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Clewis's Beginner Follow along (52)

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Hey everyone,

Thanks for coming in to check out my follow along, would love to hear from you and any constructive criticism or words of advise you may have.

I am starting back in on Vortex's 40 day pop tutorial for Voluum (Thanks @vortex for taking the time to put this tutorial together, Im sure it took a lot of your time, energy & focus and I really appreciate your help, thank you).

I first attempted to go through this tutorial earlier in the year but I was not committed to learning this skill set and I had "shiny object syndrome" and kept jumping from one business model to the next.

So now I am back and more committed learning this skill set and I am in this for the long haul.

Also bare with me as I write out this follow along, I have to figure out how to post images, stats, other things that may be helpful etc...

So again, thanks for coming in to check this follow along out and I look forward to hearing from you.

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Good luck, fasten your seatbelts and prepare yourself for tons of knowledge to be acquired

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Day 1

Applying to Various Networks

As I have said, I started working through this tutorial earlier in the year so I already have a few accounts created.

I have accounts with...

-Voluum for my tracker, (I have registered and set up a custom domain)
-Mobidea for Affiliate Network
-Propellerads for Traffic Network
-Popads for Traffic Network

I was not accepted by clickdealer. ( I plan to re-apply once I get some green campaigns under my belt & understand the fundamentals of setting up and running campaigns a little better)

I have applied to HAKA Affiliate Network and I am waiting to see if I am approved or not.

For right now Mobidea is the affiliate network will be using to pick offers to test.

As I am going through the "2-8 a) Picking Offers- Mobidea"

Questions for Mobidea Offers

-I do not see EPC(earnings per click) as an option that I can adjust, i am assuming they got rid of this option?

-When recording the offer information in excel, Where can i find the "carrier", is carrier the same as operator?


I have been instantly approved for a few offers:

-24130 - MX - [MOB] - Genious Quiz - Telcel - 2Click

-24577 - KE - [WEB+MOB] - Unlimited Streaming - Safaricom/Telkom - 1 Click

After following the tutorial and setting the parameters, these are a couple of the offers I will be testing/ learning with.

I will take these and move on to "Day 9: Setting Up Tracking on Voluum"

I don't really have any specific questions or concerns right now besides the couple of questions about the Mobidea offers... For now I am just trying to keep learning from and implementing this tutorial.

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Hi @clewis! Thanks for starting a follow-along! Looking great so far!

I wouldn't spend too much time on picking offers for direct-linking. This is just an exercise before we move onto learning how to use landing pages. I would suggest to ask your Mobidea AM for offer suggestions and run a couple of those for practice.

As for posting images: @twinaxe wrote a great post on how to do that - please see his signature for the link.

To do screen captures of your stats etc.: There are lots of free software but I use lightshot.



Amy


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums

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Ok, sounds good.

I will get in touch with my AM for some suggestions as I keep going through the tutorial. (I received an automatic message that said they will be back in the office tomorrow)

I am still waiting to hear back from HAKA to see if i am approved or not (will try to reach out Monday or Tuesday)

Do you think Mobidea will be sufficient for offers to run for now or should I try to sign up for other affiliate networks?



"Day 11:First Lesson on Testing and Optimization"

Looks like the plan I have in Voluum does not allow me to drill down into 3 levels of data but I do get the concept of drilling down into the levels of data to see what is working and what is not.

I will probably have to look into the next plan up as I move forward through the Tutorial.


"Day 12: Setting up a Campaign on PropellerAds Explanation"


A ton of information, very informative, very helpful, will definitely be referring back to this post.


So far I am learning a lot, looking forward to working my way further through the tutorial.

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Thanks. Good luck to you also. I seen you have a follow along, looking forward to seeing you crush it.

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Try to get into more networks.

Especially in the beginning it´s good to test few networks to find 1-2 that work good for you.

Then you can stick with these to don´t spread your earnings across too many networks.

But when you just start it´s good to first test few networks because not all networks work equal for all affiliates

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I was accepted by HAKA, so now I have accounts with Mobidea, Mobipium, and HAKA.

This should be good enough for now right?

