Ask Me Anything Affiliate Turned CEO $20M+ Generated

[rogerramjeet]

Hey Blackfoxio. Great insights into AM.

I was wondering if you have any tips on choosing traffic sources. Seems like there are 100's of traffic sources for pop, same again for mobile, ect to choose from...

What's your strategy on selecting a traffic source? Do you concern yourself with networks saturated with affiliates (ie. POF in its day)?

Thanks

 

[Blackfoxio]

Hey Roger,

Very good question. A lot of traffic sources syndicate whats known as remnant inventory which the buyer would sell at a higher premium to the affiliate this is known as traffic arbitrage. With that being said any source you approach always ask them to send a report based on it's direct publisher placements. This way you know how much traffic they really have.

Traffic sources comes down to the type of offer your looking to run. For example pop is disruptive advertising, so anything mass market should do well, mobile on the other would work ideally for app installs and pay per call camapigns.

Take competition and turn it into opportunity. If you see POF has ton's of affiliates buying traffic look into what's being promoted what spin off's you can create or if you take the product route what sort of tool you can build to help affiliates target better on PoF.

 

[mobile99]

What do you think of the following traffic sources:
SEO:
PPV:
POF:
Pop:

I'm considering pop traffic but not sure if it's a good traffic source. Do you know how much top pop traffic affiliates make? What advice do you have for people trying to get started with pop traffic?

Here's what I know about pop traffic so far:
pop is cheap and there's a ton of traffic. learning curve isn't that bad, takes some time to master but not very hard. You need a server that can handle a ton of traffic and everything has to load fast. You don't have to deal with ads so you need a good converting landing page. Also watch out for lead quality because the advertiser has to make money too.

I'm not really interested in mobile stuff, so I think I'll just stick with desktop/web pop traffic.
Which is better, mainstream pop or adult pop?

I know you said mass market, but can you name some offers/niches that work with pop traffic? I can't see finance/health offers working with pop traffic. maybe dating, games?

If I want to run adult pop traffic, do I go to the same adult ad networks that offer banner traffic such as trafficjunky, exoclick? or do you have to go to certain networks for both mainstream and adult pop traffic?

 

[Blackfoxio]

SEO: Very scale able but depending on keyword competition can take awhile. ROI however is through the roof once done properly.

PPV: Great for trials and leadgen we find bizopp and dating to do quite well to.

PoF: Works for dating of course, app installs gaming or dating related, and biz opp.

Pop: Most pop sources are derived from adult traffic, so dating and gaming tend to work the best here.

Top pop affiliates I know easily churn out over $1MM a month launching over 20 different campaigns per day and then working cpm arbitrage.

Mainstream, pop, adult it all depends on the offer.
Finance and health works on ppv which is another form of popunder advertising.

If running adult pop traffic I would reach out to exo, tj, and popads.

What do you think of the following traffic sources:
SEO:
PPV:
POF:
Pop:

I'm considering pop traffic but not sure if it's a good traffic source. Do you know how much top pop traffic affiliates make? What advice do you have for people trying to get started with pop traffic?

Here's what I know about pop traffic so far:
pop is cheap and there's a ton of traffic. learning curve isn't that bad, takes some time to master but not very hard. You need a server that can handle a ton of traffic and everything has to load fast. You don't have to deal with ads so you need a good converting landing page. Also watch out for lead quality because the advertiser has to make money too.

I'm not really interested in mobile stuff, so I think I'll just stick with desktop/web pop traffic.
Which is better, mainstream pop or adult pop?

I know you said mass market, but can you name some offers/niches that work with pop traffic? I can't see finance/health offers working with pop traffic. maybe dating, games?

If I want to run adult pop traffic, do I go to the same adult ad networks that offer banner traffic such as trafficjunky, exoclick? or do you have to go to certain networks for both mainstream and adult pop traffic?

 

[tommakemassive]

The road towards success is full of ups and downs... can you tells us about a time you nearly gave up and a time you really felt on top. Thanks!

 

[Blackfoxio]

The road towards success is full of ups and downs... can you tells us about a time you nearly gave up and a time you really felt on top. Thanks!

I was 19 dropped out of college had $3,000 to my name. At the time I was sleeping on a hardwood floor with a pillow and a sweater as a cover. I would only eat 1 meal a day and drink coffee throughout to keep my stomach full. I was tired of being broke and had to do something to make a change.

I started working the graveyard shift at ups unloading, and packing 18 foot trailers from 11pm at night to 9am in the morning from monday to friday at minimum wage. Weekly pay check was no more than $180 after taxes. Right then and there I knew working for someone else will never be me. I do not see my self climbing the ladder to make at most six figures a year when I know I can make much much more.

