Gold Diary of a rookie affiliate (the road to $1000 a day)

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

So i thought i would start a follow along as way of keeping myself accountable and I also think i’ll find it quite enjoyable and maybe a few peeps on here might find it helpful.

Unfortunately am not comfortable revealing specific campaign details yet as affiliate marketing is competitive enough as it is.

I should probably start of with a little bit about my IM background I've been doing IM on and off for about a year with very mixed results but I've never really been 100% committed (until now). I've run a few campaigns on different traffic sources such as POF, 7search and bing ads.

At the start of this year i made a decision that i would focus mostly on mobile campaigns in non English speaking countries and pick a traffic source and stick with it until i make it work and I've got of to a good start so far.

Tracking: Voluum

Am using Vouum to track all my campaigns because i think its amazing and easy to use and the guys over at codewise have done an amazing job. I know that eventually i’ll have to start paying for it but i don't mind as it saves me time and its one less sever i have to handle and from what i have read they have some amazing new features in the works.

Advertising Methods: mobile pop-unders and more

I decided to start of learning how to make mobile pop-unders and other traffic sources convert as it means i don't have to waste time making shit loads of banners just landing pages.

Affiliate Networks: Furthermobi

I decided to start promoting offers through furthermobi to start with as they give weekly payments when you hit $50 and they also had really good reviews on affpaying.

What I've done so far

First thing i did was sign up to whatrunswhere on that free trial they offer in order to have a look at what other mobile affiliates were running, types of banners and the landing pages they are using and so on in order to get some ideas.

I've already tested 10 different mobile campaigns so far in 4 different country's and all seems to be going okay still got a SHIT ton of optimizing to do however and there's not a lot of mobile pop-under/domain redirect traffic in a lot of these non English speaking countries but i think if i can make $5/10 a day NET in 15 different countries then that is a a good start.

When i get a LP and offer that works all i need to do is copy, translate, past and optimize it, I've got one winning combination so far and I've translated it to over 4 different countries with relative success already.

What I've learnt so far

- The best mobile offers are the ones that solve a problem or allow you to create a false problem and provide an immediate solution.

Possible Issues

I don't have a job at moment so cash flow is a bit on and off but i start i full time job in February so i plan on really going HARD then but with weekly payments from furthermobi when i hit $50 i think i should be okay

Below is a screenshot showing how I'm doing this month so far

 

[K]

Looking forward to this - I love Voluums interface! - What traffic platform is this?

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

this post was removed

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

The journey is the reward

Its been a funny start to the week, I've pushed my existing campaign over to 2 more countries 1 seems to be doing OK while the other is still in the red even after a bit of optimization but i’m gonna leave it to the end of the week before deciding whether to cut it or not.

I've found out that the best way to increase the traffic to my existing campaigns wasn't actually by increasing my bid (been experimenting with this over the last few days) but by just duplicating the same campaign over and over.

The force is strong with this campaign

I had an email this week from my AM that caused me to pause my campaigns as the advertiser had put new restrictions on the type of traffic allowed, i immediately emailed my AM to find out if it was okay for me to continue sending traffic by my chosen methods. While waiting for a reply i decided to look for an alternative offer to run (just in case).

It only took me about 30min to find another offer so i quickly switched the links round in my Voluum tracker just to get an idea of how it would perform and the crazy thing is this alternative offer performed better in certain countries (some by over 50%) then the original so it looks like i’ll be splitting testing offers, i probably should have been doing this to start with in all honesty.

Anyway i got got an email back from my AM saying it was cool for me to keep pushing the offer as i was before no need to change anything on my end.

What I'm listening to right now

God bless the competition

It looks like the main traffic source am running on seems to of got a bit more competitive in certain countries as i have seen the bids increase slightly. I’m not bothered by this tho, as like i said before my goal is to push this campaign to as many countries as i can.

I was thinking the other day how amazing it’s gonna be to have a campaign running in over 20 to 25 different countries and languages, how fun its gonna be porting it over to traffic source after traffic source, optimizing and split testing the shit out of it.

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

this post was removed

 

[K]

Love it man well done - are you scaling the winners?

Any screenshots of new stats?

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

Love it man well done - are you scaling the winners?

Any screenshots of new stats?

