Topics include:

• Building an email list
• Retargeting
• Offer walls and conversions funnels

Don’t worry, this isn’t a ‘pitch’ webinar. Just content, and then a Q&A at the end.

Date: Thursday May 17th
Time: 7pm Pacific Time

Please register here

Let me know if you have any questions!

Most people have read about the Pinterest spammer. Thanks to that, and spammers in general, Pinterest now strips Amazon affiliate links. Judging by an event we attended with Pinterest in the Bay Area, they really didn’t have a clue about affiliate marketing and that ride could have lasted a lot longer! Oh, well…it was nice while it lasted!

Now, let’s talk about Jenny. Jenny is a loyal Pinterest user who loves pinning anything and everything. Some of the things she pins are:

• Baby animals
• Clothes
• Cool houses
• Flowers/Gardens
• Inspirational pictures with words on them

You get the idea. She likes to make cute, funny comments when she pins too. Of course, she spends quite a bit of time following people, repinning, and commenting.

Jenny has figured out that doing this gets her pins ‘repinned’ hundreds of time. She also has lots of followers. Jenny has also figure out that she can make some decent money promoting affiliate projects. Yeah, it sucks she can’t direct link Amazon, but she can still pin Amazon products through her blogs, etc. She can of course do this with other affiliate offers too.

Jenny has a dirty secret though. First, her name isn’t Jenny, and no she isn’t a female. Second, he doesn’t actually like Pinterest…he thinks it’s boring and stupid. He would much rather be playing with cats or yo-yo’s or something. I think you see where I’m going with this.

Instead of figuring out how to spam Pinterest, I’ve been figuring out how to build high quality profiles. While most people are figuring out how to build bots to automate things, I’ve been figuring out what people on Pinterest are like. Why do they go to Pinterest? How do they interact with others? What things to they love to pin and repin?

After doing it for a while, I’m convinced you can make more money with less work doing things this way. Once you get inside the mind of the average Pinterest user, you can really just spend 20-30 minutes every few days pinning stuff and profit. You can get these accounts earning a few hundred dollars per day after some time. Your Pinterest account grows in a snowball like fashon. It won’t do anything for a while, until you get enough followers, repinning, etc.

I’ve told people about this, and they immediately think how they can automate it. While some of it could be automated, there’s no way you can automate the core idea here and that is – being a real Pinterest user.

Spend some time researching Pinterest and it’s users. You can do pretty well without spamming.

This fact is actually a very powerful tool in marketing. If you can convince people that everyone else likes what you’re promoting, you stand a good chance of increasing your conversion rates (sometimes dramatically).

The idea is called social proof. The premise is that people think that what everyone else is doing (buying) is correct (good).

How much more likely are you to click on a ‘like’ button when you see that 500 of your friends have liked it? How many times have you seen the affiliate herd blindly adopt a position because everyone else is? Those ideas are at the core of social proof.

As affiliates, we need to incorporate this into our marketing. This gets a little ‘grey’ because what most affiliates do is fake social proof. These might be fake ‘likes’ on their landing page, etc. It’s up to the individual how comfortable they feel doing some of this. Of course, you could go out and get ‘real’ likes if you wish but..

When you think about it, the classic rebill landing page is a form of social proof. You have the ‘user’ talking about how great their skin looks after using product x, which is backed up by all the ‘comments’ at the bottom of the page.

So what are some hot social proofing ideas? Facebook, Google +1 and Pinterest are probably the most relevant for affiliates right now. You can certainly incorporate other sites/idea though.

Think about putting ‘like’ or ‘+1′ buttons on your landing pages. That’s the most basic idea of social proofing affiliates can get started with. I posted some other ideas in the forum, but this is enough for a public blog

For some further reading, check out Robert Cialdini who’s social proofing ideas are very popular.

We’ll be putting on another one of our awesome meetups with networking, drinks, and of course…cookies!

