Home > Success, Wins, Achievements >

---

Very depressing moment need brainstorming with you folks (15)

---

This forum is awesome and as you write everywhere, it is overwhelming, specially when you are not getting any profit from your campaigns.
A person as me, which is used to convert, finds very frustrating not being able to have a single profitable campaign.

I tried to run 4 campaigns following the 1$ tutorial. Literally nothing in terms of profit.
I tried to run 5 single offers, here even worse: not even one conversion, maybe 2...

So I started to read more and more and the more i was reading the more I was loosing my self in the forum.
So now I have my PopAds opened and my Propeller Ads opened and charged with 100$. I have few people saying:"leave popAds, use Propeller Ads it's better."

I was not able to run even one single profitable campaign from PopAds.
So i'm reading and studying Propeller (push and pop).

Most of people say:"leave pop, use Push (push is the new pop).
Ok, cool, but which offers to run?

I asked my AM for the best offers? I run one, zero results in terms of conversions (I'm even not talking about profit here).
People say that targeting Latam is cheap. Well, Propeller was suggesting at least 7,3 $ CPM which seems very far for the 0,02 used in tutorials and suggestions. So yeah...lost again.

Than I read that you should use pre-landers (of course, make sense, as in normal promotions). This means build them, host them, etc.

Am I going to the right direction? Am I over complicating?
I found Haka, I'm even not sure I setup properly the whole post back thing etc, since there is very small amount of info regarding Bemob and haka + Propeller, i was just following the Voluum tutorial. Fingers crossed all is correct.

Ah yes, I run out of my 100.000 free actions on Bemob. I red somewhere that before you reach 100.000 actions, you will find for sure some profitable campaigns...well...not in my case.

Should I just leave everything and focus on what I'm good at which is Facebook and Adwords?
But again, I'm aware I'm a newbie in AM so i think Fb and Adwords are a little bit to advanced in terms of "affiliate marketing approach" aka bans, etc. I'm really not willing to ban my 10+ years healthy accounts.

I'm lost again. I feel Like I learnt a lot but I'm lost again.
I understand it's part of the process but I feel literally like nothing is working.

I'm running now another single offer on PopAds + a top offer from Mobipium. Will see what will happen but I'm guessing already nothing.
My total spent on PopAds for now is 67$ and I have in Mobipium 19$ as revenue.

Still, I'm not pretending to make it a fast earnings but is it normal to feel as I feel right now?

Who is depressed as I am, I'd like another post which helped a little bit to see some light:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ic-(Algorithm)

---

Don't get me wrong but 4 campaigns and 5 single offers is not much at all.

Be prepared to test 20, 30 or 40 campaigns without finding a real winner.

You have to learn so many things, don't focus on profitable campaigns yet, focus on learning how to run campaigns first.

Additionally your campaigns were push smartlink campaigns, they are not meant to make real profits anyway.
They are there to give a first impression about running affiliate campaigns.

Then you tested 5 offers, I test sometimes 30 offers per day without having a winner.

Probably 80%-90% of the offers you test will fail, that's normal.

I can imagine that it's frustrating for you but when you get frustrated from these few tests you will have a hard time.

Really, the hardest time for a beginner is the time when you didn't have a winning campaign yet.

Motivation can crash and you lose faith in the whole affiliate stuff because it's hard to imagine that it's worth it when most of the stuff fails.

But in the end you only need one good campaign and it can make good for dozens of fails.

Again, this is probably hard to imagine when you never had a winning campaign yet but you will understand when you have one.

You say it yourself, you're not even 100% sure that your technical setup is correct so keep your expectations realistic.

Read the tutorial that I linked in my other thread and think about getting a self hosted tracker like Binom where you can run unlimited traffic without overspend.

Maybe it's normal but it doesn't help.

Read my posts in the beginner series and try to have realistic expectations.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to discourage you.
It's rather the opposite and with the right mindset it can be much easier and way less frustrating

---

In theory making money with AM is easy. In real life it can be "simple" to make solid money with it once you have mastered your lessons.

