3 Weeks to Get Back in the Mobile Game (21)
So, I'm back on the field, ready to compete.
If you want to see:
- a follow along about mobile campaigns...
- a follow along about about a lazy ass who has wasted his talent for too long, and whose worst enemy is himself...
- and if you want to see this very same guy kicking his own ass in order to never be guilty of making excuse again...
Then keep reading.
*** A little story about myself, if you don't give a shit about my life and just want the actionable plan, skip this part 
***
Not trying to waste your precious time but I thought I could share why I'm doing this follow along.
I've started doing AM part-time in addition to my day job since 2011. Made all the progress on my own to get the technical and the marketing background wanted. Able to code landing pages for web and mobile pretty fast, split testing freaks, and I can create banners on my own, animated or not.
I've always had moderate success, reached something like $100 - $300 a day in profits, but I've never been able to pass this cap. Mostly because I've always targeted my native market I think, and at some point I've been stuck getting more converting traffic for the campaigns that was running at those times. I wish I could have overcome the fear to get my feet wet in other languages sooner.
The problem is, these 'profitable' campaigns have always ended at some point, somewhere between 2 weeks and 6 months, and it's like I've always allowed myself to procrastinate and sleep on my assets instead of giving that final push that could have made me doing the real jump full time.
It's like after a moderate success like $100/day, I feel depressed and demotivated when I try new things that don't work and eat my hardly earned capital. Very weird feeling, because when I look back, all the success I had was earned when I tried things really outside the box (angles mostly, but also conversion funnels a bit outside your typical conversion flow I think, or maybe I'm pretentious as shit, which can be the real explanation since my business didn't reach the next level yet)...
So I know that when I really want, I can be creative and I can make things that convert... But for holy god sake, what the fuck is wrong with my attitude? I need to get my ass kicked real hard, and that's what I want to work on as well on this follow along. It's not just about reaching profits and making things working, it's also about working on myself in order to be a better and most reliable person.
I guess, I'm the kind of guy who is always overthinking, over-planning, and since I had twins in 2012 and still had this day job, I'm guilty to miserabily excuse myyself to easily give up because of the lack of energy.
Haven't worked seriously since summer 2013.
So, I know why I've been stuck for so long, and it's making me very angry about myself.
Stop complaining, it's time to heads up!
Now the twins are 2 years old, still a lot of struggle and shit, but well, it's the life I've chosen having kids. At least, they are easier to handle now.
Also, my boss is taking his annual 3 weeks holidays. This will allow myself to work at least 3 hours a day on AM during my day job. I plan to add an extra 2 hours a day, which is a reasonable amount of time regarding the minimum amount of energy I can get in my daily routine.
5 hours a day fully dedicated to AM for the next 3 weeks.
I know it may sounds lazy, for the grinders among you that work 10 hours a day overnights, but I'd like to plan a fairly reasonable action plan that I can keep following for 3 weeks.
I guess, I will always have the time to push harder taking on my sleeping time if things get traction, I prefer to plan something I can stick on 3 weeks with suffering from no exception, instead of setting irrealistic goals, so let's say 5 hours of AM work a day for 3 weeks, in addition to my day job and my time with the kids.
*** End of the story, I needed to get these emotions out sorry ***
*** The plan ***
I already have good relationships with F5, Neverblue and Adsimilis.
Tracking and servers are already setup (and wasting my money being inactive for so long, same for my STM subscription, what a shame).
I have a bunch of banners templates and mobile landing pages templates well coded.
I have a bit of capital earned on my past campaigns (3k).
I have $500 here and there waiting since mid-2013 on adult traffic sources.
I already know the best converting spots on these traffic sources since I've ran dozens of profitable campaigns there (around 100$/day max but that's still profits).
I guess, most of starters would dream to start with that. Such a shame I didn't do anything tangible with that for so long 
1/ First goal :
- Trying to make the most of the $500 waiting on the adult traffic sources.
At least breaking even, on the converting spots I know (still have the data on spreadsheets), with proven offers from F5.
(Maynzie if you come here, I'll need your help on this part )
- Second part is to find out a system that I imagine to be semi-automated (i.e. launching x banners of y kinds on day z or w, refreshing LP on a XXX basis, rotating offers on XXX basis etc.), in order to have a consistent flow of profits coming from these campaigns, even if we're speaking of the tiny margins we can get on these competeting traffic sources as an affiliate.