I do plan to re-apply to clickdealer when I get some green campaigns under my belt (whenever that may be)


Day 13: Setting up a Campaign on PopAds

When I start a new campaign in Voluum, They give me the option for "simple" or "advanced". After clicking into both, it looks like the "advanced" has an extra tab for "destination"...

Is this something that will be covered later on in the tutorial?
Is this something I should look into further?

Campaign is setup, I used the direct linking offer that I used for the Propellerads campaign as Vortex says this is mainly for practice right now and getting the feel for setting up a campaign in Popads.

I attempted to use an approved offer from Haka but was kind of lost when changing out tracking tokens(have to go back and study tracking tokens and setting up tracking)

This is another post full of great information, will definitely be referring back to it.

Some things I want/have to do
I will have to go back and spend some more time studying "tracking tokens" and how to properly setup tracking and URLs to be sending the correct tracking info.

Should I step back and study previous lessons or keep learning and connecting the dots as I move forward? ... next lesson is "Introduction to Landing Pages".

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You can start with simple. Not necessary to make things overly complex in the beginning. You will know when simple won't suffice for you anymore.

Before you crack your head into pieces just reach out to either Voluum or Haka for the setup. The more networks and traffic sources you integrate the better you get an idea how tokens work (since they are all kind of similar). Maybe start with cheap offer first so you don't lose too much money in case anything is wrong with your setup.

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Yup, for the sake of the tutorial, it's enough to work with these 3. Later on, you might want to enroll with a few more that have a wider coverage of verticals... gotzha, advidi or clickdealer that you mentioned, but that can wait a few weeks.

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Thanks @matuloo & @larsometer for the advise.

I am on Day 14-15: Introduction to landing pages and it is looking like a may have to learn some coding...

Should I step back and get better at setting up and running campaigns on Popads and Propellerads (setting up tracking etc..) or just keep on with the tutorial and get better as I go?

Thanks for all the help so far, I really appreciate it everyone

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Start with testing as soon as you feel it is ok to run camps. If you choose low payout offers in low tear geos so you don't risk too much.

Good thing is that low payout offers tend to convert better. Once they convert and you see that in your tracker you have proof that your tech setup is sound. And when conversions roll in you can see and feel the magic.

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Without proper understanding of tracking it's hard to really run any campaigns, but it's also hard to reach profits without using landing pages. So you pretty much need to master both parts. I'm with larsometer though: the earlier you start running some campaigns, the sooner it will all start to come together. Some things seem complicates "on paper" but it all clicks quickly once you set them up for the first time.

The tutorial starts with directlinking, in order to not confuse newbies with the LP stuff straight away, so it's a good idea to start some DL campaigns just as a form of training. As soon as you are sure that you've set it up correctly and understand what you are doing, move to LPs. You don't really need to learn coding either, there are ready to go LPs available here on the forum, you can purchase a pack from adplexity and there are also people here on the forum who will clean/prepare LPs for you at decent prices. Later on, it's very handy to learn how to make simple edits to the code yourself, as you don't want to pay a coder everytime you need to change the headline or some image, but again, this can come later on.

Your goal now should be to get something running asap and learn from that. Watchin a real campaign in action can sometimes give you more than a day worth of reading

Some links for you:

Our landign page repository: https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...age-Depository
Adplexity pack for sale: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ity-for-1-only
This guy will clean LPs for you: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Service-(BETA)

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Don´t worry, you don´t really need to code yourself.

You just need to understand a bit how to read the code and make few changes.

When you did it few times it´s not that complicated anymore

You can only learn how to run campaigns when you run campaigns - there is now way around it so it´s important to learn the basics as soon as possible.

Use direct linking to learn how to create campaigns and run some small campaigns to make sure that the tracking and your whole setup is working.

When everything is working fine and you feel safe enough in the process move on and learn how to work with landers.

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Thank you for choosing PropellerAds as your traffic source!

We recently published a very detailed article about Popunder campaigns. You will find a lot of valuable tips there

Here you will find other articles that can be useful for you as well: https://propellerads.com/blog/category/learn/tutorials/

In addition, we recommend that you join our Telegram chat. There we give bonuses and answer questions that our clients have.

