Insights from just a normal dude who’s done this hundreds of times and sold a company he and 2 other normal dudes built & sold for $100,000,000 in 7 years (2022).
The #1 Secret to profiting insanely on AMZ or .com website (Direct To Consumer?
Market Product Fit
not
Product Market Fit
Let me explain. The above starts with Product, but you need to ALWAYS start with the Market.
It goes against standard, accepted marketing practices.
Create a great product, great brand, and they will come.
Kind of like the Kevin Costner Movie “Field of Dreams”. If you build it, they will come.
Before you do anything…ANYTHING…analyze the crap out of the MARKET. Period!
Who are they? (Ideal Customer Profile / Avatar)
How big is the market?
What are they willing to spend for the solution they are looking for?
Can you get your Cost of Goods Sold down to 1/3 – 1/5 of the price they are willing to pay?
What do THEY want? What do they really NEED that will give them what they want?
You guys are all talking about pain points blah blah…that is important. But as many of the best copywriter guys say, you need to help guide the customer down the path of discovery.
But in today’s age, you can get there by gauging and analyzing customer sentiment.
Read reviews of the customers in the market for the top 10 best sellers.
Analyze the top ten best sellers and what they are delivering. Can you find a spot in the top ten?
What can you do better with your version of the solution?
What is going to be YOUR Brand’s (or Product Brand’s) Magic?
How can you deliver the solution in such a way that makes them feel something with your product?
The extreme example is DrinkBrez. @drinkbrez @iamshackelford Nick Shackelford his product literally gets you stoned. You definitely will feel something with his solution.
But what he’s really selling is a change of state. Going from Stressed out with Anxiety to Mellowed out & Checked out. An easier sale than many…
Once you have all this insight, then build the product, build the brand, build the content around the two of those in such a way that it is simply packaging that your Ideal Customer is already expecting to see.
Conversion/purchase is just a natural extension or natural byproduct (a reward to you, really) for giving them EXACTLY what they want.
Then conversion/purchase on AMZ or your .com website is just a natural extension or natural byproduct (a reward to you, really) for giving them EXACTLY what they want.
That’s how we built a company from scratch on AMZ in 7 years that sold for $100M in 2022.
We did that by doing so 15 times with 15 different brands in the same category/niche on AMZ & eBay. Didn’t even really get to DTC with them all.
Because, in any given category, different Ideal Customer Profiles are searching in the same AMZ Search Results Pages.
Examples?
Different price point sensitivity: $7.99 versus $10.99 versus $21.99.
Different size sensitivities: 10ml, 1 ounce, 4 ounce, 8 ounce, 16 ounce, 32 ounce, 1 gallon, 5 gallon. You laugh, but we had different brands for different sizes and prices.
This is pure gold…seriously, and is THE secret sauce.
I’ve done this in hundreds of categories in several businesses.
I can help you do so, too, and help you analyze your market before you make a huge mistake.
Send me a DM and let’s find a way for YOU to conquer your next niche…carve out a piece of the Ocean of Profits pie.
A small piece these days can turn into $1M ARR in 6+ months. Easy peasy!
Let’s do it!
Thank you for reading this far…seriously, message and let’s figure out to get your next big win together.
Making Money as an Online Affiliate Marketer – Introduction
Having been an active Affiliate Marketer since 1998 and being a natural educator who freely expresses my experience with anyone who will listen, I’m often asked “How do I get started earning money as an Affiliate Marketer?” The questions come in many shapes and sizes, but they all are asking the same thing. How do I tame this beast of Online Marketing and make an extra income…with the hopes of someday going full-time?”
The motivations are all the same and the degree to which they actually motivate the individual change over time.
I’ve taken several people under my wing over the years and went to great effort, expended a lot of energy, and time for some (even to the point of building out everything for them).
This post, and the accompanying video, will answer the where to start part of it and upcoming posts will deal with other facets of this complex business.
It (Affiliate Marketing) is a business and not just another expensive hobby.
That might be the first mind-shift you need to make. Although at times you will feel like you are a gambler running traffic to offers betting on the come…this is not gambling. It is not a hobby…although it may be for some.
If you are an Affiliate Marketing Gambler or Hobbyist I hope this post will change your mind and aid you in becoming a passionate die hard…who is fully committed to this as a business.
Step 1 Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – Establish your Lifestyle Cost Goal
I think the first step you need to go through is to establish some simple, but quantifiable goals for yourself.
One of my apprentices a couple of years ago (we’ll call him Jon) went through this with me kind of like this:
Dan: So, you want to make money online? Why?