I need this 'semi-automated' system because I already know the sweetest spots and the ones that made me lose money. If I can come up with this kind of process, I could feed it with the smallest amount of time possible while dealing with my day job.
So the goal is to recover a bit of a financial wealth, and trying to make something working for a longer time than before.
- Third part is to go direct with the site owners when I find the best mix in term of creatives and offers on self served traffic sources. And keep adding banners and LP on a daily basis on my semi automated system, improving my profitability in the process.
2/ Second goal :
When recovered a bit of capital (it it worked of course, but with the $500 deposit already out of my wallet, even if I'm not profitable, I'll get some money back at least), I'll be following the plan shared by Caurmen on the mobile cookbook. But it will be another story for later, when I'll feel that I gave everything I could to make the first goal a success.
*** Productivity ***
I've used a lot of productivity hacks during my career (the producteev app, the pomodoro method, evernote etc.), I won't reinvent the wheel here but having a day job force me to make the most of my time for these 3 weeks.
I liked the idea of this post:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ot-Here-s-mine!
so I'll set up goals that need to be done no matter what happen in the day.
I'll use this thread as well to keep track of my progress.
One of the goal I plan to achieve everyday is:
"Something new needs to be uploaded online today"
No matter if it's a new campaign, a new banner, or a new landing page.
No matter if it's worth $3 of traffic or if it's worth 20000 fresh new clicks.
No matter if it's not perfect or if it's ugly as fuck.
Fully rested or tired, euphoric or bored, happy or depressed, something new that wasn't existing yesterday has to be online today.
This is the very minimum objective on my 3 weeks plan.
No need to mention that during these 3 weeks, Facebook, Twitter, the news sites and the like will be shutted down the whole time.
No distraction, no TV show, no restaurant etc. You get the idea.
Everything has already started, I come back tomorrow with the record of the day.
Please help me to find the strenght to stick to this plan for the next 3 weeks, to not jump to an other strategy or kind of offers/traffic sources, and please kick my ass whenever I show some signs of weakness
Now, I'm going to work fellas.
Cheers
Originally Posted by julien
Good luck, subscribing!
Thank you Vitalis 
Ok, so,
Day 1:
- 2 countries targeted for a first test
- Bunch of offers added to the mix
- 4 landing pages created and uploaded
- 9 banners created, 6 of them are animated
= 2 campaigns uploaded with these settings, currently waiting for approval
Let's get the data...
Something new, that wasn't existing yesterday, has been put online today
Definitely subscribed! I'll be looking forward to reading updates from this one!
A lot of things happened on this first day, I'm feeling again those sensations when you wake up in the morning and can't wait to see what happened during the night. I'm feeling again this excitation when I log into my dashboard and see if I made a little revenue.
Day 1 Stats :
Spent: $30.56
Revenue: $6.40
Profits: -$24.16
ROI: -79%
Ok, no stress, data is coming at its own pace and at least there are some conversions showing up.
Also, I'm just reporting day 1 where the camp has been approved around 11pm, so, not a lot of things to comment on this short sequence, but I watched day 2 very carefully (more clicks and money spent that day) and I can already feel a thing or two:
Things done on Day 2:
- Apple devices were converting horribly. 1.27% CR.
With such a bad ratio, I prefer to pause these devices for now and will go back on them later with an other strategy.
I'll certainly try web offers on these devices to see what happens.
- One of the landing page that I was the most proud of in my life happened to be a HUGE FAIL with an astonishing 0.00% conversion rate
Bye bye dear, I had a great time coding you with all that fancy stuff that made you look so perfect on every devices on the planet, but you failed to pass the test.
- A couple of ads seems to be decent, even if they lose money.
I kept 4 of them and added 5 new ones. For now, still on the same adcopy, just trying to get a better template to work on before split testing too much the adcopy.
- I could see that Exoclick is still a shitty traffic source to deal with. When I buy traffic from a spot, I end up being on dozens and dozens of them... Plenty of bucks lost for nothing.
I don't have time to get in a fight, AGAIN, with them, about that HUGE BUG on their platform...
Spent too much time on phone and email to try to sort this out last year.
Since I still have $500 to spend there, I use this money and then, I'll throw this trafic source away for good this time.
- For some reason, I can't get traffic from PornHub and Youporn, even if I select them.
Too bad because these sites worked very well for me in the past on mobile traffic.
- Just launched something new, I'll comment it later before exposing too much on this idea I had.
- Finally, I could see some offers, and more particularly, specific LPs provided by the merchants, that were over performing.
