Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns

---

World's Greatest Mobile Appetizer Follow Along Ever (37)

---

Hello everybody!

My name is Chris, i'm 27 and from Melbourne, Australia and i plan to journal my mobile marketing adventures in this follow along journal.

Im brand new to mobile and haven't done any AM for a few years now so for the last week i've been figuring out tracking, applying for ad networks, and sorting out my traffic source. It's honestly been a steep learning curve already and i've only just submitted my first mobile campaign to Decisive to be approved.

As stated in the heading i'll be using the Mobile Appetizer thread to guide me along to the land of Profitopolis, and i invite you to join me along my journey through the ups and downs and the massive learning curve i'm currently going through.

My end goal and motivation for all of this is to eventually make enough $$$ to live full time off the internet, pack my bags, and live where ever in the world i feel like living at the time.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So down to business. I've spent the last few days figuring out Voluum tracking and how to get it to work with my traffic source (Decisive) and my network (Avazu). I believe i've finally sorted it out and have just submitted my first campaign to Decisive to be approved, hopefully it goes through all fine and then i can see how well my tracking turns out.

Will update here soon and let you know how it's all going.

Chris

---

But.. but... I thought Victoria was "the place to be"

Hi and Good luck!

---

Nope, it's a trick to get people here, run away as fast as you can!

So a little update, my ads were approved over the weekend and have been running for about 24 hours now.

Ad Spend $1.70
Revenue $0.60
Conversions 2
Profits -$1.10

Stats



My CTR is around 1% on average which im pretty happy about for my first campaign that's had no optimization - ALSO, i've had 2 conversions in there (something's gone wrong with my tracking and Decisive hasn't reported them) which i'm thrilled about!

A good first day, im gonna keep letting this run and see what happens over the next few days.

I've got a few questions though if anyone out there can help me?

1) As i said above my conversions weren't being reported in Decisive - they're reported in Avazu(obviously) and Voluum but not in Decisive - i've obviously missed something in the tracking department, anyone have any ideas?

2) My next concern is that i'm not receiving much traffic, my time is more important than saving a few bucks and i'd rather test hard for a few days than let it drag out for a week, considering "wins" of bids are at 33%, 16%, 2.5% and 2%, what should my next move be to increase my traffic?

3) Check out this screen shot from Voluum


I'm just wondering why my clicks are appearing in the visits column and nothing is appearing in the clicks column. Is this cause if i was using a LP 'visits' would be people clicking on the banner/ad, 'clicks' would be those who go through the lp and get taken to the offer and then conversions are those who convert at the offer?

If anyone can give me any ideas about the above questions that'd be awesome!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm gonna make a few more campaigns whilst this first one simmers away and then once i get enough traffic i'll start to optimize it.

---

Have you set up your external postback in Voluum? If so, what did you put in there? That's the key to getting conversions tracked in Decisive - you need Voluum to send the data out.

As for getting more data - up your bids. What are you running at the moment? Smart CPM, CPM or CPC?

---

Hey Caurmen, i've been scouring the forums for a few hours now and think i've got it, but can you double check for me? The "Postback URL" was blank when i posted my questions and i've just recently filled it in, is it what you were thinking of?



Im currently running SmartCPM at $0.45 and an offer payout of $0.30.

---

That setup is correct.

Also, when you are direct linking the clicks only appear in the visits column to avoid confusion and give a 0% (lander) CTR.

They used to appear 1:1 in the visits and clicks column which was equally confusing at 100% CTR, and given their event pricing, would charge you twice for each click.

---

Thanks Zeno, i havn't had any more conversions come through on my network yet but when they do ill check to make sure Decisive has picked it up.

---

Hey Lads i'll give you a bit of an update

STATS

Ad Spend $17.77
Revenue $0.60
Profit -17.17

This is a combination of the 2 campaigns i have been running for 2/3 days now.

I've just created another campaign and have just launched it so i'll come back and check it a bit later.

I've also (finally) been accepted at a network that uses cake as their tracker so i can now go through "The Appetizer" nice and fast without stuffing around setting up tracking from different networks every-time which is fantastic

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Journal/Reflection So Far

Right now i'm learning heaps and heaps. From tracking to creating banners and dealing with networks it's been a great introduction to AM and Mobile, i still feel horribly confused half the time and get excited when i see a new $0.30 conversion. From mastering other skills in my life i know that this is just the learning curve that's needed to become good at this, when you feel the burn and keep on going, that's where the growth and progress is and i'm right in the middle of that right now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's next?

