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(Not so) Newbie - Planning to Surprise the Wife (24)

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Quick introduction since it's my first post - I build websites and manage advertising for small businesses as my main business for the last 2 years. I make $500 average on affiliate products through my blog/youtube channel so I'm not a total noob in affiliate marketing. I know the potential and want to make some life-changing cash fairly quickly.

I've tried mobile aff. marketing in the last few years but didn't give it enough time to work.

After hearing about STM on a podcast (Glenn Alsop) recently, I decided to give it another whirl. My goal is to take my wife out to dinner in the future and give her an envelope with a payoff letter on our mortgage and a permission slip to quit her job whenever she would like.

To accomplish this, I'd need $200k to pay off home and then $500/day average affiliate income. I believe I can do this in 24 months realistically but could also happen much faster with hard work and some luck. Our 10 yr anniversary is in 14 months and she'd probably like my surprise better than diamond earrings.

I'm gonna go through the Mobile Cookbook to start the learning process. I'd like to focus on Mobile PPI type stuff since I do desktop stuff through my blog already in the website services space. I also think the potential is new(ish) and growing with mobile.

What I've done:

• Went through first section of Mobile Cookbook - Appetiser
• Got Decisive.is account
• Got Affiliaxe account approved, applied for several others (Matomy, Appflood, denied on a few big ones
• Started 3 CPI direct-linking campaigns according to Appetiser guide (Fashion - India, Game - French, Dating - UK) - They've been running for 24 hrs.

Results so far:

• Got a handle on how decisive.is works. Impressed with the volume and speed of impressions/clicks.
• Figured out conversion tracking after being confused. The kicker was realizing that Affiliaxe uses HasOffers system
• CPC range $0.04 - $0.40
• 2 conversions (same campaign) out of 900+ clicks - Ouch! (I'm planning on spending money to educate myself)
• Campaign with 2 conversions is "Fasion - India" with CPA of $2.67 and payout of $0.32

Planning to:

• Let these campaigns run up to $15
• Follow along with Mobile Cookbook
• Keep track on this thread for my own notes and whatever guidance you guys can provide.

Questions

• What do people think of Affiliaxe? I haven't seen it mentioned much here but it was one of the first I was accepted to.
• How do you test tracking links for other countries? Affiliaxe blocks and redirects them when I visit them. Proxies?
• Should I scrap these campaigns since the results are poor or let them run for the learning experience? That's all I'm really trying to do at this point but don't want to waste money needlessly.
• Not sure I understand the benefits of creating landers and banners if direct linking can work? I know you can't direct link with major PPC like Bing/Adwords but I don't plan to use those anyway. I may find a need at some point to create custom banners and landers but at this point, I'm going the direct linking route. Am I missing something?

Thanks - impressed with the forum so far and hope to add some value myself. I'm travelling for 10 days coming up so may not update for a while.

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Good luck, have success... love your post title :-)

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Awww your story is too sweet! Great to see your motivation.

Answering your #2 question:
You should get HMA (hidemyass) to test your tracking links in various countries!

Good Luck on your journey!

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Thanks for the tip. I did come across HMA when looking for proxies. Must be some free options?

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Good luck man! As for question #4, even for direct linking you want custom created banners because they'll be new to your target audience's eyes and therefore result in a higher CTR. Landers on the other hand bring down your CTR, but in cases bring up the conversion rate so you should split test direct linking vs landers.

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Ask your AM to send you the links that you can access without being redirected.

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That's a nice goal to have. Good luck to you!

Depending on your tax rate and your current outgoing family expenses, $500 of profits per day will probably not quite get you to your goal in 2 years, but it definitely will get you there in 3.

I'd also suggest you test out 2-3 traffic sources at the same time with the exact same (or as similar as possible) campaign structure. You will get much more actionable data that way by adding this important independent variable to your data set.

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RE Affiliaxe - I worked a lot with them previously - its a solid network, nevertheless it seemed to me that most offers were not direct from advertisers (low payouts, re-direct links from other networks), although I suggest to give it a go and see how you synchronize with your AM and network in general.

