you ran traffic and tested it.
It´s really bad when you waste 1-2 weeks to start the perfect campaign just to realize then that it tanks completely.
It´s much better to run some quick and dirty tests ASAP to do a rough check for potential.
When you then see that it´s worth it you can still spend more time on it.
Nonetheless at this very moment it´s only what it is: ideas and plans.
Nothing beats taking action.
Hell, I have a tattoo on my right forearm with text "Take Action".
So my tip is, don´t waste too much time to plan everything from A-Z when then no equivalent action follows to justify the time you had for planning.
Long time ago we had a thread here about the difference between "being in motion" and "taking action".
You find the thread HERE.
It´s a really interesting read and probably helpful for many people here.
Do yourself the favor and don´t get stuck in the "being in motion" mode, the only way to learn how to run campaigns is to run campaigns.
Everything else won´t get you anywhere.
And when you are finally ready to start feel free to run a follow along.
We can give you thousands of advices in advance but often in your real campaigns unexpected situations appear that were not covered before so it´s much better to work with real life examples then.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
hahahahahahaha
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Right, I understood that, basically I joined STM after most of my R&D was done. So missed out on those important guides while planning. Now, I have started two gambling offers in Indian geo. And I am looking at some 1 click offers from Haka on basis your recent post that I will run alongside. Have come too far on some Tier 1 offers to abandon. So, will test them too. Played one campaign set today. Will create a follow along soon.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Yeah, I can do a 50K a month right away, no biggie.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Initially, I plan to run -
50% Native
25% Push
25% Adult Banners
I am actually not looking to function as a solo affiliate, I already have a small team and I will setup an agency as soon as I have things figured out. Already my HR is screening media buyers. I am doing things myself initially so that I know everything in and out.
I myself am decent at making websites, cleaning wasn't a concern. I have hired the developer because I wish to run some highly customized listicles, build long term properties and a few dropshipping campaigns too.
Besides, my bandwidth allocation has to go towards the campaigns, I don't mind if 1 percent of my budget goes to a development resource. If I can get some good funnels done it will be worth it. I need all my energies on marketing bit.
My close friend runs one of India's top Nutra COD brands, so a whitelabel for me is not going to be an issue either. Too early for that though, but that's going to take a team too eventually.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
That's right, I found 5 relevant for adult and mainstream dating. What I like about having 5 is I am not putting all my eggs in the same basket and I can look to spend a little extra without worrying about all my funds invested in one offer or CPA network initially.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
You are very right about this. I haven't tested. Presently it's best in the sense that as a noob, what I was picking up right away versus the offers that I have now are way better than my initial picks from the very limited choices I had. I screened thoroughly all those top networks, and spied on what's running where, the design, the content, the funnel, the flow etc. I can see a massive difference in the quality of choices I have now and even their payouts. So, from offers that I am eligible to run, I believe I have the best possible shortlist to test from a beginner's point of view. But only testing can tell for real. No doubts about that.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Right, So I was seeing it this way.
If I am banking on Native Ads for mainstream dating, my present understanding tells me that it works.
So, I have to work this vertical on this source for myself. And I cannot let budgets / offers / prelanders / creatives / sources defeat me. Because, one leak and it's game over. So, I wanted to step in with the best of everything that I could arrange in my current capacities. That took a while but I am very contended with my preparedness and accummulated resources.
I got all the best offers I could get for myself for US / UK / AU geos.
I have multiple offers for each niche I picked.
Senior / Latin / Russian / Ukrainian / Asian / 25+ Mainstream / 35+ Mainstream / Foreign / Sugar Daddy
I have decided to rotate the offers, prelanders and landers to identify winning combinations -
Focus is on Desktop + iOS
I selected 3 native ad networks to run them on, starting the launch with one.
Presently some campaigns are live on MGID.
Just some $300 spent and they are around -45% without optimization on competitive bids.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Sir yes Sir! Copy that!
Thank you for the kind words of encouragement. Fingers crossed!
Yes, I read that blog, I have read most of the great stuff here, already. (Remember, three months of mad research :P)
It was great. I shared it with my team and some quotes from it are already on my whiteboard.
In general I have realized that I am always slow at start, I really need 2-3 months of incubation period to do extensive research and planning before I feel prepared to step into an industry and start taking actions. It's a childhood defect. I have seen me turning it into an advantage. It helps me pace up fast when I go live and I feel safer taking risks and it gives me confidence to think I have decent plans in place and a better level of awareness.
But, no excuses, I am accelerating now. Getting in hardcore action mode. It's all going to be action now, because I have already done the six months worth of comprehension. So, now recurring research work will be very specific and on requirement basis until all mapped POAs are executed. It's purely going to be production focussed approach from here on.
I love the sound of that tattoo, it's giving me great ideas about my first one ^_^
I'll start my follow along real soon! I am hoping for my stats to turn out like your January Push follow along. XD
I am going to need all those real time advices and support.