Setup more campaigns.
Try out lots of different banner ideas. (Make them emotional, try some gifs, blinking "click here" buttons, etc)
Try out a variety of offers suggested by my AM's.

Also i want to finish this post by reminding everyone of an important principle that Charles Ngo used to get him where he is today, and that is Kaizen, the principle of 1% improvement everyday. Small, micro improvements. Every. Single. Day.

---

So today was a bit of a rest and recover/research sort of day as my 3rd campaign smashed through my budget ($40 in 8 hours however i cheated and had a US campaign...) with zero conversions which was a bit disappointing, but not unexpected as i'm still quite new.

STATS

Adspend $50-ish
Revenue $0
Profit -$50

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I ended up going over heaps of forum posts and also spoke to my AM who was wondering that the heck i was doing (400 clicks, 0 conversions, lol!) and came to a few conclusions.

- I'm still new, i've only made 3 campaigns, don't be so hard on myself, keep doing what im doing and make small adjustments and see what happens.

- Landing pages are crucial for a good conversion rate, i came a across heaps of people saying this as well as my AM which makes me think it might be worth skipping over the appetizer and moving onto the main course (which adds landing pages into the metaphorical stew)?

- My banners are all very similar and i need to be a LOT more creative with them, i sort of just repeat the same style x8, lol.

Here's what i've made so far for my 3 campaigns, i think most of them look pretty awesome and many of them were getting over 1% CTR but no conversions. (So once again makes me think landers might be the way to go)


Keen to hear from any newbies in the same boat or any pro's who have any advice or motivating stories of when they were a newbie, cheers!

---

I think you have way too much text in your banners

---

Woah yep, red flag, slash that text in half at least! There should always be more non-text than text.

Long bullet points of benefits etc. are better employed on landing pages than on tiny mobile banners.

---

Thanks fellas, will definitely cut down on the text in future!

---

YES.

There are loads of reasons why your first few campaigns might not work. Even for a very experienced affiliate, it's perfectly normal to launch 3 campaigns - or more - and have all of them flop.

Keep testing, keep changing things, and you'll find a winner eventually.

---

Thanks Caurmen, your support and reassurance is appreciated.

---

Yo Yo,

Just a quick update, i've been quite active in the rest of the forum asking heaps of questions about tracking mainly, still a few tracking problems in my last campaign that i don't want to make in my next one.

Right now i'm working on a Du Battery offer in Argentina, this is my first non English campaign so there's a few extra things that i need to do (get my banners converted to Spanish and also make sure that Google Play will be in Spanish as this is an international offer). I'm making a big effort to create a wide variety of different style banners as my previous one's have all been fairly similar, will update you all on how this goes once i get it up and running, hopefully by tomorrow.

---

Hey guys,

A quick update for everyone on my overall progress in mobile since starting almost 2 weeks ago.

Ad Spend: $140
Revenue: $14.34
Profit: -$125.66


Although a little disappointing when i look at the numbers it's a lot more exciting when i consider all the skills i've been developing (setting up campaigns, tracking, creating banners, choosing offers and dealing with networks, etc).

Most of my efforts have been spent using decisive & pushing the infamous Du Battery offer, which all the networks say is converting really well, however i've only had 3 conversions with it so far from almost 4,000 clicks so i probably need to try more angles, or mix it up and try a different offer.

I think my biggest challenge at the moment is creating a really wide range of banners (and i might need to start looking at trying landers too), even though they're different they still all follow the same format and get between a 0.7%-1.4% CTR, check out my latest work





To Do Now?

- I played around with a sweepstakes offer earlier on and that actually did much better than the battery one (still a loss but 5 conversions with less adspend!), so i might go back and try some more of them.

- Have a look at other peoples banners and get some ideas to really mix it up, my banner styles are very rigid and i want to change that. (Also try and learn how to use paint.net, currently using Microsoft paint which is good but feels a bit limited.)

- Look into landing pages. Im still new but i understand the importance that a lander can play so i'm gonna have a go at 1.

Will postback soon with my findings.

---

Ooopps, i forgot to update my follow along, better late than never though!

AN UPDATE

So what's been news with me?

Life and landing pages basically.

The last 6 days i've been knocked around with the flu which has forced me to have a little break, however the week before i was learning the ins and outs of landing pages, which didn't come without it's challenges.