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You've got a good plan and mindset.

Lets jump to your most important question which is the importance of banners and landers.

THEY ARE VERY VERY IMPORTANT!

Banners:
- This is what gets you a LOT of clicks or a little bit of clicks
- It determines WHO clicks your ad. You want targeted clicks usually... people who are interested in what they're about to see on the next page.
- The better your banner is, the higher CTR you get. CTR will often determine if you will get traffic over someone else who's trying to get that same traffic. CTR is also responsible for getting you lower CPCs. So CTR is very important.. and you can only get high CTR with good banners.

Landing pages:
- This is your best selling tool. So direct linking works, but 70% of the time a landing page will work better. You ALWAYS want to test a couple landing pages vs direct linking.

..think of it like this: You walk into a bar, and so does your clone. You're both trying to pickup a girl and you're not allowed to speak (Mr. direct linking), but your clone can speak and he has a way with words.. he's savvy, witty and very charismatic (Mr. landing page).. you both hit on the same girl.. who's she going home with?

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My Mr Landing page doesn't know what to wear (images) or how to woo the ladies (bad copy). I assume the more ladies (offers) he chats to the better he gets (more stacking).

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This is an awesome and precise allegory Clap clap clap!

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Not sure I get your logic. I can see how fresh banners can bring up CTR and landers can boost conversions, but don't see how landers can bring down CTR. My goal will not be CTR but conversions. I'd only want to boost CTR after really knowing that conversion rate is solid. You can entice thousands of clicks with a great banner but if it isn't a relevant ad, it will give zero conversions.

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@Stackman

What you're saying about banners makes sense. Differentiating from the rest is important for CTR. I understand the concept of pre-selling with a banner too since I've done a lot of PPC. For example, having the price on the ad so people know, or making sure they know it's an iPhone app. Things like that can help conversions by distracting bad clicks.

I think I'll have to bit the bullet and do landing pages. Already have some ideas based on a book I read recently "Pyschology of Influence"

1. Give visitors an option of entering their email address for more info OR clicking a (affiliate) link to download a free app. The free app option looks like a steal when first asked to give an email address.

2. Do the same thing with a dollar amount - Put $1.99 price in the ad so you know people are serious, then offer it for free (affiliate link) on the lander. What a deal! The $1.99 might lower CTR though

3. A top 5 list of apps (all affiliate links) anyone tried this?

4. Scarcity - give something away for free but limit the number available (assuming incentives allowed)

5. Social proof - show testimonials or number of people who have downloaded the app, either on the banner or lander.

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He means that the intermediary lander CTR will drive down the overall CTR from banner-to-offer, since 100% of the people you send to the lander are not going to click through to the offer.

All good ideas to test!

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UPDATE:

Traveled a lot in September and finally caught up and ready to get at the testing.

I put up my first campaign:

Traffic: Decisive
Offer: Battery app from Affiliaxe
Direct or LP: Direct linking
Geo: NZ and Australia
Angle: Traveling, need long battery life
Banners: 7-8 (attached a few), some animated

Questions:
1. I'm following the mobile appetizer which doesn't use tracking or LPs. I'm planning on doing both but will start off simple to learn the processes. Is it really worth it? Seems the profitable campaigns usually require LPs and tracking and the appetizer is really just a step in the learning process. Is that correct?
2. CPV lab or STM tracking? Budget isn't so much an issue. I just want the best software. I do have a dedicated server.
3. Ads have been active for 30 minutes and getting a few hundred wins with no clicks. I assume after some time goes by and there are no clicks, I should test new banners? Maybe more calls to action.
4. Isn't it possible the banners could be bad but the offer/angle could be solid? Meaning - you get to The Appetiser: Choosing Fresh Meat 1:Making The Cut and you've spent $15 on impressions but gotten so few clicks on your awful banners that you have way less than $7 payout. In this case, it may be smart to test new banners before scrapping your offer/angle. Thoughts?

While I'm waiting for some results from this first campaign, I'm going to be signing up and browsing other affiliate networks with mobile offers and investigating getting a tracking system setup.

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Hey man!

Great post. Great goals.

