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Follow the n00b (14)

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Hi All,

First a small introduction of myself: I'm 31, running an internet marketing agency for over 10 years and looking for another approach to make some (pocket) money. I hate Photoshop and have basic knowledge of HTML. I'm new to affiliate marketing and mobile CPA. However, once in a while you have to challenge yourself. I've been playing around last week with a few networks. Here's my story.

I made a few thousand $ with traffic arbitrage: buying cheap PPC and selling it. However, my accounts we're blocked so I had to find another thing to play with along my daily tasks. I came on STM via Warrior Forum and read about this "Mobile CPA" thing. Quite interesting when you're on the beach. I decided to give it a try. I signed up at Furthermobi, Zeropark and Voluum. Damn, setting up Voluum isn't easy if you don't know anything. Luckily some screenshots were on this forum.

Once my first campaign was live I was pretty excited. However, does damn networks need hours and hours to approve them. In fact, one network (they are on this forum!) need a WEEK to approve it. My interest isn't lasting that long...

So the first campaign was a virus offer somewhere in Asia. I made $700 in three days. Since I didn't understand anything about this I asked my AM for a list, created another batch of 20 offers on Zeropark... and they all lost money. In fact, my first campaign is the only one making me money so far. More specifed: was making money as it dropped below zero quite two days ago.

I signed up for another batch of traffic sources but it was all confusing me. I've put everything on hold after the weekend as I hate-hate-hate loosing money, but want to make a new start. I know mobile CPA can generate money fast & easy, but my first campaign was just a matter of luck. It encourages my to jump into it even after the disappointment after it.

A few bits and pieces for other n00bs:

• Getting your campaigns approved isn't that easy. I've been following the mobile cookbook appetiser on this forum but all ads provided by advertisers/networks are declined.
• Since I don't want to create me own banners (I'm lazy and don't have the knowledge) I focus on PPV / direct linking from now on. I already made $700 in a few days and if I'm able to repeat it and understand WHY it worked, I can go all-in.
• It appears some networks don't want to deal with small advertisers. I'm spending over $100k on Adwords every month but new to mobile CPA, so this is a good way to get into the networks.
• Since everything went wrong after my first campaign I focus on 1 traffic source and 1 vertical from now on.
• Yes, it's easy to make money with mobile CPA. That's the good news. The bad news: it's damn difficult to crack the code.

And a few questions I hope to get an answer on:[*]Some people appear to block traffic via Voluum.com. How on earth can you do that!? [*]Does anyone have some good direct-linking practices or guidelines? [*]If you choose 1 vertical and 1 traffic source, do you select multiple countries? I would say so, but can anyone confirm this? [*]Why don't we create a CPA Dictionary on this forum? My mobile network says "Incentivized Traffic allowed: Yes". It's clear i'm a n00b, so how can I know what it means? In fact, I can come up with 50 terms I don't understand. [*]Update: I've got a campaign via Zeropark which is going pretty good (over 100% ROI). However, that's just for 1 carrier. Does anyone have a tip to target carrier traffic via Zeropark?

Okay, will keep you posted about my progress the upcoming days to see if I'm making any progress on my efforts.

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Not sure what you mean by this

Do you mean direct-linking as in not using a landing page?

I would choose 1 offer and 1 source at a time. If the offer doesn't work then choose a new offer in the same vertical. When the offer does work you can start adding sources and countries.
When you start testing 1 offer and 1 source you could pick multiple countries if the offer allows it. If the language is the same then this isn't a lot of extra work. A different country can make or brake your campaign but it can also become a bit overwhelming if you don't focus enough so it's a trade off.

Example: You provide your visitors access to a free movie download if they sign up for affiliate offer x

Nope, you can't target specific carriers in Zeropark. What you can do is to create a rule in Voluum which filters out the non-compatible traffic and send them to an alternative offer.

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A dictionary / glossary is a damn good idea, and in fact is on the "to be done some time soon" list for me!

Voluum - you can't block placements via Voluum. However, you can use redirects within voluum to redirect traffic to different offers or landers - is that what you mean?

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Hi there, thanks for the quick replies! That's the reason why I joined this forum :-)

The dictionary is pretty helpful as it allows n00bs to get used to the terms you're using. I'm happy to add some bits and pieces as far as I can.

Zeropark is delivering great traffic and I've learned today how to make "rules" on Voluum to redirect traffic from all carriers apart the ones accept the offer to another offer. I'll chat with my AM (a good one for the dictionary!) to see if we can offer an alternative to them. My ROI on the correct match is over 100% but all other traffic is waste and costing me.

Direct linking: not using my own landingpages but the ones provided by the advertiser.

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Stickied in the Newbie Q&A - is this what you're after?

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...n-the-IM-World

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Heh, I didn't even know you'd made that! Nice one.

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Ah, cool! I'm not the only one who wasn't able to find the glossary I guess... :-)

Thanks and I will post an update of my journey soon.