Jon: I need to make money and I hate my job?
Dan: Ok. How much money do you need to make?
Jon: Well, a few hundred dollars a month would be cool.
Dan: Well, that’s not a number we can measure. How much do you need to make to not have to work the job you dislike so much? What would be a life changing number of earnings (profit) per month be?
Sidenote: I’m zeroing in on his lifestyle cost, or a figure he needs to reach to have financial freedom from a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke). Tim Ferriss did a great job explaining it and calls it “Lifestyle Costing” you can read about it by clicking here: Lifestyle Costing
Jon: Well, I need to make $1,500 per month to have all my bills paid and do the things I want to do.
Dan: Ok, so that’s $50 per day. No problem. (Notice I chunked it down to a daily goal, it makes it easier to digest and believe)
Sidenote 2: Tony Robbins talks a great deal about “chunking” and is probably where I learned this term from. I very quickly, and you should too, adopted the daily goals as my default. It’s easier for your brain to get a handle on those smaller numbers and helps deal with the fear that can hold you back. Before you know it, over time, you will be able to grasp earning $10,000, $50,000, even $100,000 per day. It’s gradual, over a long period of time, but did happen for me.
Jon: That doesn’t sound like a lot, does it?
Dan: Nope. We can get there in a couple of days.
Fast Forward: So, after a couple of days of training and cooperatively choosing a traffic source (Trafficvance in this case) and an offer (I don’t remember the exact offer, but remember it was a low payout (bounty) like about $3). I basically built everything for him, while he watched every step of the way. Within a couple of more days, he already hit his $50 per day goal. Within a week however, he lost interest and moved on to something else. I was bummed…
I’ve recently came in contact with him again and he’s jumped from one project to another and is yet again going after another. I think, for him, the thrill of the hunt is his demise. He currently has what I call Affiliate Casanova Disease which I wrote about curing in the post here.
To some extent, I think that he lost sight of the goal. To earn $50 profit per day. Maybe the goal was not exciting enough. It doesn’t matter. He set the number, not me.
I take full responsibility for my part in his failure. I personally robbed him of the joy of learning and struggling and fighting his way there. Having me cut through all the brush and pave a trail to the pot of gold robbed him of that.
So, being a consummate learner I will not do that for anyone again. I will point the way and tell you how and sometimes what you need to do, but you need to do it yourself. You’ll be a stronger, more Kickass Human Being when you get there than if I lead you the whole way there.
Step 2 Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – SWOT Analysis
I won’t go into too much detail on this, as you can visit the link above and do so yourself. One thing to note though, is that SWOT Analysis can be used for all aspects of your Affiliate Marketing Business.
As stated on Wikipedia, “A SWOT Analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry or person“.
You are the first thing that you should analyze assuming you’ve already come to the conclusion that the “industry” (Affiliate Marketing) passes your SWOT Analysis already.
So, run a SWOT Analysis of you. What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, what are the opportunities, and threats.
I’ll talk a little more about this in the video in this post when I answer some of the questions of a recent (yesterday) organic (thank you Google) visitor to KickassMarketer.com
Hopefully you get the idea though. You should analyze you, the Affiliate Offers you want to promote, the Affiliate Networks you want to work with, the Traffic Sources you want to work with. But, YOU should be the first place that you start analyzing.
Step 3 Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – What’s your exit strategy?
A wise man once said “Don’t start any business without knowing your exit strategy!”. Another way to put this is how Steven Covey says it “Begin with the End in Mind”. You can visit him here.
Are you starting a business you can sell, a lifestyle business, a replacement job for your JOB?
The most important thing here, is that you at least have a long term goal in mind. So, when you get lost in the details and grind of running the business day-to-day you have this to come back to for a renewed perspective.
For most Affiliate Marketers, myself included, when they start out…they desire to have a lifestyle business. One that frees them from having to show up to a 9-5 job. One with the inferred promise of more income than they are currently earning at their jobs. One with an unlimited amount of potential for increased income…which is absolutely still true to this day about Affiliate Marketing.
Another exit I want to address here is “When do I leave my job to pursue Affiliate Marketing Full-time?”
When you’re ready is the ambiguous answer.
For some it means they have 6-12 months of their lifestyle costs saved in the bank. For others still, it is right now.
I would personally recommend that you stay in your job until the time you have sufficient funds in the bank to cover your personal expenses (that supports your current lifestyle) and that not leaving your job just doesn’t make any sense anymore. A mentor of mine once told me, “When the cost of doing nothing exceeds the cost of doing something…you will do something!” That’s when I left.
