STM – 6 Weeks Affiliate Mastery Challenge

Did we not say that 2015 was going to be an amazing year for us?

We have STM London… The Angle… and now this! Let’s start 2015 off with a bang.

I’d like to formally announce that in 2015 we will be offering an Affiliate Mastery Challenge course.

This programme will be 6 weeks long and cover everything from core marketing concepts to the basics of tracking and practical tasks. It is aimed at those who are reasonably new to the AM scene and want to greatly accelerate their core education. We will help you demystify the brain-numbing challenges that this industry throws at you.

If you think the STM forum is amazing, this 6 Week Affiliate Mastery Challenge will be absolutely remarkable for you and will draw on some of our most salient content – crunch, squeeze and mix it, then beam it into your now watering eyes.

It will be primarily video-based with weekly live sessions as well as prerecorded video. All in ultra-quality HD of course.

We will have a superstar cast of presenters including Mr Green, BBrock32, Stackman, and of course yours truly. There may be other industry-leading presenters nearer the end of the course but I won’t reveal their identities just yet…

For those of you who prefer visual/video-based instruction and who are truly ambitious to make this work, this spectacular offering will be your best investment of the year. But Zeno, the year’s only just started! WRONG! 2015 is over. This is now the year of STM!

You can expect the 6 Week Affiliate Mastery Challenge to over-deliver on your expectations.

To be clear, the 6 Week Affiliate Mastery Challenge is a completely separate offering to the STM forum and as such will not require you to be a member but will have it’s own price tag.

Want some juicier details? OK OK I’ll oblige… here’s a cursory outline of what the 6 week programme:

Week 1:

Day 1: Many aspects of AM covered + some practical tasks. You’ll learn about the various entities involved and will start setting up a tracker, server, business website, will join an affiliate network, etc.
Day 2: Introduction to the different media channels, ad types, major traffic sources and how user intent is a critical underlying factor.
Day 3: Verticals and offer types.
Day 4: Different bidding modes and commission models.
Day 5: The affiliate marketing tool kit. Here you’ll be run through all the tools you need to start campaigns on the right technical and creative footing.
Day 6 live delivery: A short recap of the week, Q&A and a live run through of setting up a website, hosted email, etc.

By the end of week 1 you will have a cost effective setup that makes you feel like a real marketer, and to the outside world, a reputable business. You’ll be comfortable with a number of design and technical tools and will have a good overview of the various entities that operate in this space.

Week 2:

Day 1: Shallow dive on Facebook as a traffic source. A cursory overview of FB to demonstrate some of what we learned in week 1.
Day 2: Split-testing and tracking. How to do it, why it’s critical.
Day 3: The maths of affiliate marketing and lead generation, statistical significance. Let’s be honest: this is hard for 99% of people. I’ll help you demystify and practically implement it.
Day 4: Angles and conversion psychology.
Day 5: Brainstorming angles. Learn how to sit down and pump out ideas – both silly, amazing and stupid.
Day 6 live delivery: we will set up a direct-linked campaign on a Mobile DSP and go through the basics of configuring a campaign on any traffic source, checking tracking, etc.

By the end of week 2 you will have a much better grasp on tracking fundamentals, maths, angles/copywriting and will deploy a test campaign after brainstorming angles. You’ll learn how real marketers test angles. Consider this an angle bootcamp!

Week 3:

Day 1: Analysis of weekend data, then market research.
Day 2: Introduction to funnels, lead quality and the role of landing pages.
Day 3: Introduction to Muse and lander creation. Let’s pump out some landers!
Day 4: Technical setup and tools. The apocalypse (kidding!). We roll out a VPS server, buy a domain name, and get things ready to upload a live landing page. If you suck with this sort of stuff, pay close attention to this day.
Day 5: Confounding variables and what can affect your campaign performance.
Day 6 live delivery: Campaign setup on an RTB-based platform. I’ll run you through getting a campaign up to use that pimp lander you made a few days ago.

At the end of week 3 you’ll be rearing to go. Whoa there tiger! We’ll be unleashing you next week when you start crafting and deploying even more campaigns on another traffic source. For now, you’ll roll out a campaign to test your lander and provide practice drilling down into landing page data.

Week 4:

Day 1: Analysis of campaign tracking and real user monitoring data.
Day 2: Introduction to a large scale traffic source.
Day 3: Further discussion of a large scale traffic source.
Day 4: Elements of your campaign to test and how to prioritise these.
Day 5: How to better understand your market and sell to them. We go over various tools and tactics to leverage in your campaigns.
Day 6 live delivery: initial research and live set up of another campaign. We will go through the creation of a campaign from start to finish. We’ll go over best practices for the traffic source.

By the end of week 4 you will be pumped. You will roll out a well-designed campaign that will collect data over the weekend. From here on out you’ll be sharpening your skills and refining your campaigns.

Week 5:

Day 1: Discussion of data from campaign. Where to go from there, nuances and how to optimise.
Day 2: The science of AM. That’s right, science. This was inevitable.
Day 3: Productivity techniques and time-management. We’ll talk about how to streamline your workflow. We’ll even talk about outsourcing!
Day 4: Brainstorming and research. You’ll be tasked with launching yet another campaign. Let’s build experience and reinforce your knowledge!
Day 5: We will talk click loss and why you should split-test networks. Common misunderstandings will be resolved!
Day 6 live delivery: guest call with industry expert on topic TBD. I won’t tell you who will be in this slot… but they will have an attractive accent.

By the end of week 5 you’ll be comfortable deploying campaigns on virtually any traffic source and will have a firm grasp on testing methods as well as how to “keep calm and process data”.

Week 6:

Day 1: Discuss campaign data so far + ways to squeeze more out of campaigns. This week may be cut a little short with STM London around the corner, we shall see. If so we will condense the content into a few days only.
Day 2-3: Case studies on various traffic sources by guest presenters. Likely not live this round but Q&A will be actively manned!
Day 4: Other traffic sources, emerging markets and crazy ideas/studies.
Day 5: Where internet marketing is heading and how affiliate marketers fit in. Consider this a Zeitgeist-ish lecture. We’ll reiterate what you should be focusing on to be succesful in 2015.
Day 6 live delivery: wrap up

At the end of the course your brain will be humming like a marketer.

You will get over thirty affiliate marketing cheat sheets and resources that won’t be available elsewhere, as well as priority support/Q&A during the training.

You’ll master traffic sources. You’ll have campaigns running that are generating conversions! Your early campaigns might even be working too – who knows how life will reward your efforts!

If it wasn’t clear, the course will be run by yours truly.