Now i'm quite good with computers but know next to nothing about coding and programming a simple lander (let alone a more complex mobile sensitive one!) , so this was a fantastic challenge for me, made all the more easier by this fantastic guide by Caurmen http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...With-Any-Phone , (thx dude!) . Even though i did a lot of copy and pasting and it was more of a practice lander but it worked perfect, so now i'm taking these basics and currently working on creating 2 landers for the current sweepstakes offer im promoting, as well as this i have 8 banners already made and ready to go.

So yeh, ill hopefully have this new campaign up and running in the next few days (need to get it approved by F5 first) and then ill have my first lander campaign going, exciting stuff!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My biggest challenge right now is learning how to code these new landers, cause as i said earlier, im full on newb at coding. It's great to start with the lander from Caurmen's guide cause i can just change the text and the image, however in the future i want to experiment with different designs, so im gonna need to learn to make my own... but that's ok cause i enjoy a challenge and enjoy learning new skills.

Something else im also challenged with right now is getting the most out of my time. I tend to think that if im in front of the laptop with the STM forum open that im working and being productive, unfortunately a lot of the time im just cruising the forums looking for info that isn't really important to me right now, so i need to be a little stricter on myself to make sure that i have more to show at the end of a work sesh, i'm sure others can relate, no?

---

Boom, i'm back!

It's been a few months since i've posted here (or anywhere on the forum actually), ive unfortunately had some things in my personal life to deal with lately which have left me little time for AM, that's the bad news.

The goods news however is that I've managed to get a high paying job with minimal hours and minimal effort, leaving me with heaps of time, energy and money to devote to AM.

I'm ready, i'm back, and i'm here to learn and make mistakes and follow the path of so many successful people here on this forum. I've just completed Zeno's 6WAMC and have been horrified at the amount of gaps i have in my AM knowledge, so my immediate focus is to become proficient at photoshop, basic coding and creating LP's, as right now i'm pretty crap at all of these.

My short to medium term strategy is to have a 50/50 split of my time to learning new skills and creating+testing campaigns. My biggest enemy right now is time wasting, distractions, and working too slowly. Developing my discipline will be a big part of managing these problems and i'm gonna need to be very conscious of all of them. Another thing i need to be aware of is to forget the outcome and to focus on the process. It's very easy to become disillusioned when you're losing money and nothing is working, to just pull the plug and give in. I can't always control the outcome but i can always control my discipline in following the process of testing and learning constantly.

I have the time, i have the money, i have the best learning platform available and a forum full of pro's happy to answer any of my questions, i really have no excuses NOT to get proficient at this. As my signature currently says i'm looking for my first day of profit. I'm sure that will come in time, and i will be learning heaps in the meantime.

Watch this space guys, follow my journey, 2014 was the warm-up, 2015 is the real thing, let's do it.

---

Lot's of people including me quietly following you mate. All the best... don't give up

---

yep...following you me too...

---

Thanks Gents, !

So the last few day i haven't had any campaigns running or anything as i've been putting myself through an intense Photoshop learning experience (ive never used photoshop before basically). I'm happy to say that whilst i'm not entirely proficient at PS i'm now able to make very basic mobile banners and apply a few effects, and after watching heaps of youtube training vids on the subject can see PS's HUGE potential to make an enormous variety of amazing banners in a short amount of time. (compared to my former strategy, using Microsoft Paint )

It's such a huge program and can get quite confusing at times, even with instructional vids. I know the only way to become good at it is just to practice it and play around with the different effects, and that's exactly what i'll be doing for the next day or two before i start planning and creating some new campaigns!

Right now i'm just going to direct link and focus on getting some decent CTR's (and hopefully some conversions), once i've started getting some decent CTR's and creating banners i'll then start looking at adding a lander.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's Next?
- Create 5 more practice banners or photoshop, use different effects and techniques for all of them.
- Go back through 6WAMC and use the processes from there to pick and build a campaign.

I plan to get this all done within 2-3 days (trying to account for the tedious and slow process of getting offers and banners approved)

---

Hey everyone,

A quick update.

Creating my banners and getting this first campaign live took me a lot longer than i planned (getting them translated into 4 different languages, issues with Arabic and Photoshop, and an affiliate manager who forgot to email me back until after id done the final copies to tell me that 4 out of 5 of my banners texts were non compliant, so had to redo most of them), but i finally got there and got them done.

They've been running for a few days now and conversions are coming through, only 6 in 2 days for a small app install (Du Battery $0.28 payout) , so ill give them another day or two and then decide on my next move.

Victories.