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Thank you @twinaxe, @matuloo and @propellerads for the help

My plan moving forward is to spend time everyday setting up a few campaigns and getting a better understanding of the process of setting up campaigns the right way, from tracking to traffic network setup.

After setting up a few campaigns for the day I will get back into the study of the tutorial and learning to use landing pages effectively.


Thanks for the advise on coding... this will save me probably days of study, I will look to learn some basics at some point to be able to adjust the code as needed for the landing pages but definitely good to know that I don't have to take the next week or so studying some basics.


As far Direct linking goes... I keep reading that it is dead and yet @twinaxe has a direct linking campaign guide in his sig that was profitable.

Is this rare? or is this something that is overlooked? .. or is it just the fact that having a LP usually makes the campaign higher converting?


Again, thanks for the help everyone, very much appreciated

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I never started a real HTM/CSS/JS tutorial myself.

When I worked on landers and got stuck I just learned enough to fix my issue and then continue.

That way I didn´t waste time learning stuff that I don´t need anyway.

The reason why the campaigns from my guide work is because the offers itself have good converting prelanders already.

In absolutely most other campaigns it´s better to use landing pages.

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As twinaxe mentioned above, pretty much the only way to make directlinking work, is to use offers that already have prelanders built in. There might be a few exceptions to this, but you know how it goes, there are exceptions to every rule

Personally, I'm using my own LPs even if the offer itself has some prelander... somehow it still performs better for me, even though the "questions" asked on my LP are similar to those that the offer lists itself... I guess that those users who actually make it through all the "hassle" of answering all the questions are more motivated and interested to see what's waiting for them behind the registration page

But again... exceptions... it's not that unusual to see a campaign with custom LPs performing worse than a directlinked one (with built in prelander), all the parts of the funnel simply have to "click", when that happens, you have a winner

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Awesome, thanks @twinaxe and @matuloo

"When I worked on landers and got stuck I just learned enough to fix my issue and then continue."

I will go about fixing the landers this way as well, just learning what I have to do to fix them.

I am seeming to get a better grip on setting up campaigns, So I think I will dig a little deeper into landing pages and their set up.

As both of you have explained... the landing page is critical to the majority of successful campaigns.

So moving forward I will dive into learning more about landing pages and getting them setup and running in sync with the campaigns.

Hopefully soon I will be able to post some screenshots of some test campaigns.

Either way, I will keep on with the study of the tutorial and keep pushing to get a better grip on setting up campaigns and really understanding the mechanics of the whole process. My goal is to be able to setup and run test campaigns effectively so I can be constantly testing new offers.

Again, thanks guys for the help, you are awesome

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Day 18: Setting Up Hosting and CDN


-Registered a domain name with namecheap.
-Registered an account with AWS.

going through the process of setting up hosting with s3..


How does something like landerlab relate to this hosting process.

I know @vortex explains that AWS s3 is the cheaper way to go and something like funnel flux would be ok once someone has little extra money.

As of right now I do have extra money to invest in tools and software that will make this process easier/ more efficient.

So my question is... is setting up this hosting with s3 the most efficient way to go, as far as time invested to set up the technical aspects or is there a software that would be worth the investment?

My apologies if I am jumping ahead to quickly but with the extra money to invest I would rather pay for the software to make this process more efficient. But if AWS s3 is the way to go for hosting then no problem, I will continue on with learning to use it.

Thanks everyone

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Funnel Flux is a tracker.

Aws S3 allows you to host your website (+ cloudfront to serve it faster). Landerlab replaces it and gives you an integrated solution with templates ready to use, which can save you time at the beginning, especially if you don't know how to code. I personally use S3, but because i know well the AWS ecosystem and it has lots of advantages for me. But i know STM members using Landerlab who are happy with it.

If you had to invest in tools, i would start with a tracker + a spytool (like Adplexity, Anstrex, Visto for example) .

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Thanks for the help @jeremie.

In the tutorial it said that funnel flux had a hosting service, maybe they did away with it?

Ok, so landerlab will replace using AWS s3 + cloundfront?

For me I am not super technical, although I will take the time to learn if that is what it takes and that is the best way to go about the hosting process.