I made the best choice by testing all the LP declinations from the start, because the most powerful at the moment is not the main link you can pick up for the offer on the CPA network.
Soooooo, a lot of things need to be done, it seems that my to-do list can't stop to grow with new ideas and things to test... but it's still better than being out of ideas
Aaaaaaand, day 1 is complete:
Something new, that wasn't existing yesterday, has been put online today
^^awesome stuff.
Anyone who is new and wanting to get a good look at how the process should work - follow this follow-along! So far Julien's approach is spot-on in how to start a new campaign.
Good stuff mate, gonna follow this one!
Your approach/process is good.
You spend money, get data, the data clearly shows this isn't going to work without monumental increases in CVR/payout/etc., so you move to a less tapped geo or a different offer. Yes!
Day 3 Stats :
Spent: $38,76
Revenue: $12,72
Profits: $-26,04
ROI: -67%
Things done on Day 4:
I'm afraid there won't be a lot of things to comment on this day.
The test with the 2 other GEOs/offers ended up with a frustration.
For these 2 GEOs on the placements I wanted to get, and with the settings filtered as I wanted, there is barely to no traffic at all.
I'm not even sure that the offers are losers but since I can't spend more than $15 a day on these settings, I won't lose my time on this campaign at the moment, at least, on this traffic source.
So, I've decided to run another offer, still on adult dating, but this time I'm pretty sure there is a huge load of traffic waiting for me on the GEO I plan to target.
Also, even if I'm tackling the adult dating niche with my custom LPs, I'm always not far away from the famous rules LP.
I've decided to take a bit of risk and will come up with new angles and LP concepts.
On the banners AND on the landing page.
I won't test something too crazy for starters, I think, because each time I've let my creativity flowing on this market, I wasn't really rewarded and still came back to the rules LP again and again.
But since I plan to work on a larger volume on this one, I definitely need to take risks and rotate different concepts.
I'll let you know the results here.
And again:
Something new, that wasn't existing yesterday, has been put online today
I remember you from my own first time appearance right here on STM and always looked at you as one of the guys that "did it" and (posted some good nuggets.)
Time to do it again my friend, subscribed and watching for good things to come out of this thread
Hey there,
It seems like you have a solid plan and working hard to make a success of this. I think that is just great.
However, you really should not be doing this on your employer's time ... and especially so if you are engaging NSFW/adult activities. Not only can you get fired for this, but it is also just not the responsible or right way to go about it.
You owe your employer certain responsibilities while you are at work, and you should respect these. Do your campaign activities outside of work hours, while you are on vacation, or maybe during your lunch break.
But don't do them when you are supposed to be working for your employer.
Interesting I am new in affiliate marketing subscribed as well!
Thanks Gary
You owe your employer certain responsibilities while you are at work, and you should respect these. Do your campaign activities outside of work hours, while you are on vacation, or maybe during your lunch break.
But don't do them when you are supposed to be working for your employer.
I felt bad after reading your post, since as a libertarian I believe in the meaning of a contract.
Anyway, setting up 3 hours of AM work during the day job was too unrealistic, I can't make them with the amount of work I have to do here.
Of course, I wasn't designing my creatives at the office
So I'll just check the stats from time to time, raise or lower bids and pause traffic when it's needed.
It won't take a lot of time and I need this 5 minutes here and there to check up that everything is going well.
Thank you very much for reminding me that I have to respect my contract.
Instead of facebooking like others in the rat race, I'll just check up my stats, and that's it.
I'll do more on my time at home.
Day 4 Stats :
Spent: $45,01
Revenue: $8,12
Profits: -$36.89
ROI: -81%
Things done on Day 5:
Not much to say for now.
The data above includes the remnant traffic from my previous test, but the new approach seems slightly better.
I need to get data to confirm this hypothesis.
To reduce risks, here's what I've done:
- Launched 2 new angles through a dynamic landing page which interacts with dynamic parameters.
I pass in the URL a specific ID for the angle and a specific ID for the image, in order to match perfectly the landing page to my banners.
When the landing page recognizes the angle, it displays automatically the appropriate copywriting.
Also, one thing very important, since I'm on the dating niche, I've chosen to work on angles that pre-qualify users.
Users that will click on my creatives will be older men for the most of them.
- Launched CPC traffic for now, the time for me to get more data on these angles, because CPM bids on this GEO are freaking wild
My eCPC can reach $1 because of a low CTR on some placements.
