Transition from merchant employee to full time affiliate

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nvanprooyen

nvanprooyen

Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat
Dec 8, 2008
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Just curious, how many of the WickedFire community have made this switch? And what has been your experience with it? Nuggets of wisdom truly appreciated....

I've run profitable campaigns for my employers for years, and have made the transition into promoting offers on my own. I don't know if anyone can identify with this, but over my career I've gotten a bit "disconnected" from the advertising expenditures & revenue.

My focus has always been ROI, but it's easy to say "Hey, great...we made 150K today", it's a totally different thing to know what that actually feels like when it's your money. Conversely, the same is true when targets aren't exactly what you anticipated (losing 10K on a campaign). To a degree, I think this level of bravado allows you to take calcualted risks that pay off more often than not.

When you're looking at things in an Excel sheet in an analytical fashion, it's hard to fully realize that it's actual money (when it's not yours). Anyone who has run large campaigns over time on the merchant side knows exactly what I'm talking about...at least I think they do.

So the question is this...how do you maintain that level of disconnection between what's happening so you can make level headed decisions without emotion? I'm finding it hard to be objective when the money and consequences have become very real. Or should I be disconnecting from it like I've done in my past experience?

Sorry if this was long-winded. I'd be curious to see if anyone has walked this road on WF though...

Know this is coming already: Running your own offers can make your head spin. I suggest reading this article for some really great advice: <insert dickroll>

Thanks

Nate
 


You'll end up the same if you decide to break free. If you start making money, you take it less personal when you lose a few k a day. It's just business.

look, you are right here telling me that you are making 150k days for your employer (that prolly pays you wayyy less). And you still ask me if you should break free? Come on, thats an obvious one..
 
So wait a minute, you've got experience producing campaigns that make $150k per day and you're wondering if you should not venture out on your own?

no brainer....
 
Hello friend,

I no know why you wont run campaign on own. If know how make 150,000 a day you can make over 50 million American dollars in 1 year. Some people no make that much entire life working. With 50 million American dollars some people no have to work any more for life.

Good luck bro
 
uhh....start running campaigns before you quit and see if you can hack it or not. If you lose money you have your employer still paying you so who cares?
 
You're thinking too much. Let the numbers tell you what to do and forget the rest. The only time your subjective judgment should really enter the picture is when you're picking what to test, choosing keywords, and designing your copy/landing page graphics - and even then, there are plenty of ways to quickly get numbers to tell you if your hunches were correct.

And don't quit your job until you have a couple of profitable campaigns running and a bit of money in the bank. There's a lot of value in what you learn working on the other side of things, but it takes cash to fund your campaigns and pay the rent until your checks start coming in.
 
Ya...its probably a good idea to have two sources of income until you are sure you know what you're doing and that your campaigns can start generating some cash. You'll need some cash flow to get started so save a bit from your job...

narsticle said:
uhh....start running campaigns before you quit and see if you can hack it or not. If you lose money you have your employer still paying you so who cares?
Click to expand...
 
ricdes said:
You'll end up the same if you decide to break free. If you start making money, you take it less personal when you lose a few k a day. It's just business.

look, you are right here telling me that you are making 150k days for your employer (that prolly pays you wayyy less). And you still ask me if you should break free? Come on, thats an obvious one..
Click to expand...

Sorry, let me clarify. I was talking about 150K gross revenue, and in that particular instance (travel vertical from a previous employer)...margins are pretty low.

It's not really a question if I should break free or not...I was mostly wondering if anyone else had the experience of "ok, we had a good day today" (being pretty disconnected from the reality that it's "real" money since it's not yours) vs. "Holy shit! I just killed it today / lost my ass today". I'm just worried I'll be more risk adverse and miss out on opportunity.

Like Stefanie said though, I'm probably overthinking it.
 
nvanprooyen said:
Sorry, let me clarify. I was talking about 150K gross revenue, and in that particular instance (travel vertical from a previous employer)...margins are pretty low.

It's not really a question if I should break free or not...I was mostly wondering if anyone else had the experience of "ok, we had a good day today" (being pretty disconnected from the reality that it's "real" money since it's not yours) vs. "Holy shit! I just killed it today / lost my ass today". I'm just worried I'll be more risk adverse and miss out on opportunity.

Like Stefanie said though, I'm probably overthinking it.
Click to expand...

You're totally overthinking it. Set up some goals, like if you're making $X / day profit for Y days, with Z in the bank, then you're ready to cut lose on your own.

When you're running your own campaigns with your own money, you definitely get more emotional about it. But you should follow some simple rules. Here's a couple that I started out with:
Rule 1: preserve capital above all else.
Rule 2: maximize roi. don't run $10k/day for $1k/day profit.
Rule 3: track and test everything. this is how you can turn 50% roi into 200% roi over the course of 1-2 weeks.
 
It's not really a question if I should break free or not...I was mostly wondering if anyone else had the experience of "ok, we had a good day today" (being pretty disconnected from the reality that it's "real" money since it's not yours) vs. "Holy shit! I just killed it today / lost my ass today". I'm just worried I'll be more risk adverse and miss out on opportunity.

I know what you mean when you say that the numbers on the excel look just like that - numbers. I tried on my own, and it was too hard.
First, you have to know for sure that you can motivate yourself and not loose days on days asking yourself the wrong questions.
second, In an office you get programmers to do staff for you, and graphic designers, and copywriters, and someone to clean up after you, and someone to take the loses, as well as enjoy the revenue. When you're on your own, you need to do all that yourself. It can be done but its not easy.

Last but not least - good luck
 
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