If you’re new in this industry or you’re just launching your first campaigns please read this post as it might be able to help you save a lot of time and money.
What I’m going to write is a lot of quotes and questions that newbies think when they’re starting. I’m not trying to make fun of anybody here, don’t worry. We were all newbies at one point and probably did a lot of this mistakes a few years or months ago.
The faster you learn which things happen and why, the better. I’ll try explain a few ones here and keep it simple but if you’ve got questions make sure you leave a comment below. Let’s get started.
Follow my online journey from zero to hero in 3 months A.K.A. From rags to riches
Yup. This is something I’ve seen many times, especially in forums and follow alongs. It’s not impossible, but these posts get featured to lure more new affiliates into the game while thinking they can learn and go from 0 to $10,000 per day in just a few months by launching a few direct linked campaigns in a small traffic source.
I know some people that have learned super fast and have big 4-5 figures campaigns running after 6 months, but normally they have some especial edges that help them achieve this easier.
Which advantages? Well, they either have a mentor, or a ton of money from other internet ventures, or past experience in affiliate marketing or a complete team ready to launch tons of campaigns, etc.
Also, keep in mind not everything you touch becomes gold. Some of your campaigns will fail like crazy, especially at the beginning and there’s not much you can do about it except learn from them and read your data.
I have $300 saved to learn CPA marketing, what’s the best traffic source that gives you more conversions?
Well, first of all, $300 ain’t nothing in this business. You could spend a lot more than that in 1 day just by testing a couple offers in just 1 campaign. Always remember to test low payout offers if you’re on a limited budget.
Also keep in mind you need money to get a few tools like a hosting service a tracker and maybe an spy tool. You could spend those $300 in 1 day after buying the basic tools to get started. I normally recommend having $2,000 PER MONTH and assume you don’t have that money so it can be well spent while you learn in the following months during your journey.
About the traffic source… Well, it depends on a lot of things like your offers, your systems, the verticals you want to tackle, etc.
Want to know which traffic sources can give you more conversions per click? Google and Facebook come at the top of my mind. But this doesn’t mean I would recommend them to a newbie.
Whaaaaat? But I’m an old (not so successful) SEO and want to move to paid traffic because that’s where the money is and nobody got time for pandas and penguins! Do I have to deal now with Adwords bans and other stuff under the big Google? Yup. But that’s why I wouldn’t recommend this traffic sources for beginners anyway.
I’ll try this pin submit offer that pays $26 per conversion or this dating offer on Facebook. For sure it will convert and I’ll make $500 back from my $300 I have to spend. Sincerely: every newbie before being banned on Facebook.
Exactly. If you want to get banned fast on Facebook and spend 3-4 weeks appealing to their reviewers team just to realise your account isn’t getting back then this is the best way to do so.
If you have no idea of how Facebook works and the multiple reasons why they will ban you (AND THEY WILL NO MATTER WHAT), or you don’t know about cloaking, account farming, etc. Please make yourself a favor and don¡t launch that CPA campaign.
Trust me, you’ll be better in a different traffic source and you won’t get your hopes down for weeks.
In some cases you’ll get banned before launching your first campaign just because you want to direct link an offer and it’s got a geo redirect which is a NO NO for Facebook reviewers.
Let me launch this antivirus lander I found in Adplexity and see how it goes. Sincerely: every new affiliate that doesn’t know most of the pop campaigns are cloaked or breaking a few rules.
And then your campaign gets rejected and you wonder how everybody else’s and their mama are running it but you can’t get it through the reviewal team.
I received 2,000 clicks and no conversions so I paused the campaign. Is that normal?
Yes. It happens a lot. But depends on traffic source and your offer. 2,000 clicks could be nothing if you’re doing pop on a tier 3 country, but could be a lot of data if you’re running on Facebook.
I started promoting this offer because the landing page looks very cool. I mean, how could it not convert if it’s so beautifully designed?