Thanks so much for taking so much time out for responding to it.
I wish I had the right words to express my gratitude. So very kind of you!
You wouldn't have expected the second book to come out so soon. I am really really bad at keeping things short. lol
Originally Posted by startupminions
You can’t flex like that and say you’re part of the newbie association of whatever at the same time.
We have newbies afraid to spend $10 a day and you’re scaring the shit out of them.
With all due respect, If I have a team, I also mentioned I am doing all by myself right now.
A noob may have an active job that pays him well or an active business that he makes money from.
In my case, I have an active business that my partner is solely taking care of.
I am on a mission to figure things out all by myself and then to bring my team in as I mentioned in my post as well.
I know people who started as solo affiliates and went on to run an agency or even a CPA network, some run whitelabled businesses or started a full fledged brand.
Everyone has to right to have future plans beyond CPA.
I am not bragging about funds I have, I come from a humble background. It is my own hard earned money. I live a simple life and invest everything I earn.
When people figure out winning campaigns, they look for investing partners or figure out ways to bring in credit cards (as seen in one of the posts here). So, If i have ways to bring in capital, why do I fall in the category of a shark when I am a complete beginner and starting from scratch myself?
Do not get the wrong idea that I am not afraid to lose money or I am not giving it my heart, soul or all the time available.
A business can be started with zero capital and even with a million dollars in. It does not mean that the one who had the money has advantage or he will win or he is not an entrepreneur. He may have more at stake, more to lose. He may be a beginner too.
There's a thin line between right and wrong. And, it's easy to judge. But we all have a story. We are all trying. We are all hustling.
I wish we all remain compassionate here as we are and continue exchanging such quality ideas and find some way of contributing to each other's success.
I hope if I manage to make things work for myself, to share as much as I can, to contribute a major percentage of my time to helping everyone get there like you guys are doing.
I really look up to you fantastic people being so concerned about the success of others here. It has touched me.
As I mentioned in my post, I am already working on a depository to share with everyone. That's all the research I did and I believe it will help people who haven't been to a spy tool yet.
And, I apologize if anything I mentioned (Association joke etc) to make my loooong books a bit readable, and if it was offensive or if I appeared pretentious or demeaning to anyone, I will refrain from using such references or if it offends anyone that I use the word 'noob', I won't use it again. (In my self defense, I saw this coming and used 'Random_noob001')
Anyways, cheers man - @jaybot
I love the great work you do here and I respect you so much man. I look up to you and I will always listen and follow anything you say without questioning.
Have a blessed weekend sir! Cheers again
Originally Posted by twinaxe
You're always on point
When I would start with SEO, Adwords or native I would also be a newbie in these things.
Or for example let me quote vortex from her Outbrain Tutorial
Originally Posted by vortex
Some time ago I talked to a friend who is media designer.
He is very good with Photoshop and knows HTML/CSS, he also worked in an ad agency but offline, print media.
I thought he would understand pretty good what I am doing because he has some knowledge about similar stuff.
My idea was to get him into affiliate marketing as well because it could be fun to work with someone I know together.
Oh boy, I was so wrong.
He didn´t understand anything, didn´t even get the most basic concepts of tracking and stuff.
It was like a clash of two worlds.
So even when he worked with lots of websites before and ran many advertising campaigns in the offline world he would be a total noob when it comes to paid advertising.
In the end we are all newbies when we do something new that we never did before.
Let´s be honest, from the posts it doesn´t seem that @startupminions has bad intentions or so.
He did something else before and is starting with something new now = newbie.
He already has a team and money from his other biz so why shouldn´t he use it?
And he decided to post it in a rather funny way, in my opinion nothing bad about it.
Let´s try to not see everything so blinkered, there´s enough bullshit and division already out there so let's try to keep at least or cosy forum a friendly place
Originally Posted by startupminions
But on a more serious note, waiting for your FA thread, your "books" will be greatly appreciated there especially
On the other hand, less people running pops = more pops for me
Originally Posted by twinaxe
When I would start with SEO, Adwords or native I would also be a newbie in these things.
Or for example let me quote vortex from her Outbrain Tutorial
Another example, from my family or friends no one understands what I am doing and how I earn my money.
Some time ago I talked to a friend who is media designer.
He is very good with Photoshop and knows HTML/CSS, he also worked in an ad agency but offline, print media.
I thought he would understand pretty good what I am doing because he has some knowledge about similar stuff.
My idea was to get him into affiliate marketing as well because it could be fun to work with someone I know together.
Oh boy, I was so wrong.
He didn´t understand anything, didn´t even get the most basic concepts of tracking and stuff.
It was like a clash of two worlds.
So even when he worked with lots of websites before and ran many advertising campaigns in the offline world he would be a total noob when it comes to paid advertising.
In the end we are all newbies when we do something new that we never did before.
Let´s be honest, from the posts it doesn´t seem that @startupminions has bad intentions or so.