One of the lessons is to make it through the struggle. Could well be that you need to test 100 offers or even more before you find something solid.

Just read some of the follow alongs (like the one from Jaybot) and you get an idea what people have to go through.


Take what people say as an inspiration. You don't know why and how people have gotten to their findings. Sometimes there is much more complexity behind a topic than it seems in the beginning. In the end you need to find out what does work for you.


When you want to make money now it probably is the best to focus on what you can do best and feel best with.

If you want to learn something new and broaden your media why not stay with what you have recently started here?


Luckily it is just a feeling.

When you build a car you would not worry about that it cannot drive before you put the wheels on it.

Things that are working already is all the parts of your setup, like postback, traffic source setup, camp set up in tracker etc...

Also you managed to make at least some revenue.

Next steps will be to find an offer that has at least -50% ROI... then learning how to judge if and how to turn it around into green... etc.

To put things a bit more into perspective... you can compare your AM endeavor also with going to university or training for a totally new job. There you would not worry at all that it takes more than a few months to master it.

---

Hi @twinaxe, thanks for the kind words, you are helping for sure. Reading the 1$ tutorial I felt like I'm a looser if I won't be able to have at least one profitable campaign.


Feels better to know that I should run at least 50 of them.
You are giving me some numbers which are helping in focus better on what is considered a fail and what is considered a green light. Makes me feel better having this kind of guide.


The frustration is not coming from few tests but thinking that after few tests I should at least see 0,01 in profit. If you say it's not working this way, believe or not, it makes me feel better.

Thanks man

---

Yeah I see the point, thanks folks. You are helping me as friends when slaps you in the face and that is helping to see clearer. So yeah, thanks.
Should I continue to try with pops or should I jump into Push?

Why Am I asking?
I red a lot of times: stick with one traffic source, test, test and test, don't jump from one thing to another.
I just want to be sure I'm not waisting budget and time.

---

Maybe read this article.
https://medium.com/the-post-grad-sur...n-35151f557e48

You are likely in the phase 2. You passed the excitation of the discovery and hit the wall of reality

---

Thanks Jeremie, yeah feels like I'm in the phase two. Knowing that feels better. Thanks guys for your moral support.

---

We have all (or most of us) been through this, it's normal. Take a deep breath and sit back for a bit.

You're learning a new business now and it's not possible to learn it in a month or two. Whoever told you it was possible, has lied to you.

What if you decided to start producing something? Or open a shop or café or restaurant... would you expect it to become profitable in a month or two? Would you expect to become a pro chef in a month? Of course not, but from some reason people do believe that they can master affiliate marketing in a much shorter period of time than other "normal" businesses Right now you're studying and what has happened to you now equals to getting a few bad grades. It feels bad but it is not a tragedy.

I've been personally in the same stage as you are when it comes to this paid traffic affiliate marketing game... once it clicked, I wrote this article that you might want to read: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ally-master-it And let me mention that I had quite a bit of organic traffic experience already, but it still took some time to learn how to work with paid.

---

Thanks man for your nice words. Yeah i see the point.
I feel sometimes AM it's like Poker: make sense for a while but at the end, it's just luck and how much you are ready to loose in order to win here and there.

Hope it's not like that but yeah, all of your comments made me feel better folks. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.

---

No, it's not.

---

AM can be a lonely, dark road my friend... one thing I find helpful is to try to tweak my goals so that they are more controllable.

So instead of "I want to make money with natives", I try to think of it as "I want to become the best native ads media buyer in the world". As I can control the latter more than the former, and if I do become the best native ads media-buyer in the world, then surely the profits will follow, whether its from my own campaigns or running camps for someone else or as a consultant, etc.

Same with you and pops right now. Instead of thinking "I'm going to make money with pops" and then feeling depressed when the tracker is red, think of it as "I'm going to try 100 offers on pops to fully give it a a good shot, and then evaluate whether its the traffic source I really want to master".

Alex Becker actually had an incredible video about this on YouTube a few years ago... though I can no longer find it... where he talks about the fact that the hardest part of entrepreneurship is the constant ego hits and small failures... and that this is why there are people who can spend 14 hours a day on World Of Warcraft or The Sims and achieve great success, but don't achieve success in real life.