When & Where

Tuesday April 3rd from 7-10pm

425 2nd Street – Just a short walk from the Moscone center.

RSVP

Please RSVP here http://www.facebook.com/events/211848238922265/

Hope to see you there

This year I will be doing a mastermind session at adtech SF with Mark from CTRTard.com. This is going to be a really good session. Some of what we have outlined so far…

David

I’ll be talking specifically about mastering the dating niche. In addition to several case studies of my own campaigns, I’ll be covering:

- How to create dating landing pages that convert
- Strategies for targeting – How to find targets, be creative, and get volume
- The best networks to run specific offers on
- Scaling – How to take a dating campaign from initial test to $1k per day
- Developing long term strategies and building your own assets

CTRTard

Mark has been on Aff Playbook since almost the beginning. He’s well known for his scripts and programming expertise that he shares in the forum and on his blog at ctrtard.com

He’ll be talking all about Automation — and how it can help you scale your business. He’ll be giving you an overview of the different ways both desktop apps and web apps can be automated and discussing techniques for spying, scraping and building things that your competitors have only dreamed of. He’ll also be covering tools you can use and how to approach different automation projects so you get the job done right the first time.

The Details

The mastermind will be held Tuesday April 3rd from 3:30pm-6:30pm. We will do presentations, and have an open Q&A session.

The cost is $350 which includes a recording of the session.

This will be a smaller session and we are limiting it to 10 people. If you would like to register and reserve a spot please PM me in the forum, or email me david@affplaybook.com before sending payment to make sure there are still spots open.

How did you get started?

I was really tired of working for other people – I couldn’t see a future in it. I started off with reading blogs, etc. and eventually joined what was then PPV Playbook. At first, I was doing a little bit on many traffic sources and really had no direction. It wasn’t until I decided to focus only on PPV until I got it working that I saw real success.

Tell us how you went from $0 to $300 per day (The first success story you posted)

It’s really very simple: I started building as many campaigns as I could handle. What I was doing previously was  making 1-2 campaigns, then analyzing them endlessly. I was trying to make every single campaign work, and was convinced I could. When I decided that I would only go after the campaigns that I saw potential in, things started to shift. I developed a system for launching and testing campaigns quickly. This enabled me to spot the campaigns with the most potential and focus more on those.

Ok so then how did you get from $300/day to $10k/day?

More of the same really, and also scaling into other traffic sources. I wouldn’t be as successful if I tried to scale into other traffic sources too soon though. I firmly believe you need to master one traffic source before moving on.

People ask me questions like this a lot, and my answers aren’t that ‘exciting’ really. There wasn’t one trick or tip that made me successful, it was just a lot of somewhat monotonous work. Everything I learned, and most of the tactics I still use, I learned from the forum. I see people in the forum gloss over lessons and tips that I’ve taken and had huge success with. It’s not just following the case studies, but really reading everything in depth and spotting potential opportunities.

Do you stick to one niche?

Not always. Right now I’m in about 3-4 verticals that are somewhat related. I constantly test new niches though. I do think it’s important to focus on a niche but that doesn’t mean you have to ignore others. I have some really stable campaigns that I can’t scale much but they earn a consistent $100-$300/day. Those really add up. I think it’s a mistake to ignore smaller niches/offers that can’t scale.

Do you see yourself doing this long term?

I definitely see myself doing something in the online space long term. As far as running offers, probably not. There is so much more money to be made out there in business models that don’t have so much volatility.

What are some things you dislike about this industry?

There’s a lot of B.S. and fraud in the CPA space. It’s a little funny, but more annoying than anything. Some networks out there today that everyone loves wouldn’t be in business if they weren’t engaged in large scale fraud.

The same thing goes for seeing these younger affiliates talk about how much they’re making. It’s funny because they have such big mouth’s that it’s not hard to track down their campaigns. Almost without fail, they’re doing something shady: sneaky coreg stuff, cloaking, etc. The affiliates I talk to who are making real money (5-6 figures) are doing it fairly (as much as CPA marketing can be anyway) legitimately.

