My First Follow Along in the Mobile world! (12)
Hi Guys.
I've been here reading a lot and launching some campaigns just to familiarize myself with mobile. Not a great success though. Spent around $200 and made $7, spread across many campaigns. I am guilty of cutting many campaigns (in loss) early before even optimizing it. No idea why I did it but I guess it's a newbie thing seeing a lot of red.
That's why this time I decided to start a follow along and let others help me. Keeping myself accountable will improve the process and hopefully the end result.
Let's talk about the plan 
Offer Type: Sweepstakes
Payout: $1.2
Country: New Zealand
Traffic Source: Decisive
Tracking:
I chose this offer because I'm interested in running sweepstakes and this one is doing well right now.
I've prepared 6 banners and 2 landing pages. They are out for approval after which I'll start my campaigns.
There will be 4 campaigns (mob/app, mob/site, WiFi/app and WiFi/site) as advised by Caurmen in the Mobile Cookbook.
A few questions....
1. Say I spend 5X the payout on an angle and still don't have any conversion, is it ok to kill the angle and try another one?
2. If the offer is doing great, would you still stop promoting it after failing at two angles? (w.r.t Mobile cookbook)
What I need from this follow along?
- I want to learn the process and stick to optimizing campaigns rather than cutting them prematurely (stupid, stupid mistake 
)
- I want to learn how to get very low CPCs. My best CPC is around 0.03ish. There is definitely scope for improvement.
- A profitable campaign in the end
My aim to reach $100/day within the next two months. It's not going to be easy but I'm sure I can make that work.
That's enough blabbering for today guys. I've told you what's in store. Now let me run that campaign and bring back the data 
1. Most Likely, but this is dependent on how your traffic was spread out between placements.
If you are targeting a very broad audience, on many different placements, then maybe not, as you may want to give the angle a chance on more placements. So you would proceed by letting more placements reach x2 of the offer payout. Once a placement hits the offer payout x2, you will either pause it, if no conversions. Or keep it running if at least one conversion.
Or you may decide this angle isn't worth your trouble. But this is something that will take time to figure out.
This is a part of Affiliate marketing that you get a feel for. It's like when you play a video game. Lets say Call of Duty:
It's Christmas morning and you run downstairs to unwrap your presents. YAYYY! Mom and Dad got you the new COD 9001 Super Advanced Warfighter edition. You rip open the packaging and put the disc in your console. You boot up some online multiplayer team deathmatch (Fuck Yeah). You are totally ready to pwn some newbs. You start the match and you keep getting killed over and over and over and over, BUT then you get a kill. The match ends and overall your kill death ratio was 1-18 (You Sucked). But thats ok, because at least you had fun right? The next day you boot the game up again, and this time you choose the MP5 instead of the M16, now your k/d ratio is 12-15. Not bad, still not at the top of the leaderboards, but hey you're getting better. So you play the game throughout the week, each time making some progress. Then comes Sunday night (Awww yeah son), you boot up the game and choose your trusty MP5 again, but this time you decide to throw a red-dot site on that bad boy (Good Call Bro). Your start the match...BOOM Headshot....followed by BOOM Headshot......and another and another (You're killing that shit!) You finish the match and you come out victorious 22-2 (Great Job Soldier).
So, I guess what I am trying to say is Affiliate Marketing is a lot like playing a brand new video game. But instead of Maps, there are traffic sources, and instead of guns there are advertisements, and instead of gun attachments there are tweaks to split test your efforts.
Most people who start out that have never played before need some practice before they are worth a damn. There are of course some people that are pretty good from the start, but they are a rare bunch. In any case, the more you play, the better you get. If you're not enjoying the time spent playing than your probably not going to keep playing it.
Affiliate Marketing is an expensive video game in the beginning for most people. But the difference with the AM video game vs the COD video game is one pays you back. And the more you play it, the sooner it starts repaying its debt.
2. No
Finally to speak to your goal to reach $100 a day in 2 months. Very Doable. Don't be afraid of it, just focus and work at it everyday. There is no rush, there is just your need to focus your actions towards that goal. The speed does not matter. Enjoy the journey.
Thanks for the reply fatmach. I'm learning from my mistakes and hopefully one day (very soon) I'll do way better than what I'm doing right now!
Hey Guys!
Time for an Update.
The sweepstakes campaign hasn't taken off. Approval of creatives is taking a loooooooong time. So I started another campaign which is an app install. I will also add the sweepstakes campaign once it is approved and running.
Campaign 2:
Offer: Dolphin browser - INTL offer
Country: Israel
Payout: $0.21
I have launched two campaigns targeting mob/app and mob/site. I read somewhere in the forum that always test carrier traffic first before jumping into WiFi. So I'm going with carrier traffic to begin with. (1) Is this ok guys?
My traffic source is Decisive and the reason I chose Israel is just that the CPM is very low. Since the payout is less, I thought like let's give this a try.
I made 7 banners in different styles. Set the bid to smart CPM and the CPA goal is $0.33.
The campaign has been running since last weekend.
Here is some data.
Today's data.
http://awesomescreenshot.com/0d432eszfe
All time data.
http://awesomescreenshot.com/08332et95b
The spend is also very low which is kinda surprising. Their volume isn't that bad when looking at their planner. (2) Is the low CPA Goal (1.5X times the payout) the reason for the low spend?