And he used those games as a metaphor, and said that the only way to succeed in entrepreneurship is to almost split your brain in two, where you view yourself as a character in a video game, where the "real you" is the controller. Separating your "monkey mind" that is irritable and ego-senstive and hungry and tired and everything else from minute to minute, from your "soul" or the "real you" that actually has the wisdom to wield the joystick.

And this allows you to just focus on doing the work that needs done, and minimizing the effect of all the small 'ego hits' and 'feelings' that hold most people back from success in entrepreneurship.

Feelings are important of course, but only on the higher "soul" level and not on the front-line, monkey-mind level.

Its a really subtle distinction, but it has helped me tremendously... so wanted to share it...

This video of his is somewhat similar, but nowhere near as good as the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPpnXuVZWIE

Finally, to come full circle and apply this to AM/Media-Buying, it seems to me that the answer to 99% of problems is "Try more offers/campaigns".

Just keep trying more offers/campaign configurations... as many as you possibly can... once you feel like you've tried every offer imaginable, go find another 50 offers to try... every time I struggle in media-buying... this is the answer... cut them after the first bit of red if you want... don't feel compelled to 'optimize' them... just try, cut, try, cut, try, cut... and in one way or another success will usually present itself...

---

For some reason, AM does feel like poker in some way that I'm not able to specify. It also does attract a similar type of people, at least to some extent. There are several ex poker players even here on the forum. But it's more about the "feel" you get from the concept... working anytime, taking some controlled risks, peaks and downs... and not the business itself. Maybe just the more shady part of AM might be similar in some way.

But generally speaking, affiliate marketing is a legitimate business, you can sell solid products, build your own products, collect your audience and build a large operation that you can sell later on. That's absolutely not possible with poker.

So I wouldnt really compare these two.

---

Don´t worry.

As I said, the $1 guide is not meant to make real profits or get you long running campaigns.

It shall just give a first impression about running campaigns so that you can test it on low budget.

When you feel like this is what you want to do you should definitely move on.

But don´t get too focused on these numbers because they are just that - numbers - not more and not less.

Some people find success after 10 campaigns, some after 70 campaigns.

It can be different from person to person.

Important is to don´t compare your own situation to others because everyone is different, learns at different speed and so on.

Of course it´s not working that way, a huge issue is that many people think making money online is easy.

Everyone has a PC, everyone has access to internet so it seems like an easy task.

When you see it as a real business, a real job, then the evaluation will be completely different.

It takes time and money to learn something new, that´s fact for every kind of business.

Just imagine you want to make your living from playing guitar in a rock band but you never played guitar before.
Then it´s also not enough to buy a guitar, sign up for some online courses and be a successful rockstar few weeks later.

Or you want to become rich as a race driver in few months but you can´t even drive a car yet.

Such things are simply not realistic.

Nonetheless is affiliate marketing different (and in my opinion better) than other industries because it gives us the chance to build a new biz faster than other industries, it also gives us the chance to build a new biz with less investment than other businesses and affiliate marketing gives us the chance to make more money in rather short time compared to other industries - but there are still many things you have to learn first.

Depending on your prior experience you have 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…

It´s just unrealisitic when people expect to be profitable from the beginning.

In your other threads we can see that you have issues to setup your tracking, you still have issues to really understand how landing pages and the whole redirect funnel works.

Don´t put too much pressure on yourself, slow down a bit, learn the basics and then move on step by step.

See it rather as a marathon and not as a sprint.

Keep your expectations realistic based on the level where you are and not where you want to be

Also don´t worry yet that you "should at least see 0,01 in profit", just because your campaigns are not profitable it doesn´t mean that you lose all your money along the way.

Many campaigns will generate at least few conversions so that you get some money back.

It´s not a black or white scheme that campaigns are either big winners or total fails.

In many campaigns you will receive conversions but just not enough to run on profit.

Check THIS thread and then THIS one.

