Ok so I've been doing affiliate marketing via paid traffic for awhile now, and have dabbled on and off with mailing, and recently decided to devote more of my time and resources into getting it profitable before handing it off to someone to manage for me. And I gotta say, mailing is really, really difficult for a noob to get started at Here's a brief breakdown of what I'm starting with: - Server at OVH - 128 dedicated IPs from OVH - A list of 1MM AOL names I bought from a reputed member - An Interspire setup I know the pros would shit on my Interspire setup but a noob's gotta do what a noob's gotta do I'm willing to put in some investments but the established ESP's don't want to take in noobs and I respect their decision so I might as well gain some experience with a crap setup and see where things take me. I'm going to update this thread at least once a week with my progress. I've broken the 1MM names into 2 parts; going to work on the first 500k names first and get my feet wet before touching the other 500k. So far, what I've done is sent out 2 emails in the same day. 313 bounces, no conversions I'm still learning to make sense of all this info, and am looking forward to learning from you pros
You're right, you do have to start somewhere and it seems as though you have an adequate setup to start learning. And as you've found so far; it's a hard road to hoe! Just from a quick glance I'd offer you a couple of pointers: 1. I've seen a ton of spam come from OVH IPs so I'd question the quality of those. You should set up a few AOL accounts and test your IPs to these "seed accounts" so you can see if you're inboxing vs. junking. While you can still make money junking; the amount of volume you'll need to send is significantly higher and Interspire will fall short here. 2. Rotate back and forth between the two pieces of your data. You won't want to sit on it as the older it gets the more dead/bad addresses it will have and if you've been able to establish any IP rep at all; you'll certainly kill that by running to that other chunk if it's been sitting around too long. 3. Test - Test - Test and test some more when it comes to offers! Finding offers that your data responds to is a huge part of the game so either get into your affiliate account and start running through your offers or talk with your account rep in hopes they understand email well enough to give you solid advice on what to run. Always be sure to tell them what you're mailing to i.e. AOL as this can help them guide you to offers if they talk to their other email pubs about where they're mailing to. 4. Maybe the most important bit of advice I can give you is "don't get discouraged". This is a tough business to break into so roll up your sleeves and be prepared to put in the work. In the long run with the help of people here or around you hopefully you'll become a solid mailer capable of making a decent living. It's at this point you can decide to scale up your operation if you choose to do so. But at least get yourself to a stable position before you start throwing money at it. It's always more fun to scale with profits than coming out of pocket to do it!! Good luck man, I hope you make it. :top:
I'm not that big of a mailer yet, but I would start with GI for OVH instead of TLD. I'm pretty sure 90% of the OVH's IPs have been mailed on already s o the inbox rate or even delivery rate is significantly low. Also. I would go with GI at first to at least make some profit back then use those profit to mail for TLD later. TLD is a long run buddy.
@PushSend thanks for the thoughtful response, I really appreciate it! "You should set up a few AOL accounts and test your IPs to these "seed accounts" so you can see if you're inboxing vs. junking." I've been advised the same before but I really have no idea how to do this, is there a link you can point me to somewhere that talks about this? My understanding is that I need to create a few AOL emails myself.. And then enter these emails into the list I'm sending out to.. And see whether these go into my junk or inbox, is that it? Is it accurate to conclude that if it goes into my inbox, it would also go into everyone else's inbox, and if it goes into my junk, it will go into everyone else's junk? @mrlucky123 I don't have GI data at the moment but I'll keep your advice in mind, sounds like a golden nugget, thanks! Yeah this seems to be the general sentiment with the pros but after talking to a few ESPs, I figured I don't really have much of a choice being a noob. There was one I was considering taking a plunge with but was told that aside form the high monthly fee, I would also need to pay a "coaching fee" as well because I'm a noob. Understandable I guess, but that's what leaves me at my current situation. Would be grateful if someone could point me in a better direction!
OMG!! After being dejected after checking my stats in the morning, I just logged in and saw this! Made my day for sure. Gonna schedule 2 more emails for tomorrow and see what happens. It's still blind money for me as I obviously still don't have a clue what I'm doing but I'm just going to try harder now that I'm seeing some validation Cheers guys!
Congrat dude/ dudess, whatever you are First bite of the cake is always the sweetest you will never forget.
You just made what takes SuperWeinii and his SuperWeinii platform 20 days to make !! Nice work kid!!!
