[AMA] $25m+ in affiliate mktg revenue & exiting the game: Ask me anything.

[Shallen210]

Hello, I've been dabbling in affiliate marketing for a while now. I've been getting more into pay per call lately. Have you any experience with pay per call?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[apax999]

great thread, I learn a lot and thanks for doing this. I have a couple of questions regarding PPV.
1. where do you do demographic research? quantcast used to do the trick, but not anymore, it seems they hide all the data. Now I use alexa, but not sure if it is accurate.
2. When do you decide to go wide on a campaign? I mean after how many conversions? Every time I try to go wide, I always lose money.
I tried different angles and sometimes direct linking and it never worked out. Let's say I'm running a payday loan, I tried to bid
on bank sites. When I run background check offers like instant check mate (was highly recommended by my affiliate manager), I bid on mom's and nannie sites. How much do you spend before you decide to kill a campaign for an offer that pay around $25?
3. can you give any example on how you go wide? any niche is fine, diet, loan, debt, penny auction, coupon, credit report or anything. do you rotate offers and landing pages? and how much do you spend on each keyword or target before you kill the target?
4. do you use a full page landing page or 700x435 on trafficvance?
5. do you use both popup and in-text on trafficvance, which one do you have more success with going wide?

thanks a lot.

1. Quantcast is a good jumping-off point. Google Ad Planner is also very good. Tip: never hurts to ask your traffic source of choice for a report on sites they would recommend placing your ad. Usually they will pull up a competitor's campaign and feed you their data -- after all, competition is good for the ad network.

2. Depends on the CPA. If you are running co-reg paths on a 0.85 RPU I would kill the campaign after $50 and re-build it with new targets/landers whatever. If you're running $40-50 credit report offers I'd run it up to $500. Thinking back, it looks like my rule of thumb was 10-15x CPA. Hopefully by the time you reach that mark, you will have done at least a couple conversions to tip you off on a trend.

3. Going wide just means getting more traffic, nothing to do with lp's or more offers. In fact, I wouldn't go wide until I perfected my lander(s) and was running the best offer out there. Pull your top converting placements/keywords/targets and use the good 'ol noggin to see if you can decipher trends. For instance, take diet trial stuff. Here's a sample campaign where there is 200-300 placements, and these are the top 3 targets based upon conversions

placement conversions
------------------------------------------
jennycraig.com 45
weightwatchers.com 30
nutrisystem.com 28

trend is obvious here. but instead of looking for more weight loss sites to go wide with, think of other stuff.

food (calorie count websites, recipe websites like allrecipes.com)
clothing (demo is obvious in this fairly-obvious example, women -- target victoriassecret.com, loft.com other women clothing sites etc.)

4. You need to split test. I spent a lot trying to figure this one out.

5. Popups, by far.

This was a great thread... and if you dont mind I would like to ask a few quick questions.

1. I noticed you said co-reg is your bread and butter... are u still running it?
2. And if so... which networks are u with? (silverpath, smiley, OI, etc)
3. Which countries are you seeing the highest RPUs and how much are they?

Awhile back I had a great idea for a front end but before I launched something else started working so I devoted all my attention to milking it.
Now Im in between campaigns and Im basically testing some lead gen idea but Im itching to monetize those optins immediately so I was thinking about sending them down a path or to an offer wall.

1. No. Co-reg for all intents and purposes is dead. The pillars of coreg were mobile/pin submit offers but shady publishers and networks forced Verizon and AT&T to pull out last year. Intl co-reg is even worse.

2. All of the above, plus GameTheory when they were big. I would stay away from the now-defunct Smileymedia and anything their former CEO is involved in.

3. It was US. Past-tense.

With co-reg, unless you build it and own all the direct relationships it's a dead medium. Was awesome for a long long time. You could arbitrage any traffic source into a coreg path and come out profitable.

Do you find demographics shift from country to country or that AMA is typically stable across demographics regardless of locale?

It's pretty stable across US/CA/UK/AU. Once you go outside of that bubble it may be worthwhile to do a little extra research.