Yes I am using both Voluum and mobile adplexity, but still very much in a learning curve for both.

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You mean this one?



More or less yes

I can imagine that it all sounds complicated but in the end it isn´t that hard

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Yes, I decided to go with landerlab and use their hosting. It seems to be a more streamlined way to have landers up and running quickly, maybe I am wrong but I want to give them a try.


Ok, thats good to hear , the setup process on aws s3 + cloudfront did seem to get pretty complicated and I knew landerlab was an option so I've decided to go with landerlab for right now.

As of right now, I am still working may way through the tutorial, trying to find some footing haha.

My goal is to be able to setup and run test campaigns with landers and have everything working correctly (tracking, landers, traffic etc...) by the end of the day Sunday, Oct 4th. and hopefully get some conversions, I will be very happy if I can achieve this.

Thanks again @twinaxe, and everybody for the help, I appreciate it

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Yup, especially in the beginning it can help to keep the setup as simple as possible so that you can put your focus on other things.

Important is only to don´t be cheap with the setup so that it doesn´t become your bottleneck.

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Hei Clewis, wishing you good luck on your journey. We will be around to help you with some advice on optimization or different other strategies should you require it once you get to that point.
For now, I would really recommend that you take it slowly, step by step and as everyone else said, use your tools and study how to run campaigns with ease in order to test different networks simultaneously. Don't forget to pace yourself and keep track of your spending and revenue generated, remember it's okay to take breaks if you feel overwhelmed and ask for more solutions here

All the best.

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Hey @twinaxe, what do you mean by "be cheap"... like not investing in the tools and software needed?


Thank you for the advise & support @popcash, I am taking in one day at a time and trying to get a good grip on how to setup and run campaigns. I don't necessarily feel overwhelmed right now, just trying to learn & implement every day. For sure taking a break for a day every now and then does seem to refresh me so I will keep that in mind. Again thank you for the support, Really appreciate it.

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Like @twinaxe said, definitely try to get into more networks. Mobipium and Haka are enough for now. I'll be recommending more networks in new lessons of the 40-day tutorial that are newbie-friendly and have more offers to play with.


In the new version of this tutorial I'm recommending to skip the DISCOVER plan altogether for that reason. It seemed like a good deal at first, but without the ability to drill into at least 2 levels deep there's little point.


You can, but don't have to...until you encounter a new affiliate network that isn't covered in the step-by-step, and you're lost as to how to set up the offer and postback links. THEN you may have to really dig into how tracking tokens work - and by that time you'll have the motivation to spend time to figure it out because you won't have a step-by-step for the new network.


You are of course encouraged to complete the tutorial at your own pace. However, it is not necessary to understand each lesson perfectly before moving on.

Practical experience is crucial in understanding some of the concepts described in the lessons. So what I would suggest is to just keep progressing through the lessons unless you feel that a lack of understanding of a previous lesson is keeping you from progressing to the next lesson.

Try to do a complete first pass of the entire tutorial as best you can, then run a few more campaigns, then read through some of the lessons a second time etc. That way the written material will help you execute the testing and optimization, and your actual experience will help you to understand more of the written material - to achieve a virtuous cycle.


I'm afraid @twinaxe's advice may not apply to everyone. He's probably the type to learn by trial and error (if I know him at all) but not everyone can just jump into a random mess and start changing things and figuring things out the way he can. If you don't even have a rudimentary knowledge of coding, AT ALL, it would be impossible to even know WHAT you need to fix. When you get to the lessons on landing pages, you'll quickly find out whether spending a few days to learn basic coding would be a good idea. If you open up a landing page's code and all you're able to do is stare at it blankly, then you know.


Everything goes through phases - offers are no different.

A few years back, I made good money direct-linking to direct carrier billing offers (the 1-click / 2-click types). Then, mobile carriers cracked down on a lot of these offers that were spammy/scammy/shady. Unfortunately (or not), the spammiest/scammiest/shadiest offers were the ones that converted best. So these types of offers stopped being profitable. When I said direct-linking was dead, I was mainly referring to these kinds of offers.
@twinaxe's wonderful case study is from running Haka's Click2SMS offers. I haven't noticed this type of offers around until in recent months (doesn't mean they haven't been around - just that I haven't noticed them). And their conversion flow is so simple that they will convert when direct-linked. The big advantage with these is that they accept international traffic, which is VERY rare when it comes to low payout offers that even newbies can run. So, I would consider this to be an exception, not the norm.

