I’ve been part of the STM (Stack That Money) community for a long time. Since I posted my review about STM several years ago, it’s time to relaunch a follow-up review so you and other beginners would benefit from the valuable information on this post.
First off, keep in mind that STM is more than a forum. It’s a community.
It’s a forum where members are coming from a place of help.
It’s a community where members are giving feedback so you can improve the necessary things.
It’s a learning resource where you don’t only acquire theories but you also discover the tools useful for affiliate marketing and the practical steps for you to succeed in this field.
Are Affiliate Marketing Forums Dead?
A lot of forums have been created over the years. A lot of them are just dead. Some are still up. However, it’s not a forum that you should look for. You should look for a real community. Because a plain forum can only make you learn things. But a community can help you get to your desired destination.
When I started, I basically learned through YouTube and Google. Fifteen years ago, that’ the only resource we had. Good enough. But it lacks this thing we call “networking opportunity” which a community can provide us.
Back then, I tested everything on my own, acquired knowledge on my own and failed on my own. Really, there was no one I can tell my failures to and get some feedback. Therefore, I didn’t know where I went wrong.
Though there are already forums in the past, none were really like a community. You would just be overloaded with information by reading threads that were so broad and generic. Affiliate Forums specializes in a community and not the trend.
A community can help you duplicate what they’ve already achieved. On the other hand, you can also learn from their mistakes so you can avoid it and succeed in your journey.
Be with the right people.
Tell me who your 3 closest friends are. Chances are, you might become like them. It’s the same with a forum you are in. If it’s a community where beginners are striving to achieve their goals and successful members who are helping others, then you will be able to make a shift from where you are to where you want to be.
Affiliate form is not dead. You just have to find your niche. STM forum is a community that can guide you by the hand.
What Can You Learn from This Affiliate Forum?
Lots of things. Though this forum is broad, you can still find specific topics and types of learners, go-getters, and affiliates. There are several topics that range from Facebook Ads to eCommerce, to Native Ads and Pop Mobile traffic.
You everything in here, even SEO affiliates. Though there aren’t many participants in such threads, it has been growing with the rise of e-commerce. Many users you can find here are traffic buyers.
Traffic buyers want to increase their ROI immediately. With the help of experts like the forum owners and moderators who leave great feedback, you will learn different strategies. Also, you can follow along in this forum to continuously learn your craft. I am in there leaving feedback as well to the community.
If you are a beginner, you might be overwhelmed with the vast amount of information in here. So, I recommend that you just choose something so can start with it. If you do not know where, then check out their On Boarding thread. This thread gives you a jump start on the affiliate marketing industry.
On the other hand, if you’re still confused on where to start, to give you an idea on where to start, check out the list of success stories in the forum. These started as follow along because they needed help. The forum community went in and helped these users become super affiliates.
Their success was not attained overnight. These success stories are users that are just like you trying to start. At first, they were confused about where to being, how to find the right way, and how to get there. Good thing the STM community came in and gave feedback on their FIRST campaign.
The best part is these came from Follow Along Threads.
Start from Someone Else’s Mistakes
Look for a thread that you want to follow along. Follow Along threads track the progress of the activities you follow and apply the same strategies on your own campaign. The affiliate, usually a beginner, posts…
- their ad spend
- their landing page
- their bid strategy
- their ad creative
- the tools they are using
Everything is posted for the community so they can have some sort of helpful feedback. After several days or even a day of paid traffic, they post again their results…
- their CTR
- their Conversions
- their CPC
- and many more stats
This allows the STM users to go in there and tell the person what he did right, wrong, and what to adjust.
It’s like having more than one mentor. Their past experiences and the lessons learned from them, will be of great benefit to you because these lessons can fast-track your progress by avoiding the same mistakes they made in the past.
Since everyone is throwing their input, you can decide what strategy you think will work best for your specific case. If it doesn’t work for you, then they still got your back. But it usually ends up working and then you become a success story in the forum!
It isn’t Just a Forum, Always a Place for Innovation
STM isn’t just an affiliate marketing forum. It is a community that wants to help improve the community itself. So over the years, they have done a lot of projects and invested in tools for the users of the Stack that Money forum. Those are the tools which they believed can help users succeed in their campaign. STM really wants to win in the affiliate marketing space.
For example, they are helping affiliates find affiliate jobs through AffJobs. They invested in a visual click tracking platform and helped affiliates by providing an ad spy tool.
This allows the affiliates to quickly profit from campaigns. The owners of STM forum, are all about innovation. They ensure that their users are equipped with the quality tools for you to accomplish everything so you can be an affiliate marketing conqueror.
Recently this year, they made sense of the data on the aggregated report from their longtime community users. It asked several simple questions about the affiliate industry.
Longtime members of the forum gave their feedback.
Always a Community First
Even after a lot of success stories of STM members, this platform always wants to keep the family-style community. So, everyone in the forum usually meets up somehow. Whether it be at affiliate conferences or at STM local events around the world.
The meet-ups started out as just a gathering of like-minded affiliates that ran affiliate offers who wanted to discuss failures and success. STM allows members to have meaningful connections that can result in powerful collaboration.
Not only is this essential but damn productive as well. Because it allows affiliates to talk to very like-minded users and talk about threads that have been posted in the STM forum as well. This can help them do brainstorming which in turn will come up with viable solutions to problems.
Therefore, it’s an interactive meet-up. Moderators plan sometimes a day or even several days worth of activities for the members of the forum.
This community tends to also create outside mastermind groups as well. So, they have the opportunity to further discuss how to create ads online that can generate significant revenue.
Overall Conclusion after Years in the STM Forum
After several years in this forum, I find myself logging in and out of it. In order to keep up with the constant changes this industry goes through, I have to read up on what others are doing. This is how I keep growing. Learning doesn’t stop because changes are constant.
The STM forum helps me keep up-to-date with what’s going on with everyone and their traffic sources.
I get to always discover what is popular and what tools everyone is using. Also, it helps me keep aware of the news that is going on and what may or may not happen with that news about our affiliate industry. This provides me the basis so I can come up with a safe forecast. It’s beneficial both for me and for others who need my help.
STM creates a lot of unique groups as well. These are video content, podcasts, and training information. It keeps up with traffic trends so it can give the needed insights for the members. Again, this isn’t just a forum of affiliates. It’s an ecosystem where members have mutual benefits through relevant information and tools for affiliates.