If you’re new you don’t have money to test the 20,000 offers each network has in their systems. Get your manager and a top list to get started with offers that are proven to convert. Leave the discovery process for the future when you can launch dozens of campaigns per day without drying your wallet. Don’t choose an offer because of the design, CR or EPC. Choose offers by the number of conversions!
Here’s my totally non-compliant landing page for my CPA network manager to review and approve. Sincerely: You before getting kicked out on an offer that you haven’t even tested yet.
Dedicated for those people sending super aggressive landing pages to their managers and wondering why the offer wan’t approved to run with them.
I’m going to direct link to the offer because the lander looks great and I have no coding skills.
Most affiliates at the beginning want to direct link everything or even do arbitrage so they don’t have to do any efforts to make money. After several failed campaigns they realize they need to build landing pages because it helps with conversions, loading times, etc. Here are a few advantages of using a landing page.
I’m only going to promote offers I can be proud of.
Until you realize every offer making money out there is about dating and cheating, fake sweepstakes, viruses, tech support calls, nutra, weight loss, etc.
You wanted to promote something you can tell your granny about but end up running adult traffic or fake blogs with viral news around the world.
I’ve been following you for a while and want to know if you give private coaching. I promise if you tell me your secrets I’ll pay you 10% of my first profitable campaign.
Come on… I have received this one at least a hundred times. Coaching is quite difficult and very time consuming. If you really want to be coached by someone expect to pay some good money. Otherwise it’s not worth the time of the teacher and there’s no guarantee that you will earn money even if you know the system because it also depends a lot on yourself.
Do you expect to learn how to make $30,000 per month by paying somebody just $100? This isn’t the Warrior Forum…
Sir, please help me cause I have no money and 2 boys to feed. I just want to know how to make $10 per day and I’ll be happy.
Definitely not the best approach. And sometimes they wonder why you’re not giving away your secrets for free and get mad at you. This also includes the people that add you on FB/Skype/twitter/etc. and start asking questions like:
- What offers do you run?
- How much do you earn per month?
- Which is your best traffic source?
- etc.
They didn’t even present themselves and you’re already being interviewed. This isn’t strictly a newbie thing, but because many people think making money online is an easy business that can be just taken as a hobby they think you can openly talk about your numbers because it’s all good. Take this as a business and not as a quick hobby and respect it.
That’s all for this edition
Talk to you on the next one 🙂 And again, don’t feel bad if you’ve done some of this mistakes. We were all noobs once. The faster you learn, the better! Time to work!
O sea nos estás diciendo que si no tienes mínimo $ 2,000, dedícate a otra cosa…. Pues que bien.
Si, sería lo mínimo que recomiendo para empezar. De otra manera mejor ahorrar por más tiempo antes de iniciarse en este mundo.
Hey Servando, what blogs or sources of information do YOU FOLLOW? I noticed a lot of people basically blog about the same thing… And the case studies are similar. So I’m curious, where the origin of these “case studies” and posts come from.
Just to name an example, Teespring posts.
I’ve read many blogs where people have mentioned running campaigns with shirts that say “it’s a SERVANDO thing, you wouldn’t understand” etc; I also read a blog post you wrote mentioning this exact same type of design.
Seems like everything trends around the same time. Wondering who is setting these trends…? Right now it seems eCommerce and Shopify type products are trending.
I don’t follow many of them. In all case, forums, blogs and most other sources aren’t that updated but they help you give you a hint on what’s working.
The best way to be updated on what works is by watching what everybody does and tests, going to events and network with people. Traffic managers, network reps, etc. now what’s working because they see everything around since the beginning too.
As for the Teespring thing, I know who started it back in 2012-2013 and I’ve seen all the steps in the evolution by staying up with friends, being in private masterminds and by actually doing it myself and spying others.
Ahh I see , thanks.
So a lot of these trending things come from private masterminds?
If you don’t mind me asking, can you mention any names of these friends or their blogs? Or the mastermind group?
I know great minds think alike so I’m trying to gain as much knowledge as possible.
There are a lot of people who sell or promote seemingly “rehashed” information and I always feel like I’m getting out dated information.