- I'm getting pretty damn good at photoshop banners, and have already learnt so many little shortcuts, tips and tricks too get things done better and faster, as well as learning all the effects i can use.
- Campaign is up and running, everything is setup right, conversions are being passed through Voluum and then onto my traffic source which is fantastic.

Lessons.

- Really need to execute a lot faster. There were a few unavoidable delays but i really need to get more done in less time, not only to build up momentum and immersion but so i can get that first profitable campaign and convince myself 100% that this is real, and that it's something that i can achieve!

I'll try and start posting screenshots of my banners and Voluum stats cause it makes these follow alongs a lot more interesting and fun to read!

Ad Spend. $21.78
Revenue. $1.68
Profit. -$20.10

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whats Next?

- Let these campaigns simmer for a few more days.
- Do some reading through the forum and figure out a way to optimize this campaign and if i can make it profitable or not.

---

wAs just following and reading your story ,,,where are you with this?

---

Will fill you in now!

Ok, an update from the DU Battery offer i mentioned in the previous post.

Ad Spend: $62.50
Revenue: $4.76
Profit: -57.74
ROI: -92.4%

Campaign wide i had an average CTR of 0.72% and a CPA of $4.06 (on a $0.28 payout, lol)

So i'm thrilled to see conversions coming through but they're coming at quite a big loss, haha.

My biggest problem so far has been a lack of data to work with. My campaign is split into 20 sub campaigns, 5 different geographies segregated into APP/MOBILE, APP/WIFI, SITE/MOBILE and SITE/WIFI. Most of them got between zero and two conversions, and two of them managed 4 and 7 conversions, however they were getting tonnes of traffic and consumed almost half my budget. The one's with low traffic flow have quite high CPMs however and that probably explains why my smart bidding has resulted in low traffic volume.

Many of them only got a few $ worth of traffic which resulted in hundreds of clicks yet no conversions, so maybe down to accidental clicks or something wrong with my funnel flow.

One of my creatives though in one of my countries has done alright though, it's had several conversions (probably not statistically significant but it's all i've got to work with) and an ROI of -66.5%, so im gonna scrap the rest and focus on this country and maybe try a few more angles here.

Here' a screengrab of my Decisive stats for this winning country, happy to out this one if it will help others and will get me any feedback



I've got another campaign that's almost ready to go, a sweepstakes offer, which ive already had to redo the creatives twice due to compliance (what a headache!)

I'll make an update in the next few days on all this stuff!

---

Great stuff mate! You've inspired me to do my own follow-along haha (as a slightly younger guy also from Melbourne with the same goals, coincidentally)

---

Hey Chris!

Just caught up on your journey all the way back from last year. Looking forward to watching you crack it this time!

I think you need to boost the CTR of your banners. Your banners last year had waaaay too much text. They’re definitely better now but still look to me to have too much (unsure if that’s just because it’s a language I don’t understand though…).

Hanging out for the next update!

---

Thanks Lion Heart (AM is a great chance for us to escape this lovely dark Melbourne weather hehe)

Thanks so much for the motivation and feedback Ruby, Yeah, im still making my banners a bit too wordy (even now!), ill try and cut it all down and save the word's for my lander.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:

I'm horrible at keeping this follow along up to date and it's probably to my own detriment. Not only is it a great way for me to clear my head of any AM concerns and clarify what i need to do next, there's also so many knowledgeable and helpful legends on this forum who could be offering me priceless advice if i did, saving heaps of time and frustration!

Sooooo.... I'm going to make a commitment to update this follow along at least 3 TIMES A WEEK for the next month (until the 7th of June, and probably extend this), even if it's just a few lines of what i've been up to, and to really incentivise myself to stick to this (and to encourage more regular readers hehe) i'm going to offer $100 USD (payable via paypal) to the first person on this forum to call me out for not sticking to this commitment.

So onto business...the last few weeks were pretty average to be honest, i was sick for a week and then tried to get my head around building mobile responsive landers, and just dealing with the technical problems (media querys not working!) that come with it. Ive never used landers on mobile before and id been putting it off for a while, so it was just something i had to do. Happy to say though ive got some landers up and running on one of my campaigns right now. They're not perfect, they're not pretty, but they're a decent first effort and i hope to get better at them as i make more of them.

I'm also looking to scale back my ambitious goal of $0.01 profit (hehe) to a modest newbie goal of -50% ROI, and aim to launch at least one new campaign a week.

