I know. What a trashy linkbait title, right?

Your bullshit-o-meter is probably looking for one good reason to close the page so I’ll cut to the chase. Scaling a successful campaign is the secret to success. And it’s not even a secret. But you’re here now, so allow me to continue.

One of the questions I get asked a lot, normally by non-affiliate friends, is “How much do you spend on advertising in a day?”. If you haven’t trained yourself to fire back with “As much as I can”, then there’s something fatally flawed in your mindset.

A key reason why some affiliates fail to take their earnings to the next level is simply a lack of ambition. A willingness to settle for X/day and not re-evaluate targets when they’ve reached them.

I have to admit, I was guilty of this same flaw when I first started marketing. Back when rebills were as common as the sun rising in the east, I was milking a cash cow for more money than I knew what to do with. But not everybody has the instinctive “super affiliate” trait of chasing the maximum profit. You have to think big to win big.

I was trapped in the salary mindset. I saw that if I continued to earn X/day, I’d have made X/month. And that figure, being a mind-blowing leap from my work wages at the time, was enough to kill my ambition. I didn’t look to scale my campaigns any further than I was already happy with. You can probably see where I’m going with this.

A lot of marketers end up frustrated or beating themselves up over their failures to match the success of higher earners and bigger ballers. Maybe this is you. But I can guarantee one difference in their attitude to yours. They never stopped redefining their goals. They never stopped looking to scale their campaigns.

Great ideas do not run on tap. A winning concept isn’t going to slap you in the face over morning coffee every day of the week. So when you find something that works, you have to make it work big. One successfully scaled campaign will pay for months of failed concepts. And this is how many super affiliates operate. I’m elbowing myself in the balls at every mention of the term “super affiliate” here, because it’s a fucking joke and a definition invented to keep the Warrior Forum ecosystem alive.

How many times have you had a successful campaign producing profit that you’re happy with, looked at your options for scaling, and dismissed an idea because it’s too much work for too little return? You’re happy with what you’re currently earning, right? That satisfaction can kill ambition. And it will kill your ability to grow your business.

There are several steps to scaling a campaign, and I’m going to outline my usual thought process when I’ve found an idea that’s making me money. Note that these points are catered more towards social traffic. If you’re a PPC player and you can’t think of a way to scale your campaign, you’re a retard.

1 – What other age demographics can I incorporate?

I have one dating campaign which is producing 200-300% ROI. It all started with one ad targeting American 30-40 year olds. One week on and I’ve now adjusted the copy and images to target Americans of all ages from 21-65. I could have lived quite comfortably off the original campaign. It required research in to different offers but the concept was a winner.

2 – Can I develop the same concept for the other gender?

Many of you running dating ads are guilty of this. The majority of affiliate marketers are male. We have this nasty habit of targeting males as an instinctive step towards what we know we can relate to. Are you settling for 50% of what you could be earning if you opened your mind to targeting the fairer sex?

3 – What happens if I raise my bid prices?

Are you one of the many marketers who starts bidding low and slowly raises the price until you’ve reached a level of volume you’re happy with? If you’re producing 100% ROI, you have absolutely no excuse not to raise those bids a little higher and test the results. Don’t settle for the lowest bid that hits your magic profit number. If you have the luxury of bidding higher and staying profitable, DO IT. Basement bidding will only work until somebody comes along with an equally good concept and the balls to pay more for the traffic.

4 – Can I take the campaign in to English-speaking international markets?

Do I even need to stress this one? CPA offers don’t have to be restricted to the United States. I know affiliates who earn crazy money and haven’t generated so much as a single lead in North America. If you have a winning concept, it should be common sense that scaling in to other English speaking countries is likely to raise your profits. Look for similar offers and bring your campaigns to Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa. With the right offer, you may even be able to hit Asian markets with large numbers of English speakers.

5 – Can I be bothered to get my creatives translated for non-English-speaking markets?

Now this is where you’re going to start shaking a lot of your competition. Only a small percentage of affiliates make the effort to translate their campaigns in to foreign languages. It just so happens that the small percentage usually consists of some of the smartest and most profitable marketers out there. With cheaper traffic and much less competition, I think you already know that you COULD scale internationally if you wanted to. It’s whether you can be bothered to take those extra steps.

6 – Can I take my successful campaigns to other similar traffic sources?

This is the final step to successful scaling as far as I’m concerned. You’ve maxed out the age demographics. You’ve adjusted your offers and creatives for different international markets. What next? It’s at this point where I take a moment to glance over the test data that I’ve accumulated in the time that it’s taken me to expand a campaign as far as I already have. I’ll take the best performing creatives – those with the highest ROI – and I’ll use them as my test barometer for new traffic sources.

To take a classic example, let’s say you’ve got a PPV campaign producing the kind of profit margins that keep your bed wet at night. You’ve optimized and developed a list of URL targets that produce consistent results. Where can you go from here? I’ve been in situations like this before where I’ve explored the URL target a little further and noticed that it actually has Content Network placements on the same page.

Easy money!

Even without content network placements, if you’ve found a really obscure URL that drives converting PPV traffic to an offer – can you get in touch with the webmaster? How about paying for a single banner placement on that page? When you consider that a large number of the visitors don’t actually have Vomba installed to spring your pop-ups, a banner placement is likely to catch the rest of the traffic. I’ve said it over and over again but there are many ways to skin the cat.

Once you learn how to successfully port your campaigns across various traffic sources and advertising platforms, you’ll begin to realize that it doesn’t take a million great ideas to be a super affiliate. One good idea, developed and scaled as far as it can go, will usually put you ahead of your peers.

I’d recommend you check out this extensive list of traffic sources for ideas of where to scale your campaigns. Scaling isn’t just the secret to earning more money. It’s the secret to a stable and well diversified affiliate business. If you’re working in this industry without ambition, it won’t be long until somebody jacks your good ideas and buys a new yacht with them. Make every winning concept count.