Frustrated Newbie

[Annesoren]

Hi! I am Anne from Norway. Where to start...

I haven't launched a single campaign yet, and I keep getting stuck on obstacles on the way - but getting closer...
I have worked as an analys in some major corporations, am fairly intelligent, and studied graphic design as well.
I signed up for all the tools and downloaded some landing pages from Adplexity just to see how they are built, but wow was I demotivated! They all seem super advanced with tons of scripts, stylesheets etc. and I just dont know where to go from here. Studying codes for months is no alternative

What I have done so far is to:

get a domain, hosting, tracking software (trackingdesk), spy tool (Adplexity), affiliate network (one of the small ones, because the larger wants to see results before they let me in), traffic source (PopAds, PropellerAds), learn some basic HTML and CSS, added subdomains and created CNAME records to my tracker.

I plan to start with mobile traffic, and I have one offer approval so I can run a test campaign, but I can't seem to put everything together...

Questions:
- How does everyone create their pre-landers? Do they need to be so advanced?
- Do you sometimes grab logos and images from the offer website - and is that allowed?
- What pixel sizes should the ads be? Lets say I want to make a native ad on a mobile source - how do I know the size it should be? Is it just a simple .jpg?
- Is there anyone who can help someone like me to go through the steps of launching a campaign for the first time?

 

[Anthonyyeee]

Hi there, I'm a newbie as well but I can tell you what I learned to do.

- I use adplexity to find some pre-landers that are already being used then I take em with httrack and use sublime text to put in all the codes I need. I test the pre-landers and whichever one is working the best for me, I then A/B test that one pre lander by putting in different headlines/images/Call to actions. Personally, I find that simple pre landers are more effective.

-I've never tried that but I believe that's allowed. I could be wrong so double check with your affiliate manager on your affiliate network.

-There are multiple ad sizes but the most popular ones being used are 300x250 and 728x90.

-Launching a campaign is the easy part. Testing and optimizing is what is going to be difficult. Just keep in mind that you will make mistakes but that's ok because every mistake you make teaches you valuable lessons. You can ask your ad network to help you understand how to set up a campaign. This might help you as well...

How to Create a Killer Mobile Campaign on ExoClick

Good luck to you! I hope you succeed. Just a word of advice, you don't need to learn code or anything technical if you don't want to! There are simple workarounds and you can even outsource these tasks to others to do for you.

 

[Annesoren]

Hi there, I'm a newbie as well but I can tell you what I learned to do.

- I use adplexity to find some pre-landers that are already being used then I take em with httrack and use sublime text to put in all the codes I need. I test the pre-landers and whichever one is working the best for me, I then A/B test that one pre lander by putting in different headlines/images/Call to actions. Personally, I find that simple pre landers are more effective.

-I've never tried that but I believe that's allowed. I could be wrong so double check with your affiliate manager on your affiliate network.

-There are multiple ad sizes but the most popular ones being used are 300x250 and 728x90.

-Launching a campaign is the easy part. Testing and optimizing is what is going to be difficult. Just keep in mind that you will make mistakes but that's ok because every mistake you make teaches you valuable lessons. You can ask your ad network to help you understand how to set up a campaign. This might help you as well...



Good luck to you! I hope you succeed. Just a word of advice, you don't need to learn code or anything technical if you don't want to! There are simple workarounds and you can even outsource these tasks to others to do for you.

Thanks a lot @Anthonyyeee, and the best of luck to you too It's quite a learning curve. I feel all backwards, because it seems the setup of everything is the worst part for me. Cant wait for the analyzing and optmizing part to begin - thats more in my corner

I signed up for leadpages.net and it seems to work great. The pages are more advanced than I was looking for, but it was super easy to delete sections and simplify the page as much as I want. After that I just download the page in .html and upload it to my server. No need to worry about the images and stylesheets, because they are stored on leadpages.net directories which the html file point to

Where do you find the information about ad sizes? Is it from traffic sourses (like PropellerAds)?

 

[Eric hunter]

Hey @Annesoren
From how it looks to me you are more than ready.
In this industry, there is no doubt that you need to jump into the other, you have managed to collect an amazing amount of information.
Information that not all the active affiliates even now, and they earning money.

I know that you want to do things in the best way, but don't be afraid to fail or to lose few dollars.
The smart way to do it is to test it, test your campaigns in smaller amounts until
you will see it works well.

Anyway, I know it's hard but try to stay focused, and you have a lot of things to try out in the affiliate marketing world.

I wanted to ask you though few questions if you don't mind,

1) Adplexity, is (relatively) a very expensive tool, why would you want to pay that much before you even started?
2) Do you use a Landing Page builder? because there are few Drag&Drop platforms that are amazing.
If you do, which one?

 

[Annesoren]

Hey @Annesoren
From how it looks to me you are more than ready.
In this industry, there is no doubt that you need to jump into the other, you have managed to collect an amazing amount of information.
Information that not all the active affiliates even now, and they earning money.