I was earning six figures per year from my employer at the time. I was making great money. The Affiliate Marketing Business I started on the side began making 5 figures per day. I was literally earning more in a day than my employer could pay me per month. I was friends with that business owner and told him so. As a friend he let me leave with his blessing. The rest is history.
Step 4 Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – What’s your passion?
The main point of the post was “Find what you love…and do it!”
You have numerous loves along the path of life, but you must focus on one at a time to ever fan the flame of love into something that becomes an unstoppable passion. If you were entering into a new relationship with another person, you’d want to find out everything you can about that person. You’d spend sleepless nights thinking about him/her and finding ways to spend more time with them whenever you could.
You need to build your love for Affiliate Marketing that same way. I’m not suggesting you go learn every little traffic niche of Affiliate Marketing whether it be:
Google Adwords
Bing
Media Buying
Mobile
Facebook
Plenty of Fish
Pay Per View
etc
It would be helpful for you to read all you can and learn from other people’s journeys. Learn from their successes and failures. Learn all that you can to the point you can put together a SWOT Analysis of each and then pick one to focus on that you’ve found an affinity for. But, once you do, commit to it. Don’t be an Affiliate Casanova.
S0, you have to focus on building your love for Affiliate Marketing by learning all you can, which brings me to the next step…
Step 4a Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – Join an Affiliate Marketing Community
I’m a paid member of all the Affiliate Marketing Communities (that I know of) and some very expensive paid Masterminds (Think $15,000+ entry fees).
There is one community, above all others, that I would recommend EVERY Affiliate Marketer be part of. That is AffPlaybook.com. I will give you a private sneak peek behind the magic curtain in the video above.
I wish there was an AffPlaybook around when I was a new Affiliate Marketer. There wasn’t. Most of the courses around at the time were about $1,000 to get in and didn’t have even 1/10 of the value that this has. There are 4,555 paid members of that forum and some of the top names and 8-figure Affiliate Marketers (me being one of them) that not only frequent it, but also help out newcomers to the Affiliate Marketing Industry.
I know David Ford personally (he owns, operates, and actively manages the forum) and he’s an honest, generous, and loving person. He’s built something very special and you can tell that the people there are all like minded and support one another.
There’s over 112,000 posts in that forum for you to gobble up and learn from. It’s literally like an online encyclopedia on everything Affiliate Marketing.
AffPlaybook.com is quite literally an online encyclopedia on everything Affiliate Marketing- Dan Matejsek
Again, I’ll show you in the video more, but if you are not a member of this forum at an measly $67 per month than you just aren’t serious about Affiliate Marketing as a path to your financial freedom.
Step 4b Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – Pick your Traffic Source and your Affiliate Network
Assuming you took my advice and joined APB, the next step is diving in head first (or feet first if that suits your fancy). Read everything you can over the next 30-60 days. The success stories, the follow-alongs, the lessons, the tips.
It will be overwhelming, I know.
The purpose is to consume enough information that you can build your SWOT Analysis for the Traffic Sources & Affiliate Networks and begin to zero in on the one of each you are going to commit to.
Run the SWOTs and choose one Traffic Source and one Affiliate Network.
Once you have a network, then you need to find an offer or two or three to test.
Now here’s where the passion part comes in again. If you can’t at least develop a slight crush for the offers that your Affiliate Manager (note you have to ask them personally) told you are performing well on your chosen Traffic Source than move on to the next.
I’ve found that if I can get excited about an offer and I’d buy or participate in the offer (and be willing to let my Mom do so too), the excitement is contagious. I will be building campaigns that are exciting to the consumers and they tend to be full of more value (and more likely to succeed) than if I was sending people to an email submit that I know in the back of my mind is just setting these poor folks up for SPAM for the rest of forever.
So, find an offer or two you can get excited about and commit to them. You are going to give them your best shot and make them work.
Same with the Affiliate Network you chose. Your SWOT told you to choose them and now you are committed.
Don’t jump ship from your Traffic Source or Affiliate Network the first time you hear smack said about them or your offer. That is just smack and not your personal experience. YOU ARE COMMITTED.
Step 5 Towards Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer – Rinse & Repeat!
There’s a popular principal that I’ve used my entire adult life and most likely you have too without even knowing it. It’s called the Pareto Principle. You can read more about it on Wikipedia here.
