Not a Newbie but still stuck (10)
OK this is pretty hard for me to post because this is basically admitting I have failed at this biz.
I have been at it for a couple of years while working my shitty regular day job. I have to travel around a lot because of my job and I've been working from hotel rooms, hotel lobbies, with crappy wifi, crappy cell phone connections and so far its all been failed campaign after failed campaign.
Now I've come to the point I've feared the most: I'm almost out of money and almost out of a job.
I know everyone's advice at this point would be to get another day job and just come back when I have some money, but I'm in a make or break situation so I don't feel this is an option for me.
I've tried PPV, POF (over 6 months) and right now I'm bleeding money on adult dating offers (best results so far but still losing money). Never tried FB.
I post this because I want to get your input on what you guys think is the best way to get to $50/day. That's all I need right now!
Everyone kick my ass in to gear please!!
If adult dating is providing the best results so far, that's where I'd stick with any paid campaigns.
Realistically though, if you're running out of money, you need to look at one of...
a) Focusing on free traffic for a while (trade your time for money, effectively)
b) Take up some freelance gigs (Elance, article writing, whatever)
c) Take on the extra job (I know it sucks, but it's an option. The more options you have, the less stress you'll have to deal with)
There are many free traffic sources where you can make $50/day in exchange for some hard graft donkey work, CraigsList being the most obvious of the bunch.
If you're absolutely set on playing the arbitrage game, I would stick with adult dating and get to the bottom of what's working vs. what's not. Have you ever had a profitable adult campaign? What's the closest you got?
Hey Finch! It's an honor to have your opinion on my thread.
I think my most profitable day so far has been around $250 with a $30 profit on Traffic Junky. After that the offer went to shit for some reason and never worked again. Then bidding got a bit crazy on TJ and had to leave that country for cheaper bids.
I'm testing other traffic sources where bidding isn't so high, but I feel like I'm just bumping in to the same wall over and over where something will work for one day and then stops working.
I would be thrilled to make a consistent $50/day. Anyone need a shit ton of Spanish translations done? hehe. I've been thinking of jumping on freelancer.com to make some side money that way.
I made money with SEO some years ago while I was in college. I got complacent. Google killed my sites. I'm the "DONT PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!!" poster boy.
Anyway, I feel I just needed to vent my frustration a bit. Not gonna stop working , not gonna give up. Thanks for your input!
Traffic Junky is good quality traffic, but it comes at a premium.
It sounds like it was the offer that bombed. One day wonders are not rare. If you're sending a lot of traffic and the merchant doesn't like the initial quality, that can be all she wrote. Did you split test different offers?
TJ is expensive and competitive. I'd recommend JuicyAds for somebody in your position. You can get dirt cheap clicks, and it's easy to test multiple offers/creatives. Check out the post I wrote on it last week: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ys-on-JuicyAds
Good luck!
This was the situation I was in at the middle of last year. My best advice would be to scrap all your habits, get off the forums, and get to work. Use prepaid credit cards and vouchers to spread your money as far as possible. Also make sure whatever you are promoting has a quick turnaround, preferably something where you can get paid weekly. Spend up to 2X testing something and nothing more, if it doesn't work move on, quickly. I used wifi hotspots at McDonalds and StarBucks and stayed there until it closed. It wasn't favorable, but I didn't have a choice. I also learned a valuable lesson... how to stop f*cking around treating this like it's a hobby and get to work.
^ The quick turnaround is very important.
If you spread your rev across 5 different networks, and fail to meet the minimum payments on any of them, you're gong to run in to severe cashflow problems. I'd recommend sticking with one tried and trusted network if your cashflow is delicate. Just make sure it's a good one!
Thanks for the great input Finch and Thomas.
That's certainly a mistake I made, spreading my (small) earnings around 3-4 networks and taking ages in getting paid. Plus, I'm outside the US and made the mistake of running with some networks that only pay via Cheque so it took aaages for the money to get to me. Noob mistakes.
You could very easily make $50/day doing freelance work on sites like ODesk or Freelancer.com
Start freelancing, keep the day job (if you can), and put your extra cash into testing/optimizing your online marketing efforts. There's enough good advice in this forum to help you get a couple of things profitable if you have the money to invest initially.
Thanks miket! I've been looking in to Odesk and Freelancer. No offers yet, but I'm sure I get I'll get something soon 
I think one of my first almost profitable campaigns was with Offermobi! Back when I was jumping all over the place and not sticking to making one thing work. You guys have some good offers.
Originally Posted by rafael
I think one of my first almost profitable campaigns was with Offermobi! Back when I was jumping all over the place and not sticking to making one thing work. You guys have some good offers.
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