Affiliate Building Blocks.
Hi! My name is Jaybot and I'm an Affiliate Marketer.
Now, you may be wondering what this blog article/Follow Along/Tutorial thingy is all about.
And to be honest with you... So am I
OK. So, I've been around the block a few times and I am not a total noob, I've had +$XXXX days and -$XXX days...
I started affiliate marketing a few years back when I realized that I couldn’t scale myself. I’ve been relatively successful in several other completely unrelated fields. But. I realized I was renting out my time too much. No matter how much I worked, I couldn’t clone myself
But computers will work 24/7 for me. And they can scale infinitely, or at least a helluva lot better than humans can.
So… I started out like most noobs:
Having no frickin’ clue what the hell to do.
Random google searches on affiliate marketing. Searching for information on crappy internet forums, trying any sort of courses I could find on affiliate marketing… and most were absolutely terrible.
But I don’t regret that.
As you’ll see in the coming days, weeks, months (hopefully!), Affiliate Marketing is about making lots and lots of mistakes until you find something that clicks.
My first few months of AM was running Microsoft Bing Ads PPC (Pay Per Click) search ads to health related e-books on Click Bank.
I would send search ads for ‘Best XXX Cure’ to website/blog with email sign up for free tips, and send to offer page on submit.
I also tried direct linking (Bing did not like this) to the offer and a bunch of split-tested landers. And of course, the email list was an auto-responder using the swipe file from the offer owner, with links to the offer. All of these things worked. Kinda.
My first week of AM, I made a whopping $80.73!!! Woohoo, I was off to the strip-club soon!
My first month: $203.91 more! Yeah, baby! This magic internet money thing is real!
And then charge-backs started happening.
Some people were not happy with their e-books, I suppose.
These Click Bank e-books are not cheap payouts either. Like $24 a conversion, plus up-sells. Oh, and I hadn’t even calculated how much I had spent on hosting and adspend (it was more than the revenue, I’m pretty sure).
Still. I was hooked. I loved the idea of making money online by selling other people’s stuff (I don’t want to deal with inventory, do you?)
However. I didn’t like the loooooong wait times for conversions (and charge-backs) for these Click Bank offers. I needed a way to split-test things faster and find things that worked (and paid) much quicker.
After a few other bumps along the way... Long story short (this intro is too damn long already):
I found Pops and CPA Networks. And I still love them. They’re quick, cheap, profitable, and will teach you everything you need to know about running traffic. From tiny Single Opt-in campaigns at $0.01 payouts through Credit Card submits at $40 payouts, all the way up to Casino and Crypto payouts at $500. Pops work.
So. I kinda know what I'm doing. But.
I also know how difficult it is to be starting out in the affiliate world:
It's scary as hell.
It sounds easy, in theory though, right?
Buy some traffic from a traffic source, send it to an offer = big profits!
That's what all the gurus tell you, anyway
The truth is, I'm not a guru. But. I do have a secret!
If you do this one weird trick, you will master affiliate marketing and you will make profits!
What is this one weird trick?
You must run campaigns
You can spend all day reading about what offers and verticals and landers and spying and cloaking and traffic sources... for years and never run one camp.
And you will be no closer to your dream of fat stacks of cash and swimming pools full of lovely ladies with loose morals.
What? That's only my dream? Whatever, I'm sure yours is nice too. But you still ain't anywhere near it if you're not buying traffic.
To run traffic, you must spend money.
And you WILL lose money. That money will get you some data.
You will also look at that data using the best tracker on the planet (Binom, of course
). You will adjust your traffic. And eventually, you will make more money than you lose.
"But why, why, why Jaybot?! Why are you writing this? You never answered that question!" I hear you asking.
Because I love you.
No?
That doesn't work on my wife either. Ah well.
The real reason is: to learn!
That's right! I'm not a super-duper affiliate like many others you see in this space. And I firmly believe that one of the best ways to learn and get better, is to teach what you have learned so far.
With that being said. I want to get back to basics, and point out how to get started in this business.
Which is why I’ve named this Affiliate Building Blocks.
You know those little blocks that babies play with to learn how to stack things, and knock them over, and throw across the room and scare the dog?
Then, as they understand it better... you leave the room for 5 minutes and come back to the kid building a 10 foot castle, complete with a moat and live alligators in the water?
Trust me, it’s possible. But you need to have the basics down first. And you also have to be willing to play with the building blocks. Knock them down. Throw them across the room. Stack as many as you can before they fall over.