You can apply this as your Rinse Cycle for all aspects of your Affiliate Marketing Business & Campaigns. The key here is to use it. It will become clear over time that 80% of all you are doing is a waste of your time and 20% is where 80% of your results come from. So, it is critical that you recognize the Pareto Principal when it reveals itself to you and take action.
When I had my own full-time Affiliate Marketing Company, I trained my in-house Traffic Brokers (that’s what I called them) to launch 10 new campaigns a day. That could be as simple as 10 new offers on one traffic source targeting very targeted keywords. My in-house terminology was the Spaghetti Method. Throw Spaghetti against the wall every day and see what sticks (converted to dollars of any kind).
The next day they would see Pareto at work in their Affiliate Marketing Campaigns. Of the 10 new offers, 2 would be profitable. 2 would be complete total losses, and 6 would be somewhere in-between. Their job then, was to kill the two losers. Optimize the the 6 in-betweens and scale out the 2 winners.
Funny thing is that that even the 2 winners would have Pareto at work. They’d soon find out that 20% of the keywords were generating 80% of the traffic. Of the ones generating the traffic. 20% were generating most of the revenue and 80% were not.
So, you’ll find you are in a constant state of Rinse & Repeat…kill and scale…fast forward that and over the course of a year my team an I had 2,100 offers running profitably. Find that 80% early and get rid of it. It’s dead weight and will slow you down.
Conclusion
I’ll likely touch on other aspects of Affiliate Marketing and how you can earn a full time income with it, but my parting thought for you is:
Financial Freedom through Affiliate Marketing is absolutely, still a real possibility for you, if you want it and you are willing to work hard and fall into a committed & loving relationship with it.
For more of everything Affiliate Marketing I’d suggest you join us all over at AffPlaybook.com and join today.
After plugging away at Facebook ads to Teespring for 4 months, I’ve decided to abandon my dream of ‘Teespring Riches.’ I’ve spent hundreds on Teespring training and tools. And of course hundreds more on the ads themselves, and paying for designers.
[Personal details edited for public consumption]
Apologies for the ‘negative vibe’ of this post, but I’d like to hear from others that either agree or don’t agree with me. Maybe it’s simply a case that I’m not cut out for this type of venture.
When I was speaking at a closed event with Gauher Chaudry (in 2008) I had a bunch of new comers (newbies sounds so downgrading) and I had an epiphany.
I told them the real “secret” to being successful is “find something you love and do that”.
Sounds like you lost the love with “Teespring” because you really didn’t have much in the first place. Maybe just a crush and the crush has worn off.
If you can take a step back and ask yourself if this is something you could really fall in love with long term (get married to it) I say stay with it. If the answer is no, then move on.
Be careful though that you don’t become the Affiliate Casanova (king of one-night stands) as we all are guilty of (me included, I’ve been that).
What I found was that I love Online Marketing. I married that (OM) and see the niche (Tee-spring) as only the vehicle I’m taking my date on to the movies.
If you can get that perspective and get yourself fully committed and passionate about it to the point of kicking ass and taking names (and phone numbers, pun intended) than stick with it.
I hope that helps…sounds a bit too philosophic, but I think I got the point across. 🙂
Hello Kickass Marketers! I shot a video for my friend David Ford of AffPlaybook that is more of a case study than anything else. It’s a behind the scenes private tour of one of our Mobile Advertiser Portals. I have never seen this done and it will likely never happen again…unless of course, I do it. You get a sneak peak at what one Mobile Advertiser did in 14 days (hint it’s almost $100k)
Contest Rather than transcribe the video I’m going to ask you guys what you learned. The person with the most well written comment, quantity and quality will get a 30 minute private coaching Skype chat with me.
The only catch is you must be willing to allow me to post the content of our dialog and use your Forum Name. I will not be pitching squat. Just open to any question you can come up with and at your disposal for 30 full minutes with 110% of my attention.
Also, for fun all forum members get 1 vote. You vote by thanking the comment writer. David & I will be the judge of who the winner is. So, these qualifiers matter. Number of thanks, quantity, and quality of comment content. Without further ado, here is “KickassMarketer Uncut & Raw” Episode #1 or many to come… 🙂
It’s a long one Charlie Brown. 48 minutes. More of a webinar than anything else. Please comment and let me know what you think.
P.S. The video below is also available to members of Affplaybook.com.
In 2008, I was running a 7 figure Affiliate Marketing company. My personal life at the time was in turmoil (understatement) going through a horrible (another understatement) Divorce. I took time away from my personal nightmare and attended an event at that time my friend Amish Shah put on. I owe Amish Shah the credit for getting my bum down there and to him, for that I will always be grateful. It literally changed my life. At that time in my life I was at the bottom emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. It was so bad, I let all my employees go to pursue other paths and let my business, which I could have sold (I had several dozens of offers), just dry up and die.