 

[apax999]

Hello, I've been dabbling in affiliate marketing for a while now. I've been getting more into pay per call lately. Have you any experience with pay per call?

I tested it for a few days, got bored. I don't like buying mobile advertising right now. I think it's way over-rated, reporting on all of the big networks is dreadful, and mobile users are not likely to purchase anything. For instance, a big % of the mobile traffic are people on the move... commuting to work, at work, out in a public place -- I don't see them stopping, pulling out their wallet, getting their credit card and entering cc info on their iphone while standing on the subway platform.

Some guys love mobile and proclaim it the "Wave of the future" yada yada. And it will be. But we need to come to a point where we are storing CC and payment info ON our phones. If we can eliminate the process of your casual, normal end-user needing to reach for their wallet while on their mobile device THEN I think mobile could be huge.

Once-click purchase for this trial product .... yes please!

 

[timlisten]

thank you so much for answering my questions. I wish I could have found this thread earlier. I was doing ok last year running a lot of campaigns like 100+ where my income comes mostly from the top 5 campaigns. The good campaigns come and go and some die over time and I have to keep finding replacement for these campaigns. Unfortunately, all my profitable campaigns die like 3 weeks ago, so my income goes from $400 a day to $0 literally overnight. Here's a few more questions for you if you don't mind.

1. Do you run a lot of campaigns or just focus on a few?

2. Do you run pay per leads offers or pay per sales offers when you go wide? I'm getting a lot of charge backs recently on some pay per lead offers bidding on highly targeted sites, do you think the leads will be less quality when you bid on unrelated sites when going wide?

3. Does simple landing page work better or the complicated ones like flog or a sales page work better for you? I've read a lot of different opinions on this. Personally, I found simple and shocking landing pages drives more clicks but not necessary conversions.

4. Any other good ppv networks other than Leadimpact and Trafficvance?

5. Do you ever have to deal with down time where profit drop to a point where it makes you upset? How do you deal with it? I'm feeling really upset as I tried hard in the past 3 weeks trying to find new offers to run without success (spend $300 daily and break even) and start to question myself does ppv still work with all the competitions and spy tools out there?

again, thanks so much.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Shallen210]

I tested it for a few days, got bored. I don't like buying mobile advertising right now. I think it's way over-rated, reporting on all of the big networks is dreadful, and mobile users are not likely to purchase anything. For instance, a big % of the mobile traffic are people on the move... commuting to work, at work, out in a public place -- I don't see them stopping, pulling out their wallet, getting their credit card and entering cc info on their iphone while standing on the subway platform.

Some guys love mobile and proclaim it the "Wave of the future" yada yada. And it will be. But we need to come to a point where we are storing CC and payment info ON our phones. If we can eliminate the process of your casual, normal end-user needing to reach for their wallet while on their mobile device THEN I think mobile could be huge.

Once-click purchase for this trial product .... yes please!

I understand, but the thing with pay per call, is its usually offers that people need, like handymans, adt security systems, allstate car insurance etc...wouldnt you say if these people were needing something like that they would be searching for it and make a call when its probably a priority to them ex..my water pipe busted, need a plumber now scenarios? And you as a pay per call affiliate/publisher gets paid if the phone call lasts a certain time and is within the criteria the advertiser is looking for. So regardless if they buy the service or product, you still will receive a commission for driving the phone call to their call center.

would you say most people who are purchasing products and services over the internet are still coming from pc/desktops?

 

[Jakeeck]

So do those gaming networks stick your in-game ads over a multitude of sites? Or are you able to pick a specific site? Say I wanted all my in-game ads to be on pogo, am I able to do that?

 

[Yussef]

Just wanted to say welcome (from another ex-affiliate here for several years), and thanks for the post. A lot of people who want to get into AM these days don't realize what a challenge they are facing. At the same time, people who have never dealt with it and have no interest to, often don't believe the numbers that it is possible to generate.

I have a conversion headache right now from an offer I just couldn't get profitable.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Yussef]

When you optimized your campaigns, did you normally end up targeting just a few placements or was it spread out amongst many placements?

