We're very excited to present our 67th interview with
Alissa Crusher of
AmsTracking.com
Alissa Crusher manages the business development at AmsTracking.com, an advertising agency that caters exclusive offers to CPA networks. Alissa is making a tremendous impact in the CPA industry in a short period of time. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with friends and family. Alissa's dedication to work, passion to the industry, and a genuine drive to success, keeps her available to her clients almost 24 hours a day.
1. Hi Alissa, could you introduce yourself to our readers? How old are you? Where do you live?
Thanks for the opportunity, Gao. Hi, to the readers of affpaying blog, My name is Alissa Crusher and I am originally from Chicago, Illinois. I am 24 years old and have been involved in this industry since I was 21, which would equate to approximately 3 years.
2. How did you get involved in affiliate marketing? What/Who inspired you to enter it?
I got involved into affiliate marketing after being a merchant on eBay. In the past, I acted as a merchant and sold various products of mine, but since I was limited by the production line that was carried along, I got into promoting "others' products", which ultimately brought me into the affiliate marketing industry. The inspiration came from the thought of being financially independent. I was also tired of people having a great amount of control over my hours, and the idea of being a 'decision maker', really had provoked me into looking further. Additionally, it took a lot of trial and error to achieve something, whether it would be a profitable campaign or a successful JV, but once I had the taste of success, I was hooked on it. I just felt that it was worth it. In my opinion, the thrill and happiness from achieving something successful, simply outweighs the trouble that we usually go through. In fact, I was at a stage where I thought profitability isn't a possibility anymore, and that my efforts were just worthless. Luckily, I had conditioned my mind in a way that I believed in what I was doing.
3. What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
Diversification without deviating myself too much into other areas, was one of the toughest challenges I've had to face. What I mean by that is, usually when my profitable campaigns dried up (eventually they all do), I didn't have more of them to replace the dried up ones. So my income ceased to exist and was very short lived depending on the duration of that particular campaign. I've had this happen to me a few times until I realized what my mistake was, and since then I always try to diversify in the variety of campaigns I run. They range all the way from dating ads on fb to simple local lead generations. Furthermore, taking action was sometimes the biggest challenge for me. I had numerous conflicting thoughts in my brain - for example, "what if my lander doesn't convert", "what if I go over my budget", "what if....." so on and so forth. Generally speaking, I condition my brain to fight off those conflicting thoughts., and proceed with courage and dedication.
4. Currently, what are some of the projects you are focusing on?
At present, I am focusing on being a CPA advertiser. Our team and I are vigorously working on CPA landing pages across a few verticals - for example, email submits and payday loans. Our primary goal is to optimize the offers continuously, until they achieve the maximum efficiency. We work with a handful of trusted and established CPA networks, and we do our best to offer them with unmatched EPCs and competitive payouts. Personally, I make sure that both the CPA networks and their Publishers are monetizing their traffic effectively.
I also manage business development and day-to-day operations at Swag Boss Media INC and Fivestar CPA, a private affiliate network for serious volume publishers. Since we own some of our highly converting offers, we believe that affiliates and affiliate networks are monetizing effectively.
5. As an affiliate, what is your favorite traffic source and why?
Internet, Haha. All joking aside though, pinterest has been one of the best converters around. For me, I would generally say social traffic converted great. You can do wonders with social traffic, if targeted and built correctly. So for example on pinterest, rather than just spamming the users in the front-end, with email submits or health pills, I have decided to build a following first, and then use the 'pushing' next. People generally say straight sale CPA ones are not the best on pinterest, but I beg to differ. I've had much success with beauty straight sale offers such as hair straighteners and etc, than the rest of the lead generation ones. I think the reason for that success was, I had already done the 'lead generation' in the front end by building a highly targeted responsive list, so all I had to do later was convert them into a straight sale.
I don't think it would make much sense to me if I had used a CPL offer on an existing lead list that I originally built in the first place. I found women to be more responsive to such a tactic.