We are in a similar situation.
Lets connect via skype and exchange ideas and experiences on the way.
I will ps you my skype in case you want to connect.

Anyway, good luck and let have same AM fan!

G.

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Thanks. PMed you and subscribed to your Follow Along thread.

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Here's the data after about 24 hours. And my observations

1. No placements need to be eliminated yet
2. Pretty good volume on the Wifi Site campaign. One site has 70% of clicks in that campaign, but also 2 of the 3 conversions in that campaign.
3. Conversions are tracking

Thoughts?
I guess I'm just waiting for them to reach $15 now



I may be jumping the gun, but I'm anxious to test a landing page so I created one and cloned the 4 campaigns to go to the landing page. Is that bad since they will compete against each other? I guess it would be ideal to test this using tracking software that rotates between direct link and landers but haven't set that up yet. Need a few questions answered on tracking software that I posted in my last post above.

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You should just use a tracker as yes you will be competing with yourself.

I would recommend Voluum or Thrive - both are free to start with. Thrive is self-hosted, Voluum is a managed platform.

You are indeed correct that there is no tracker or LPs in the appetizer simply because it is a stepping stone. Normally tracking would be indispensable.

When it comes to banners performing badly you're right, this can compromise your angle testing. However, why did they perform badly? Was it the design/composition? You should test many at the beginning. If then the performance is low across the board, it is likely your targeting OR the actual angle itself - and thus the ad copy - is not very engaging. If an angle doesn't engage users to click on something like a broad appeal utility, it's probably not a great angle.

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I paused the first campaigns I setup. They had 1500+ clicks and 4 conversions. I'm going to continue testing that offer with a new angle and already have have Voluum setup and tracking so I can get more data from my money spent.

From the initial campaign that I paused which had about 1500 clicks, I got 1.7% CTR on the banners. That doesn't seem too bad. What do you guys usually shoot for? What's a good benchmark for banner CTR?

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Ok, I paused campaigns a week ago and finally assembled the data. I ran 3 campaigns total and I'm beginning to understand how valuable the data is, even though my ROIs are low.

My Observations and questions

1. ROIs are obviously really low with -87% being the best so I'm leaning towards scrapping all these and starting new campaigns
2. Are banner CTRs acceptable at 0.68% - 2.8% ? I guess it depends partially on payout. I was averaging around $0.01 for CPCs. At that cost, a $0.24 payout offer has no chance of breaking even unless banner CTR is well over 4.17% (CPC / Payout = Banner CTR Minimum Viable Target) That's one way to look at banner CTR. Is that correct thinking?
3. I guess my next question would be - is $0.01 CPC good? These campaigns ranged from $0.005 - $0.02 CPC
4. Landing page CTRs seem to be good enough to support winning campaigns and were probably not the limiting factor of these campaigns. I tested a few different ones so have some interesting data on what works better
5. I did get some valuable feedback on banners including types of fonts and animations that increase CTRs
6. As you can tell, I'm focusing a lot on CTR as the first step, but the other important aspect that I'm not considering is - is the offer/angle any good?
   

I'm curious to hear answers to my questions below and any other input you can share. Thanks!

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Banner CTRs aren't that important but I would want 1%+ in most cases.

Similarly, the CPC really isn't important - just it's relativity to your earnings per click, and these of course will vary substantially with offer, traffic source, placements, etc.

I think your LPs are doing OK in most cases but these campaigns look like duds so far, at least without considering how various placements may be dragging the campaigns down (did you do any placement optimisation?)

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I did monitor placements and pause some that were meeting the criteria in the Mobile Cookbook. I'm sure a few bad placements made the campaigns look worse but their effect was not enough to substantially change the overall results.

I think the idea behind the cookbook is that campaigns with promise should start off better than -50% and then be optimized to profit. These ones aren't showing much promise so I think I'll take what I've learned and start some new campaigns. I guess it's important to realize that the offers may not be bad and it may just be the angles.

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Yep, you've got the right perspective.

Testing angles = fishing for potential.

When you find something that does exceptionally well unoptimised then you can attack it at full strength.

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