My mastermind is going well, 2 of our group have been having quite regular green days (one day of $100 profit!) which is just brilliant. We're all working hard and creating new campaigns and trying new things, give us all a few more months and there's no telling where we could be.

Watch this space, AusHustler has returned...!

---

Hey, it's been nearly an hour since your last update. Shall I send you my paypal details now?

In all seriousness - good luck. Keep cracking at it.

---

Haha awesome man. Love the pledge - I’ll definitely be watching this

RE: your landers not being perfect or pretty - as long as they work, I think it’s better to have something done than nothing at all!
I’m a bit of a perfectionist and often realise I’m wasting way too much time fiddling with something that will probably make no difference!

---

With this new surge of energy I think you should be scaling you're goals up! Don't be satisfied if you hit -50%, don't be satisfied if you make $0.01 profit. Set your goal to making $xx,xxx a day and don't quit until you've made it. Become obsessed with your goal and you'll have no choice but to succeed.

---

Hey everyone,

Bit of an update, since i last posted.

After trying a few things and changing stuff around i've finally got a campaign humming away that im confident i can make profitable! The last 48 hours the conversions have been flowing in and im very close to hitting my daily cap today (which is a first!!)!!

Some quick stats.

- ROI today is between -25% and -30%
- Wifi performed horribly and most of my conversions have come from a handful of mobile carriers.
- CTR averaging around 2%
- CTR varied from 11% to 22%
- CR varied from 3.25% to 5.75%

Oh, and this was all on Decisive so far for any of the Decisive doubters out there.

Will post some updates on this over the next few days.

---

New Update!!

Hey everyone,

Proud to announce my first day of GREEN!!

This has been about 6 months in the making and ive stuck to the same traffic source all along and i've finally been able to make it work!!!

Im ecstatic and have had a big grin plastered across my face for the last hour, so without further adieu, let me break it down for you all!!

Today's Stats.

COST: $10.08
REVENUE: ~$22.43
PROFIT: $12.30
ROI: ~120%

Offer - App Install (secret)
Traffic Source - Decisive (yes, i had big doubts about it for a while too, here's the proof though!)
Network - (secret)
Geo - Only one so far. (secret)

A few notes about this campaign.

- I made a few changes to this from all my previous campaigns that i believe have made all the difference. Study the forums guys and girls, the answers are all there right in front of you.

- Within a day or two there were some polarised placements that REALLY stood out, some seriously crap ones ($25 adspend and 0 conversions, and i didnt spot this until end of the day, lol) and some seriously good ones (1/2 to 1/3 CPA of the offer payout with a statistically significant number of conversions).

- Wifi performed dreadfully and i cut that, but not after a good $30 adspend went through on it across all sub campaigns, so carriers were where the profit is for this one. Also site placements were horrible, i cut them as well. Apps traffic via carriers was the winning combo.

- I tried to run this on Go2Mobi as well, however they required me to mod my creatives slightly, and this tanked big time. Not sure if it was the exchange i chose, the modified creatives or what, ive emailed Mobi support to get some ideas.

- My biggest problem right now is ive been hitting my daily cap the last few days (took less than 12 hours today), and itll be a few days before i get some lead quality feedback, fingers crossed!

- Stats have also been slightly difficult to track, there's been a bit of guestimating due to different time zones.

And here's a screenshot for you cause i know it always makes these posts a lot more fun to read



Once again im just over the moon about being able to pass this milestone, looking forward to some $XX and hopefully $XXX days in the coming weeks and months

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So What Now?

- Get my cap lifted.

- Optimise this campaign properly. (Try new creatives, whitelist campaign, etc)

- See if i can keep it consistently in green and try and scale it.

- Sample with scaling to other geos and traffic sources. I know my angle converts profitably.

---

So proud of you for sticking with it and keeping us updated. Great work man, hard work is finally starting to pay off!

---

There is too much text in the banner although the brand name is very big compare to the copy of the banners so it could work.
however most of the banners don't have a specific Call to action.

I believe creating a very clean and specific call to action will only improve your CTR rate.

---

Awesome work dude! Congratulations!

There's the proof that persistence pays off

I would offer you advice but it looks like you know what your next steps are! Scale scale scale

---

Yeah Chris! Killin! (you made the latest STM email too) Congrats

---

I'm new to this, 3 camps in (running my fourth right now) and have been reading your thread all the way from the beginning. Super psyched to see you hit green. Thanks for sharing your story to this point; it's very helpful because I can see myself asking some of the same questions you asked in your journey two years ago.

---

Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns