Testing The Mobile Waters With Caurmen's Appetiser (20)
Let it be said first that I am brand new to mobile and must thank Caurmen for his excellent guide. I figured this would be a great way to start out and gain a bit of insight. My plan is to stick to the guide and hopefully get my head around things.
I began looking through the offers available to me and of course consulting my AM for recommendations. After some research I settled on what appears to be a solid offer.
Payout: $0.40 CPI
Target: Non-English Speaking Country
Traffic Source: Decisive
Tools
What Runs Where
Adobe Fireworks
As per the guide I sat down and did some research. I looked over all the information about the app, what it does and what it's main features are. I also took a quick spin over to What Runs Where to see how other people are promoting the offer. With this information I began to develop some angles. With a few angles and pain point/benefit ideas I settled on one to start with and began building some banners. I have been a long time user of Adobe Fireworks for this kind of graphics work, I know the software well and it is very well suited for this sort of rapid production.
With a handful of banners ready to go I opened up
(Site) (Wi-Fi), (App) (Wi-Fi), (Site) (Carrier), (App) (Carrier)
Once the campaigns are configured in Voluum I jumped over to Decisive and set up my 4 campaigns there. As recommended I chose Smart CPM and set my CPA Goal to 1.5 times the offer payout or $0.60 in this case. My overall budget is set to unlimited and the daily limit set to $8.00.
I have the network posting conversions back to Voluum and then Voluum in turn posting conversions back to Decisive. We should be able to look at plenty of data once we get the ball rolling.
So now we wait for the campaigns to be approved with Decisive.
Here is everything sitting in Voluum getting those lovely little heartbeat clicks.
I will be updating as soon as this one launches, stay tuned!
This looks interesting, keep us updated how it goes!
subscribed! good luck!
Good start mate, looking forward to seeing the results!
I was pleased to wake up today and find that all of my creatives were approved. When I had a bit of time to sit down and watch things roll out I went over to Decisive and started everything up.
Here is the view from
And of course the view from Decisive:
In just 5 minutes time I am seeing good traffic, looking at how quickly the spend has jumped leaves me very reluctant to make any cuts so quickly. The guide mentions cutting placements which are eating 3x the payout as I gather data. What I see here leaves me to question this tactic without inserting some sort of time variable. Since I am promoting an app install doesn't it seem as though I need to allow potential conversions time to be realized before making any judgement on a placement? Even at this 5 minute mark as per the guide there are a few placements which I should be cutting, it just doesn't feel right though.
Any insights would be appreciated!
hey man, awesome stuff. I've also got zero mobile experience. My barrier now is actually getting into any of these affiliate networks. were you already in the networks you found these types of offers on? The last time I ran heavy affiliate traffic was back when copeac and neverblue were relevant (neverblue may still be, but their site doesn't look the part anymore)
If you or anyone who sees this thread has any ideas on getting approved by these networks, let me know 
I would say start with F5 Media, do a quick search on the forum and you will find all the details you need. Apply for an account, be honest with them and add Jaimmie to your Skype list. She will be able to point you in the right direction and get you up to speed very quickly with some recommendations.
Here we are about an hour in and I have a lone conversion.
I have been keeping my eye on things and as I mentioned in the last update have hesitated to blacklist any placements just yet. I don't know if this conversion just popped up to make me seem as though I might have a clue as to what I am talking about or perhaps to make me look like a fool at some later date. Here is the view from the Decisive Live Reports:
This particular conversion happened to come in on one of these placements which appeared very early on as though it was eating my budget up. It's obviously too early to tell but I feel as though spending the money to view the data makes sense at this point. I have decided to let things run for a bit as a general guideline, giving users time to convert. This will certainly help me to learn a bit more and could give others some insight and maybe even a chuckle.
At this point I would spend some more money to get meaningful data.
So far it's too little data to make a decision.
You're absolutely correct - if a campaign has only been running 5 minutes, I would definitely not cut any placements yet!
Give it at least an hour or so, preferably a couple of hours, before doing your first check on placements. Normally I leave it overnight.
You might end up spending too much on one placement, but that's not as bad as cutting placements too early.
Looking very good!
So here is the day 1 wrap up from Decisive.
Notice the $11.60 spend on the second campaign which has a daily limit set to $8.00, a bit odd. I did send an email over to Decisive to make sure they were aware of this, obviously not the end of the world at this scale but seeing 40-50% overruns on large spends could have the potential to hurt someone. I will post any updates they provide me with here.
