Recently I published my first article on Zorbas Media.
Now you can read it here as well.
Probably many of you know the feeling that you want to start something and of course you want to be prepared as good as possible.
You start planning the campaign, you set up the landing pages.
Maybe then you do some more research and before you are finally ready to start your campaign you already found something new.
Then you know that our good old friend “procrastination” visited you for some distraction.
Or you spend few days working on a campaign, then you finally start it and it sucks completely.
Then you just wasted few days of your precious time.
You can trust me when I tell you that I know what I am talking about.
It often happens to me that I want to start a new campaign and then get lost in details.
Instead of just starting I focus on small things.
I do micro research for the smallest elements in a campaign, I try to find the perfect image for the lander, I think about how I can make single words better.
And all these things then keep me away from just starting my campaigns.
For effective and productive work it´s mostly better to just get the basics done and then start a campaign instead of trying to make everything perfect from the beginning.
In the end it doesn´t matter how good you prepare for your campaigns, there is only one way to know if something works or not.
You have to test it.
So even when you spend lots of time trying to create a perfect campaign you still have no guarantee at all that it will be successful.
On the other hand when you just get the basics done you can test many more campaigns and find winners faster.
When you see initial success then of course you should focus on the campaign and try to optimize it as good as possible.
But there is no need to start optimizing before you even started.
Of course we shouldn´t run every bullshit no matter how bad it is, that would only cost us money.
Doing research if something has the potential to succeed is a must.
But when we have something that could work we should just test it without thinking too much about it.
There is no way around testing anyway so better get it done as soon as possible.
The more you test the faster you will succeed.
Another good article, LW.
One article I would like to see is what one needs to start a first affiliate campaign (presumably a POPs campaigns, because that is your focus).
I run adword’s campaigns for clients. I know that I can do some pretty good optimizing, within 1 hour on many moderately sized campaigns… even though I might actually spend 5+ hours a month on an account (the remaining 80% of time spent is more about keeping the client happy via various tasks/actions that are not really so crucial to the bottom line).
My time spent on initial Adword Campaign builds can be quite high (5-20hr). I feel good research/campaign-structure are important, to make later campaign managing, easier and more efficient
Occasionally I might use Spyfu, and one or two other tools, but most of the time I get the results I need with the Google supplied tools – which are free.
So, I need to know the Google Adwords tools, and I don’t need to pay any monthly subscriptions for tools.
For someone thinking about starting affiliate marketing (maybe POPS). What would they need to invest in, in terms of time and tools?
What tools must they learn? What tools must they subscribe to? What sort of time is required to learn these tools and even what time is required to build a campaign and monitor/optimize it on a regular basis?
If someone moved past their early trial campaigns… what extra tools would be essential then?
I, and I expect many non-affiliate marketers, don’t have a full grasp on what range of skills and tools are vital before one can even start – on first impressions it seems that a lot of both are required.
Hey Mike,
Thanks for your suggestions.
Maybe it could help to get a overview about how to start, what tools and so on.
I really like the idea also to tell about what skills are needed.
Will work on it 🙂