Over the best sushi I’ve had in my life (I’ve had tons) I met Matt Trainer for the first time. Thanks Amish Shah for footing the bill that night by the way. 🙂
Call it serendipity, divine intervention, or the Universe coming to a place of convergence, either way I’d like to thank God for introducing me to Matt Trainer back then. When I had hit rock bottom and turned back on course for where I am today.
It’s more of a point of reference in my life where my life took a turn upward.
I went on to help build a brand new start-up company (3 of us founded) to an 8 figure business in three years with a 100+ employees.
So, this last weekend 8/9 through 8/10 (2014) I had another turning point when attending the “The Marketing Moron Conference” held by my older now much wiser (and enlightened) friend Matt Trainer.
I can’t give all the credit to Matt Trainer or the speakers etc, but it was a turning point in my life. One I have not had since 2008 (with the Amish Shah event)
This event is another a point in time, one I will look back and can honestly say it was a point when my life took another turn (like the 2008 Amish Shah event) and placed me on course for an exponential growth in abundance & prosperity.
So, even though most people on the outside looking into my current life before, hanging out with Matt Trainer this last weekend, would say I am already at a great place in life. I now realize that I’ve been thinking too small and limiting the amount of God’s wealth and abundance that could/would enter my life.
I now have a degree of clarity and focus that makes me feel attuned to what God’s purposes for my life are. Allowing me to operate in a place where I am truly and genuinely 110% me and 110% present in the moment. The person who God wants me to be and allowing myself to be used by him to change the world we live in.
I feel like I’m on fire now, in a permanent state of “flow” like I’ve been possessed by God and just need to step out of his way and let him do absolutely amazing things. Things I could never do myself.
I will be my only limitation, getting in the way of what he has planned by letting my “self” or ego get in the way. I am committing to God and anyone reading this to never again allow myself to operate at the ground level of life and only operate in a place where I am flying high in the clouds on God’s coat tails and having a significant impact on humanity by being 110% present at all times and 110% surrendered to the fact that God is my source and supply and guides me in all my steps, if I’ll let him.
Thank you Matt Trainer for being the vehicle of change that brought me to this place. You are a true brother and I will be forever indebted to you.
Anyone who has the opportunity to attend another event Matt Trainer puts on, should reflect back on their current state of life and ask themselves…am I thinking to small? Am I ready for some more abundance & prosperity? Am I ready for a turning point? One that would elevate me to higher plane of abundance & wealth exponentially greater than where I am at today? If your inner “still small voice” says yes. Don’t hesitate to go. Just go…
Sincerely with immense gratitude and appreciation,
Kickass Marketer
P.S. It may come across that this is all about me. I want to emphasize that it is God that is at this higher plane, I just happen to be in the airplane that he’s flying with no intention of ever jumping out of the plane again so help me Jesus!
Ethan Zuckerman, who now runs the Center for Civic Media at MIT, says he wrote the code while working at Tripod.com in the mid-1990s.
But no he didn’t know what he would unleash.
In an essay for The Atlantic, he explains that he was just following orders.
“The business model that got us funded was advertising. The model that got us acquired was analyzing users’ personal homepages so we could better target ads to them,” he writes.
“Along the way, we ended up creating one of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s toolkit: the pop-up ad.”
The idea, Zuckerman says, was to be able to serve an ad without creating an implication that the publisher actually supported the company.
“It was a way to associate an ad with a user’s page without putting it directly on the page, which advertisers worried would imply an association between their brand and the page’s content. Specifically, we came up with it when a major car company freaked out that they’d bought a banner ad on a page that celebrated anal sex. I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.”
In 2007 I adopted Paid Pop-up Ads and scaled it to the point that, as an affiliate marketer, I promoted over 2,000 products and services. It helped me become the #1 affiliate for many major brands and literally generated millions of dollars for my advertisers. It changed my life.
Over a billion impressions later (crossed that mark a couple of years ago), personally my opinion is that there’s no apology necessary.
The concept is sound and still in use today on mobile, although it has evolved to a slightly different variation called Interstitial Ads. There are even pop-up ads on mobile websites now.
The fact of the matter is that it was an ingenious concept that was sound and if not abused by those running the ads, is very effective.
The consumer seeing the ad can simply choose to participate in consuming the ad or clicking the close button.