In addition, other members have mentioned offers that have their own landing pages "built-into" them. Of course you can occasionally find good offers in those as well.

If you'd like, you could focus solely on running offers that can be direct-linked. Even today, I'm still finding offers that can make money with direct-linking that don't fall into any of the above-mentioned categories. However, those may be fewer and further between. Whereas if you know how to work with landing pages, you'd be able to choose from a much wider selection of offers. But either could work theoretically - it depends on how good you are at doing research (spy tools etc.), how many networks you have good relationships with and whether they have good offers that can convert with direct-linking, how good you are at optimizing, etc.

To clarify further: Offers that have very simple conversion flow can make good candidates for direct-linking - click on a button to subscribe type of offers. Whereas offers that require more work from the visitor such as asking for their name and email will have a better chance when you use a landing page, because without seeing a compelling reason on the landing page that tells them to take action, they wouldn't have a strong desire to leave their info. Landing pages are a double-edged sword - on the one hand they presell visitors so that when they click through to the offer page, they'd be more likely to convert. On the other hand they add an extra step to the funnel i.e. another chance for the visitor to bail from impatience. Therefore, the landing page is only useful if it does more good than harm, i.e. it does an effective enough job in preselling the visitor that the increase in conversion rate offsets the loss of visitors resulting from the extra step in the funnel. Hope that explains the reason for using landing pages in the first place!


Definitely agree with this. Also, know that it doesn't really matter WHERE you host your actual landing page files - on S3 or on your own server - because ultimately you'll be using a CDN to SERVE your pages. So storing your landing pages on a fast server for example will not give you any advantage.

Landerlab - I'll probably write about it in the new version of the tutorial. Feel free to play with it yourself in the meantime.


No the service is still available!

I would suggest not to fixate on the technical lander hosting stuff for now. S3+Cloudfront/Cloudflare does the job well, as does LanderLab+Cloudflare. Just choose one and move on for now. Focus on learning how to do research in spy tools, how to optimize landing pages for speed, and most importantly how to test offers and landers and optimize campaigns. THOSE are what WILL determine your success/failure (no such thing although I'm using that word to illustrate a point), not where you host your landers.

Nice progress by the way!



Amy

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Sorry for confusion.

I meant that you shouldn´t get the cheapest options for infrastructure just to save some money.

All your traffic goes through your tracker and server so when this is good enough it can easily become your bottleneck.

100% agree, it´s probably not the right approach for everyone and works best when you have at least a somewhat good understanding for such stuff and a good mind for logical stuff like coding syntax.

When you never done anything with it at all it´s better to first learn the basics so that are not completely lost when you check the landers codes

Yes, nowadays the technical development made it much easier to run our stuff without facing too hard consequences when we don´t have that much knowledge about about the technical stuff.

Nonetheless I´d like to add a bit to it

The CDN already helps alot to serve the pages faster but I also recommend to use a good and fast DNS service.

That also helps to access the landers and tracker faster.

Then it definitely makes a difference if we use a SaaS tracker or a selfhosted tracker.

Using a SaaS tracker we only need to run a server/VPS for our landers, using a selfhosted tracker it´s much more important to have a powerful server.

In the end I would still recommend to get a good server no matter what tracker we use.

A CDN is there to cache our static files like images, CSS, JS but for example I don´t let my HTML files get cached.

When we have landing pages and the HTML files would get cached by the CDN I would think that then the dynamically added values from the JS would also be cached so that the cached versions would have unnecessary text there.

I guess I better try it with an example to explain my complicated sounding description a bit better.

Let´s say we have this code snippet on our lander

When we then call the URL like https://mydomain.com?brand=Samsung the text would change to "Congratulations dear Samsung user!".

