Any business implies a certain percentage of risk. It’s a well-known fact that can hardly be argued. Media buying, as a kind of business, involves some risk as well. Everyone dreams about being an entrepreneur with his own prospering business, still, there’re indeed not so many real entrepreneurs. The main reason for this is FEAR. 

Recall the moment when you were about to enter the affiliate marketing field. Do you agree that it wasn’t that easy to launch your first ad campaign without this anxious feeling? It’s very obvious why: ad campaigns that are launched for the first time have higher chances to fail.

Anyhow, there are those, who are not going to give it up and continue struggling for their first leads on to the end. They are the guys who follow the crucial CPA rule: Failures do not exist. The thing that is called ‘failure’ is nothing but an incomplete attempt. Bear this in mind 🙂

Today we’d like to draw the attention of those frustrated affiliates, who are waiting for a sign or crying out for help. Our guidelines will help them overcome their fears and start running ads. Cheer up, guys!

Here are the TOP newbies’ fears. There’s a little challenge for you: identify yourself. 

• The fear of the unknown. A newbie is worried about his chances for success or failure. He’s looking forward to having a long-term stable income with affiliate marketing, but he is afraid of going the wrong way;
  
  
• The fear of losing all his savings. Even if a fresh affiliate is ready to take the risk, he will be worried sick about possible financial loss. The situation gets worse when the affiliate lost significant funds while making his first steps in media buying; 
  
  
• The fear of difficulties. The brain of any person tends to escape complex actions in order to conserve body energy. An affiliate’s brain is no exception.
  Let’s say, a newbie had studied lots of case studies and rushed through a heap of articles on affiliate marketing. Then, he signed up for an affiliate network, chose an offer and a nice landing page for it, and then tried to park his domain but failed. The only rational solution here is either to read an FAQ of a website or reach out to the support. But instead of taking action, a newbie is more likely to give up the idea of getting involved in affiliate marketing as he has faced with the difficulties he is unable to overcome (in his view).
  
  

Apart from diverse types of fear, there exists a key, frequent, and fatal reason – LAZINESS (aka procrastination). Running ads implies hard and complex work that frightens lots of new affiliates. Let’s be honest, this thing can be more detrimental than any kind of fear. 

Anyway, all the above-mentioned obstacles vanish if a newbie is clearly aware of his further step-by-step plan of action. 

Today’s affiliate marketing isn’t limited by purchasing traffic and monetizing it.

It’s a complex process that requires taking multiple (and important) steps that precede an ad campaign launch. The fact of how well these steps are done determines the success of your campaign.  

Below you can find The Essential Steps Checklist that a newbie affiliate needs to complete to finally overcome laziness and fear, and launch his first ad campaign. 

NB: The steps concern running COD-offers with Facebook Ads. Some steps may differ according to a preferable source of traffic. 

1. Study the core concept of system management. Running ads is impossible without basic skills of domain registration, domain parking, and domain connection with a host server. Also, it’s useful to learn how to add landing pages/prelanders/websites and set up API integration (sorting your leads in a txt file). Also, you need to make sure that all your leads are being tracked correctly (both in your stats and in the one of an affiliate network). These are the initial basic skills you should get;
   
   
2. Learn HTML & CSS. This core skill will enable you to customize the content of a landing page to your liking: fix bugs, shorten texts, and change positions and colors of the contained elements. There’s a slew of sources that provide tutorials on the subject for free, btw;
   
   
3. Find a good tracker. We recommend paying your attention to Keitaro TDS as it is one of the cheapest trackers among the good ones. However, any tracker you like the most can be useful for you. Install the tracker on your server, configure cron jobs, make sure everything works well and your leads are displayed correctly in your stats. Creating a postback URL will be additional useful skill here; 
   
   
4. Search for the ban-free ways of promotion. At this stage, you’ll be able to understand how to promote products avoiding most bans. The strategy of doing it depends on what type of offer you’re going to work with.
   
   
5. Clone your website page. This will help you stay out of trouble. 
   
   
6. Pay your attention to some Internet services. Find info about what Virtual Private Network and anti-detect browsers are and how they’re used in affiliate marketing. Surely, using them is not a must but you should be aware of this side of affiliate marketing as well. A good marketer is he, who’s abreast of everything in the niche. 
   
   
7. Have a creative time! Now we’re skipping to the creative part of this manual. What should you do at this stage? Familiarize yourself with spy tools, try to develop a concept for your creative materials, and create your own masterpieces with Photoshop and/or Sony Vegas;
   
   
8. Go deeper into the Facebook Ads theory. You’re almost ready! Ping your AM to get the best creative pair (a landing page + a prelander), design banners, and make video ads after having completed all the steps above. Thereafter, read articles on how to farm accounts and ones about Facebook quality ranking and Business Manager Overview. You’ll have to deal with the payment system and find a trusted source of fresh IP addresses;
   
   
9. Read articles on Facebook Blueprint. To be exact, you need to read the following articles: Bid Strategies, About Ad Auctions, and Ad Auction, and Delivery Overview. You should know what is “cost cap”, and what is “bid cap”. Without achieving these goals there is no sense in launching an ad campaign. Then set a pixel and add the plugin “Pixel Helper” on to your browser, create an audience in “Audience Insights”, and upload your creative materials to “Designers Hub”. 
   
   

Congrats! Now you’re ready to run your first ad campaign! 

These points are just the tip of the affiliate iceberg. Today’s media buying requires lots of work to be done.

Watch out: your chances to run a successful campaign (on Facebook, as per the specific character of the article) get lower and lower with each step skipped.
On the way from one point to the other, you’ll be able to understand whether affiliate marketing is a suitable field for you or not. 

Anyhow, going from step 1 to step 9 will help you get rid of the fear of working with affiliate marketing. Don’t be afraid to start off with small steps. Soon you will get a fairly nice background and, when you face any difficulty or loss of money, you will be able to understand the root of an issue and be ready to bravely cope with it. 

AdCombo hopes that all affiliate newbies will get over their fears. Be consistent and diligent and you will succeed in gaining quite a good profit! Remember that we are always around to help you achieve this aim 🙂

We will be glad if you share some more useful tips that helped you got over your worries. Feel free to leave them in the comment section below the article.