What's wrong with this plan? (3)
Hello people! Would love your input on my initial plan to step into the world of AM and also give me a seemingly better chance to find the first green campaign?
1. Since I'm starting with nothing, would it be wise to find a funnel on spy tools and try to gather some whitelist sites/zones just to test offer (in the same niche/vertical/category) more efficiently?
2. After gathering, if not a good whitelist, at least a good blacklist, to start testing a bunch of offers in the same vertical?
3. Start working on the offer that wins in step 2 and if it works, re-introduce network wide traffic and optimize again?
The thought of running everything into an offer/funnel that may or may not convert seems a little "off the ground" to me.
A good WL or BL can help you a lot too. The problem is, how do you know it's a good one? If you can get a good one from someone you trust, then yes, go for it. Sometimes the adnetwork reps can provide this, but keep in mind that these lists are not good forever... new placements are added all the time, so even if you start with some BL there will be new poor placements sending you traffic.
I understand your motives for sure and it's safe to say that even a sightly outdated BL is better than running everything, at least when starting out.
What kind of traffic are we talking about here? Pop/push? Other?
I'm going to assume we're talking about pop or push. 
Your thinking is solid. This is assuming you can find a blacklist/whitelist you can trust.
Some traffic sources will give you a list of placements to start with (e.g. zeropark). I'd start with that if I didn't already have my own.
If you can't get a blacklist from a trustworthy source, just do your own testing. Use low-payout offers to identify good vs. bad placements for cheap.
As for not being confident about your funnel - this is EXACTLY why you should split-test ads, landing pages, and offers.
To increase your chances of finding a winning combination:
Offers - start with AM-recommended offers
Landers - start with landers from spy tools that have received a lot of traffic, that you see lots of instances of - if they're popular and a lot of traffic has been sent to them over at least a few days, chances are they're decent converters
Ads (assuming push here) - get inspiration from the most popular ads in spy tools (lots of traffic sent over a few days or more) and INNOVATE. Ads burn out a lot faster than landing pages.
Test a range of funnel elements (offers + landers + ads) and you'll soon get a sense of what good and bad metrics look like.
Also: In the first 1-2 campaigns you run in a certain geo on a certain traffic network, you should be able to identify the worst placements. After that is when you can implement your idea: When testing new offers and landing pages and ads, do so on your "best traffic", ie. either with the worst placements excluded, or on a whitelist of placements that have converted. If you see profit, open the funnel up by re-testing some of the excluded placements in batches (to avoid cutting into your profits too much).
Hope that helps!
Amy
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