We are presented interruption marketing to the tune of hundreds, maybe even thousands of ads in our daily lives.
We as advertisers are simply trying to interrupt the consumer and present whatever it is we have that might interest them and benefit them. The consumer has a choice whether they participate.
If he owes anyone an apology, so do we all that advertise.
No apology necessary Ethan Zuckerman.
I am indebted to you Ethan and thank you for your brilliance.
To share some of the help I gave to a KickassMarketer nick-named J-Sin in the http://Affplaybook.com (I got his permission first by the way).
I wanted to share a Skype dialog we had about some struggles he was having on Mobile and some pointers I gave him that might help you two.
I cover some of the challenges of Mobile Traffic in – The Blessing & the Curse! Part 1, that you need to understand before you go further. If you haven’t read that yet, go back and read that first. –> click here
[6/21/2014 8:05:09 PM] KickassMarketer: Hi Jason. ‘KickassMarketer’ connecting
[6/21/2014 8:05:54 PM] *** J-Sin has shared contact details with KickassMarketer. ***
[6/21/2014 8:06:01 PM] J-Sin: Hey KM
[6/21/2014 8:06:04 PM] KickassMarketer: Hey J-Sin good to meet
[6/21/2014 8:06:14 PM] J-Sin: yeah, great to meet you too!
[6/21/2014 8:06:38 PM] KickassMarketer: I’ve been following you a bit in the forums and consider you the forum authority on adult. It was cool to see you jumping in both feet into mobile
[6/21/2014 8:07:18 PM] J-Sin: honestly its been a bit of a ego killer 🙂 something good for me i’m sure but i didnt think mobile was going to be much different than desktop cpa offers
[6/21/2014 8:07:44 PM] KickassMarketer: LOL! It’s a beast I’ve been failing at taming (it’s untameable really) for 3+ years now
[6/21/2014 8:07:55 PM] J-Sin: its where all the traffic is it seems
[6/21/2014 8:08:00 PM] KickassMarketer: I jumped in early and we built a company around it
[6/21/2014 8:08:10 PM] KickassMarketer: have 50-100 (counting customer service) people now.
[6/21/2014 8:08:19 PM] J-Sin: wow! thats great!
[6/21/2014 8:08:21 PM] KickassMarketer: But it is a beast that changes daily
[6/21/2014 8:08:41 PM] J-Sin: so did I bite off more than I can chew jumping into SS first?
[6/21/2014 8:08:42 PM] KickassMarketer: just when you think you have a handle you get kicked in the groin
[6/21/2014 8:08:51 PM] KickassMarketer: SS?
[6/21/2014 8:08:54 PM] J-Sin: sitescout
[6/21/2014 8:09:37 PM] KickassMarketer: yeah, I think so. There are other networks that are good to start with. The game is the same most anywhere, but large platform media buys are a particularly tough one to nail down
[6/21/2014 8:10:06 PM] KickassMarketer: ZeroPark is a good place to start. Or for dating Greepoint ads is great. Both regular traffic and adult
[6/21/2014 8:10:21 PM] KickassMarketer: ZeroPark is owned by the company that built Voluum
[6/21/2014 8:10:35 PM] KickassMarketer: For dating I thnk Greenpointads would be a better bet
[6/21/2014 8:10:52 PM] J-Sin: OK great… so you told me what to stay away from… what countries would you suggest to a noob to start an offer on?
[6/21/2014 8:11:07 PM] KickassMarketer: They specialize in mobile pop-ups and interstitials. Have some other inventory too. I know the owner
[6/21/2014 8:11:20 PM] J-Sin: you got a ref link for GPA then?
[6/21/2014 8:13:22 PM] KickassMarketer: I’ll do better than that. I have an email…I’ll forward their latest insider email and the president’s name and email.
[6/21/2014 8:13:37 PM] J-Sin: Great… [J-Sin’s email omitted for privacy]
[6/21/2014 8:14:09 PM] KickassMarketer: [email protected] Mark Hurson. Tell him KickassMarketer sent you
[6/21/2014 8:14:23 PM] J-Sin: hahahah I know Mark… he’s old school adult
[6/21/2014 8:14:38 PM] J-Sin: small world
[6/21/2014 8:15:12 PM] KickassMarketer: I forwarded you the email
[6/21/2014 8:15:16 PM] J-Sin: thanks…
[6/21/2014 8:15:18 PM] KickassMarketer: Mark can get you set up
[6/21/2014 8:15:31 PM] J-Sin: is it self serve or agency-like?
