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Secrets of Super High Volume Affiliates (33)

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I thought it'd be a good idea to post some ideas on how to manage your business when you become a really high volume affiliate. I'm sure the big guys on here have their own methods of managing all their campaigns and running hundreds of thousands of clicks a day, all of which can be stressful.

Here's a challenge- Say you're making 5k a day profit. Do you have days where you just don't want to do anything because you're making decent bank. How do you stay motivated?

What's the balance of campaigns you keep? Do you put all your energy into one or two main campaigns or do you let the ones that are working sit as they are and not necessarily optimize them to the fullest while looking at new campaigns to work on?

Figured it'd be cool if we could get some high volume guys to chime in here.

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It's hard at times, you would think that because you're making good money that is enough motivation to keep pushing for better results - that's quite the opposite for me. I've been full time for about 3/4 years now and I always find myself torn away to watch tv, go play pool/have a few drinks, xbox or anything else aside from working on scaling - the problem is you get comfortable.

I work from home at the moment but I'm really thinking about renting some office space to get out of the house away from all the distractions, it's like working out - if you try it from home it's much harder to get motivated than if you go to the gym because once your at the gym you have nothing else to do aside from your workout.

My main income is coming from 3 campaigns at the moment, they are pretty much on autopilot aside from when ctr drops on the ads so I just keep an eye on those - I already have a bunch made up ready to test for when that happens.

I'm taking my time to learn new traffic sources and trying to build out lead gen arb funnels to run. Obviously if anything happens to my main ones they are a priority but I don't like having all my eggs in 1 big blue basket which they are at the moment

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rich thats awesome.... set it and forget it type stuff.... and from 3 campaigns? wow.

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I have 3 main ones that bring in like 95% of income I'd say, constantly have tests etc going on other platforms.

I wouldn't say there just set and forget, I keep my eye on them at all times but their at the point I wouldn't be worried if I went away for a week or weekend and didn't have access to them etc.

I'm pretty much maxing out the spends on my current facebook accounts and at that stage where I don't want to keep pushing all my stuff on facebook because I dread any emails from them because it seems nothing is safe lately. I'm wanting to spend the time whilst I'm making good money without having to babysit campaigns to learn other platforms etc.

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When I started making 5k a day profit, I slacked off and give myself a pat on the back.

Then that campaign died. I said to myself "you mother fucker, you should of milked it for all it's worth".

The next big campaign comes along and 5k didn't look so big anymore. I also remembered from the previous campaign, that I wanted to kick my own ass for being slack. So things turn up to another level.

I stay motivated to keep pushing into bigger volume because I know these campaigns wont last for ever. When they die off, I don't want to have regrets of not working harder on it. I work the hardest when something big is running for that reason. 100% energy into the big winner. You have ultimate focus. You are not fluffing around with little bits and pieces, and don't get distracted with hot new angles.

I also have motivation to beat my high score.

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@Mr Green : so it is not the money that keep you going ?

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When one of our page went viral in fb (lasted for 9 days) we didn't sleep much, page health was more important than any other thing. All the time watching servers, stats, monitoring everything. Motivation was at highest level and slept few hours then back up to keep an eye on things - like in war. Dunno how you get lazy and unmotivated while making bigger bank lol. I'd ask you how would you feel when you wake up and server is down and you've lost 10k+ ?

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let me add another question here.. Let's see a mix of income by traffic source

FB for me has become increasingly a cat and mouse game, you need a bunch of new accounts and trackers/cloakers and hope FB team won't catch on you.. I'm thinking Display/PPV are more suitable for long-term camps but I might be wrong...

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I'm in the same zone with sm1810. New ads every day to keep the traffic up. Money is my motivation, after 5 mil I will retire from AM to start something less stressful and for long term. Good luck!

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I should print this post and have it taped to my desk. Reminded me of when I hit my first big campaign...you think it'll last forever then. Looking back now, I should have been making more accounts and doing whatever I could to scale it out. Instead I got complacent and entered a dip of finding other campaigns to take it's place.

I like that you say you stay focused on one high volume campaign instead of being distracted by other fluff campaigns and new angles on the side. That's exactly what I wanted to get input on because you hear diversify diversify diversify all the time, but then again these campaigns don't last forever and you might as well get a return out of what's already working for the time being.

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I second that on Mr Green, although not the same big numbers when I hit my first major campaign and it became stable on the one traffic source I was going out everyday enjoying myself knowing that I would make money but then the offer killed itself and I was left with nothing but mopey campaigns.