I know that you want to do things in the best way, but don't be afraid to fail or to lose few dollars.
The smart way to do it is to test it, test your campaigns in smaller amounts until
you will see it works well.

Anyway, I know it's hard but try to stay focused, and you have a lot of things to try out in the affiliate marketing world.

I wanted to ask you though few questions if you don't mind,

1) Adplexity, is (relatively) a very expensive tool, why would you want to pay that much before you even started?
2) Do you use a Landing Page builder? because there are few Drag&Drop platforms that are amazing.
If you do, which one?

Hello Eric!

Thank you so much for your advice. I almost feel stupid trying to put this together. And I definately do not mind questions

I understand what you mean by jumping in and test it out. But honestly, I am not hesitating to try - I literally can't figure out how everything fits together. Like I get the concept, but the actual step-by-step technical prosess is missing. Now, I have only been at it for a few days, and I guess it takes time to learn, but I hate waiting for that big light bulb to hover over my head

1) Well, I ask myself the same question. It just seemed like all I read was how important it was. And I was also really desperate to get some landers otgether and I thought Adplexity could be helpful (turnet out it wasn't for me).
2) I now signed up for leadpages.net for my landers, and that seems to work great.

I will try to enter the Mobidea platform and see if I can find some offers in there. Because the one offer I had seems so shady I dont feel comfortable with it.

Thanks again, I appreciate any help!

 

[RO Creative]

You're in a pretty much confused state because of information overload.
I suggest checking out some journeys here and there and see what they're doing and follow it.
I will be posting a journey thread so you can follow it aswell.
Do check for it or if you want I can link it to you once I publish the thread.

 

[Annesoren]

You're in a pretty much confused state because of information overload.
I suggest checking out some journeys here and there and see what they're doing and follow it.
I will be posting a journey thread so you can follow it aswell.
Do check for it or if you want I can link it to you once I publish the thread.

Thank you.Yes, Information overload is the word! Please link me to your article

 

[Eric hunter]

Hello Eric!

Thank you so much for your advice. I almost feel stupid trying to put this together. And I definately do not mind questions

I understand what you mean by jumping in and test it out. But honestly, I am not hesitating to try - I literally can't figure out how everything fits together. Like I get the concept, but the actual step-by-step technical prosess is missing. Now, I have only been at it for a few days, and I guess it takes time to learn, but I hate waiting for that big light bulb to hover over my head

1) Well, I ask myself the same question. It just seemed like all I read was how important it was. And I was also really desperate to get some landers otgether and I thought Adplexity could be helpful (turnet out it wasn't for me).
2) I now signed up for leadpages.net for my landers, and that seems to work great.

I will try to enter the Mobidea platform and see if I can find some offers in there. Because the one offer I had seems so shady I dont feel comfortable with it.

Thanks again, I appreciate any help!

Hey @Annesoren !
First I will say that you doing great.
Again you have managed to learn a lot of information, and as you can probably understand, all the information you have now touched only in one sector in this big world of Affiliate Marketing.

And that is what so great about.
First, forget about Adplexity now, in my opinion, this service is good but only for companies.

leadpages.net is pretty good, the basic package works well for a reasonable price and even the professional one is not that expensive.
And yeah, it takes time to learn all, but you don't have to master it all before taking action.
So again, get approved to mobidea, choose a nice offer and give it a try - with a small and reasonable budget.

 

[Annesoren]

Hey @Annesoren !
First I will say that you doing great.
Again you have managed to learn a lot of information, and as you can probably understand, all the information you have now touched only in one sector in this big world of Affiliate Marketing.

And that is what so great about.
First, forget about Adplexity now, in my opinion, this service is good but only for companies.

leadpages.net is pretty good, the basic package works well for a reasonable price and even the professional one is not that expensive.
And yeah, it takes time to learn all, but you don't have to master it all before taking action.
So again, get approved to mobidea, choose a nice offer and give it a try - with a small and reasonable budget.

Thank you! I'm so glad I joined this forum. I got my approval with some offers today, and hope to get something up and running soon! My tracker Trackingdesk has noticed me struggeling for days and also reached out today to offer me a one-on-one help session. That is some impressive customer service!

Also, I signed up for another traffic source yesterday. I had propellerads first and the help material was really bad and so was the customer service (felt like I was interupting someones coffee break)

But now I signed up for Tribal Ad, and that was a game changer too. Their introduction videos blew my mind and I learned more about optimizing campaigns in an hour than I did the whole week I've been reading (I'm an analyst, so this stuff spins my head). And not to mention how to bid smart to achieve better ad placement without spending more money!! It just feels like I found the traffic source for me, where someone actually wants me to succeed

Thanks again everybody!