[6/21/2014 8:16:59 PM] KickassMarketer: I think it would be wise to start there. You know adult & probably know dating. Now add in mobile’s crapload of traffic (assuming its quality) and you’ve got the perfect storm. I can’t personally vouch for the dating traffic, but I do buy from them and it converts. Talk to Mark, he’ll steer you in the right direction. Tell him what your up to and he will even give you tips on what, where, how, and when
[6/21/2014 8:17:26 PM] J-Sin: Great…
[6/21/2014 8:17:46 PM] KickassMarketer: It is kind of a hybrid platform. Their system is a bit underdeveloped, but getting better. They have a TON of traffic that converts which is hard to find and not everyone knows about them, so less competition
[6/21/2014 8:18:31 PM] KickassMarketer: I’ve got to jump off for a while to hang out with my wife. Been working all day. 🙂 It was great connecting. Hit me up if you see me on. I’d love to help any way I can.
[6/21/2014 8:18:47 PM] J-Sin: cool man… thanks! nice to meet you
[6/21/2014 8:19:10 PM] KickassMarketer: Best of luck!
[6/21/2014 8:24:08 PM] KickassMarketer: one other last tip…self-serve generally means sh#t-serve on mobile. It’s the crappiest of the crappy traffic usually.
[6/21/2014 8:24:15 PM] KickassMarketer: adios
So, there you have it. A little more insight into Mobile Traffic and a few hidden tips and some traffic tip referrals. Don’t say I never gave you anything LOL!
I received this Private Message via the paid forum in Affplaybook.com. Rather than message him directly I’ve answered him here with some groundwork laid out for the challenges in Mobile that will answer some of the reasons why Mobile Traffic is such a tough nut to crack.
Please note this guy (he is a guy by the way and I din’t ask him yet to post this, so I’ll leave his name out in consideration for his anonymity) was doing it right in the sense that he had invested in himself by buying the tools and building the infrastructure for success. He also had the initiative to go after it and Kickass by throwing a ton of spaghetti against the wall ($2k worth) to see what sticks. None stuck and he’s beat up and ready to give up. I’ll share my feedback after his message…
You may not know me so I may come across like any typical noob that seeks to get rich, dreams all day etc.
Truth is, I see these success on mobile and CPA offers skyrocketing through the roof, and yet after spending close to $2K USD in adspends from networks like exoclick, plugrush, leadbolt, mmedia, inmobi, buzzcity, tapit, and even Bing, I have only made back less than $90 in total revenue. It’s a big loss, to me. Not because of the figures, but because I have not learnt anything from this experience. Tweaking, optimising, scaling, I could not even find ONE campaign that was at least break even. I have tested from some 60 different offers, and they all seemed to crumble.
I have already reduced my expenditure by ditching imobitrax, and a VPS hosting, as well as my boxofads and WRW subscription, and soon I will be leaving AFFplaybook as well.
I’m not asking for you to throw me a bone here. I am only hoping for some insight in this industry, so I can keep my dreams of running Mobile CPA offers alive.
Is there a way you could teach me, a thing or two about how you crush it?
I would love to add you on skype.
Regards
L
Mobile Traffic has a HUGE Blessing about it to us marketers. The same Blessing comes with an equally weighted Curse. Both are the same…it is the absolutely MASSIVE scalability and volume. Funny my spell-checker doesn’t even know what scalability is. No wonder LOL!
As I mentioned in my previous post the opportunity for volume (which is where our scalability comes from) in my previous post here but some of what I didn’t share about it is its biggest challenges I’ll cover now.
But, before I do I’ll share a quick story. Since most of those reading will have heard about the “good ole days of Adsense” I think it may help shed some light here.
In those Good Ole days there were people who got in early enough, before Google shut them down, and were building crappy content sites that were built with the sole purpose of ranking in Google Organically for specific terms. The sites and their pages had Adsense ads on them (and there were even courses released at the time) and plugins that would help maximize your sites’ visitors’ clicks on your ads. Tricks like pointing to your ads, using only this ad type here and here etc.
They worked and worked very well. I personally have friends who were generating $1,000,000 per month with them. For a while…
Well, one of the issues in Mobile is that there are apps and mobile websites that there sole purpose is to generate tons of clicks for their owners. They are getting away with it to this day. Policing this is very difficult because it will take some massive improvements to Google’s policing mechanism before it happens. Once they figure it out, which they will in time, it will be a cat and mouse game for probably years to come. It’s out there and a BIG problem for advertisers like us.