Thanks mate

Yep that's right, am just taking successful campaigns and moving them over to different countries on the same traffic source at the moment, i'll probably be looking to scale to other traffic sources soon tho.

I plan to post weekly stats updates every Sunday showing how I've performed that week.

 

[K]

Make sure you "Add a review to post" on http://www.affiliatefix.com/f75/voluum-6312/

 

[hans23]

I never thought redirect traffic was that good.
Your stats showed an average 10 % conversion rate.
That was rather high for untargeted traffic like redirect offer especially for mobile traffic.
Did you run keyword based campaigns or RON campaigns?
And can you please show your landing page layout (not your real LP) if you don't mind?
Because all I was doing until now mostly was direct linking

Thanks and good luck

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

I never thought redirect traffic was that good.
Your stats showed an average 10 % conversion rate.
That was rather high for untargeted traffic like redirect offer especially for mobile traffic.
Did you run keyword based campaigns or RON campaigns?
And can you please show your landing page layout (not your real LP) if you don't mind?
Because all I was doing until now mostly was direct linking

Thanks and good luck

hey up Hans23 I use to think just like you

What I learned is that you have to understand the psychology behind the people the traffic source gets.

For example let’s take popup traffic, someone miss types Google into there URL bar without realizing and lands on a page that is NOT Google there 1st thought is probably WTF and there 2nd thought the most important is WHY have I ended up on THIS page instead of Google.

Now lets say the landing page is a direct download offer telling them they need to UPDATE there chrome browser now 1 in 10 peoples 3rd thought will be “oh okay my browser is out of date that’s why I landed on this page let me update it”

An affiliate promoting a direct download offer like that probably gets paid $1.20 or something like that, that’s money in the bank haha.

The above is just an EXAMPLE of the type of offers that work on RON redirect traffic and can get a 10% or more conversation rate the same psychology applies with mobile RON redirect traffic as well.

I only do RON as that’s where the volume is especially when going international.

Below is a the lay out I use for all my mobile landing pages. Remember KISS (keep it simple stupid)

 

[hans23]

hey up Hans23 I use to think just like you

What I learned is that you have to understand the psychology behind the people the traffic source gets.

For example let’s take redirect traffic, someone miss types Google into there URL bar without realizing and lands on a page that is NOT Google there 1st thought is probably WTF and there 2nd thought the most important is WHY have I ended up on THIS page instead of Google.

Now lets say the landing page is a direct download offer telling them they need to UPDATE there chrome browser now 1 in 10 peoples 3rd thought will be “oh okay my browser is out of date that’s why I landed on this page let me update it”

An affiliate promoting a direct download offer like that probably gets paid $1.20 or something like that, that’s money in the bank haha.

The above is just an EXAMPLE of the type of offers that work on RON redirect traffic and can get a 10% or more conversation rate the same psychology applies with mobile RON redirect traffic as well.

I only do RON as that’s where the volume is especially when going international.

Below is a the lay out I use for all my mobile landing pages. Remember KISS (keep it simple stupid)

View attachment 2370

wow, thanks man, nice explaining.
I assume your example is using keyword campaign, isn't it? You can tell visitors to update their chrome browser when you used keyword campaigns in that case was "google" keyword. The problem is when we use RON campaign, we need broader niche to make it work. I usually just throw random niche to figure out which is working on the traffic source when using RON campaigns. That's why I have high untargeted visitors to my campaign. And resulting on very low conversion rate. Well it doesn't matter as RON campaigns usually have lower minimum bid.
Ah your 10% CR is raw clicks, your true conversion rate was 4% (conversion/LP clicks). Still, it was high, your LP must be good. Maybe I will try redirect traffic next time.
Good luck

ps. thanks for sharing your LP layout

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

wow, thanks man, nice explaining.
I assume your example is using keyword campaign, isn't it? You can tell visitors to update their chrome browser when you used keyword campaigns in that case was "google" keyword. The problem is when we use RON campaign, we need broader niche to make it work. I usually just throw random niche to figure out which is working on the traffic source when using RON campaigns. That's why I have high untargeted visitors to my campaign. And resulting on very low conversion rate. Well it doesn't matter as RON campaigns usually have lower minimum bid.
Ah your 10% CR is raw clicks, your true conversion rate was 4% (conversion/LP clicks). Still, it was high, your LP must be good. Maybe I will try redirect traffic next time.
Good luck

ps. thanks for sharing your LP layout

Thanks am glad you found it useful.

