I read somewhere that the key to success in our business was threefold:

Matching the hottest offer with the hottest creative with the hottest traffic source.

I’m not really smart enough to get all three so I just went with the first: getting on the hottest offer. With a tip from Josh and some buzz on the other forums I built my offer which went from $0 to over $1M in less than 4 months.

I feel grateful for the success I’ve enjoyed and though I’d share some of the insights I learned along the way.

These are the gritty details:

Skills Required to Run an Offer (on your own):

– Merchant account setup
— This is the lynch pin
— Triple check your monthly volume caps. I still have 5 figures being held with 2 MID’s for going over cap
— Integrate with a gateway like authorize.net

– Fulfillment setup
— If orders aren’t shipped within 24 hours, you will lose your MID

– Coding and Design
— Learn basic PHP/MySql. 90% of what I know I learned from tizag.com and from dissecting populated code from dreamweaver datase/binding/server behaviours and components
— Built own CRM to handle orders and shipping
— Setup dedicated servers and optimized with CDN for fast loading of rich content landing page
— Designed first LP from a very basic $7 template, later hired a designer to send PSD’s which I coded into php/css.
— Learn basic Photoshop. Do not get to caught up advanced photo editing. Just learn how to manipulate layers and add blending effects.

– Customer Service
— Used fi ...

This thread has 37 more replies.
WANT TO SEE THE REST?

Join STM Forum