The JS snippet is still in the source code so when the CDN then caches the landing page the new code would be

As I said, I am not 100% sure if I am right with it or not but I could imagine that it works that way when we consider how CDNs work but maybe I am wrong with it and someone with more knowledge can correct me when I´m wrong.

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Ok will do, I am currently with mobipium, Mobidea, and haka. My plan was to use these networks for the time being to learn to set up campaigns properly and once I have that down and maybe some small profitable campaigns running I will reach out and apply to more networks.

Ok, I will be upgrading when I get a better handle on setting up campaigns properly.



Yes ok, I will try to go about it this way.

As of right now, I am trying to get the landing pages setup and running correctly down, and as you know I have chosen to go with landerlab+cloudflare so just like everything I am going through the learning curve to get it figured out.


Ok, maybe not so bad to take a little time to learn some html basics.

I first would like to have context on what needs to be fixed so I can base my study around that.


Yes that does a good job of explaining the use of landing pages.

I guess what I can take from this is that some of these offers with "built in landers" are worth a test but like you said, I will still absolutely go about learning to work with landers as that opens up a much wider range of offers that I can test and work with.




ok, I still have to learn how to use the CDN (cloudflare) and yes I will go about learning to use landerlab as s3 seemed to be quite complicated and also a lot of steps to go through if a domain gets flagged.



This is gold, really helped me to not get to wrapped up in small details of the setup process. I know it is important to have these things down but also good to have a bigger picture of what is and isn't so important.

Thank you so much for your help, I hope to keep making progress everyday and getting a better and better grip on setting up and running campaigns

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Hey affiliates,

Coming back after getting sidetracked and not working or studying affiliate marketing for a bit but its time to get back to it.

I have not found a quality freelancer and just re-launched some job postings.


Question:


How do you send the freelancer the landing page?... When I download the lander from adplexity, it downloads into like 20 different files.. I am guessing I just zip them and send them in a zip file? and I believe I can then send this with dropbox.

How does everyone go about this?

I am also using landerlab if that helps at all


Edit:


I am thinking of using lastpass.com to generate temporary passwords and allow the freelancer temporary access to landerlab so they can get in, clean and fix the lander and save it so there really isn't any transfer of files...


Thanks

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Glad to see you still around

20 different files is not that much as most of that files are assets (images/fonts etc)

Not a landerlab user but maybe there is an option to collaborate and create developer accounts? I think that @platinum is your goto man in that case.

You can also try sending your devs raw zips ripped from the adplexity - they would know how to handle it.

Do a quick check before sending them - unzip it and open in your browser - if it's total mess like no images are loading and no text is displaying just skip that one and download another - there is bunch of different "providers" that use the same variant over the adplexity so finding another, similar one shouldn't be a huge issue.

So you send them raw zip and they send you zip with fixed lander that you upload to landerlab.

Google Drive + sharing one of your folders with dev might help.

Also - do consider spending some time to understand how to get your camps to greenish before hiring up bunch of devs as landers that they fix might not convert at all.

Good. Using password manager and 2FA (authenticator or SMS) is in my opinion a must given the broad amount of companies that we have to sign in to actually start working.

One data breach in ANY company (happens pretty often) and you can get your stuff messed up badly if using same email/password everywhere.

If you are doing sweeps there is one awesome lander up and ready to use prepared by twinaxe, you can find it HERE

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Oh yes, this is so true.

Just recently I had one of my trafficsource accounts compromised.

Luckily I saw it fast enough before more damaged happened, was low $xxx but it´s annoying enough.

This week I spent then with setting up Lastpass, changing passwords from hundreds of websites, setting up 2FA for dozens of websites.

And because I am a stupid idiot sometimes I also messed up my tracker during the progress that bad that I had to reinstall the server so now I basically have a clean tracker again and have to start from scratch

But at least everything should be safe now

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Wut?!

Luckily, you’re twinaxe and you’ve been regularly backing up all your tracker data, right? Right?!

Or, just hoping all your BL/WL on the traffic sources and theoptimizer data will help you?

I’ve been too lazy to backup my tracker data so far. Now you’re scaring me

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Well...

...

...

Of course not as often as I should do

Last tracker backup is a year or so ago.

