Hunger Games Review - Julien (Team Europe) (13)
Hey boys, here's how I felt this great experience.
The hunger games was an insane opportunity for me in the struggle, and I was so happy to have a chance to join the team Europe.
I was sure to be invisible for mods on STM, seems like Besmir wanted to give me a chance.
Thanks man, you know I enjoyed these 2 weeks 
I'm sorry I won't reveal some of the "best kept secret from the affiliates gurus" because to be honest… There's no secret at all to be outed.
And it's maybe the first lesson I took from this contest.
We can read EVERYWHERE on aff blogs, forums (especially this one) and in whatever aff ressource that we have to take action if we want to see some success.
If I got a penny each time I could read the words "take action!" on my daily aff readings, I'd already make X,XXX a day.
But guess what, it's so fucking true.
To be honest, I'm not trying to minimize what this experience brought to me, because it was awesome for me.
But if I take some global perspective, I can't say I learned anything else I was already knowing when it comes to LP design, audience targeting or ads creation…
With or without this contest, I was already possessing all the things I needed to make things work.
Again, I'm not trying to minimize anything because of course my mates were awesome and were very skilled.
But the gold wasn't in the technical stuff.
The gold was all in the mindset.
That's what changed for me.
I've found out that, in my opinion at least, it doesn't seem to have a lot of difference between me and other affiliate marketers.
- I'm not creative everyday, but I can be most of the time when I'm in good mood.
- I'm not the best coder there, but I can pass whichever variable I want on my landing pages and play with it the way I want.
- I'm not the best designer in the world but I can certainly set up 2 or 3 different landing pages a day, even if I still have a day job.
- I'm not Ogilvy but I'm not so bad at copywriting.
And I've found out too that in this industry, at least in the niches/angles we were focused on, everyone watches like a hawk what the competition is doing, and I've seen so many variations of the same landing pages, ads and concepts that it was getting really ridiculous.
I've never, ever, designed anything based on someone's work.
Of course, I made my homework and did some spying… but I've never copied anyone words for words.
Not trying to be a saint or something, just want to say I've found out that it gave me some advantages and it was also funnier to work this way.
So, it seems that I already had 90% of the skills I needed to be successful in this game.
But the thing that was really motivating me was to find out that my mates were exactly like me.
It seems that everyone start at the exact same point, and ask themselves the exact same questions… What will I run, how will I run it, which angle will I take, how will I design my landing pages and my ads…?
To be honest, I thought the most of my learnings will be there.
But it seems that everyone is made equal when it comes to launch a campaign.
Of course, there are some things that experience can bring you, some mistakes my mates haven't done when I did.
But my feeling is, the main thing that separates me from them is just TIME.
I mean, because they spent more time in this game than me, they just have some advance. But I can certainly reach this point too somedays, if I work hard.
When I say the biggest difference between super affs and me is TIME, I mean, there's only one way to catch up: creating landing pages, again and again, launching new ads, again and again, testing, again and again…
Correct me if i'm wrong, of course being creative and inspired help a lot, of course being good at desing and copywriting can help as well.
But at the end of the day, the things that make the real difference is HOW MANY CREATIVES HAVE YOU REALLY LAUNCHED DURING THE TIME YOU COULD WORK ON YOUR IM DAY?
And if you launch a lot of things, it means something scary for guys with a low budget like me: it means loss.
I could reach profits pretty fast on one camp, but one other was, and continue to, losing money.
But my ROI is progressing.
If I had to launch this campaign alone in the past, I would certainly give up at some point.
But Besmir and my new mates gave me the strenght to keep pushing hard.
And I'm sure now it was the best thing to do, because they were doing the exact same thing I was doing: keep pushing, again and again!
Of course, they had more luck than me because they were profitable.
But I know now why they were, and why I wasn't.
It's like I said above: "because they spent more time than me launching campaign in their whole aff career".
I thing the english word to describe this is : EXPERIENCE.
They just have more experience than I am, but I can reach that level too.