It can probably help you to see the whole stuff from a different perspective and take lots of pressure from you

---

when I first started I was also unsatisfied with the conversions I was getting, but it was 50$ spends. Also back in the day it was super fast to make money with google ppc and also super fast to lose it at the same time. The internet was young and so was I. I have been depresed 2 times in the online world. one because I felt I got in the affiliate game by luck and questioned if it was SKILL or just LUCK. It wasn't until I met an amazing aff manager that basically helped me go from 50$ a week to 1$ a day within a months time. It was that when I realized I was going in the right direction and decided to just let go of my job.

It is important to not give up but have a goal. I had a goal in my mind when I got in this game, I was working 3 jobs and my goal was to only get rid of 2 jobs and have 1 stable job. Then I reached the glass ceiling at my job after rising to the top in 2 years, my next position would of been a director. No one would set a 22 year old as a director at that time. So I said to myself I got rid of 2 IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET RID OF MY CURRENT JOB. I said it should it. I told myself if I cant do it in 3 months then its back to the workforce, 1 month I did my years salary in that month. It did take 20 hours days at that time. Watching the lacking youtube videos back in the day and doing more trial and error than I have ever done before. Just keep at it and set a goal and realize the potential you have, this is critical. Not everyone is meant to be a basketball player, but that skill might shift into a gym clothing distributor.

STM is an amazing forum with the community behind it. This community I have made a lot of friends in. A lot I have also received support from. The campaigns you currently are starting isn't much, but keep at it. making sure you learn and ask yourself why did that happen, then digging deeper into the question, why did my cpc increase, etc etc... this is why affiliate are the best marketers, we continually ask why and whats wrong with our campaigns until we resolve the issue or find a mini loophole.

Stick at it. I and probably many in this forum have been where you have.

---

I love all the questions you've been asking! And I understand your frustrations. But the time has come for some tough love.

You and I have had extensive discussions in other threads regarding traffic types and the pros and cons - so I won't repeat that here.

One thing to quickly clarify first: The $1 guide is not meant to help you make your first $1 in PROFITS, but your first $1 in REVENUE. You've accomplished this goal and more.

As I've stated in the guide:






I think the main issue is that I may have, inadvertently, made running campaigns look too easy. And that has set the tone for your expectations. My newbie guides all aim to break everything down into easy-to-follow, step-by-step processes. This has helped many hundreds (even thousands) of newbies to learn the ropes over the years.


And if I've given you the impression that running paid traffic campaigns is easy, then I apologize. The truth is, it's anything BUT.


Think about it: If just ANYONE could pick up the $1 guide, set up a campaign, and start churning out profits within a couple of weeks - why wouldn't everyone on earth just quit their jobs and start making money with this?


Learning the ropes is one challenge - newbie guides are there to help with that. And I and the other members are here for questions.


Another challenge - the harder one - is to test, test, test until your eyes bleed. THAT, my friend, will mostly be on you.


We can provide guidance, and emotional support (because we've all been where you are now).


But dude - at least give us that opportunity first before giving up!


So far, you've started 2 follow-alongs, and only within the past week:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...citing-journey

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...raffic-sources

(The second one I JUST found, posted yesterday in a forum section that didn't allow posting - I've moved it and will reply shortly.)


Having said all of that: Not everyone's passion lies in online marketing. I'm not gonna lie - affiliate marketing using paid traffic is an especially brutal business. If you don't have a passion for it, it would be difficult to survive.

So I would encourage you to think long and hard about whether you want to stick with affiliate marketing and give it a good shot, or not. There's no shame in quitting if you realize that there's something else you'd rather be doing.

But if you DO decide to stick with this for a bit, below is some motivation that has helped me, which may also help you.


"You don’t make millions on the internet with a few tactics, you do it with consistent focus and habits."
(Reference: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...uccess-secrets)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47K3hEe98iU
(Tony Robbins about Sly Stallone & Rocky Story)

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...uccess-Stories
(The Success Stories subforum)



Hope that helps! Whatever you may decide, you have my full support.



Amy

---

Home > Success, Wins, Achievements >