I've had a lot of success, where do I go from here? (16)
I've been doing affiliate marketing for about a year and a half and I hit my first profitable campaign in November last year. I've tried POF, leadimpact, and trafficvance, and I've finding almost all of my success on trafficvance. Since then I have had a lot of profitable campaigns and this month was my best month.
I had my best day ever earlier this month ($2906 profit) and as of today I'm at about $20k profit for the month.
I'm excited with how far I've come(especially when I remember how my life was a year ago), but I feel like it's time for me to take this to the next level. When your business reached this point how did you handle it?
Did you start hiring people? How do you go about finding good candidates and how do you go about training them? How can you trust them with campaigns they could easily run themselves?
I'm already planning on getting on mobile, but how would you suggest managing multiple traffic sources? Do you focus primarily on one and only use the other when you are trying to scale your other campaigns? Do you try and split your time evenly between them?
I guess what I'm actually confused about is that I don't know what the next step looks like, and obviously there are a lot of different ways you can continue to grow your business.
Thanks for your help!
If most of your success is coming from TrafficVance then learn EVERYTHING you can about that network. That's great that you hit $20k a month, but man you can do sooooo much more. Think bigger...
Now you wanna jump into mobile? I'd focus on scaling TrafficVance even higher and then try out LeadImpact. Test out different verticals, test out different countries.
To jump into something brand new is just throwing money away.
As far as hiring, there's no perfect solution. If you're running 100% on your own then get some graphic designers, coders, and a personal assistant at least.
If you wanna hire someone, the best way to keep them loyal is to give them a profit share. How would you feel if you were running someone's campaign, getting paid $3k a month, and watching them make $20k a month? It's hard to stay loyal when there's so much money on the table.
Damn that's awesome OP, congrats. Any info on how you reached your success so fast? Really interested.
Congrats Colorofspace! That's really great that you've experienced success thus far. I agree w/ Dr. Ngo, in the sense that there's still money to be made in other niches on Traffic Vance, and scale them to other PPV sources. Traffic Vance also has INTL inventory that hasn't been tapped yet. Think laterally, scale your PPV camps, then move forward.
Originally Posted by dr_ngo
Think of your greatest weakness(s) / factors that slow down your ability to make more money and try to hire someone who can play those roles so you can focus on your strengths. This is something i'm also considering.
I would give them access to traffic sources, but not to affiliate network stats. This might create a bit of extra work for you but it keeps things a lot safer on your end.
I'm subscribed to this thread, would love to lean how others have scaled their businesses in this industry.
Yep, I'd listen to Dr_Ngo as it's the same advice you can see on several threads by top earners: exhaust what works before jumping into unknown territory.
This is hardcore, 300k in year cool
Don't get me wrong, I still plan on putting a significant amount of focus into trafficvance, I just feel like it's time to learn a second traffic source. If you don't think now is a good time for that, then at what point would you learn a new traffic source?
I'm going to give LI another look (even though I've launched 100+ campaigns on it, I've never been able to make it work), and I will put some serious thought into my weaknesses.
Also, hiring a virtual assistant sounds like an excellent idea. I can at the very least hand off target optimization to them, which will save me a lot of time.
Damn that's awesome OP, congrats. Any info on how you reached your success so fast? Really interested.
You also need to work hard and be dedicated. I only work 10-20 hours a week, but those hours are spent exclusively on efficient work. Launch several campaigns every single day you work. Close the forums, blogs, facebook, reddit(etc..) and turn off the TV- these are for after work. Just to be clear, surfing STM also doesn't count as work.
Pick the people you work with carefully. Make sure your network will pay you on time and won't try and rip you off. Talk to your AMs often and keep a good relationship with them. If you don't like one of your AMs, request someone else.
One more thing that I think has been key to my success. I don't treat money with a scarcity mindset. Greed really is a hallow motivator. There are always going to be people with more money than you and no matter how much you make you are going to want more. I really only see the money I'm making as a high score, and I'm only competing with myself. There is plenty of money to go around, there really is no reason to covet it.
Thanks for your replies everyone.
Originally Posted by seitzy12
Pretend like you don't have any money... When I find a profitable campaign I tend to relax and get a bit lazy, But I learned the hard way to keep working. Thats also why I got an office. At home I didn't have the drive for working and my brain couldn't concentrate on work. At the office its a whole new atmosphere and when I come here I cant play games, goof off or relax. All I think about is work and everything else does not exist.
You need to stay in that "work" mindset and don't let yourself slowly slip into the 'take a break and relax' mindset. Set a schedule and follow it. Be strict and try to learn everything you can about affiliate marketing. If you master one traffic source, learn another. Master 2 learn a 3rd one.
Make a back up plan, make a saftey net. Learn different techniques. There is so much you can do if you get into that mindset.
Stay ahead of the game. I only know Dating on FB ads. So if Fb goes down i'm screwed. But if I knew how to profit from other traffic sources then I wouldn't have to worry because if FB goes down, I can put my main focus on traffic source #2. When that one dies theres traffic source #3.