He did something else before and is starting with something new now = newbie.
He already has a team and money from his other biz so why shouldn´t he use it?
And he decided to post it in a rather funny way, in my opinion nothing bad about it.
Let´s try to not see everything so blinkered, there´s enough bullshit and division already out there so let's try to keep at least or cosy forum a friendly place
I’m simply looking at it from the average AM beginner’s perspective. If I were a beginner and reading the first excellent post, I would be inspired.
If I kept reading and saw posts about needing 50k a month it to spend on ads I would be discouraged.
That’s all I’m pointing out.
Definitely looking forward to minion’s FA when it comes.
It would be pretty disappointing when a beginner who has "just" few k to start would read it.
But there´s a difference between needing $50k/month to start or having $50k/month available
And yes, the thread title is about realistic goals so maybe other beginners could take the mentioned $50k also as a realistic budget to start and that´s definitely not the case.
On the other hand, when we check startupminions goals we can see that they are pretty reasonable, he´s aware of losing money in the beginning and that it takes some time to learn the stuff and build a biz.
No matter what his budget is he still has lower expectations than other beginners who think they can conquer the world with $1k starting budget.
Apart from all the talks it´s interesting for me to realize what huge differences can be between beginner and beginner.
There can be the 20 year old dude who just finished college and wants to be self employed and starts with affiliate marketing or there can be a 40 year old man who already made millions in daytrading and now decides to start affiliate marketing with a 7 figure budget and still starts in low tier geos to first learn the basics.
To end the discussion I would say that depending on the context and perspective all our reasonings are valid and that it´s great to have such a diversity of users here
precious words
Originally Posted by boomleebee
Great Post! I myself have been guilty of wanting to receive high daily profits without knowing or having the necessary funds to achieve that amount. I think that with the time it takes to learn people become frustrated because they need money right away to get out of whatever dilemma that they may be in. I dropped out of a college a few years ago because I thought I could be successful in affiliate marketing.
Turns out that it was not as easy as the advertiser advertised and I had to suffer from being homeless and only being able to get crappy jobs like working at a garbage facility and volunteer work in undeveloped communities. A real low point in my life but now I'm back in college and I still want to learn affiliate marketing. I am not saying that it is not impossible for someone to actually learn everything and quit their job or college but like twinaxe said you have to think realistically.
But let´s face the truth, why do people think they can make money online without the knowledge or skills needed for it?
Of course it´s definitely possible to make money online, we have more than enough examples here that it works.
Nonetheless it´s just like any other craft, you need to learn it.
To see how unrealistic it is to make money online without the knowledge let´s just compare it to other tasks and then ask ourselves if it would be realistic:
- I want to make my living from playing guitar in a band but never played guitar before.
Is it enough then to buy a guitar and after few weeks I am ready to make lots of money?
- I want to make my living from being a physicist without knowing maths at all.
Is it realistic to achieve my goal in 2-3 months then?
- I want to earn lots of money as a racing driver but I don´t even have a driver license.
Can I still make my living from car racing?
We could continue with it over and over again and for every other job we would never have such unrealistic expectations.
I guess the problem is that everyone has a computer and too many "gurus" tell how easy it is to make money online (when you buy their courses).
Many people don´t see affiliate marketing as a real job but rather believe it´s something that everyone can do and that´s far away from the truth.
Thanks for your post, it's very positive and makes me feel good. Less pressure, more realistic. I really hope to be able to do the first 30 per day in a stable way and than scale from that.
@martinbe I´m glad that you like the post.
One very important thing we shouldn´t forget is the motivation.
In the beginning you have to deal with so many different new things and you need to learn so much.
It all gets easier the longer you the stuff but unluckily the beginning is the hardest time.
When you then just go from one fail to the next it can be very frustrating.
With small but steady wins it´s much easier to keep the motivation high.
Just imagine in the evening when you finish your work you can either be disappointed most of the time because you didn´t succeed although potentially you could have made much moolah but it didn´t work or you can look back at the day with a little smile on your face because although the potential profit wasn´t that high you really made few bucks.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
It can happen that you try to prepare everything as good as possible for a perfect start whereas it´s much better to read the important basics and then just start and read and learn along the way.
One real campaign can give you much more than 100 hours of reading.
In the end you can´t be prepared for everything anyway.
It doesn´t matter how much you read, once you start running campaigns you will have situations that you didn´t expected.
As I like to say: "You can only learn how to run campaigns when you run campaigns"
Great post twinaxe. I.e. It woud be so simple: if you drive a car and you don't know which command you have to use and for what, it's sure you will crash after some meter. It's strange - or could be not - that people in front of money lose their reason.
Originally Posted by seeds_of_60
In such situations you are more likely to look for shortcuts.
Another problem is that the whole affiliate stuff is often shown in a way that it looks easy and when it´s easy you also have huge expectations.
When you then really start to run campaigns you will often pick up with the reality
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