You obviously don’t use your real name, and keep a low profile. Why is that?

I wanted to keep things private. Anything you say online is potentially there forever. I don’t want my professional life out there for everyone to read.

What are some tips you could give affiliates wanting to reach the level you have?

I would get serious about developing a system for creating and testing campaigns. Each campaign might be a little different, but you want a basic process to follow to take some of the guesswork out of it.

Stick to one traffic source until you master it fully. There is no best traffic source. If affiliates are running on it, you can make it work. Several times now, I’ve found success right before giving up on a traffic source.

Success won’t come when you think it should, so get that out of your head. Just keep building campaigns and think that each campaign is one closer to hitting on something good.

I drop tips in the forum as much as I can. Some of the tips I’ve given have made people a good deal of cash. Unfortunately, most people read them and don’t take the time to apply it.

Here are a couple of Dr. Manhattan’s memorable threads:

Case Study – $2k per day on Facebook

$300/day profit realized!

The affiliates who are really doing well with these offers, know them inside and out. They don’t just grab an affiliate link to Turbo Tax and slap up a campaign; they thoroughly research everything about the niche. This post will get you started in that direction…

What Are Tax Offers?

Tax offers are generally lead based offers paying out anywhere form a few bucks on up. Most of them are for a product/service that helps people file taxes (Turbo Tax, etc.).

The most important thing you can do to promote these is learn more about taxes. Sounds fun right?

Demographics

Everyone in the USA has to do taxes, so these demographics are centered around people who fill out these types of offers.

Generally speaking the average visitor to a tax offer is female, 25-44, kids, middle to upper income. Don’t just base your campaigns around that, because even though the demographics are skewed that way, there is a large portion of people completing these offers who fall outside it.

Understanding Your Customer

This is extremely important. Most people living in the USA have a basic understanding of how the tax system works. Overseas webmasters don’t however, so they need to spend extra time learning all the tax lingo. Do a Google search for ‘Tax basics’ and read up on it for a couple hours.

After brushing up on tax terms, you have to learn what goes on in the head of an average tax payer.  These are some ideas:

Nobody likes to pay taxes, and nobody likes preparing for them.

Taxes are a giant pain – from getting all your receipts and paperwork together to meeting filing deadlines, it’s something almost nobody enjoys.

The last thing they want to do is spend more money on this

People are grumpy enough having to fork over their hard earned money to the government. The last thing they want is to pay a lot to have their taxes prepared.

Their taxes are complicated, but not too complicated

The wealthy usually hire accountants to do their taxes. Our target audience doesn’t. They are working professionals who don’t have super complicated taxes, but don’t know enough to do it themselves. Instead of figuring out which forms they need to file, or what deductions they can take, they want a simple solution that takes the guesswork out of things.

Creatives

There are a few things you want to stress in your creatives. Take the points above and figure out how you would solve those problems for the customer. Going from the list above, some thing to highlight on your creatives are:

- How easy the tax solution is to use
- How much time it will save
- The fact it can be done from your own home, at your own pace. No more trips to the accountant.

Make sure your creative look as professional as possible. There are definitely times to use more amateur looking creative, but tax offers aren’t one of them. Remember, we want people to trust what you’re promoting. Make your creative look like they are from a professional company. Make good use of the brand you’re promoting to instill a sense of trust in the user.

Traffic Sources

Affiliates promote tax offers in many ways:

- PPV
-PPC
- Media Buys
- Email
- Social Traffic
- SEO

There isn’t one traffic source inherently better than any other. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and also different ways of targeting users. Some affiliates promote these offers with multiple traffic types to leverage this fact.

What’s really more important than the traffic source is understanding your visitors. If you get that down, you will do well no matter what traffic source you try.