I messed up in my AM career because I didn't take the time to learn other methods of making money. All of my eggs are in one basket right now and I am working on that. If I took the time to learn other things I could have been rolling in a nice beamer right now.
Keep learning and keep working. Take this job seriously and keep hustling!
You should be hiring people that are better than you in specific tasks, and focus on your own strenghts, so for example if you are good with TrafficVance you should keep doing it and hire someone for the part you are not good at/don't like, that could be programming, designing, administrative tasks etc.
One thing I learned is that just creating campaigns is very far from a stable business, and there are alot of factors that can make you lose all your traffic and income very fast, I know that because I know a lot of people that went from 100-500k/month to 0 in a matter of seconds because of traffic sources blocked, offers dead, etc.
YES, you should keep doing campaigns and going for the big ones, because you are going to make a lot of *fast* money that way, but if I were you I would consider starting my own ad network and getting direct deals with websites, that way it is very unlikely you will ever lose your traffic and you can turn affiliate marketing into a very lucrative and stable business.
After that you create your own offers and nothing can stop you 
I think your decision to scale to a new traffic source should be based on what it is about your existing campaigns that is working well. Have you found an awesome angle that converts well on a particular site? Then contact the webmaster and try to get banner ads too.
Have you found a golden keyword combination that works for offer x? Then use that information and see if you can monetize it through Bing/Google too.
Whatever it is that is working, take that information and think more laterally. What else can you do with it? What advantage does it give you in terms of insights in to the demographic, or insights in to how a URL converts?
When you're making $20k in a month, you're sitting on a lot of data and a lot of trends.
As for hiring people, it really depends. As the others have said, there's a thousand ways you can go for that.
I think before attempting to take somebody on for the affiliate side of your business, you could maybe look at where your own time is going. Are you currently spending your entire day on the $20K/month campaigns? If not, why not? Are you taking bites out of the day on little small side-projects that could easily be outsourced? These are the projects that I would be first to outsource.
I like to optimize my time so that I'm focusing on my most profitable projects. Only when I know that I'm spending my own time efficiently will I hire anybody else to help with the more lucrative affiliate stuff.
If I were you, I would spend a whole week mapping and recording everything that you work on with timesheets. Treat it like you're going to bill a client at the end of the process. Then sit down and look at where your time is going. Which processes can be delegated? Which processes have you fooled yourself in to believing are necessary? Time sheets are a great way to get a bird's eye view of your work-life. But only if you use them honestly and record everything.
Maybe not directly related to your question, but I'd give you the following tip:
Since you are on a solid ground with 20k profit / month already, start building a REAL business online. What does it mean ? Start a legit website and set your aim to become an authority site. No matter what niche you pick, it's doable with enough resources and funds. Take the skills you have to send traffic to your 'legit' site.
Reasons:
1) You'll get natural traffic through shares / likes / pins / +1's etc.
2) You'll build (in best case) a real brand which will prove to deliver no-cost traffic after a while if done properly
3) Hire an offshore office in countries like PK. Settle with the office owner for a fixed amount per month. He should take care of everything. You just give instructions, his task is to keep quality at a certain level and increase volume. Don't get VAs or anything, just get a 'manager' who handles all that with an existing team.
4) You'll climb the search through natural links / social signals. After months, you might be starting cross sales. Example: you're building a real legit site for diet products - cross sales possibilities would be beauty products, fitness products etc. etc.
5) Establish social community sites like a facebook page / twitter account to keep your followers / potential clients updated with fresh offers and everything.
6) Create a Mailing list for cheap, interest targetted subscribers.
1. first , I would advice you to exploit traffic Vance to the maximum possible , because you already have a formula .
2. Once you you have fully exploited TrafficVance , try to expand it to Lead Impact .
3. It is also not bad idea to test your angles on other traffic sources such as media buys and PPC advertising platforms . But , do this once you fully exploited TrafficVance and LeadImpact .
4. Even though I hate to say it your campaign would not be profitable for ever . So , I would advice to invest some part of your money into building an online asset like building authority sites , building a list , etc.
The last tip that I want to share with you is to focus most of your time and efforts on matters that are responsible for the most part of your income .
Awesome job on the success, especially this quickly!
I have mixed feelings about outsourcing though.
The best $5 I ever spent in my life was on Fiverr, getting someone
to compile a list of targets for my PPV campaign. That $5 has resulted
in 5 figures worth of profits.
On the other hand, I've had so many VAs that I've spent many hundreds
on that ended up disappearing without a word, and the worst thing was,
I realized it didn't make much of a difference to me as they weren't doing
anything I really needed them to do.
Bottom-line is, everybody's needs and mode of operation is different, you
gotta sit down to analyze what's working for you, where you need help,
and decide accordingly.
I've never had anything profitable on LI before, my profitable campaigns are
always on TV, but it's definitely worth a shot now that you're at the $20k
mark.
Definitely be building a list though, not building one early on is one of my
greatest regrets.
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