Day 1 Results
Spend: $28.81
Revenue: $2.80
ROI: -90.28%
More to follow!
Originally Posted by caurmen
This is almost exactly what I ended up doing, my sleepy time inserted itself in to the middle of all this excitement. A few placements did spend more as expected but I am very pleased to hear some validation in my choice to continue to collect data.
So here we are kicking off day 2 and it's not the shimmering success any of us hope for. First, the numbers:
As you can see, per Caurmen's guide the third campaign in the list has been paused as the spend is now beyond $15.00 with less than $7.00 in revenue. This is very quickly painting a picture in my mind that screams very loudly that my angle is very wrong. The remaining three campaigns are on pace to perform even worse which puts my head in a bit of a tailspin. My normal reaction here is to cut and run!
My intention now is to keep them live and continue to monitor until they each reach the $15.00 spend at which time they will be subject to the actions in the guide as normal. I am not going to allow myself to infer anything beyond what the data is telling me for now and I want to complete this exercise even if it results in failure. I know that personally I have a bad habit of cutting too fast and running the other direction out of fear and I wish to make a sound effort to change that. I want my conclusions to be based on method and data as much as possible.
Till next time.
subscribed! good thread!
Your CPAs are very high cf. your offer payout but I wouldn't give up hope just yet.
The campaign you paused clearly has the most potential - lowest CPA, highest CVR (albeit minimal data) but in fact the lowest banner CTRs!
I would dig into the campaigns and start to find the placements that are performing poorly. There could definitely be some profitable pockets in the 2nd campaign especially if you can get better banners going.
Wrapping up day 2, another one bites the dust. The view from Decisive:
Here we can see that Site/Wi-Fi had a massive spike in CTR but the conversion rate is just not there. I am not going to jump to any conclusions just yet but my brain is starting to work here. My gut tells me that after all the results are in and I have a chance to look things over the right path might be exploring a landing page to lift that conversion rate up on the Site/Wi-Fi campaign while working banners and maybe testing a few more angles out on the App/Wi-Fi campaign to bring that CTR up to par. The real question will remain, should I even continue?
Any thoughts would be appreciated, looking to get my mind moving in the correct way here most of all!
Day 2 Results
Spend: $24.59
Revenue: $2.40
ROI: -90.24%
Total To Date:
Spend: $53.40
Revenue: $5.20
ROI: -90.26%
Looks like you've spent <$200 so far? Maybe Decisive's inventory is just not that good for this particular geo? But I wouldn't be so quick to judge of course.
The Mobi Manifesto (Ruck of IMGrind... it's still a good intro) says that you should expect to drop $500 per campaign (containing various angles but same offer), and it will take 10-12 campaigns before mobile 'sticks'. You are only a few percentage points on your learning journey. Make sure you split-test that offer across multiple networks (at least two), get some more angles popping, more banners for cheap clicks etc.
Looking good so far and at least the conversions are coming in. But there's a lot of fat still to cut from the campaign. I haven't started mobile just yet, but have been fervently reading up about it (holidays right now). It seems like it's going to cost at least a few grand to be able to SEE the whole steak, before you can start cutting the fat properly. Then you munch and get the protons and get big brah.
Continue but change things if required, follow the cutting rules mentioned in the STM cookbook.
Were you just testing one offer here?
It's possible that you could optimise this particular set of campaigns to profit, but in all honesty, both from my experience and the research I did for the Mobile Cookbook, I would recommend moving on to a new angle or new offer at this point (assuming that none of those campaigns pick up before they spend $15).
None of those campaigns are initially looking that profitable, and you really want to find a good angle / offer even before you start optimising.
Set up another angle or another offer, send it another $50 - $60 spend, and see how it does. After a few tries, you'll find one that looks promising right from the get-go, and that's the one to focus on for now.
Hi Caurmen, thank you for the comments. Yes, this was all for the same offer.
With what you have said here I think it's best for my mindset to just move on. I personally have a bad habit of beating a dead horse. I just don't know when to leave something on the floor and focus my time on finding a real winner. From what you have articulated in the guide and stated here it sounds like there's better things out there and I should direct my time to finding them.
Forward I shall move.
Thanks again!
Originally Posted by caurmen
It's definitely good to adopt a ruthless attitude to cutting angles that don't work, in particular. Don't go overboard, but most people tend toward sticking with one angle for too long rather than the reverse.
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