I'm not a newcomer to entrepreneurship as I've been doing my own thing since 14 but just never really grasped the concept of putting a "system" in place. My logic with affiliate marketing was if this guy is paying $5 for a simple lead what can I do to get 20 leads a day.

Weekly I'll earn $700 and that'll for sure change my life style. With that thinking I launched a campaign and grew it to $100 a day as planned once I hit that milestone however I started launching more and more campaigns till I got up to $1,000 per day.
With that being said I try not to get over my head sure I make a lot daily compared to back then but at the same time campaigns come and go. Now we're more focused on launching our own in house products and applications.

At UPS one employee told me "If you can do this job, you can do anything you want don't waste the rest of your life here like I have" That saying, to this day stuck with me and thinking back I've come a far away.

 

[mobile99]

Wow, $1MM/Month? I assume it's revenue, not profit. Even if 10-50% of it is profit, that's still a lot of money.

Can you explain what cpm arbitrage is?

If you want to run pop traffic, how much money do you need to get started?

What are some good spy tools for pop traffic? Or I want to spy manually, do I go to streaming sites (mainstream) and porn sites (adult) to see how other affiliates do it?

If you don't mind, can you give us a quick step by step process of how to launch a pop campaign?
Ex: Find dating and gaming offers. Get an account on exo, tj & popads and deposit $1-2k. Do some spying to see what other people are doing. Create landing pages to test. Run traffic, gather data and optimize?

SEO: Very scale able but depending on keyword competition can take awhile. ROI however is through the roof once done properly.

PPV: Great for trials and leadgen we find bizopp and dating to do quite well to.

PoF: Works for dating of course, app installs gaming or dating related, and biz opp.

Pop: Most pop sources are derived from adult traffic, so dating and gaming tend to work the best here.

Top pop affiliates I know easily churn out over $1MM a month launching over 20 different campaigns per day and then working cpm arbitrage.

Mainstream, pop, adult it all depends on the offer.
Finance and health works on ppv which is another form of popunder advertising.

If running adult pop traffic I would reach out to exo, tj, and popads.

 

[Blackfoxio]

For sure.

Cpm Arbitrage is the practice of buying CPM at a lower cost and reselling at a premium rate. You pocket the difference.
Pop traffic depends highly on the offer. I've had guys turn $100 into $10,000 with dating on pops.

Right now I'd recommend mobile ad scout.
To spy manually in my opinion takes to much time when you can be out there buying data to see what works and what doesnt.

1. Find a pop source.
2. Find out what verticals they do well in and how much traffic is unique.
3. Setup campaign as RON
4. Spend $$$ to collect data, optimize to find winning placements.
5. After placements are found then rotate your landers, creatives, or any ad materials.

Wow, $1MM/Month? I assume it's revenue, not profit. Even if 10-50% of it is profit, that's still a lot of money.

Can you explain what cpm arbitrage is?

If you want to run pop traffic, how much money do you need to get started?

What are some good spy tools for pop traffic? Or I want to spy manually, do I go to streaming sites (mainstream) and porn sites (adult) to see how other affiliates do it?

If you don't mind, can you give us a quick step by step process of how to launch a pop campaign?
Ex: Find dating and gaming offers. Get an account on exo, tj & popads and deposit $1-2k. Do some spying to see what other people are doing. Create landing pages to test. Run traffic, gather data and optimize?

 

[Eko Hartono]

listening and learning

 

[Blackfoxio]

glad to help.
Been away recently has we've been building some interesting new products.

 

[PalmaGhost]

glad to help.
Been away recently has we've been building some interesting new products.

Thanks for all of the help so far. I have a client that has an online game similar to 2nd Life (i.e. runs on desktop and uses a downloaded client to connect to the virtual world) and I'm wondering which network in your opinion I should contact in order to start a lead gen campaign for them. They want to start small ($1k/month) but reinvest heavily if and when traffic begins to convert. I know you run a network but maybe I missed which verticals you guys accel at.

I need a network that provides the following:

Help with landing page design
Advice on offer structure
Help with properly coding the conversion code(s)/pixel(s)
Advice on optimizing backend monetization in order to maximize lifetime value and thus invest more in traffic generation

Any advice on the subject would be great because this is my first time on this side of the CPA equation.

Thanks

 

[Blackfoxio]

Thanks for all of the help so far. I have a client that has an online game similar to 2nd Life (i.e. runs on desktop and uses a downloaded client to connect to the virtual world) and I'm wondering which network in your opinion I should contact in order to start a lead gen campaign for them. They want to start small ($1k/month) but reinvest heavily if and when traffic begins to convert. I know you run a network but maybe I missed which verticals you guys accel at.