One final thing to add – most people think of promoting tax offers at the beginning of the year. Don’t forget that there are many people filing extensions and hence filing up until October. You also have people who are looking for tax settlements, tax relief, etc. Those specific types of offers can be promoted year round.

Of course, running your own business means you have to work even when you don’t want to. So, how do you motivate yourself to keep going? Here are a few suggestions…

Think of the negative

This is a big motivator for me. Whenever you’re feeling like skipping out on work, think of the negative consequences of doing so. Would it mean less money for bills? Less money for going out? Not being able to take time of later when you really needed to?

Stop barganing

Does this sound familiar?

“I’ll watch the game right now, and then do those campaigns later”…
“Hmm..now I’m tired from stuffing myself and drinking…I’ll just do double the number of campaigns tomorrow.”

We all know what happens ‘tomorrow’. Running your own business isn’t like playing ‘let’s make a deal’. The more you bargain with yourself, the less successful you will be. To combat this, make a set number of campaigns you are going to work on every day and stick to it no matter what. This will really help you understand that everything is a tradeoff. If you watch a game for 3 hours, that might be 3 more hours that you have to stay up building campaigns.

 Get some fresh air or exercise

Even a short walk around the block can kind of ‘reset’ your brain and body, and make it easier to get into work mode. Next time you find yourself staring aimlessly at your computer screen, try a quick walk or some pushups to find some motivation.

Focus on what you have to do

Sometimes working too much when you can’t get into will lead to burnout. Instead of always pushing  yourself, try completing the tasks that are the most important for that day then taking some time off. Getting away from the computer for even a 1/2 day can mean extra productivity when you return.

Set a schedule

When you had a job, you had to get there at a certain time and work a specified number of hours. People working for themselves often don’t stick to a schedule which is a straight road to being unproductive. Human’s need habit and structure..we just function better that way. Try setting a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Eventually, it will be easier to do work when you don’t feel like it because it’s part of the schedule.

Everyone who runs their own business struggles with motivation from time to time. Try adapting some of these strategies and see if they help. If you have any good tips feel free to leave a comment!

Aff Playbook forum members get the guide FREE. Tom is an active poster who helps members out with their POF campaigns through advice, lessons, and case studies.

There are several fundamental philosophies that I approach POF with from which I do not waver from. Keeping these principles in mind at all times will help you visualize the end goal and work towards that picture painted in your mind. These are principles that have worked for me and that I think are optimal in implementing my system, but they are not the only ways of thinking. I encourage you to explore what might best fit your own work style if these principles do not make sense to you or are not congruent with the way you want to do things.

Core Principle #1: Everything needs to scale.

With anything that I decide to implement, I always, always think: “Is this scalable?” In my mind, there is no point in doing anything that is not scalable, since I am not interested in making an extra buck or two on any particular day; I want to build a cash printing machine. There is only a limited amount of time in my day, and I want to spend it on activities with the highest leverage.

When I say scalability, I do not mean with any particular campaign. I can give you a successful campaign and tell you to scale it to other countries, and you will probably be able to do that with some effort since it’s just replicating what’s already been done. Can you, however, repeat the production of other successful campaigns on a consistent basis? What I want to get you thinking about in scalability is in regards to processes. You want to build a system made up of as many routine tasks as possible.

3-Step Scaling Possibility Thought Process:

1. Finding something that works

E.g. amateur images work well on POF and you might find them browsing through a free stock image site).

2. Determining whether your success can be replicated

E.g. was finding amateur images on the stock site just a fluke for that one campaign, or can you consistently find amateur images on that site, or similar sites, for most, if not all, campaigns?

3. Determining whether the replication can be scaled

E.g. I can think of 2 ways on top of my head in scaling the image example. First, outsource the stock image searching job and pay a fixed price per image. Second, purchase amateur images in bulk from a paid stock site).

After thinking through steps 2 and 3, you can then determine that you are not wasting time finding images now since you will have a solution for images when the number of your campaigns grow a hundredfold.