I doubt you'll learn a lot trying to screw around with Interspire. You should keep looking for a solid platform with a deal that would make sense for you... But at the end of the day you won't make money without spending money...
honestly dude, this is getting old. Give it a break. those posts that you are referencing were grossly misinterpreted by clowns who had nothing better to grouse about. the truth is that his platform kicks ass. I've been with him for 3 years now and have made multiple 6 figures with it repeatedly that said, CONGRATS to epicskillz. It's fun and exciting to watch a new mailer discover their wings. let us know how we can help you, we're in your corner
LOL - Someone got Arbydar grumpy............Yes.......I have to vouch for what he is saying as well - His platform does kick ass - we are making mid 5 figures a month with it.......for 9 minutes a day of work i would say that my ROI is pretttttttty guuuud....... :1zhelp:
Couple SuperWeenie henchmen backing up their boy, huh? :fight: Thought we had a challenge thread on here that proved that wrong? Hmmm, and multiple 6 figs Arby? with ADKi? Wow, hows the bad IP count there, must be astronomical. Take you guys word on it, but as tired as you are of hearing me break balls about this, imagine how tired the whole forum gets of SG turning every thread on MF into a self promotion thread, huh?
It IS getting old BigEricBug. We all get that you are pissed at him for some reason, no need to jump on every thread to mention him / his company. On a side note, platforms don't make money -- mailers do. Big mailers are working with several platforms including his, and doing very well with it. Anyone can take a whitelisted at the big 4, return path certified class C, and make a dollar a day with a 10MM dataset purchased for a couple thousand and the wrong words in the subject line and the content, no matter what platform / custom software you use
Thanks everyone for the kind words! I've been called back into the army for the past week for national service, and now I'm back. With the limited time I've spent, I've managed to recover a good portion of what I've spent on the server. Not sure what the drama above was all about though lol. @SuperGenii thanks for the advice. As a newbie, I only have access to a list of AOL names right now. I don't think I have much of a choice with regards to mailing software as nobody seems to want newbies on their platforms. I'm going to be using Interspire again on my next attempt, but this time on a better server + IP setup, and I'll be setting up a system where I'll be sending emails every single day and scheduling stuff in advance instead of what I've been doing haphazardly. The current data provider I'm using has been very helpful and the data seems to be genuinely good as I've been getting conversions whenever I sent out mailings. Again, I know everyone thinks Interspire sucks but the fact is it's made conversions for me so far and I look forward to learning the ropes of mailing through it, and invest in very expensive mailing software only when my volume justifies the costs. As with paid traffic, I ran on shared hosting for a long time before I upgrade to VPS and eventually a dedicated server. Baby steps I guess. Look forward to figuring this stuff out. I'm also trying to figure out how to get lists of clickers and openers as how to make use of that info. Any further tips will definitely be kept in mind and implemented at the first possible chance! Thanks guys, I'm excited about this.
I am looking. Thing is, the couple people behind the platforms I've talked to, don't want my money because they don't want noobs. Either that or they're charging a huge premium (5 figures) just for coaching me to use the software which I would really rather invest on acquiring data and "screwing around with Interspire". It's a constraint I have to live with I guess; I'm more than happy to spend money to make money, but a 5 figure coaching fee just doesn't seem justifiable at this early point in my path. Thanks for the advice though, I'll keep looking for sure.
I suppose you can keep doing what you are doing till you see all the limitations of Interspire for yourself. At the very least that's a learning experience to get past the greenest noob stage. Once you've gotten past that stage you'll have a clearer idea of how much a good platform is worth and how much the limitations of Interspire are costing you. You'll also have better luck getting past the noob screening.
Certainly not a good stage to be at lol, but I think you nailed it on the head I remember getting rejected by CPA networks way back when I started doing paid traffic, and it's interesting how networks are now coming to me to get me to join their networks. Never thought much of it, but now that I'm at the mercy of the email marketing gods, I feel humbled to say the least!
A quick update plus a bunch of questions I paid someone for mailing coaching, and I'll be using what I learn from him to buy a new server, and carry on mailing to my 1MM AOL names. I've been trying to learn as much as I can in the meantime by soaking up the forums and have the following questions at the moment, if some vets could help me out that would be great. - I read that GI really burns servers quickly. I'm mailing AOL, so if I just standby one aged domain with one server, is that sufficient? - How do I know if my lists need cleaning? And what happens if they're dirty? My last few mailings were without cleaning. My server did go down after the last mailing, is that because I mailed too much or because my list was dirty? - I was told that "mailing just AOLs" isn't a good practice. Does that mean I should get other data and alternate between the different types of mails? What is a good mix? My head hurts from all this reading after a long day of work lol, thanks in advance for any help!
I told you using OVH wasn't a good idea because of all the shit mailers they let on their space. IMO you got side swiped by these mailers getting ranges SBL'd daily. It was not because you mailed too much that's for sure!