These are your overly creative developer-types that I’d call not fraudulent per se (there’s much uglier out there that I’ll talk about in a minute), but it’s complete BS traffic nonetheless and bad for us.
There are websites that are legitimate, that get away with a more subtle version of this, like the Angry Birds guys that have banners on every screen and the players click them just to make them go away. Not fraudulent like placing your ad where the button for the next step in the game (like is out there) should be, but these clicks are still complete crap as the user backs out of the click before they even reach your resolving URL.
Still crap, but not fraudulent on purpose. This subtle form of bad click inventory is just a matter of fact and will always be there to some extent. Google can’t police it really, but can get better about adjusting the advertisers spend based on bounce rate. I think on their ad platforms they may be already adjusting for this (not to the extent that we would like to see), but know from experience that and data I’ve seen shared by others, that depending on the app the traffic comes from, this can be up to 40% (on average) and even higher in some games (like 90%).
Then you have the really ugly vermin. These are the companies in India and other countries who have server farms with cell phone emulators (faking that they are phones) and click inside their own games and websites to generate clicks for revenue. They are VERY sophisticated companies (think BIG companies doing a massive scale of FRAUD).
These fraudsters are so sophisticated that they not only click your ad…they also click the buttons on your landing page (mine) and then install the app. This allows them to scam the networks where innocent guys like me are paying for installs. They’re robots not only install the app they open the app and start clicking buttons inside the app.
They even take it to another level of fraud. When they emulate the install they are also faking the IP address. So, when I go to a place to buy a UK install I often am buying an install that looks like its in the UK and a real human (they faked that part).
I absolutely know this is happening on a HUGE scale. Reason for it is, being the app owner I have access to all the data on the users’ device and know the actual cell phone carrier network that they are on. So, when I see an app in the UK that has an Indian Cell Phone Carrier I know they gamed me.
A big problem is that by the time I get the install everyone in between has been gamed. The Affiliate, the network, and me (at the end of the food chain). Nobody but me in this process actually knows the real truth.
They get away with it because most advertisers like me don’t have the technology on the backend to catch it. They have a UK install so…hey that’s cool right? Nope. Not if you really ever want to make money or get real engagement from that “UK” user.
Many of the big guys probably don’t care. They want to get to 100,000,000 users and then sell their company for $19 Billion dollars like Whatsapp did.
For the little guys like me we’re getting scammed and most of the players (traffic sources, networks, affiliates, and advertisers) are all getting scammed and there’s nothing we can really do about it. They don’t even know. Would they care if they did? Maybe. Could they stop it? No. They don’t have in app analytics so its impossible for them to catch it.
In the UK for example, I discovered this problem in early January 2014. It was 36% of all of our traffic in the UK. That’s as an aggregate from all sources. Some partners had 60%+ of their traffic coming in this form.
So, being the advertiser all I could do was lower my payout to a point where my revenue per user was on target. Essentially putting me out of business because everyone else was still paying the higher rates for traffic. Because they either don’t know yet (likely) or don’t care.
This is just one of the big reasons why Mobile Traffic is tough.
Add to that the fact that you might jump on a traffic source and buy 40,000 USA clicks. Let’s assume that they cost $0.05 each. That’s $2,000. Being a Kickass Marketer you’ve got Imobitrax and can track every aspect of every users coming through your front end.
So, now divide those 40,000 clicks (which is a crap-load of clicks) across 4,397 websites and apps on a traffic platform. Assume for the moment that the traffic platform evenly distributes your ads across the platform and you get 9 clicks from each one.
Let’s say you have a kickass offer that converts really well in your geo (USA) and it converts at about 15-20 clicks per install.
See the problem?
Even if you get some conversions you can be sure that some of the sites and apps are not good. They don’t have enough data yet.
So, the scale and volume is a curse in this regard. Knowing now what you know about the fraud, and tricksters etc. Knowing you absolutely have to optimize…you’re stuck. You can’t drop sites that don’t have enough data. Let alone optimize for carrier, handset model etc.
So, a big problem in Mobile Traffic is not being able to afford to buy the data. Even big companies that are performance based (critical distinction because most aren’t) can’t afford to buy the data on all the several hundreds of traffic sources.
So, I leave you with a little hope…throw you a bone.
My newbie tips for mobile are:
Start in niches you already have success in and/or have a passion for. Find what you love and do it is my motto.
Start on Facebook or another traffic source with limited distribution so you can optimize. If you start with Facebook you’ve at least eliminated the multiple publisher (sites and apps) variable out of the equation.
About to Ditch Teespring