Seems like:
(most) blogs contain tier 3 info
forums are tier 2 info
private masterminds/groups are tier 1 info
and the best info is undisclosed and not openly available without “spying” on campaigns which you must “discover” and reverse engineer yourself.
You’ve got to do some research and you’ll find some even on FB and Skype. Most people I’m talking with don’t have a blogs as they don’t care or don’t like to be a public image.
In fact, nobody of them have blogs. They like to be silent lurkers for several reasons.
That makes sense. I’ve always had this thought so I will try to seek out less publicly available info.
“If something is so profitable for someone… Why would they share it?”
Since that would create saturation and basically dilute their profits!
Unfortunately A lot of people don’t see it that way. They flock to people who show off while on vacation and post screen shots of PayPal balances.
I see so many people on FB who barely know the basics trying to sell $2,000+ coaching 0_o
People will try to sell a list building course to someone and not even have that someone on a list of their own…
Or an SEO course and not even rank for anything at all ever.
If you don’t mind me asking, why do you share and have these blogs? I noticed you target a few different sub niches under marketing.
What’s your main monetization method by sharing this knowledge on your blog? Is it coaching?
I once heard that there is more money selling an idea rather than executing the idea.
Thanks for the info. Hope I’m not asking too many questions.
I used to think the same before. But honestly, if you don’t share it, someone else will. It always reaches the masses, you just need to know when to grab the wave when it’s rising.
The purpose of this blog has nothing to do with monetization, let alone selling courses.
The most valuable things you can get from a blog like this are:
1. Branding and authority, which helps you build your business and show others you’re in the game for real, not just to make a quick buck and disappear.
2. Networking. Most people don’t think about this, but when you’ve got a blog in such a closed niche, it’s great for networking and get to know with other like-minded people. Many of the private masterminds I’ve been invited or created was thanks to my blogs. Some great managers and/or business partners/service providers/etc. added me because of it too.
3. Building a long term white hat asset. No need to explain this one.
4. Monetization, but when you’re building a blog not just for SEO purposes, content is king. Monetization is secondary and not my focus at this stage. When I started blogging a few years ago, I did it for the money. Nowadays I do it for fun. Otherwise you’d see me blogging every single day if my bills depended on it.
Is the offer a good converting one or a very branded offer? Then maybe I’ll test it.
If not, why bother while most custom creatives are completely garbage? Many mobile subscription offers have a generic download supplied banner. As for apps, you’ll see your CTR will be so low you won’t be able to compete with the bids.
Great read mate, keep it up! So many great lessons here…
Thanks! I’ll keep it up 🙂
Great article. I’ve learned a crap ton in the past 2 months. I’ve spent about $2100USD and only lost $500, this lets me know i’m on the right path. One thing I always had issues with was figuring out when to cut a campaign. If the offer is low paying ($1-3) i’ll spend up to $180 on it and if I don’t hit -40% roi or better I move on lol. Everyone has their own unique style… it’s just a matter of figuring out your own method to the madness to get to profitable campaigns.
That’s not bad at all for a start. You invested $1600 in your education 🙂
Yes, everybody has it’s own tweaked strategy. I think if you spend $180 for a $1 offer you’ll get enough data unless there’s something like a publisher or specific OS/Browser that’s not converting and spending all of your money.
Got some great info off this post. Love it, keep them coming!
Thanks Mongo. Will do 😉
which type of offers will be best for newbies to try out and how much should we spend to get the data whether it is a winning campaign or not. thanks
Low payout offers. I like to spend at least 10x-20x the offer payout before making decisions.
Depends on the traffic source because sometimes I could spend just 5x and sometimes up to 50-100x.
Great post as always! this sings pretty true, I have been guilty of some noob mistakes, one of the lessons that i really feel I have learnt recently is take a step back, take things slow, you don’t need to send 10K installs a day 100 is ok to start. Like you said, it is so unlikely to go from 0-10K per day. Best of luck to any noobs and keep on grinding!
One step after another. can’t run before learning how to walk 🙂