I still have several excel sheets with BL/WL so it´s no doomsday scenario.

I also try to see it positive, gives me the chance to start fresh and clean again

Thousands of campaigns in the tracker were a bit messy anyway.

It´s just really annoying to add trafficsources and CPA networks again.

Backup man, backup.

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Thank you @plutus for the help. I was just getting confused with all the different files that came with downloading the lander. I was thinking it was just one complete file but ok... I have dropbox so I think I can setup a share folder with the developer.

Wow @twinaxe, I wasn't thinking of that when I was considering using last pass but gives me something to keep in mind?

So your traffic source was hacked and they took the money?

I guess I will just go ahead and set it up from the start.


you run 1000s of campaigns at once @twinaxe? thats awesome and impressive if so because I think I read you don't work with a large team, right? or do you outsource some tasks?


Whats up @jaybot , Love your follow along, really motivational. Do you run "theoptimizer" to help manage your camps? and do you outsource any part of your tasks or just do everything yourself?

Thanks guys

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I can only speculate what happened but in the end it doesn´t matter anyway.

Can´t change it anymore and now everything should be safe

I work only as solo affiliate but I don´t have thousands of offers running at once.

Sometimes it´s dozens or even hundreds of campaigns but I don´t have to maintain them then.

I use Optimizer alot and also run campaigns on CPA so that I don´t have any work with it.

When I have that many active campaigns it also doesn´t mean that they are all big and important campaigns, I just keep campaigns running as long as they don´t go into red so many of these campaigns are just more or less abandoned mini campaigns that still generate some traffic and still convert here and there

With the thousands of campaigns above I rather meant all the campaigns that were in my tracker

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Hi @twinaxe. What optimizer do you use for your campaigns, theoptimizer. io or which others? And to identify Bot traffic, do you use a tool for that or which one do you recommend? i use Binom

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@tracyw020 I use TheOptimizer

I don´t really use a tool to identify bot traffic and I also don´t run bot tests.

For me a placement either converts or it doesn´t convert, independent if there´s bots or not

But it´s good to filter out bad traffic anyway to increase the quality a bit.

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I use TheOptimizer. I don't really outsource anything. Once in a blue moon I will get some translations done from fiverr or upwork, but other than that. Just me losing lots of money

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Thanks @twinaxe and @jaybot

So after working with the freelancer for a couple days I am now thinking that I have to spend some time learning and understanding programming/coding so I have the ability to do what I want to do with the landers and can fix and adjust them quickly myself.

(a few of you have already told me this but I am hard headed and need to do something myself before I really learn)

I was trying to avoid this but now I am thinking it will be very helpful to know how to work with the code myself.

I think this will be a cool skill to have and kind of interesting to learn so "off to learn some coding for a little bit"

Also I consider myself to be playing the "long game" here and not looking for a quick buck so taking my time to learn a skill is something I don't mind doing, im pretty sure it will pay off in the long run.

Thanks for the help everyone

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Do you already have at least some understanding of web development (HTML, CSS, JS)?

Then it shouldn´t be that hard.

In the end you dont need to learn that much, you don´t have to create landers from scratch.

You need to know how to read the source code and how to make changes.

Additionally you also need to know how to spot malitious code and stuff.

When you then fix few landers yourself you will see that most LPs are pretty similar to work with and then it doesn´t take much time to do so.

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That's a rabbit hole you don't need to go down.

And I'm speaking as someone who knows how to code. It's really not necessary to run camps.

I know several affiliates who can barely change an < a href > link. And they make bank.

I still fuck up tokens in offer links all the time.

As twinaxe said, basic knowledge is enough. Which you can get in a day or two withf ree online courses on html css and js; like free code camp or code academy are more than enough.

I wouldn't spend too much time on just getting the basics down.

There are so many other things you can spend time on for better ROI

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Not as much as I would like.

Im just going to do some free basic courses. Like @jaybot said "that is a rabbit hole you dont need to go down" but I feel I need a little more of a basic foundation.

Im pretty much lost right now when it come to understanding what the hell I am looking at and the basic function of the code.

So like it said Im not planning to go to far down the rabbit hole but just enough to know and understand what I am doing.