Here is another simple example. When I first got into POF, I realized that there were so many fields that it took too long to upload a campaign. If there weren’t available technology out there nor could I develop anything on my own to automate this process, I would not have continued with POF as I would have never been able to build enough of a cash flow stream with it to warrant the time to be spent.

One example of something that is potentially unscalable may be promoting an offer where the advertiser closely monitors the quality of your leads, micromanages multiple narrow demographics for you to send leads from, and limits your leads per day in those demos. While the payout per lead might be high for this kind of offer, I do not bother with them because I don’t believe it is worth the time and energy put into it. When you discover something that works, think about if and how you can make it work a hundred times over!

Core Principle #2: Sustainability.

When building campaigns, I am only interested in building assets. I am interested in building long-term campaigns that provide sustainable cash flow and do not require much of my time in ongoing maintenance, even if it means that the campaign generates $5 a day instead of $50 a day.
This way, I have time to expand on top of what I already have, instead of using my time to constantly replace dying campaigns. It makes me feel better that the $5 is something I can depend upon for quite a while, and if I just do what I did 100 times more, it wouldn’t be too shabby now would it?

I have seen some campaigns that produce hundreds of dollars a day but the profit numbers are highly volatile from day to day and the campaign is only profitable for a month. Why does this happen? Most likely, it is due to what the industry refers to as burnout or banner-blindness, which simply means that your target audience has seen the same ads too many times in a short period of time, thereby deteriorating your once high-performing ads.

You can avoid this by limiting the exposure of your campaigns. By limiting the exposure of your ads per user and per session, your campaigns will be a lot less prone to burnout, leading to campaigns that last long periods, and at the end of the day, serving more impressions overall than letting the flood gates open day one. The specifics of how this is done are through the adjustment of login count, session depth, frequency cap, and targeting, which will be explained in Day 4.

Core Principle #3: Play the Odds.

Performance marketing is a game of statistics and probability. If you had perfect information and could collect ten million impressions of data for each ad, you would know exactly which ads were the best and only run those ads. The downside is that data costs time and money. Ten impressions is not enough data, and ten million impressionscost too much, so the key is to find the right balance of data and make a bet that you are comfortable with.

In the initial phases of testing and campaign optimization, your only goal is to purchase as much data for as little as possible; that is, your goal is to mitigate capital loss while gathering the required data for you to make an informed decision on your ads.

What is enough data? Well, I am not a statistician, so I cannot tell you whether a sampling of data for your particular targeting is statistically significant. I can, however, use common sense and think: “Well, if an ad has 10 clicks and 1 conversion, is the 10% conversion rate trustworthy? No. If an ad has 100 clicks, is a 10% conversion rate trustworthy then? A lot more so.”

After you have obtained some data for the ad, you can then determine whether to cut the ad or continue testing it. This is where the probability portion comes in. Since you don’t have infinite data, you are making a bet on the better performing ads with the limited amount of data that you do have. You want to cut the losses of poor performing ads up to this point and continue to purchase data for the better performing ones.

As an example, for a lot of my campaigns, I will cut an ad that has a CTR lower than 0.10% after 3,000 impressions unless it is at least break even. There will always be those who say a high CTR ad does not always equate to a high ROI ad. This is absolutely right. I have ads that have run millions of impressions at less than 0.06% CTR generating high ROI’s. However, CHANCES ARE that the ads with higher than 0.10% CTR will outperform those with less than 0.10% CTR. You are making a bet on the better performers at this point because purchasing more data costs money!

If additional data is needed and the data isn’t costing you money (i.e. the ad is break even or better), then continue to test and gather free data. In Day 5, I will provide you with some specific metrics that I use to determine how and when to cut ads. You can use that as a guideline, but remember that there are many ways to do it. Make your own bets based on the amount of data that you feel comfortable with.

The takeaway of this Core Principle, however, is that performance marketing is a game of numbers and data can be used as statistical evidence to project future performance.