How often did you buy traffic directly from the websites that converted?

Is it important to have good relationships with people from the traffic source?

I have my own product and business, and it's been selling fairly well, but I am having problems scaling. I'm mainly using Facebook to drive traffic to a lander, then to the product itself. Do you have any recommendations regarding Facebook?

When you do find an offer that sells, how well have you been able to take it to different traffic sources?

Jason if I am not mistaking, you suggested TBB to me a while ago and per your request I learned a lot about Media buying from Chad and Mike. Didn't know if I had an opportunity to thank you for that so Thank you.

 

[Yussef]

Hey folks,

For those that didn't read my intro post, I'm at a point where I'm looking to make a major pivot out of affiliate marketing (calling it 'AM' herein) into a true fastlane business. I read MJ's book and have torn through hundreds of threads in this forum. Figured the least I could do is start a question thread for those of you interested in AM.

I got into AM 7 years ago when I was finishing up college, the first 2 years of which I only ran about $50k in revenue while learning the ropes.

The last 5 years I've done between $25-30m in revenue. I've generated the bulk of this by "campaign hopping" from the hot thing at the moment, while also running some more long-term stable campaigns in the background.

Some things upfront: I don't do mobile advertising. I don't do Clickbank or Commission Junction. I don't do SE-slow. I've never done adult or dating offers or touched adult traffic sources. I only have 1 employee--me--and work from home. I have outsourced tech, design and dev teams. I've made a good chunk of this revenue from promoting PIN submit offers and another big chunk employing co-registration/regpaths.

My personal best profit days were around $30,000 /day. I am pretty fed up and burnt out from AM and will be open, frank and fairly candid in this AMA thread.

Tips / observations / random thoughts:

- This was and will continue to be an increasingly difficult business to get into. US and CA based affiliates have to comply with govt regulations in all of their marketing efforts all while competing with guys on the opposite side of the world who could care less about rules and regulations. Those guys are (for the most part) untouchable, while US based affiliates could (and do) get nailed hard.

- Continuing off of the first point, a lot of US affiliates have moved their efforts overseas targetting EU, Latam and Asia instead of US/CA. Don't be afraid to get your LP translated on onehourtranslation.com and test some offers in small, random countries. There's no better feeling then spending 1/10 the CPC and yielding double the EPC on an intl offer in a small country vs. running in US.

- This business isn't about re-inventing the wheel. It's about copying whats working (whatrunswhere.com etc), improving it and tweaking it so that it lasts.

- AM is not a fastlane business. It's a "tease" fastlane business. It's possible to keep campaigns running for months at a time with only minor creative/LP upkeep -- but eventually the traffic source will dry out, competitors will eat you, or the offer will be discontinued. There have been many months where I could get by working 1-2 hours per week. In hindsight, I wish I was actively pursuing a true fastlane business with this "free time". I am now.

- CPA networks are falling by the wayside. Whoever you work with, make sure you are on weekly wire payments regardless of your volume. If a network refuses this move on.

- Your affiliate manager at the CPA network is your best friend and potential business partner. If you can prove you can run big revenue they will share incredible amounts of internal data with you, including competitor landing pages and traffic sources. I have several affiliate managers who I've followed around from network to network quite simply because they will be my inside man and partner. Again, your affiliate/account manager is your best buddy.

- What's doing most revenue right now on the high revenue networks you ask? Nutra stuff, and within that huge vertical: rebills. Diet to be precise, followed by skin. Straight-sale nutra stuff isn't too far behind. Outside of nutra, tool-bars (notably the shady "Update your Flash player" offer) are doing hundreds of thousands of leads per day. Behind that, PIN submits, promo (win and iPad offers) and dating do huge revenue.

- Credit cards are your friends in this business. I recommend Amex Plum (2% cash back) and Amex Starwood Business (points can be worth over 0.05 per point if redeemed correctly). I've accumulated millions of points paying for my huge adspends and haven't paid for a vacation in 5 years, including weeks around Europe, first class airfare etc. It's a good perk of the job. 2% cashback on a $1.5m monthly adspend account is a nice $30k bonus. Points have also allowed me to treat family members to great vacations. Amex is incredibly receptive to increasing credit.


