Before, I was just trying out the affiliate marketing business, doing some of it here and there, but I finally made my decision to go full throttle near the end of last year.

I saved some money from my other businesses and told myself, “NOW is the time to make it WORK.”

I basically stopped doing everything else and gave affiliate marketing 100% of my FOCUS.

Along the way I learned a lot of useful things and skills.

I should mention that I’m not into teaching someone about something unless I’ve walked the path of that something myself.

That is mostly the reason why I haven’t posted much on my blog—I’m working hard on my campaigns every single day.

Now as I have gained some experience, I would like to share 8 tips with you that I’ve learned and I believe could add value to your daily business as an affiliate marketer.

Enjoy reading!

1. Launch. Test. Repeat.

Throughout the year I’ve launched 368 campaigns and split-tested 589 landing pages.

I know these numbers because I just did and export from my tracker to do the math. (And I was curious myself too.)

Most of those campaigns eventually FAILED.

However, I knew it would be like that. But of course, I did them not to fail, but to find those WINNERS.

It’s like gold panning.

The panned gold will be covered in a lot of mud and worthless small stones, and it’s your job to separate them.

I remember back in May I had a crazy-angle idea during a shower, but I eventually forgot about it.

After 3 months, it somehow came back to mind, and I decided to launch the idea.

You know what happened? It became one of my biggest campaigns this year.

2. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

This is a pro tip, and most affiliates (including me) easily forget about it.

Once you start running high-volume traffic, SPREAD your risks by

1. Running your offer through multiple affiliate networks
2. Running more offers from several advertisers

There are a few reasons to do these. Here are some examples:

There could be a problem with the offer tracking links or somewhere deeper in the funnel.

Some advertisers/networks will scrub you harder than others.

Though this is very rare, an advertiser or network could decide not to pay you.

3. Watch your baskets

This tip is technical, but very important nonetheless.

At the start I used to run offers here and there, and I hosted my landing pages here and there.

Then sometimes there was a drop in my clickthrough or conversion rates, and I blamed everyone around.

However, the reality was a simple downtime of the offer page or of one of my servers.

When you run paid traffic, these downtimes could cost you huge amounts of money.

Now I monitor every single server and offer I run—through Pingdom.

If there is a problem, I’m instantly notified of it by SMS and e-mail, plus I have legit proof that I can show to my hosting provider (if it’s their mistake) or to my affiliate network.

4. Try the unknown

When I was starting out, everything for me was unknown.

I easily got comfortable with simple things, such as sticking only to several self-serve traffic sources.

After some time I decided to try something new every month.

I tested managed networks and less known or totally unknown traffic sources.

I remember there was a traffic source that had banners on many sites, but no one ever talked about it.

There was a very low minimal deposit (= a low entry barrier), so I thought it would never work.

I contacted the network owner and found out that they are legit company and, as a bonus, they had a lot of traffic in one of the geo’s I was running that time.

I ended up having a high-ROI campaign on autopilot for a few months.

5. Spy & imitate, then innovate

While I was starting with affiliate marketing, I somehow believed that I must be original to have a winning campaign.

I thought if I came out with something totally unique, it would work much better than the same stuff everyone else had been running for ages.

But in my early days, I also felt I had to learn how to spy on my competition.

I badly wanted to know how others were doing it, so I learned how to spy manually.

The landing pages and angles I discovered were totally different from the ones I had created myself.

I could also see what offers were hot, and I could act on that fast.

Honestly, I couldn’t have had a better teacher at those times.

These days the situation is even easier as there are a lot of spy tools on the market.

I recommend you to try out AdPlexity or learn how to spy manually, and I believe you will find success soon.

6. Meet & talk with people, build your network of relationships

Honestly, I’m not so good at maintaining relationships.

I like to focus on my work, and something like chatting on Skype takes my focus away. (Sorry, everyone who’s added me, that I still haven’t responded to your messages. I will try to be better at this.)

Despite this, I was still able to find a few affiliate friends for masterminding and sharing knowledge together.

For example, I have a scheduled weekly call with one friend.

We go through everything we’ve done the previous week, and discuss our fails and successes.

For me it also acts as a weekly injection of motivation.

With another friend I like to discuss offers and sometimes even run the same stuff and share knowledge.

One time I recommended him to try out an offer as he was just starting out and I saw it as a low-hanging fruit.

I tried it as well, but initially it was not so interesting to me as I was focused on a bigger campaign I was running that time.

Shortly after, he made it work and pulled in mid-$xxx/day profits.

I said, Damn, let’s scale it together!

We’ve run the campaign for 2–3 months and shared everything, even the placements where our ads were running.

Remember that meeting and talking to people could lead to a win–win situation for both of you. 

7. Help others

 I always keep myself busy, so I don’t have much of free time.

But when someone who is starting out reaches out to me and I see that he is ambitious and is already taking a lot of action but is still missing small details, I like to give him a hand.

Helping someone who is starting out today brings me back to my beginnings one year ago.