And if I had of known what I know now, could of taken the campaign to a much higher level by just copy and pasting it to other sources!

If you got a winner, think about how you can take that winner to another source and make it work for you even more.

Think PPV <-> site scout

Facebook <-> POF

Forever scaling is the boss nigga

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I've hit too many valleys in this industry that now when I'm on a peak I keep on hitting it so there isn't another valley. I was stuck in social media for a while and didn't make anything for a whole year almost and lived off my savings so I learned form it and have been diversifying as much as possible.

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What drives me is I see all these deals people aren't running and I know have massive potential. Then I go out in the marketplace and see all the people that are making money in campaigns I'm not. This just drives me like crazy to want to own all of it. I just think "I can do that and I can do it better" then down the rabbit hole I go.

As a publisher it was all about not getting involved with a vertical that didn't have potential to scale massive. Meaning appeals to a huge demograhpic, sells/generates easy, isn't banned everywhere already and doesn't have tight caps.

Typically pick 3-4 verticals and set budget aside to lose. When I started that was 300-500$ per campaign for testing. Now sometimes it's $100-200k the point is you have a general budget you want to put into something.

Start at the front and see if you can get good ctr's. If you can get good ctr's then see if you can direct link to the offer if you get some sales but aren't profitable then start working on a presell/jump page. Keep tweaking until it works.

Once you have something that works then do nothing but scale that as big and fast as you can before everyone else copies you. Grow it as big as you can over as many traffic sources as possible. One thing I try and do to protect the campaign is see if I can make a deal to get exclusivity on a traffic source. We as a network do this with some of our publishers. I'll say hey if we drive X number of leads a day can we get the exclusive for this traffic source. Now keep in mind you can't do this with some big dating site on facebook for example. But typically if you take less run deals to merchants that aren't getting people hounding them for the offer constantly then you have a much better chance. If I can lock down these deals then I can make the campaign run a lot longer. We do this with a number of publishers to help them secure their businesses.

Then once I'm here I typically hand it off to an employee or a partner in a project to manage for a % of the campaign.

Then start the process all over again

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@hd2010 - Hells no, it hasn't been about the money for years.

@smaxor - What kind of % do you give for your employees to manage your campaigns? Any bad outcomes from handing your campaigns?

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Hey Lorenzo,
Just to motivate me, or depress me, how long did it take to make 5k a day?

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Around 5-6 months. Right place at the right time.

The difference between a big campaign and a $100 campaign ain't much.

It's a lot like fishing. A lot of people drop their lines very shallow because they get more bites, they catch more fish, but they are tiny. If you are prepared to ignore the small fish, be patient, and drop your line in deep, you will be rewarded.

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Lots of great food for thought in this thread, diversify traffic sources, keeping the campaigns low but hitting them with lots of different ads and angles.

Do the big players often try to pull money out of AM and put it in some "safer" investments? Or do you guys focus on ramping up volume/sources to push the campaign to its limit whilst scouting out other potential opportunities to test?

I'm just starting out building up my bank roll working, running small campaigns and reading a lot, what were some of the things you bigger guys wished you had tapped into earlier or focussed more time/resources on that you do cannot live without now?

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Lot of food for thought and motivation for me here, thanks

I don't know if it helps, since I'm a very small affiliate, but I like to consider my business in this game as if I was the company I'm pushing offers for.
I always wonder: "If I was this company, would I be able to find a decent business model and be profitable."

I mean, these companies are not lonely affiliates that can switch among offers and test 10 of them a day.
They have a team, they are funded, they are responsible for a lot of people.
And they can't fail. 70% of them will fail in the first 3 years, but each of them put all of their efforts on what they have to offer.

They MUST be profitable with their products.

So these days, I'm more in a mindset where I'm telling myself to act as if I was these guys.
If companies have to do everything they can to make 1 business model working, I should think like that too, and focus on one range of offers and traffic sources.
(of course, with the ability to be flexible if things can't work)
At least, focus on 1 market and on 1 way to gain the most knowledge and the most exposure that is possible to have on traffic sources.

Will this campaign have a volume to bring money on the table for 10 employees?
Can this campaign last a year?
That's the kind of questions I ask myself now before jumping on the first offer I see on my affiliate network.