I'm planning to target another country and see if the spending problem is because of the low CPA goal.
So where do I go from here?
(3) Wait silently till I spend X times the payout? Is the 10X rule still applicable or should I just spend more since the payout is just $0.21?
(4) And is it ok to have no conversion even after 343 clicks?
Would love to hear from you guys 
Firstly, I applaud you for using numbered and emboldened questions in your write up! It makes it very easy to know exactly what you want answers to!
1) I would test WiFi and carrier separately but run them at the same time. The fact is they will perform differently and it isn't certain that carrier traffic will perform better than WiFi... so let data do the talking. Furthermore, the WiFi vs Carrier volume balance changes with countries/targeting so you may be cutting yourself short.
2) Looking at your data you can see the number of bids = available impressions. These values are quite low, which suggests it is your targeting that is the bottleneck - or that there is less volume in Israel than the planner suggests. I would launch a separate campaign for WiFi. What other targeting do you have?
3) You will want to spend a decent amount (e.g. $3-5) on each campaign/angle you try. At the moment you have quite isolated data - just carrier traffic and presumably one angle?
4) However, 300+ clicks and no conversions is concerning. Have you vettted your tracking setup, checked how many clicks are being logged at the network, and loaded your tracking URL through a real device connected to an Isreali VPN to check that a) the funnel works as expected, and b) a conversion is successfully registered?
This is a very important process that should be at the top of your list for running mobile offers - it should in fact precede campaign creation.
Thanks for the detailed answers, Zeno.
1. WiFi campaigns coming up
2. Just the country and OS. Should I try increasing the CPA goal just for the sake of experimenting?
3. Yes, Just one angle for now. So I guess I'll spend $5 on an angle as minimum and see how it goes. Trying another angle is on the cards.
4. I did have a little trouble between campaigns targeting different countries and their postback URLs. One had tracking and the other was direct linked from decisive. But it wasn't for long and the in the worst case I would have lost track of 50 to 60 clicks. Both don't have tracking now. Thought I could reduce some time and now linking straight from decisive. Good news is, I finally have a conversion
Now I have 8 campaigns, targeting 2 countries and 4 campaigns each. Including WiFi campaigns this time.
How much should one spend per day as a minimum to get some decent data for a <1 payout offer? $5? $10?
I'll come with some more data once the new ones have run for some time.
2) Yes. Experiments are good.
Check how much volume that OS has in Israel. If I look at Israel I see 10 mil daily impressions.
80% of these come from 320x50 placements so you will want to use those size ads. If you weren't, that's your problem.
60-70% of the traffic comes from iOS. There is very little outside of Android/iOS. 40% is WiFi.
If you were targeting Android for example, if iOS/Android connection type averages are the same, then you would only have 1.2 million impressions. You had about 200k, so it's clearly lower than expected but we can't say for sure that the WiFi/Carrier balance is the same across the board.
E.g. if Android phones averaged 80% WiFi and 20% carrier... you would only get 400k daily impressions from Android + Carrier targeting.
Yes. Android seems to have comparatively low volume.
The two campaigns that have getting low traffic have smart CPM of 0.08 (wins 32% of bids) and 0.05 (wins 28% of bids). I have increased the CPM to 0.15.
I'll wait to see if there is any improvement in winning % which would mean more clicks.
Time for an update.
# Dolphin Browser
So the campaigns for the browser offer ran for another day and the results haven't improved greatly.
These are the stats.
Looking at so many clicks and just 3 conversions is just saying me that the angle is not working regardless of how little I have spent.
What should I do now?
Try the offer with another angle? or Run the same for some more time?
The Sweepstakes offer campaign has just started and I'm getting some data as I write. Will update the thread once those campaigns get some decent data.
Edit:
The CPM experimentation did increase the % of wins in decisive but not by a big difference. Hardly a 10% increase. However I got a little more traffic than I was getting at that moment.
Is the offer proven?
Consider testing some other angles. If you have no reason to believe the offer should or can do well, and multiple angles fail, move on.
Hi guys!
Just got some data on the sweepstakes campaign I run in NZ with a payout of $1.2.
Here you go.
For the first time I think I've got some promising campaigns and I'm very happy about it.
But the landing pages stats are making me feel really bad.
I know my landers aren't that great but just 6% and 5% CTR is kinda disturbing. Are there any visual elements (there is a countdown timer in both the landers) I should be implementing in my landers apart from just colored backgrounds and Text?
I've paused the campaign for now and making some additional banners. The question running in my mind is When should I bring in another lander in this mix? and how long shall I keep running these two landers?
Where should I go from here guys?
I'd bring another lander into the mix now.
You've got a promising campaign, but what you have now isn't going to cut it.
Whats more important than colors/buttons is your COPY and your ANGLE. HOW are you selling this... what are you doing to make the user click to the offer page.. do you have URGENCY tactics? Step up your landing pages, make some newer, more aggressive ones that SELL the user to make them NEED to click to the next page. Compare them to your previous 2 landing pages and then you'll know where to go from there!
Some tips:
- Pages that look like apps
- Unique testimonials
- Countdown timer
- Offering CRAZY cool prizes, but saying only iPad available on the next page
get creative!
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