First of all, shoutout to Dan for helping me with this MASSIVE post and video. It helped me a ton. I have been talking to Dan a little more and I took some of his advice and I wanted to post here and share with you all what I have done so far.

I first took Dan’s advice and purchased the membership over at AffPlaybook. First, I want to say, it was absolutely worth it from what he is saying. There are sections referring to different traffic sources like PPV, Mobile, basically everything you could want. Me personally, I have been reading all the stickies and then going through every single thread and then making notes of what I liked or some ideas I had in a separate document. A really cool thing that Affplaybook is doing now is they are running a mobile marketing contest starting right about now! Which is great and perfect timing for me to join.

To give some more info about my question, I had worked for an eCommerce in Adwords and managed their traffic and helped do some really amazing things. I brought their company record breaking months through everything you learn in affiliate marketing like landing page split testing, changing bids, etc. I looked through a lot of affplaybook within the Adwords/Bing realm since I do have experience there. I don’t want to give it away so you’d have to see it on the forum, but there are definetely ways to monetize my experience from there.

I did the SWOT analysis and here is what I came up with. This is chronicling my dilemma between choosing a source of traffic.:

SWOT OF TRAFFIC SOURCES

Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

MOBILE

Strength:
===================================================
• I understand mobile tracking
• I can design mobile landers nicely
• I know about only certain headsets convert
• I’ve spent money in the past on mobile and broke even (Admoda, but not enough traffic)

Weaknesses:
========================================================
• Not knowing the right offers if the traffic has more than what I need
• Only $1,000 Budget
• I did not have traffic sources that really push “volume”. I can only work with self serve
networks and Facebook at this time until I get the right budget to goto sitescout or direct
buys.
• Can not do the mobile “the right way”, by going all in with a direct media buy and need
to rely on self serve networks.
o Work with facebook or learn the ins and outs of one self serve network. There are
gold gems there.

Opportunities
=======================================================
• Mobile is huge and there is a ton of volume on direct media buys. When I convert at low
levels and build a budget and have a plan, I can go all in and really start pushing high
volume.
• Lots of new areas to go to, whereas Desktop is not going as up as high

Threats
====================================================
• Big bankrolls where people know what they are doing
• Potentially lose a lot of money trying to find something to convert, but may not be able to
target exactly what I need. (loose self serve network targeting)
o But this could be “training” for when I do direct buys and I need to do something
with this traffic

Google AdWords

Strengths
=======================================================
• I’ve spent tens of thousands on their platform and know it in and out.
• I can design professional landing pages and know how to convert on their platform

Weaknesses
=======================================================
• I don’t know if I can get any offers to run on Adwords or what to run
• Google is going to ban me
• High click costs on PPC.
• I don’t have experience on the display network, but I know how it works.

Opportunities
=======================================================
• Really high quality traffic
• Potential to make a lot if Google allows me to go through
• The only advantage competition has on me is bigger budgets
• BING could allow things not allowed on Google with a very similar platform

Threats
=======================================================
• Copmpetition has good budgets
• Google will ban me

PPV

Strengths
=======================================================
• Lots of resources on AffPlaybook to help me with it
• Good landing page skills, while others may not have this advantage here

Weaknesses
=======================================================
• I’ve never used any PPV before
• I’m not that excited about it

Opportunities
=======================================================
• My $1,000 budget could go a long way
• It could create some long term campaigns

Threats
=======================================================
• Other people could spy on my campaigns and steal my landers
• People will not click the landers because the internet is become younger, so why would
someone click on a pop up ad?
o Doesn’t seem complicated though, just choose URLS or keywords and have your
items posted there

So after going through this SWOT analysis, I figured my results down to things: Adwords/Bing VS Mobile. My main “dilemma” is that I had a lot of experience in Bing/Adwords, but I don’t see the “big days” happening for me over there and could be slower to bring big days. But I do have a high advantage there if I can get some things to stick. It would require a lot more work. Mobile is only getting bigger and bigger and I see it as a high quality training ground to really do some big things in the future.

I really am thinking more long term and what I can see doing into the future. I just see mobile as being huge. I am still deciding what to do, but I think I will go with mobile at this time. I have just finished sending off an email to my affiliate manager to see what is good and from now on I will be continuing to look through the Affplaybook forum. It is very good. 🙂

2) The minimum earned for weekly payments varies depending on the network you work with. Whatever is reasonable and negotiable .

We usually do weekly payouts after an affiliate reaches certain thresholds:

We payout with the following schedule in total earnings:

Monthly on commissions of $0-$500
Bi-weekly on commissions of $501-$2,000
Weekly on commissions of $2,001-$10,000
Twice weekly Mondays and Friday for previous period’s spend (end of UTC) if commission earned exceeds $5,000 per day
Daily for previous day’s spend (end of UTC) if commissions earned exceed $10,000 per day

3) That offer in the video is an app install. The clicks to install usually runs between 6% – 12%, but varies from country to country and traffic source to traffic source.