 

[Eric hunter]

My tracker Trackingdesk has noticed me struggeling for days and also reached out today to offer me a one-on-one help session. That is some impressive customer service!

That is amazing, that thing that you just told me, made me want to check them and use their services.
Do you use the Free package or the Affiliate package?

Also, I signed up for another traffic source yesterday. I had propellerads first and the help material was really bad and so was the customer service (felt like I was interupting someones coffee break)

Yeah, from some reason, some of them give you that feeling. That is sucks.

It just feels like I found the traffic source for me, where someone actually wants me to succeed

That is great to hear!
Good job, I will check Tribal Ad too.

Good Luck, and if you need anything, feel free!

 

[Annesoren]

Do you use the Free package or the Affiliate package?

I have a 30 day free trial on a payed package (not sure what the name of the package is). They were much cheaper than Voluum, so I figured I try them. Seems to me like a pretty advanced tool, but I still havent been able to make proper use of it, so I cant say for sure.

 

[Aimad]

hey there! reading your post sounded like me hahaha i've been through the same process i have learned html and css to make my own landers but unfortunatly looks like it's not enough, the difference is i didn't spent much time to dive into action, one month ago i signed up in mobidea network "they have great support service" then was launching campaigns and made every mistake you could imagine hahaha. still not profitable though but it's not a probleme, i think my trafic source is suck and i realy want to change it, i'm using popads. please make sure to tell us about your experience with your new trafic source maybe i'm going to give it a try. best of luck.

 

[Annesoren]

hey there! reading your post sounded like me hahaha i've been through the same process i have learned html and css to make my own landers but unfortunatly looks like it's not enough, the difference is i didn't spent much time to dive into action, one month ago i signed up in mobidea network "they have great support service" then was launching campaigns and made every mistake you could imagine hahaha. still not profitable though but it's not a probleme, i think my trafic source is suck and i realy want to change it, i'm using popads. please make sure to tell us about your experience with your new trafic source maybe i'm going to give it a try. best of luck.

Hi there! Almost glad to hear that others are struggeling too But congratulations for actually launching campaigns!!

Unfortunately I dont feel much closer to my goal - which is to set everything up and run a campaign. Banging my head against the wall here. If only I could get past the technical stuff, I'd be fine on my own... (I know there's still a lot to learn after that, but that's ok).

I'm going to ask in here if there are anyone who knows this inside out and can do a private lesson :/ *feeling beyond stupid at this point*

 

[Aimad]

i can recommand charles ngo guide for you, it helped me big time with the technical stuff! actualy i bought a domain name from namecheap as described there, and registred to bluehost as he described and prety much followed every step he mentioned to launch my first campaign, and then it cames the part of my AM to help adjust things according to my affiliate network, just check it out i'm sure it would help you. then you just come back here and post your questions i'm sure you'll find answers

 

[Annesoren]

i can recommand charles ngo guide for you, it helped me big time with the technical stuff! actualy i bought a domain name from namecheap as described there, and registred to bluehost as he described and prety much followed every step he mentioned to launch my first campaign, and then it cames the part of my AM to help adjust things according to my affiliate network, just check it out i'm sure it would help you. then you just come back here and post your questions i'm sure you'll find answers

Yes, I have read the whole thing. And the domain and hosting is done. I now even signed up for Voluum as well just to be able to follow his step by step guide. But there are some pieces missing still. My traffic source and affiliate network are not predefined in the tool, which makes it harder...

 

[Aimad]

he had mentioned how to add trafic source and affiliate network to voluum too, and also how to setup postback url to your affiliate network (if your using mobidea i can help you with that), these are easy steps just give them a try now and you'll see.. go for it now and hit me with your questions i'll be happy to help you..

 

[Annesoren]

he had mentioned how to add trafic source and affiliate network to voluum too, and also how to setup postback url to your affiliate network (if your using mobidea i can help you with that), these are easy steps just give them a try now and you'll see.. go for it now and hit me with your questions i'll be happy to help you..

Indeed he did. But I dont think he mention where to bid on traffic for example. Seems like its possible to start a campaign from both the tracker and the traffic source..? I'll have another go tomorrow (late now in Norway
Thank you!

 

[Aimad]

no you set up the campaign in tracker, then you get your tracking link and insert it in trafic source, it's there where you have to pay to get trafic from, and set the bid and targeting and other stuff! think of it this way (trafic source "pay $$ for trafic")----trafic---->(voluum"track results and collect data")----trafic---->(affiliate network "deliver trafic and get the profit$$$")

 

[Annesoren]

@Aimad thanks again. That makes it clearer. And another problem is I dont know what platforms the other networks run on. I tried to ask CS at mobidea but she had no idea!? Seems to me I need to know that stuff to set it up properly in the tracking tool. If its cake, hasoffers or any other technology... Are there any lists out there where I can look it up?

 

[Aimad]

i'm not sure i've understand your question, seems like i'm missing something here can you explain more please??