I need a network that provides the following:

Help with landing page design
Advice on offer structure
Help with properly coding the conversion code(s)/pixel(s)
Advice on optimizing backend monetization in order to maximize lifetime value and thus invest more in traffic generation

Any advice on the subject would be great because this is my first time on this side of the CPA equation.

Thanks

Hey PalmaGhost,

$1k a month is too small for most networks to consider. They usually look for campaigns with a budget of $20k+.
What I would do is start the media buying process via adwords or FB. With FB I would target competitor games this way quality will be worthwhile allowing them to allocate more budget to you.

Networks will charge you top dollar for landing page design I highly suggest you outsource this. Offer structure, conversion tracking they'll gladly help for free. Backend monetization ultimately has to be done by the advertiser unless you own the product. What I would do is ask the advertiser if they allow host and post.

 

[Veto]

Do you think its a must to learn proper web design or is it okay to pay others for this?

Thanks for your time

 

[Youri Cane]

Hey Blackfox!

Quick questions:

When you were an affiliate, what traffic source did you use the most ?

If you were doing mobile, what traffic source worked the best for you ?

Cheers,

 

[Blackfoxio]

Do you think its a must to learn proper web design or is it okay to pay others for this?

Thanks for your time

Proper web design no. Learning the basics yes this way you can do simple things yourself.

 

[Blackfoxio]

Hey Blackfox!

Quick questions:

When you were an affiliate, what traffic source did you use the most ?

If you were doing mobile, what traffic source worked the best for you ?

Cheers,

A bunch and that was my problem.
Pick a major one master it then move on.
There's plenty of spy tools out there to help you find winning creatives. The placements and targeting however are on you.

 

[Offerit-John]

Hey, I wanted to chime in here a bit as a network software provider, but not hijack your thread.

Starting a network can be a low cost venture depending if you have publishers/affiliates already willing to push your offers. You can always re-broker from other networks to get started and as you push forward and gather your offers from advertisers directly, the income would obviously be higher.

Initially, our software (Offerit)is no money up front and end of month billing, which means if you have your business together and ready to go, you would just register an account, add your offers and have your publishers/affiliates sign up and start promoting. If you are like the last example, you can have your network up and running in a matter of a day or two depending on how many offers you have, and time you have to add them to the platform. But in the end, you spend no $ to get it setup and started... until the first invoice which is 30 days from start. We also provide training for our new clients so they can have hands on guidance getting the network up and running.

 

[Addiliate.com]

I totally disagree with this statement for a number of reasons

1. Good networks don't rebroker any offers and only work with direct advertisers and exclusive campaigns. This takes a lot of time and personnel cost to sign those IOs, set up these campaigns and manage the campaigns

2. Big networks also develop their own tracking technology and dont work with third party systems such as voluum, hasoffers in order not to give the entire margin to these tracking platforms but rather to the affiliates

3. If you want to be serious as a network, you need to invest +100,000$ per year in your brand name and being out there for your affiliates. I'm not only talking about taking expensive booths at ASW/AWA/ASE/Leadscon/GDC etc, but also investing a lot in Odigger/Offervault and other online presence

4. You need a big amount of cash if you want to start a network. Key in growing as a network is guaranteeing superfast payments (we pay weekly) to your affiliates. So you need to advance the money before you get paid. You can't do this with "low cost venture"

All of the above not only require a lot of money but also a lot of professional staff and time. Its really not easy to build a champions league network as you make it seem.

Starting a network can be a low cost venture depending if you have publishers/affiliates already willing to push your offers. You can always re-broker from other networks to get started and as you push forward and gather your offers from advertisers directly, the income would obviously be higher.

 

[Blackfoxio]

I totally disagree with this statement for a number of reasons

1. Good networks don't rebroker any offers and only work with direct advertisers and exclusive campaigns. This takes a lot of time and personnel cost to sign those IOs, set up these campaigns and manage the campaigns

2. Big networks also develop their own tracking technology and dont work with third party systems such as voluum, hasoffers in order not to give the entire margin to these tracking platforms but rather to the affiliates

3. If you want to be serious as a network, you need to invest +100,000$ per year in your brand name and being out there for your affiliates. I'm not only talking about taking expensive booths at ASW/AWA/ASE/Leadscon/GDC etc, but also investing a lot in Odigger/Offervault and other online presence

4. You need a big amount of cash if you want to start a network. Key in growing as a network is guaranteeing superfast payments (we pay weekly) to your affiliates. So you need to advance the money before you get paid. You can't do this with "low cost venture"

All of the above not only require a lot of money but also a lot of professional staff and time. Its really not easy to build a champions league network as you make it seem.

