5 Ways to Win BIG at Media Buying

Today, I’m going to talk about some of the ways you can win at media buying. Sure, winning isn’t an easy thing to do — it requires a lot of effort and diligence. But, just like poker, there are certain elements of the game that can be implemented to increase your odds of success in media buying and affiliate marketing in general.

I will share five strategies you can apply while also teaching you how to decide if you have a winning hand. Whether you play poker or not, it doesn’t matter. You’ll understand the concepts either way and I will answer some key questions that you may have.

bankroll management

1. Bankroll ManagementHow Much Money do you Need to Start an Affiliate Marketing Campaign?

Bankroll management is what tells you that you have enough money to sit at the table. And the same thing applies when you’re setting up either affiliate marketing campaigns or unpaid traffic sources. It means having money set aside that you have designated for this purpose.

This is one of the biggest questions people ask me: how much money do I need to start a campaign? And the truth is this highly depends on many factors. One of the biggest things you need to consider is what traffic source you’re using. You can be using Facebook, Google, native ads, search ads, or another source. All of these different traffic sources require different bankrolls, different strategies.

Just as when you sit at the poker table.

But let’s look at the general concept. Most of the time, in poker, you’ll need ten times the big blind. This is ten times the initial bet to get into a table game. The same applies if you’re running a CPA affiliate offer on a paid traffic source. For example, if you’re getting paid 50 dollars for a CPA affiliate, then you should have five hundred dollars to test that offer on most of those traffic sources.

You can also increase your odds of winning by understanding how to buy paid traffic and set targeting methods in place. You can target certain countries to reduce your cost or certain demographics. Check out my post on how to define your customer avatar if you want to know more about this. If you know who your audience is, then you can spend less and have a much better chance of success.

In poker, you need money that you can afford to lose when you play. And the same applies if you’re going into ads. If you can’t afford to lose money, then you should be doing another type of traffic strategy. For example, search engine optimization, which is free. We have a free course at PowerhouseAffiliate.com that teaches you how to do that.

How to get out of a slump in affiliate marketing

2. Slump in Affiliate Marketing – What to do when Nothing seems to Work.

Slumps are usual in anything we do, and affiliate marketing is no exception. It’s okay to go on a slump, it will happen. You’ll try everything: campaigns on Bing, on Facebook, Google, you’ll do SEO, email marketing. And everything will fail.

And guess what? This happens in poker too.

You’ll sit at the table and it’ll seem that every single hand you play, you’re getting crap cards. Every cut and every flop is brutal, and everybody just keeps winning around you. But you just can’t seem to get the right hand.

Affiliate marketing is the same. Let me tell you, this actually happened to me last month. Somebody hacked into my BeMob tracking platform and changed all my landing page URLs to some scammy casino offer.

These are things that occur and you have to get through these slumps, OK? So the key here is to understand you’re not alone. I recommend going into groups and forums and talking to people. See that they are having success, and believe you’ll get out of this.

Refocus your efforts and concentrate on one traffic source and one offer. Look at it with a good analytical mind and make it work.

Do not panic

3. Going on Tilt – What Happens When you Panic and Start Trying to Win at Everything?

Sometimes in poker, you lose a whole bunch of hands in a row and then become an idiot at the poker table. You start doing ridiculous things that don’t make sense and start wasting money, making mistakes.

Taking this back to affiliate marketing, if you do the same, you’ll end up with no accounts left. Your accounts will get banned for being reckless. So how do you get out of going on tilt? Well, again, you need to take a break. That’s exactly what I did when I got scammed on BeMob.

I took a break, refocused, and came back with a plan of attack. I came back with set goals. If you have the patience to go into your data and start looking at what’s happening rather than just making rash decisions, then you’ll be out of the tilt.

Know when you quit the campaign

4. Know When to Fold- When do you Quit Your Affiliate Campaign and Move on?

When do you fold in your hand? At what point do you know you lost? Ok, this is one of the toughest questions. As an affiliate marketer, especially a paid media buyer, when do you know that you’ve exhausted all of your resources on a particular campaign?

The mistake here comes mostly when people don’t test everything that needs to be tested. You might have the bankroll, but you could still be missing out on a particular combination of metrics that work. Missing out on an opportunity because you’re only focusing on certain things.

For example, maybe you’re only testing one country. Or you’ve only tested one landing page, one set of demographics. If this fails, you would’ve spent your whole bankroll for nothing.

Does that mean you have to quit on this particular campaign? Well, most people with a low budget and new to the game would quit at this point. They’d fail to understand that maybe they could’ve tested mobile on desktop with three landing pages and three ads instead.

It’s like you’re throwing everything in and you’re trying to find that winning combination. And this is very hard to do with a small amount of money. It’s kind of like gambling, you have to hope that you get those metrics right the first time.

To do that, you need to have people on the inside working for you. You need to have an affiliate manager that tells you what’s working on desktop, what the best country for an offer is.

And also, when you’re buying your traffic, you want to make sure you’re targeting the right options. Make sure you’re talking to your ad reps, especially on native ads and push ad networks.

In short, if you don’t have somebody working for you on the inside, you’re going to fail.


You do not need to manage multiple affiliate campaigns

5. Campaign Setup – How to Move Forward in Managing Campaigns

A lot of people set up multiple campaigns. Again, throwing everything in, hoping that something sticks. This is a very tough approach, especially if you’re just starting out.

Trust me, you do not need multiple campaigns to make great money online. In fact, last year alone I made over a million dollars with only two campaigns. What you need is a scalable campaign. Rather than looking at your campaigns as poker hands, look at them as tables you’re sitting at.

When you go to a poker game, sitting at a table, that is a campaign. You sit there, analyze people, learn about the table itself. You will be focused only on that single game for the entire stretch, right?

So it’s the same for campaigns. Focus on one at a time. Try one traffic source. Look at all the options, understand what went wrong, what went right, and then put all those pieces back together and try again. Play with different strategies, diverse landing pages, and ads. This is what’s going to improve your odds of success.

So, poker or affiliate marketing?

After all, even if affiliate marketing is kind of like playing poker, you honestly have better odds at success with the first option. Trust me, I’ve done both. There’s a reason I don’t play poker anymore, and I’m all about affiliate marketing.

If you understand how to analyze data then you’re going to have guaranteed success.

Are you ready to take your affiliate marketing business to the next level? Subscribe to my YouTube channel, DayJobHacks, and sign up at PowerhouseAffiliate.com to give yourself the edge you need to dominate your competitors.

Joey Babineau

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