It's weird to see we can test 10 offers and see each of them failing.
It's terrible for companies that invest so much in one product.
(luckily for them, they also have several people that can find out how to make profit for them in their team, when an affiliate alone can't find any angle that works)

Of course, paid traffic is not the only way to market a brand or a product, but if we can't be profitable on a $0.20 click on the direct marketing sources that are the easiest in the world to track, how the hell is it possible to run a long term business?

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I usually drink all my earnings. Trying not to, but ...

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Well said Lorenzo! I picked up a lot on this thread alone, and this should be pinned on the top for others to read!

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This thread is so full of gold. Thanks to everybody that chimed in.

Trying to beat your high score is a big part of motivation for me as well. It's why I (used to) do my monthly income reports on the blog - much more so for myself than for others. It really sucks when you have a shitty month and then have to publicize it. I need to get back into doing that and find that once I have a good month, I should make it absolutely necessary to beat my "score" the following month.

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1st of all awesome thread idea!

...beating my highscore doesn't work that well for me.

I naturally have the motivation to scale as hard as possible because I've been doing this for almost 5 years now and i can remember some of my biggest campaigns years back that i didn't milk, and i regret it and i won't let it happen again. So that itself is my #1 motivation.

I also reward myself with usually a trip of some sort after. Maybe I'll rent a chalet up north and invite a whole bunch of friends, or going traveling etc.. I'm currently working my ass off to allow myself to buy some late coachella tickets, we'll see if it happens. (You might be saying to yourself you make *x* a day, why not just buy the tickets anyways, and i don't because i'm naturally a 'saver' ..i feel like i need to earn it)

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Stackman, I am the same way with rewards...

Also my biggest driver is to fill my daily caps, I STRESS out if cannot fill the caps, I get scared I will disappoint the advertisers.

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@blackberry

Does that sometimes cause you to lose money, or make bad decisions? Just curious

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Depends what kind of lifestyle you want and what's enough for you. If you want to make money in a way that doesn't require a lot of baby sitting and have a high degree of volatility, then arbitraging traffic isn't the way. So begin with the end in mind. Do you WANT to actually have a business you can walk away from and still make money, or do you require sitting at your comp to feel productive and motivated. Really up to you, neither is better than the other.

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sure would be nice to earn $5k a day - that's 1.8million a year

i try not to earn anything less then $1k profits per day, and focus on keeping that income STABLE.

the difference between $100 a day and $1000 a day is hitting
the right angle, in the right traffic source, where no one has found it yet.

once profitable campaign is found... musn't rest yet.

a campaign that runs for 1 month may be slapped the next month by the traffic source.
balancing hype and traffic source compliance is important for me. changing the lander or ad copy may decrease the conversions.

to test new things, will open new accounts and test new angles.. as time goes by, will hv 3 accounts running consecutively.
in case 1 account goes down because i maxed out my card, the other 2 are covering for me, while i take a trip to the bank.

hv about 7 computers and 4 broadband providers to keep things chugging, campaigns, accounts separate from each other.

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I find it hard to stay focused when the money is practically on autopilot. I have a full time employee who works in my home office with me so i think that this is the reason why i work more than i normally would. It is very easy to get up and go shopping,movie,bar or whatever when you know the money is on it's way still. My biggest fear though is one day my traffic source disappears or something. This is why i have my worker trying to learn new things for my company as i do not want to keep all my eggs in this one basket. I have thought about opening an office to get me out of the house and maybe keep me focused but i am not sure if it is worth the extra few k per month. Oddly enough though i find i get more work done late at night when the family is sleeping and it's quiet outside. I have even contemplated on hiring a marketing student fresh out of university to have a different prospective on media buying as a whole...

Goals:

$100 per day profit = acquired
$1000 per day profit = acquired
$2000 per day profit = not yet
$5000 per day profit = not yet
Office with many employees for different divisions of the company and of course to make lots of $$$$ = not yet

For now it's just one day at a time...

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Shermanchoo, you're beasting this forum up with amazing content haha

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Fantastic content Shermanchoo, thank you so much for these nuggets of gold. This one thread is worth the price of the forum!

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Yay! May you make lots of internet monies and visit singapore, guard against inflation with a nice penthouse offering stable capital appreciation.

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No worries at all! Just wanted to give you a heads up so you won't wonder why the people you quoted, don't respond.

It's excellent that you're participating in discussions so early on! It's nice to see posts from you - please keep it up!



Amy

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yeah I am reading every thing which give us more information and knowledge regarding any source and offers.

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Old but gold!

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