- Worked a bit more on the incentives, the "reason why" the visitors should subscribe to the offer.
Changed the copywriting accordingly with these new tests.
I don't know where it will lead me but I sleep better when I know I've done everything I could to have the sweetest flow possible.
Can't wait to be tomorrow. I hope that the bids are high enough to get traffic and data. I'll check up tomorrow and adjust them if needed.
Before going to sleep, I can say that:
Something new, that wasn't existing yesterday, has been put online today
Day 5 Stats :
Spent: $66,79
Revenue: $8,12
Profits: -$58;67
ROI: -88%
Things done on Day 6:
Hmmm, some of the things I tried on the day 5 have failed big time:
- RON traffic has ended up with traffic coming from a ton of shitty placements with unreal CTR, between 2 and 4%.
Yes, 2-4%, It's not a typo.
200 clicks paid for absolutely nothing, since I was on the CPC model, it costs me $21 for nothing.
Not a big deal but still a waste of time.
I've killed this campaign.
- The CPC campaign on the premium placements didn't bring traffic.
Certainly because my eCPM is too low for the ad network in comparison of my CPM campaigns.
So it seems that there won't be a lot of possibilities with Exoclick, I'll have to target the premium placements and make them work no matter what.
At least for this campaign.
Without an amazing CTR, I won't be profitable on this traffic source.
I am having a hard time trying to improve this CTR at this point, can't do more than 0,07% on premium placements.
The fight is definitely not over.
Since I still have money to spend there, I tried every other sizes available on premium placements to see if I can get traction outside the competitive world of the 300x250 banner.
I'm happy to see that I kept working seriously on a daily basis this week, I'll have a full row soon on my spreadsheet.
Something new, that wasn't existing yesterday, has been put online today
Day 6 Stats:
Spent: $97,86
Revenue: $8,12
Profits: -$89,74
ROI: -92%
At this point, you should think that I'm completely crazy to keep hustling on this niche but wait, things seem to get a bit better:
Day 7 Stats:
Spent: $36,04
Revenue: $56,84
Profits: $20,80
ROI: 58%
Pheeew, finally some green...
On such a little sample of traffic, it's still hard to see if it's just a lucky day or if it's more tangible.
I keep working on the good angles and placements.
We'll see what happens next.
I keep you updated, even if you don't read, it helps me to keep track of my progress and see that I'm working actively to get things done.
For both day 6, and day 7, I got new creatives live, so again, the objective is complete... step by step, I'm taking action
Good job man, I was just going to suggest to switch offers since ROI was too much in the red.
However looks like smth is working now.
Keep buying data since RON requires a lot of optimization and create separate campaigns for winning placements.
Keep us updated!
great post
Day 8 Stats:
Spent: $16,93
Revenue: $8,12
Profits: -$8,81
ROI: -52%
Day 9 Stats:
Spent: $23,32
Revenue: $32,48
Profits: $9,16
ROI: 39%
Day 10 Stats:
Spent: $17,66
Revenue: $32,48
Profits: $14,82
ROI: 84%
Things are going better, unfortunately, no volume on these placements on this geo.
I'm going to scale this up on bigger geo and see what happens
I keep you updated.
The graph's moving in a good direction...
Nice one on keeping focused on volume. Keep us updated!
Day 11 Stats:
Spent: $16,82
Revenue: $40,60
Profits: $23,78
ROI: 141%
Day 12 Stats:
Spent: $38,10
Revenue: $39,40
Profits: $1,30
ROI: 3%
Day 13 Stats:
Spent: $39,17
Revenue: $31,88
Profits: -$7,29
ROI: -19%
Day 14 Stats:
Spent: $29,55
Revenue: $26,92
Profits: -$2,63
ROI: -9%
So far, here I am:
Spent: $593,72
Revenue: $345,8
Profits: -$247,92
ROI: -42%
My strategy sucks, I can't rest on a single placement, there is no sense to waste my time on such a tiny volume, even if it's profitable on 1 geo.
Since I couldn't get the campaign profitable on premium spots, I'll dig deeper on RON placements hoping to find some gems untapped.
Don't know if it's a good strategy but one of the offer have a pretty awesome EPC, > $1, on non-premium spots.
There's no reason I can't make it work elsewhere.
My guess is that the offer has been too exposed on premium spots, which makes it hard to convert new prospects in there.
That's why I've a terrific EPC on other lands.
I keep pushing... To be continued.
Untapped lands? Sounds like a profitable destination!
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