A lot of traffic sources now allow you to target visitors based on the specific browser there using, so using the same example as before, instead of targeting the keyword 'Google' you could target the browser type and adjust the LP accordingly you would do a RON campaign but split it into 3 parts.

The 1st targeting Chrome users the 2nd targeting Firefox users and the 3rd targeting IE users that is what i would call a 3 part RON campaign.

You could even apply this analogy to mobile campaigns (which is what i do) and do a 3 part RON campaign based on operating systems such as Android, IOS & Windows Mobile

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

The last of the human freedoms

I was looking over my accounts for last year and calculated how much i had lost trying to learn affiliate marketing it was $6,163.05, its funny how crazy this game is i mean its now 2014 and i’m about to hit the $100 a day mark with about a 80% ROI .

Its been a roller-coaster week competition has increased a little on the traffic sources that i’m using but its been a good thing for me as its made me more aggressive in regards to getting my campaigns running in as many countries as possible so i don't feel the effects if 1 particular GEO isn't doing well.

Something about the struggle so divine

I got a small list of new traffic sources am wanting to test out but that won't be until February as cash flow is a bit messy at the moment.

I think i’m gonna have to pause my campaigns for 3 days Monday till Wednesday by the looks of things as i’m burning through my budget so quickly, talk about a high quality problem but by the end of the month this cash flow thing shouldn't be an issue any more.

What I’m listening to right now (really good motivational video)

Below is a screenshot for my earnings for this week 13/01/14 to 18/01/14

This a screenshot of my overall earnings for the month

Got my commissions paid this week so thought i’d just whack this up as well

 

[azgold]

Wow, 80% ROI is remarkable! Well done! You seem to be progressing very quickly.

You can't see me doing it but I'm applauding you.

 

[K]

Keep at it man - long live the Fix!

http://www.affiliatefix.com/f13/how-post-images-correctly-6684/

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

Keep at it man - long live the Fix!

http://www.affiliatefix.com/f13/how-post-images-correctly-6684/

Thanks K I've been wondering how to post images correctly for a while.

 

[razrus5]

That is interesting. So the ctr is stable and you plan on a budget increase. Thanks for the post.

 

[aharvey101]

This is frigin cool and motivating!!! well done cashmoneyaffiliate! also, mobile ads are cheap! and that offer doesn't seam to pay much what vertical is it?

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

This is frigin cool and motivating!!! well done cashmoneyaffiliate! also, mobile ads are cheap! and that offer doesn't seam to pay much what vertical is it?

Thanks aharvey101

I’m promoting a few different verticals from app installs, content billing offers and the odd dating offer at the moment as I’m running campaigns in a few different countries now.

International offers the ones that convert well don’t have high pay-outs.

Based on the tests I've done so far it tends to be offers that pay between the 0.20 and $1.00 range that do best and South America and Asia always have really good ROIs when it comes to mobile offers.

This is obviously just based on my experience so far of course

 

[cashmoneyaffiliate]

My first $200 Day

So its been a bit of a crazy week on the affiliate marketing side of things a few of my top offers got paused, stopped and pay outs dropped but despite all that i still manage to make $200 yesterday which i'm REALLY HAPPY about.

I’m sure i’ll be able to keep it up once i sort out the cash flow situation. I've got a personal target of hitting $200 EVERY day by the end of February with at least a 50% NET ROI and i know for fact its achievable.

Up and down like the Dow Jones

Like i said earlier a few of my best offers have been cut or payouts reduced by the advertiser, so i think the best thing for me to do is to ask for pay bumps on the one’s am still running. I've already sent an email out to my AM so just waiting on a reply. I think i need to also join some other mobile affiliate networks the ones that offer weekly payments. (any personal recommendations from you guys would be appreciated)

What I’m listening to right now

This a screenshot of my overall earnings for this month so far

I probably won't be updating this thread for the next 2 weeks as I’m going away and i have a feeling its gonna be really hard to find a good internet connection anywhere but i will be back to keep you all updated on how am doing