1. Spot on. Especially to get an uncapped budget.
2. 100% True tracking software is by no means cheap we've spent 7 figures on technology and eventually pulled the trigger to build our own.
3.True.
4. Biggest thing is the amount of float you can afford. I've seen plenty of networks go bankrupt because they had affiliates on weeklies and advertisers did not pay.

Addiliate, is spot on regarding the whole post. If your looking for a low cost venture with less than $25,000 you can start an ebook product and generate a pretty decent amt of sales with a proper funnel in place.

 

[Offerit-John]

So from what I am reading, I guess every successful network was started by people with money upwards of $100k. and a dev team to create their own platform??? Please, allow me to retort...

1. So no good network ever started by rebrokering? Personally, since I have a product specific to this industry and work with clients daily, I can tell you this is simply untrue. We not only cater to enterprise companies, but also to the beginner who is looking to start a network and be more than an affiliate. They simply grow at the rate they can, devoting much of their time to branding, developing and learning what works for them. Is due diligence and knowledge required...absolutely, in any business it is. But to think it can't be done because maybe your experience was different, tisk tisk.

2. Not all big networks have or want to devote the resources necessary to have their own platform developed and the cost of the continual infrastructure management as it evolves. SaaS solutions reached $48.8 billion in revenue in 2014, representing a 24.4% YoY growth rate. It's expected to surpass $112.8 billion by 2019. The costs of creating and maintaining a custom platform over the years may balance out, but that's over years... and it's not guaranteed. Costs of staffing and hardware to maintain a platform continually change (increase mostly) and that's why you see the numbers above. More companies are moving towards this solution after a cost analysis, realizing the return is much better... and what are companies always trying to do??? improve their bottom line. It may take someone starting out longer to reach certain goals given their financials, experience and drive, but it is irresponsible to say it cannot be done without extremely large sums of money to start. If you do the math, the costs really don't affect the margins the way you may assume. It costs more to create and manage the infrastructure, then working with a SaaS solution. This is why you see the numbers above GROWING, not shrinking.

3. As you expand in any business, it is always wise to spend and market your own product in any way you see possible. Your budget determines this but doesn't necessarily need a set spend amount. If you are creative, you can find many ways to market your own brand and create partnerships, which in turn may lower expenses. Newcomers can manage this early on and set a % of profit right from the beginning to establish a growth marketing plan dedicated to awareness and branding. This is the smart move IMO.

4. If you follow a similar plan as I have witnessed other clients do, you get to this point where you can offer weekly payouts and reach all of these goals where you will need to inject capital... but again, this is not on Day 1 of your business, not without investing like you are saying. Not everyone has the means to create a business at the level or rate you describe, and that is why solutions like ours aren't expensive and give newcomers an opportunity to grow their own network with minimal investment and less risk. There is no need to shell out $200k to develop a platform (and months if not longer of development) when you can use SaaS services like ours for $250.00 p/month plus usage cost and grow at your own pace. Unless you are already a large company already with funding, it won't happen unless you are starting deep in the red... and fighting your way out.

Money, time and staff are always going to be a necessity to grow, but if you go at the right pace, make connections, dedicate your time to learning the industry and are ambitious, you can have a low cost startup network that can become monstrous... just not on day 1. Take your earnings and reinvest in yourself until you get to the champions league level, if that's your desire. I never said it was easy, but nothing that is great ever was easy.

Starting out spending a few hundred thousand and possibly not being able to grow the business correctly, versus starting out paying a few hundred dollars monthly, increasing costs only as you grow, is much less risky and quite advantageous. At the end of Year 1, if you had to close down shop... you could either lose a couple hundred thousand or a couple thousand.

Wouldn't you agree?

I totally disagree with this statement for a number of reasons

1. Good networks don't rebroker any offers and only work with direct advertisers and exclusive campaigns. This takes a lot of time and personnel cost to sign those IOs, set up these campaigns and manage the campaigns

2. Big networks also develop their own tracking technology and dont work with third party systems such as voluum, hasoffers in order not to give the entire margin to these tracking platforms but rather to the affiliates

3. If you want to be serious as a network, you need to invest +100,000$ per year in your brand name and being out there for your affiliates. I'm not only talking about taking expensive booths at ASW/AWA/ASE/Leadscon/GDC etc, but also investing a lot in Odigger/Offervault and other online presence

4. You need a big amount of cash if you want to start a network. Key in growing as a network is guaranteeing superfast payments (we pay weekly) to your affiliates. So you need to advance the money before you get paid. You can't do this with "low cost venture"

All of the above not only require a lot of money but also a lot of professional staff and time. Its really not easy to build a champions league network as you make it seem.