6. What type of offers have worked best for you?
Broadly speaking, Dating, Health & Beauty, and Email Submits are some of the 'evergreen' ones. They have always worked for me, and I do not see why they wouldn't in the future either, as they trigger one of the most critical emotions in humans - the need/desire/want!
For me, the type of offer that worked the best varied greatly based on the source that I am testing on. As mentioned earlier, hair straighteners and such have worked wonders on Pinterest, and surprisingly, despite having a few decent sized targeted fan pages on fb in the beauty vertical, I have always had a little trouble converting them on CPS offers. In fact, what's weird was pet supplies converted better on beauty-targeted-fanpages.
In addition, email submits have been coming along really well. Previously mentioned, I am also an advertiser for email submits and they are one of the easiest ones to catch fraud on, and usually it takes less than 24 hours to figure out the quality of people going through the path, and it's always exciting to analyze the ROI on them, at the end of the day.
7. You have mentioned that you are a CPA advertiser for Email Submits and Payday Loans, how would affiliates benefit from that?
One of the main benefits would include the improvement in EPCs. We will do our best to optimize the landers and the backend, depending on the traffic that's been sent. Both the CPA networks and high volume affiliates could get in touch with us directly, and we would be more than glad to work with them, 1-on-1.
8. What advice would you offer to a newcomer in affiliate marketing who is looking to make some serious cash?
There is more advice than I could ever give, but some of the main ones I follow include, conditioning myself into believing that I WILL turn something, whether a campaign or anything - successful. This industry demands cash flow and it's everything. For starters, websites like Fiverr and Youtube are great. In fact, I had even taken part in all those sites to obtain start up cash. I'd also like to point out that you should never get comfortable in one place. I know a few people who had started out with me, and the are still stuck at Fiverr. I mean, sure they are making a living, but they are capped at a certain point where they are not able to scale up any further. They are afraid of making a move. Fear of taking a step further will hold you, and take you two steps back. Sustaining that startup cash is a toughie because there are so many 'shiny products' in our industry that it's very easy to get deviated from the main field. To make serious cash, you seriously would have to dream big and start small. Unless you are one of those lucky few, don't expect to pull in $10k/day anytime soon. When I first started out, I had the mindset of 'getting rich quick', and as long as I was in that mindset, I never saw a dime fall in. Being patient will get a long way in this field, and doing some research on affiliate blogs and forums will also save you from digging holes in your wallet.
I also think it all starts with passion, fortitude and persistence. Whether it's the passion towards the wealth or persistence towards making campaigns successful, having the ‘right mindset’ is a prerequisite for enduring success. Personally, I had the passion to discover new methods and try them out, and on top of that, I usually test a campaign with such persistence, that I either succeed in a blaze of glory or epically crash and burn :D.
9. What does a typical day for you involve?
On a typical day I wake up to the sounds of Skype notifications, as I haven't used an alarm clock in years. I then proceed to shower and get dressed. Following that, I usually spend time online; and for the next 12 to 20 hours you will generally find me optimizing, both my CPA affiliate and advertiser campaigns. After that, spending the rest of the day in meetings with some JV partners is quite a usual routine.
10. Who are your favorite artists?
I am a huge music lover, and for me it doesn't get any better than listening to classical Al Green's songs with my bf.
11. What is your dream car?
1967 Chevy Chevelle SS is what I have on my hitlist. I know it's not the best handling car out there, but it certainly is striking.
12. Any closing thoughts for Affpaying readers?
Gao, Thanks to you and your beloved readers, for spending some of their valuable time on reading my insights. I wish everyone the best of luck. Feel free to contact me and chat sometime, I am always happy to meet new people and help as much as I can.
Many thanks to Alissa for sharing your time with us and for sharing some great insight tips here! What are your thoughts on the interview? Kindly share your thoughts in the comments section below.
PS. If you are an affiliate marketer, affiliate manager or affiliate network CEO and are interested in answering a few questions about you, your network and affiliate marketing, please drop us a message.
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