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Do they just outsource the work?

and Im guessing the time spend for better ROI is testing new offers, learning to optimize well (creating solid WL/BL), scaling winning offer + lander combos and many others things?

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Yes.

Those who remain solo do all that with traffic, but use a lot of automation. Those that want to grow even bigger, eventually don't deal with traffic at all and just focus on bigger decisions, growing the traffic types and offer verticals, and focus on offer selection and funnel creation.

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Another vote for learning just the basics so you are capable of replacing texts, maybe changing a color here and there or moving some minor elements around. It takes months or years to learn how to code properly and as they guys above already mentioned, it's not really needed to run campaigns. I don't know how to code either, but I'm able to make the small edits I mentioned and that's enough to quickly make some minor changes or replace the texts with a translated version. For anything more complicated, I simply hire a coder.

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As I've mentioned in the 40-day tutorial, you basically have 2 choices: Either outsource it or do it yourself.

And either way, it really wouldn't hurt to learn the basics.

There actually aren't THAT many things to fix on a lander usually. I'm not a coder but I've learned how to fix up landers through trial-and-error, plus looking up stuff on w3school or by googling.

I would make a change in the coding, then clear browser cache and reload the page to see whether I've successfully changed what I had set out to change. Do this enough times and you'll get the hang of it.

The first 10 landers may take a long time, but you'll get faster and faster because you'll know what to look for.

Any code that looks suspicious that you don't know what they do: Delete little by little and reload the page each time to confirm everything still works. This way you can remove some of the sneaky redirect/tracking stuff and redundant code that can slow things down.

Oh and try to download multiple landers that have the same/similar "look", so that if the coding in one lander looks convoluted, just try to fix up another!

In general you need to accomplish 3 things:

1)Everything needs to look good (all the images show up; looks decent on desktop and mobile), and function properly (spinning wheels spin, gift boxes open when clicked on, etc.).

2)Tracking code is correct (custom parameters such as location/date/model that are passed via the url are displayed properly on the page; outgoing links replaced with tracker click url).

3)Page loads fast.

That's it in a nutshell! And don't forget to re-read these posts in your follow-along on landing-cleaning workflow:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post406318

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post406319

Hope that helps a bit!


Amy

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Thank you @matuloo @jaybot @twinaxe @vortex for the help

So again coming back off a little Thanksgiving break where I flew home for a few days and took some time to get refreshed from mainly my day job, I could have continued work here but was busy the whole time visiting family...

No excuses though, time to get back to work, study & implementation.

So yes as I said before I am going to take some time to learn some coding basics so I can fix the basic problems and make sure everything is working on my own which will allow me to hire a coder in the future and be able to see if what he is doing is actually what needs to be done.

I really need to get this figured out and start testing.

I wil update soon

Thanks for the help everyone.

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Life is not just work, spending time with family is just as important, if not more!

Wise decision, you never know when it's gonna come in handy... having at least a basic understanding of ANYTHING can only be a good thing imo

Looking forward to it!

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Family part is also important, seems like you spent some really good time and pumped yourself up with an energy to proceed in AM. This is great.

In case of any larger obstacles in the learning process hit me up on skype and I can help you understand the basics.

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Hey @plutus

Thanks for the support.

It was definitely great to see my family, I did break some momentum I had built up with working in AM but thats ok like you guys said work isn't everything and it was really nice to see my family. Time to get back to the work now.

Ok will do, Im have been going through a basics course on coursera and ordered Jon Docketts Html & CSS and Javascript book as they were recommended to me.

I have seen both @twinaxe & @vortex say the first few landers may take some time but once you get the hang of it the process will speed up, This is the same as everything your new to, takes some time to learn and figure it out then you get better and better and faster and faster as you practice.

This is the mindset I take with everything... I know I will not be so great at first but with consistent learning and practice I will get better and better and eventually be very efficient/ "good" at the practiced skill.

This is the mindset I take with Affiliate Marketing/ Performance Marketing... I suck right now. But better than I was when I first started and as I build on my skills and keep working and practicing I believe I will get better and at some point make my first profits and learn and so on and so on.

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