3a) I am not sure what any one affiliate is doing. The big guys though run their own pre-lander and than direct to our landing page. No big guys run direct link as far as I know.

3b) I am not sure about email follow up. You’d have to test, but my gut says no, it won’t work. Try it and let us all know.

4) I would guess those $100k guys/gals made about 30% margin, maybe as high as 50%. They were buying RON traffic I think so it could have been much better. They would never tell me for obvious reasons.

5) Mobile (I’d guess exclusively), but no way for me to tell if anyone is doing anything creative.

6) Yes, you can use what I share as a starting point for you. Don’t pick the crappy converting (for me) models and send them to me LOL. It’s crap traffic I don’t want. But you could send them to an advertiser who is not monetizing with credit card and they would be tickled pink about your install conversion rates.

7) I’m not interested. I leverage the networks as my sales force. I don’t want to manage 100 direct reports running campaigns. The company I am in now I have one direct report and all the others report to other managers. I want to keep it that way. An in-house advertising team is inefficient, they don’t have the same stake in the game as an affiliate spending their own money, and it’s a pain in the rear to manage.

That being said, trying to reverse engineer what any one is doing is down right impossible and even if I could I don’t want to screw my affiliates. They’re part of my family…seriously. They help feed my kids and the kids of all of our employees.

8) Nope. The site, http://kickassmarketer.com , has only been live for a couple of weeks. I’ll be posting more in Affplaybook.com and on KM in the coming weeks.

9) Yes, we average about $2 CPI and $50 CPA INTL and $40 in USA.

10) See #9 above

11) I don’t know what you mean about $7k. You read that wrong. We spend 7-figure a month at any given time.

12) Yes, we only make money when an install purchases with a credit card. So, installs without a sale are a complete waste of money to us.

13) All English speaking countries do well including Singapore.

14) I want to hit a maximum $40 CPA in USA and $50 everywhere else. You can use the formula I shared in the video to figure that out, just go backwards.

It would be dependent on what the CPI is. Install to sales ratio = Installs/sales. CPI (I’m willing to pay) = Target CPA/(I/S)

Target CPA (earlier in 14 above)

15) I am not going to spend the next three years detailing all the tips I have. LOL! I will be sharing more over time.

Kickass Marketer

Dan (mr. x),
Hello. your video and posts scared me off! But now I know what NOT to do!

1. When you say they guy bought alot of data. Are you referring to the
buying data as he went out and bought the data from a broker or something
like rapleaf.com? OR is buying data just spending money on testing to
determine which handsets and carriers convert the best?

2. What is the minimum someone needs to earn to be paid weekly? and daily?
I just dont want to run out of cash and run into a cashflow problem

3. When you say it converts at 6-12%, is that with banner ads or by
building an email list and then sending them followup emails

a. Also, is that by direct linking with banners or text link mobile ads?

b. Would that work better if someone created an email list and then
followed up with emails?

4. When those 2 guys made 100k in 2 weeks, how much of that do you
estimate would have been their net profit after their ad costs. I know you
said something about they may have paid 5c per click

5. Are your affiliates using only mobile traffic to get leads, or are they
using other types of traffic on regular computers too?

6. Am i allowed to use the data from your video to setup my targeting to
get a good start. For example, use the handset and country data that you
showed from that guy?

7. So if you can see the handsets and contries that you are converting on
your end, why dont you use that information to run the campaigns yourself
and backwards engineer what your affiliates are doing and copy them? Or is
that even possible? I mean couldnt you just take their winners and then
run it on every mobile ad network until you find what they are doing?

8. Do you have any older posts besides the ones from August?

9. So it pays roughly $2 per install depending on the country, and then
roughly $50 per conversion is that correct?

10. So It says you like CPS instead of CPI. So how much would you pay an
affiliate if they just did CPS and didnt want the CPI, not that im
thinking of doing that but just wondering.

11. So you spent like 7k on mobile traffic, or are you spending more? or
did I read that wrong?

12. So I understand that you lose money on the front end in month 1, but
make it back in months 2 and 3 going forward. So you only make money when
someone pulls out your credit card and buys one of the services your app
offers is that correct? and you don’t make any money on the installs, so
thats why having alot of installs without people buying anything is BAD is
that correct?

12. So do you think I should start out with Nigeria and Australia now, or
is everyone who saw this film on Affplaybook going to be doing that now or
is that a real small group of people who may not take action even if they
saw the video?

13. What other countries work as well to get sales after the installs for
you like Nigeria and Australia that you would want me to target?

14. So you gave a bad example of the guy who you paid like $1200 and he
got like 700 some installs and only 3 sales. So what is a good number of
installs to sales ratio that you would like as a benchmark?
Like 100 installs? 10 sales? etc

15. Any other insider tips you can give me to get started?

Thanks
J