Without getting bogged down in all the nitty-gritty bulls**t details that a lot of noobs get stuck on...
Like: statistical significance. Spending 10x payout on each placement. Testing out 20 friggin' landers to find the ultimate funnel, etc.
You don't need any of that crap when you start out.
All you need is:
1) Traffic
2) An offer that converts
That's it!
So let's just choose a random offer from an affiliate network. I'll choose Zeydoo because... I've never tried it before. Let's be noobs together, yay!
Remember, you can always ask support or your Affiliate Manager what you are looking for (easy converting offers in cheap geos) and they usually have a good idea of what’s working currently.
I asked support what's a good offer and they gave me some 'super-easy converting offer that works with direct linking'.
Sounds good! It's a multi-geo offer with varying payouts depending on geo. Most of the payouts are super low...
Like $0.01
Highly unlikely it will bring big profits, but whatever, let's do it. We just want to see conversions right now.
But to be on the safer side, let's choose 5 geos which are close in payout and run them together to see if they convert. I'm going to choose...
BF, LS, IQ, MQ, SS
or in normal English:
Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Iraq, Martinique, South Sudan
Why these random geos? The payout is between $0.01 and $0.02 and they all have a good balance of traffic cost and volume. I almost chose of PH (Philippines). But then I realized there is tons of volume there, and I would regret that quickly. How do I know that? By messing up many times and running PH and failing. This comes from experience. Or by learning from other’s mistakes, like mine. Avoid PH for the time being.
I have never run Lesotho or even knew it was a country until just now... but we're here to make mistakes together, right? Right!
Setting up Zeydoo in Binom took about 30 seconds. I just loaded the template.
Then grabbed the offer link from Zeydoo. Created the offer in Binom. Copy-paste the link, replaced the tokens (the amazing Binom support and Zeydoo will both help you out with this silly stuff), and pretty much done.
Before making a campaign however... I want to make a rotation in Binom, even if we're direct linking. This way, I can test a few different offers, and even some landers in the future without having to mess with a bunch of campaigns.
OK, now campaign time. Create campaign, set the traffic loss to 12% (that's my magic number, you play with yours until your costs match), then select that rotation we just made and save. Now we have a nice link to copy and paste into our traffic source.
Oh crap, I forgot to choose a traffic source, silly me.The easiest traffic source, by far, is Pops. Pop-Ups, Pop-Over, Pop-Under, Pop-Sideways. However you want to call it. Start with Pops.
Don't start with Push. It’s too confusing for noobs. We'll totally get into it later. For now, stick with pops.
Or DIE!!!!!
Just kidding. You're not going to die. The offer might die, but you shouldn't.
So.
The best pops source to start is: whatever you want.
However, I like PropellerAds overall for testing. It's easy to use and has quick approval times (which is essential for running pops/push). Other sources like PopAds, ZeroPark, ClickAdu, Hilltop, Self Advertiser, etc. etc. etc. are all good too. But not as easy, nor as quick to approve. So, screw them for now (sorry!). You can agonize over that stuff later. You need to run traffic now, so just do it.
Adding Propeller in Binom is just as simple. They have a template for that too
Again: If any of this token stuff scares you, ask Binom Support or Propeller Support. They’ll work with you with incredible patience until you get it working.
Now, let’s go over to Propeller and break some eggs
Create a New Campaign.
Alright. Pops. CPA Goal.
As broad as possible, we're choosing mobile only, Android, no Webview (trust me), and Wifi + 3G. Don't mess around with languages. The more narrow you target, the less traffic you will get. Remember, the traffic source wants to sell you as much of their traffic as possible. And we have no idea what is their bad traffic yet.
CPA Goal campaign of $0.01 to let propellers magic algorithm do most of the magic for us. $10 minimum daily budget.
Save and start, and... cross our fingers that it gets approved.
It gets approved!
Now we check if the traffic is running to the offer on Zeydoo dashboard. It is!
Let's wait a bit and see if any conversions happened...
There are!
And check back in Binom to see if anything posted back...
Yay!
$0.03 we're rich! Ignore that red for now
I wonder how many conversions this will have by the end of the day?
I guess we'll have to wait until the next article to find out! We'll also try out some more super-simple offers, maybe another network or two (like Haka or Traffic Company) and start introducing some landers into the mix.
See you soon!
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You can contact Jaybot via Telegram @jaybot7