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I have updated that threads title - now includes glossary/dictionary so should be easier to find ;-D

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Hi All,

First of all: thanks for the feedback and help. This forum is really helpful and worth every penny - keep it up!

After my disappointment last week I decided to follow some advice I read. As I'm not that patient I decided to do two things:
- Follow the mobile appetiser recipe via decisive.is.
- Stuck with 1 traffic source

Ah, so basically I have two sources now: decisive and another one. I don't think the appetiser is the way to bring home the bacon but it's a good start with banner advertising which i don't really understand. the other one is direct linking.

After a few days I can draw the conclusion it's going pretty well. I'm making $60/$70 day steadily and am expirimenting with other offers continiously. So I'm basically adding offers, playing around with offers and devices, tracking everything in Voluum and improving my ROI. That's going pretty well and it should keep me busy for a few weeks, before reaching $500+ / day. I think it's doable the way I'm working right now.

But honestly: I'm just using one traffic source, focus on a set of countries which convert well with my traffic source... and throw every offer in I can find or grab. It's not the best tactic I guess but at least it's working in this stage!

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GREAT START! Keep scaling, learning, launching new campaigns man keep the progressive flow flowing But really thats a fantastic start mate keep us updated with any questions you have

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Hi Maynzie, thanks for your positive feedback. The last three days I'm around $200 / day. I've been seriously testing over 50 campaigns and have some winners. After experimenting a lot I can recommend everyone to stick to one traffic source. That really helps to keep everything under control. Another recommendation is Voluum.com: it's worth $99 per month easily. Because of their stats I've been able to make $200 / day (for now)! That's it for the endorsements...

A couple more n00b questions:
- I'm struggling to identify which carrier is related to Nucleo SA in Paraguay. Should be AMX, Hola or Telecel. Anyone an idea?
- Does anyone have a trick or hint to unife all names of campaigns among all the networks? I'm making campaigns like:

Offer A - adult traffic wifi
Offer A - non-adult traffic wifi
Offer A - adult traffic wap
Offer A - non-adult traffic wap

So that's going to be a chaos.

Furthermore I'm just adding more and more campaigns. I've got a second traffic source for some winners so here's how I do it right now:
- Trial campaigns with 1 traffic source
- Move winners to the second traffic source (which happens to be a lot bigger as well).

To summarize my first two weeks: $1,500+ net income. Today will be over $200 and my goal is to have 1 day with $1000 or more before the end of the year. $999 would be fine too.

Enjoy your weekend!

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Haha wow, you really have been seriously testing thats a great effort man!

This is hope to the new STM'ers out there, this is super fast tracked results and I can only see it skyrocketing from here bro!

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Hi All,

Another update! You must know I'm doing AM next to my normal job. I'm one of the owners of an internet marketing agency. We do have a staff of 15 and are burning around $100,000 / month on just Adwords for our customers. My first goal with mobile CPA is to get to a profit of $1,000 a day. However, my bigger goal is to see if we can incorporate some things I learn with mobile CPA into my other daily tasks. SEO is killing and with Google making so many changes it's going nowhere for agencies I'm afraid. The big disadvantage of SEO is that you need to be patient. With mobile CPA you can act and respond straight away!

Talking about acting and responding: I haven't spend much time on my campaigns during the last days. Here are the results:
- Saturday $247
- Sunday $170
- Monday $179
- Today $153 and counting

So a lesson I learned at this forum is to be patient and to switch off your mindset. Two weeks ago I would have killed a campaign which is loosing $10. I guess I killed at least 20 of such campaigns actually. However: you MUST WORK WITH THE STATISTICS. It's definitely the ONLY and ONLY and ONLY way to make this working. I've been able to improve my ROI on several campaigns (and am on 100%+ now, overall) just by tweaking a couple of things. Patience is key and so are figures.

As every new person in this field I must have killed a lot of campaigns if the first 200 clicks didn't generate any conversions. Again: WRONG. Just let it go for a few days. My traffic sources do allow day spreading so you can let the traffic flow per hour which is great to avoid any trends in the starting phase of your campaigns.

So where I am now:
- Multiplying my campaigns by setting up adult & non-adult campaigns
- Tipping my toes into additional traffic sources
- going over the stats and learning to be patient, patient and patient

As a last line I would like to recommend every n00b to read the guide written by the Angry Russians. It's available freely on this form and is by far the best guide I read about mobile CPA. I bought 10+ of them on the Warrior Forum which has been a waste of money after reading this one. Thanks to the Angry Russians for being so open and willing to share their knowledge. I always knew only the politicians were the ones bitching, not the average joes!

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They're some great stats man, keep up the scaling but any profit is definitely a great leap forward. Your next steps are great, scale as much as you can, I'm sure you understand not everywhere you scale will work, but if you can add another 2-3 sources you may just add a few extra hundred to your bottom line. Have you asked your aff manager for a paybump as well?

Just remember, trust the process, wait for significant data and then optimise from there. Patience is the hardest part at times, but really is a virtue in this industry. While you wait step outside and enjoy life

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