Playing The Waiting Game? What Does Your Day To Day Work Look Like? (10)
Playing The Waiting Game? What Does Your Day To Day Work Look Like?
Maybe I'm approaching this wrong - so I'd love to get some insight on what all of you solo affiliates are doing on a day to day basis.
It seems like a lot of AM involves waiting around. I first launched a sweeps campaign. I was going hard and working through the day to get all 3 LPs made, images collected and everything set up.
I launched 1 LP initially. Then, my next step was to wait a couple days while data rolls in. After 2 days, I set up the other LP on FB and tried to launch. But my ad account was disabled almost immediately. Waited another few days to get a response from FB about the ad account.
In the meantime, I also posted here and was advised that sweeps are not becoming increasingly difficult to run on FB and I'm better off launching something WH.
Decided to go with lead gen and created a LP. Last 2 days I've been waiting for approval on that from my AM. Then once I launch it, I'll be waiting on data.
If you see the common thread, I feel like there's a lot of waiting going on when I'm not actively occupied with any 'work.'
I'm wondering if that's the same experience with you?
I've been trying to get a single LP launched and get data first to get my feet wet.
But maybe I should be using this time to build more LPs & creatives to launch later? Launching more than 1 LP at a time? Or something else?
What do you do on a day to day basis while you're waiting on data/AMs/coders?
I've thought about this a lot over the years.
In my experience, the more you scale, the more you learn, the better you get at finding ways to move the wheel. Learning what moves the wheel is a huge part of AM. In the beginning it's easy to either find yourself grinding hard on small tasks or staring into space wondering what to do next.
This is a huge part of the learning experience and you shouldn't take it as a sign that you're doing something wrong. As long as you are observing this process (which you seem to be doing).
The other key point you bring up is in regards to processing of information. You will be overwhelmed by information throughout your AM career and learning how to filter that information is vital. The amount of times I've heard people saying "This vertical is dead now, it's so hard to run, don't waste your time with it" and have then gone on to make it work is pretty crazy. While you should always be absorbing information, you eventually need to start trusting your own instincts.
A quote from The Brothers Karamazov that I have set as a daily reminder sums it up nicely:
"To solve the problem, we must first conceive our individual I as distinct from the reality around us."
In other words, every challenge that you face is unique to you and what has or hasn't worked for others isn't necessarily relevant to you specifically.
So I guess being occupied with work is not really what you aim for.
More likely the real pain is not seeing any progress and thus being impatient... in the end the actual "root cause" is nothing but hidden fear.
If you want faster results you could run pop and push traffic. Some networks approve your camps almost instantly...
Other things that might help is taking long walks, meditations or yoga to soften your impatience a bit.
This depends on stuff. I know, lame answer.
So examples:
On my long-time networks for sweeps, gambling, IVR, etc.:
I can apply for an offer and be immediately approved, then upload to pops or push on propeller and be up and running in 15 minutes or so. No waiting necessary. Except for waiting on traffic to come in (and that's usually immediate for pops or push). Push/Pops "downtime" is used to find new offers, landers, push creatives, ways to automate all the annoying shit that comes with pops and push (google flags, rejected camps, lander swapping), and to chat with other marketers about how stupid we feel to be testing pin submits in Thailand and Romania.
For most ecom offers like DFO Giddyup, shouldn't take more than a day to get approved, just depends if AM is sleeping or not.
Getting a camp approved on Native networks, usually same or 1 day (if you're spending on Taboola, RevContent, etc.) or or 3-5 days (if you're not, or Outbrain just fucking hates you). Native
"downtime" is spent looking for offers, ad creatives, landers, possibly writing copy, and wondering how much money you can spend in one day before your wife notices.
For most leadgen like performCB, it's no different than ecom offers. For SOME leadgen, it can takes weeks to months to get approved because some offers are from legit companies who do actual diligence on landers and ads... until after their approved and then dirty affiliates swap everything anyway.
For FB/Tiktok, surprisingly approved in an hour, at most a day. Social "downtime" is figuring out how to make sense of their convoluted ad platform and wondering why you have to duplicate everything to not mess the algo up and then once you finally get something working, get rejected/suspended/banned, and then figuring out how to get another account.
That being said, I spend most of my downtime staring at the wall, drinking coffee, and reading accounts of people who are actualy good at this game via twitter.
Playing The Waiting Game? What Does Your Day To Day Work Look Like?
Originally Posted by larsometer
Very solid advice posted by the guys above me!
The situation is different for all of us, based on what we run, how much we run, what stage in terms of experience we are at, what our goals are etc... but yes, there is always some amount of waiting involved.
In all honesty, the extra time I had on my hands while waiting for data was one of the main reasons that I accepted the role of a mod here on the forum 
I would also say that the "free" time we are left with as we wait for approvals and data and whatnot is what makes AM attractive, you can use this time to "live your life" so to speak.
It also allows us to structure our day the way we want it. You can submit the campaigns in the morning, then use the day to fix your pool, move the lawn, go for lunch, go fishing... or whatever. Then once you are back in the evening, check the data, make optimizations and prepare more creatives for the next day. This is how I often work, those were real examples from my life In the era of mobile internet and smartphones, it's easy to check stats on the shore of a lake while fishing... if something goes wrong you can pause it directly from the phone so the risks are really low.
Depends on how you prefer to work too. My system is like a 2-shift day... I start in the morning, work for 4-5 hours in my office, then do something else and I continue in the evening when the house is quiet. When there is more stuff to take care off, I can always change this so it's not like I MUST stick to this system of course. This system has worked pretty well for me for the past few years.
This is all amazing advice - thank you to everyone who responded!
Coming from a freelance business, I think the mindset I'm used to is greater effort = greater results so I guess moving to the affiliate marketing world I'm realizing things work differently here and I am going to have free time for uncontrollable reasons.
Not that that's a bad thing like all of you explained - ideally this business should give me a lot of free time to play around with.
I may go back to that 'more work more results' mindset once I have the knowledge & experience to launch multiple things at once. But for now slow and steady is probably the way to go.
I probably know how you feel but don´t see the waiting time just as waiting time.
If you can´t do the actual task because you have to wait then nothing holds you back from doing something else in that time.
When you have to wait for campaign approval work on LPs during that time.
When you´re waiting for response from your AM do some research for other offers or LPs.
@twinaxe , I agree. That's what I was wondering. I'm sure there's a way to productively use this time. I have sweeps landers ready that I won't be running on FB traffic. So maybe I use this time to pop/push and test those landers there. Going to think about this then decide 
Originally Posted by projectzero
You can be doing some reading on AM related things and educating yourself. You could be exploring some other business options. You could start a blog on a subject you like. You might try running some offers that get approved quickly.
I spend a lot of time reading about related or even unrelated subjects... is that still working or not? On one hand it's not, on the other one it has helped me to find profit opportunities many times already... what we are doing is really hard to fit in the standard business schemes
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