I know there are 2-3 other huge AM threads on here, so hopefully we can ask some original questions here. Perhaps we should keep this thread related intermediate or advanced discussion, or offer/network specific tidbits. I'll let you guys steer but I think most "how do i get started" questions have been answered elsewhere.

Lastly, I think it would be beneficial to keep any questions here and not via PM.

Look forward to chatting.

-apax

It's rare that you get successful media buyers to out their verticals and go to traffic source so I will not ask that of you. But I want to know how you feel about the following traffic sources and what verticals you think perform best there.

Exoclick. Adblade, Plugrush and Sitescout. Tha is all sir. Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[IkeP]

thanks for all the help Apax999

I have a video case study, i wonder if i can post it here and not break any TOS rules. looking into it now...

All the best,
Ike

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Georgy]

Fantastic thread, truly one of the more candid ones I've ever come across. It's too bad this thread has been deserted as a follow-up to the "post AM world" would be very interesting since I'm looking for alternate methods of generating income (as we all are). Everything Apax999 said about the affiliate marketing world is true. I mean he pretty much gives an outline of the whole process and how to be successful. Hardwork, dedication, but most importantly "networking". It's who you know that will bring you to the next level. Everything Apax999 mentioned about promoting desktop offers is true for mobile advertising. It's the same concept of hardwork, dedication and networking. I've been highly successful in the mobile game and still am. I even have partners that have joined in my venture and we continue to go strong. One important concept of being an entrepreneur is diversification. You can't just stick with one thing (ex:AM). You need to seek out other business opportunities and I've been muscling up the idea of product creation with the intent of re-billing (subscription). I haven't decided if I will make a physical product (ex: Eskil's Supplement Business from Scratch follow-along) or a digital subscription service (be it a simple subscription or far more advanced to include carriers).

Apax999 also got it dead on about working internationally as this is the bulk of the money being made. Why? As he mentioned it's all about the rules and regulations, but also for tax purposes where you don't take it up the "you-know-what" because your government penalizes you for doing business domestically. I spent the whole day literally reading many threads, putting things together and learning about product creation. I know forum rules in general are not to bring up old posts from the past but I saw someone posted here not too long ago, so maybe there's a chance of Apax999 returning to provide an update on his new endeavor. Although the probability is close to none I'll still ask the questions and continue to participate in this awesome forum lol:

--> Since your last post here which was a little over 2 years now, have you pulled the plug completely from AM? And how is your product launch as merchant coming along? This is the next level for me and would love to know a little bit more about how you stumbled upon this idea and why you decided to act on it.

 

[Yosh]

apax999,

I know its been a while your last post on Feb 11, 2014. Just curious how things are going with your other project that you mentioned int he thread. Some general questions.

1. Are you still running campaigns for other networks?
2. Its 2016 and I'm still seeing $1.30 zip submits on networks like Peerfly and Maxbounty does this mean co-reg is alive and kicking?
3. Since 2014 what traffic sources have you lost faith in (quality drop)
4. Did you ever get involved in Mobile as the tracking tools and ad networks have matured since 2014

Just a note. I learned more from this thread in the last 2 days of reading then 2 years on Warrior Forum lol Thanks.

 

[ZMan26]

@apax999

Whats the best AFM course there is ? I would like to learn AFM.

Currently all I do is ecom and id like to get another stream of income...

If you don't know any, could you share how you built your sales funnel ? the process ?

Thank you man, appreciate it

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Cyrus]

I'm curious since you said you started in the middle of college, did you ever end up finishing that degree? And why or why not?

 

[Zen Dragon]

Thank you for creating this.

What is your advice for someone that has created a meditation course and wants to grow a network of affiliates to promote it?

 

[ZMan26]

Thank you for creating this.

What is your advice for someone that has created a meditation course and wants to grow a network of affiliates to promote it?

Start by joining clickbank bro its $50, make sure you have a "trial" offer with recurring payments.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.