It opens many questions I’ve already forgotten to think about because I’m lost in the details of the current problems that I’m solving.

It’s good to step back and take some time to think about and realize the reasons behind the things I’m doing at the moment. 

8. Read & Learn

This one should apply not only to affiliate marketing.

Keep learning.

One good way to learn is to read books.

What I’ve recently learned from Naval Ravikant, the most successful and respected angel investor in Silicon Valley, is that you should not feel guilty if you don’t finish reading a book.

There are thousands of books, and even a great book has good and bad parts.

Skip the boring part and read the juicy one.

Lately, I’ve also been experimenting with audiobooks as I can “read” much faster, but so far, I think text for me is still more flexible and easier for making important highlights.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing with paid traffic is challenging and tough but very rewarding.

Once you fall in love with it, it’s going to be the same as me—it will become your addiction!

I hope you could also find something for yourself in these lines, and if you have any questions or additional tips, let me know below in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

It’s been a while since my last post, and some of my subscribers have started mailing me and asking what happened and if I would have new posts.

I had three big things going on:

• First, in March, I traveled across the world for the biggest affiliate meet-up in London, organized by StackThatMoney (STM).
• Then, I spent three awesome weeks with my family back home in Slovakia, and I also managed some biz-related stuff as I’m still operating my affiliate business from the EU.
• The rest of the time I was working my ass off on my campaigns.

…So my blog didn’t get the attention that I would’ve liked to give it, but finally I’m back!

STM London & private mastermind case study

I flew to London from Thailand to meet up with my fellow affiliates. It was my first ever international affiliate meet-up, so I was super excited and my expectations were really high.

I had been masterminding with two friends online, and we wanted to leverage our meet-up to the max.

So we had the following idea:

Rent out on Airbnb a cool flat within walking distance of the main meet-up venue and post a catchy thread on STM saying that we’re looking for the fourth member of our mastermind.

Our thread got over 1600 views, 33 responses, and 4 applicants.

The “conversion rate” might suck at first sight, but if you realize that all of the guys who applied were experienced and 75% of them were doing at least four figures a day, I think it was a really good catch!

Our team turned out to be really great, and from our first minutes together we felt like we had been friends for ages, so we really enjoyed London together.

The “Hello Kitty crew”

Besides attending the official meet-up program, we also worked in our cool Hello Kitty flat.

Yes, you read it right.

We rented out a flat where everything, from the carpet and wallpaper to the mugs and beddings, was Hello Kitty–themed.

It may sound sick (and it actually is), but from the marketing perspective, everyone who had seen our thread immediately recognized us, calling us the Hello Kitty crew. Many of my affiliate managers joke about that till now.

Masterminding

Masterminding together face-to-face was a totally different experience from doing it on Skype. We were really pushing each other to work, and it was a lot more fun as well!

We shared everything, from landing pages and banners to network reports and offers. Each of us ran the same campaign, but on different traffic sources—from pops to banners. After initial tests, we compared our results and decided on our next steps.

The workflow was pretty fast, and in a very short time, we managed to have a campaign that did $xxx/day on different traffic sources.

Our offer got paused after two days and never got back. However, the main takeaway should be that masterminds are really powerful.

If you starting out as a newbie, definitely find one to two other guys and start collaborating together.

There is nothing to lose, but you can gain A LOT.

The meet-up

The actual STM meet-up was professionally organized, and one would not believe it was completely FREE for all STM members.

I liked the fact that it was only for affiliates, so there were (officially) no networks or traffic sources other than a few sponsors. That made the atmosphere more relaxed and the people more open.

It was also amazing to finally see some of the forum members in person. I realized again that affiliate marketing is a serious business, and it gave me a new perspective on the whole thing.

Mr. Green

Tim Tetra

Robert Gryn (Voluum, Zeropark)

Alexander Tsatkin aka The Angry Russian

I also met some well-known affiliate bloggers and super affiliates, such as Charles Ngo, Finch, iAmAttila, FBQueen, Servando Silva and Cash Money Affiliate.

With Charles Ngo

With iAmAttila

With Finch (sorry for low quality)

With Caurmen from STM

With Servando SIlva and Taiwo from CMA

Quick personal updates

As I mentioned, the last four months have been pretty busy. Aside from a month of traveling, I launched a ton of new campaigns, discovered and tested a lot of new traffic sources, met a bunch of interesting people, and learned something new every day.

You know what? I enjoy being busy this way!

But don’t worry. I do not forget my blog, and there will surely be more updates coming soon. If there is anything specific you would like to know, just leave me a comment or use the form on my contact page.

I am here to help you.

Conclusion

Meeting with affiliates is a really great way to learn more about the industry. If you treat affiliate marketing as a serious business, then such meet-ups are a must.

In-person masterminds are not something that you’d usually do, but if you have a chance, it’s a great way to see and learn more about the workflow of other people.

Different perspectives + more knowledge = more money in your pocket

Tip: We are approaching the second half of the year. Do not forget to review the status of your new-year resolutions. We still have another six months to make them happen!

Have a great day!

Erik