Core Principle #4: Compartmentalize.

There is a myriad of targeting options available in POF. As if that wasn’t enough to worry about, there are the images, the copies, landing pages, CPM bidding, different offers, networks, and more. The amount of variables may seem daunting at first, and some people will try to incorporate all these factors at once by split testing them all at once and making sure every piece is “perfect” before launching a campaign. When the campaign is not profitable, they are not sure what went wrong.

Instead, you should focus on one thing at a time and compartmentalize the various pieces that will make the system work. A simple example of this is compartmentalizing the process of finding high performing ads. The indication of POF ad performance is CTR. If that is your goal, then stop worrying about what the ROI of the ads are in the meantime. Focus on the one thing at hand, which is getting the CTR’s up.

Control the other variables in the meantime and use what seems to work for other people and go with it for now. With country targeting, just target US to begin with. With the CPM bid, if people are saying $0.50 is a competitive bid for your targeting, then bid $0.57. Hold the other variables constant so you can isolate and learn how to get your high CTR’s.

Get on the forums and don’t be afraid to ask people for help! The point is not to post a follow-along in the forums with a -50% ROI and ask people why you’re losing money. Rather, you should be posting your images and your targeting and ask people for their opinion as to why you are not getting the CTR’s you should be getting.

The key take away of this Core Principle is to isolate your focus, so that once you have taken care of each compartment that you have drawn out for yourself, you know that the whole system is about to come together.

Core Principle #5: Know Your Competition.

This one is a no brainer. You have many competitors, and if you do better than them, then you will succeed. You must have realized by now that information is king in this industry. Therefore, you should spend time knowing exactly what else is out there competing with your ads. You need to do this in order to know what the current benchmark is and what current trends are, so that you have an idea of how to do BETTER. Monitor other ads to get ideas and learn from them. Of course, not all ads are profitable, but if they’re not, they probably won’t be there for long.

Keeping up with what is running beside your ads at all times and the sheer repetition of absorbing the different kinds of ads out there will give you a huge advantage over those who do not. There are a couple of ways to monitor your competition that will be explained in Day 2.

SETTING BUDGET AND COMMITTING TO A LOSS LIMIT

So, how much cash do you need to begin POF? In my opinion, you should be willing to invest a minimum $500-1,000 per month into this venture. If done right, most people that I have come across were able to become profitable within 3-4 months, which means you should be willing to commit $1,500-5,000 over that period of time in net loss. I have yet to see a fully committed marketer lose that much on POF and still not able to make money on there, but you might realize before that point that this is just not for you.

Can you do it for less? Yes, absolutely. I want to, however, give you my conservative estimate to broach the idea in your mind so that one month in, when you’re down $500, you don’t feel hopeless and want to quit. Too many times have I seen people quit after a few months after they are down a couple thousand dollars and decide that POF is not a profitable traffic source. That breaks my heart, since, to me, they are throwing away months of learning and experience and all the data and knowledge that they have purchased for that couple thousand. More often than not, people are a lot closer to profitability than they think, and they would see that if they were able to persevere for a few more months.

Of those who are successful on POF, they are making a bare minimum of $100 per day. A few thousand dollars of investment is, in my opinion, perfectly justified in providing you with a skill to generate the income you can attain in POF.

To mitigate some cash flow issues, you should charge everything through to a credit card. I would advise against American Express cards for POF since POF is a Canadian company, and your American Express will be charged a foreign transaction fee of about 1% on average. Plus, with the networks paying you a week, two weeks, or even over a month after you’ve earned your commissions, it’s highly beneficial to have more cash (and credit) to scale up your operations.

The capital you are committing is, nevertheless, an investment, and there is a chance that this just isn’t your thing. Therefore, there is a chance that you will not see that money again at the end of this, and you have to be able to accept that you made a calculated decision to invest your capital and your efforts and move on from there.