I think now, even if I'm not making thousands a day yet, I just have to copy my mates.
But when I say "I have to copy my mates", it doesn't mean I have to copy their landing pages, their creatives or something.
===> I HAVE TO COPY THEIR MINDSET.
There are a lot of tricks to improve the conversion rate, or to not waste time during your testing phase (checking demos, asking AM what are the best offers, spying, etc.).
But I think the real skill that we should have above all is the following: being able to move our lazy asses and don't fear the loss.
I'll say the words that were sounding like so fucking stupid to my ears until now: "just take action, upload, test, do, improve...".
The real secret is here 
Still not a big guy in this industry, but I'm pretty sure I'm not far away to discover the da vinci code
Thank you Richard, Nick, Joni, Jorge and Besmir.
You opened my eyes.
With all my respect and friendship,
Julien
Thanks for taking the time mate
Let's see more reviews and take-aways fellas!
Originally Posted by julien
There are a lot of tricks to improve the conversion rate, or to not waste time during your testing phase (checking demos, asking AM what are the best offers, spying, etc.).
But I think the real skill that we should have above all is the following: being able to move our lazy asses and don't fear the loss.
I'll say the words that were sounding like so fucking stupid to my ears until now: "just take action, upload, test, do, improve...".
The real secret is here
Still not a big guy in this industry, but I'm pretty sure I'm not far away to discover the da vinci code
I will see you there - a super affiliate!
Nice write up Julien, .... and encouraging to know that when it comes to the 'secret sauce', .... most of us have 98% of the recipe already, ..... we just need to spend some time at the oven to perfect it!
Thanks for the share man! Sounds like it was a great experience. Really appreciated the write up.
Good write up Julien, I'll get mine done this week at some point highlighting what I got from the exp - just had some issues with a larger camp which need my attention getting back on track.
Was a pleasure working with all you guys and deffo learnt a thing or 2 even though I've been doing this for almost 4/5 years full time.
A strong focus on the hunger games is the networking side of it. It's not easy to teach seasoned affiliates anything mind numbing, but setting up a strong mastermind group of people in the same timezones can really benefit any affiliates campaigns and future campaigns.
We'll be creating more mastermind groups like this in the future, because we know the positive impact it has on campaigns.
Once you let down your guard a little in this vicscous industry with some people you can trust, campaigns will flourish more than doing them solo.
Really great approach stackman, I have learnt tons & tons of stuff from JV in other areas of IM,
what you say has always been true for me.
Are you going to consider releasing chatlogs from these masterminds ?
Or make a summary of technical things covered & discovered during these sessions ?
I know it's not as worthy as being part of such events and living the thing 100%, but I guess it'd help beginners in this field - myself included - grasp on new concepts, help connecting the dots together and many more benefits without slowing down the pace of these masterminds.
From an outsider perspective, this would sound like gold to me 
!
Totally agree Jordan
Thank you everybody for taking some of your time to read my review.
Originally Posted by julien
Thanks Julien for sharing us your experience. Glad you Experienced a lot in the past to weeks.
It's been said many times before: there is enough information in the forums to make anyone a millionaire. However at the end it's completely up to you, and how hard you are going to work for it. For me, staying focused and motivated has been the biggest problem I have faced during my affiliate marketing career.
I can honestly say that this two weeks experience have hugely increased my motivation, because of the simple fact of being able to network with people doing the same. You realize that there is people facing the same problems than you, that there is people working as hard as you and, more important, that by working together we all can benefit.
Julien said it: no secrets were shared because they don't exist. I think most of you would be disappointed if you ever got to see the chat logs. Just a bunch of guys talking about what they were trying and a little guidance and help between each other. That's it, and that was enough in my case to put me in a better mindset. Even though my results were far from spectacular, I believe the best positive effects of this experience are yet to come.
Besmir, Jordan, Lorenzo and whoever else was involved in this idea: thank you for the opportunity. And the same to my teammates, I hope we can manage to keep the group alive somehow.
Awesome! Thanks for the write up Julien.
sorry wrong thread
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