Setting Budget and Distribution Method in POF

In the beginning when you’re learning, you should be watching your campaigns very carefully anyway. As a failsafe, however, you should set a budget for your campaigns of $25-50. As for the option to “Distribute ASAP” or “Distribute Evenly”, I would suggest you sticking to “Distribute Evenly” for now.

Distribute ASAP means to show the ad as soon as there is a spot to show it based on what you target and bid. If there is a large amount of traffic for your targeting and you are bidding high, then it will go through your budget relatively quickly and stop getting impressions for the rest of the day. Distribute evenly means POF will try to spread your budget evenly over the course of the day.

There are two instances when you should shift to distribute ASAP. First, through experience, you may have a good idea as to when your campaigns do well during the day. You may want to start your campaign around that prime time and distribute ASAP so that the impressions you are paying for are the highest quality. That is a little too much micromanaging for me, but when you do not have that many campaigns to manage yet, it might be worth your while. Second, if you have a highly profitable campaign, and you want more traffic within the same targeting, then open up your budget and set to distribute ASAP for more traffic. This is one of the easy ways to scale a campaign up.

Once you are spending a substantial amount on POF on a daily basis, you would just stick to distribute ASAP.

Committing to a Loss Limit

Before you dive in, set a daily loss limit; I recommend $50 to begin with. On any given day, once you hit this number in net loss, you should pause all your campaigns and rerun them the next day. This is both important in framing a positive mindset going forward, since you are expecting to lose up to $50 a day, and in managing cash flow, so that you don’t burn through your capital too quickly and give up.

It is extremely unlikely that you will actually lose $50 every day. As a matter of fact, you might see yourself losing a lot less than $50 per day fairly quickly. Set this goal so that having a net loss in the first several months is just something that’s a part of the plan and that you are in an investment period to build yourself long term cash flow.

CHOOSING YOUR TARGETING AND OFFERS

In the beginning of your journey, you may decide that you want to run a particular offer and subsequently think about how to promote that offer. That way of thinking is perfectly okay. In contrast, I like to think about what targeting I want to monetize, find a few offers that might suit it the best, and pick the one I am most excited about.

I see POF as many streams of traffic available for me to monetize. My goal is to monetize as many of these streams as possible, starting with the path of least resistance. From my experience, as general rules, female traffic is more difficult than male traffic; older traffic is more difficult than younger traffic; and broad traffic is more difficult than niche traffic. For your first few rodeos, I would recommend you target the easier forms of traffic. An example of a targeting that I might pick might be: black females 18-30.

When picking an offer, choose one that people have already had success running; do not pick an obscure offer that few have heard of. Use your best judgment and ASK around! Ask your affiliate managers and on the forums. I don’t want to make recommendations as to what offers to run here because I do not want everyone who reads this to run the same offer. I would recommend going with dating offers, which is what I will cover in this guide. As you become successful on POF, you can and should test other verticals.

If you are targeting niche (e.g. people who are Jewish), there are usually two kinds of offers: one, a niche dating site (e.g. a dating site for Jews), or two, a generic offer (i.e. an offer that can be applied to most demographics). The niche dating offers can work great, and I have many that are generating consistent profits currently. However, I actually recommend that you try promoting niche with a generic offer first for 2 reasons:

If you go with my recommendation, however, you will NEED to throw up a landing page. There is a gap between the niche you are targeting and the generic offer. A landing page is needed to act as a message intermediary and sell the user to fill out the subsequent form. You will be making, editing and testing landing pages anyway, so I do not see this as a major obstacle. Day 6 will cover landing pages in more detail.

Lastly, pick a well-known network that pays weekly or bi-weekly to run the offer with. Don’t be nit-picky about the offer payout; you are in your learning phase. Once you’ve determined the targeting you are going to monetize and have the exact offer picked out, you are ready to start on the actual campaign stuff!

You can learn more about the POF 7 Day Mastery Guide here