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Any NOOB having SUCCESS with DECISIVE and Mobile Appetiser ? Please report! (47)

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Hi all,

This is just a quick poll.

Are you noob and having success with Decisive+ Appetizer? Just let me know.

Since i joined STM and following almost all noob follow-alongs, i never show a success story with this combination (Decisive - Appetiser).

I am not saying Decisive is a bad traffic source. Not at all.
But all success stories i read about with decisive are from big affiliates with huge budgets.

I'm about to switch sources, so i just want your opinion on that

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Definitely test multiple sources ... in fact ALWAYS test multiple sources. What may work a few months ago can become saturated a few months later.

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I'm a newbie and doing Decisive + most of the stuff recommended in the appetizer. So far I got up to -60% ROI within two weeks, while learning a shitload of stuff. It's normal in every area that promises big success, 90 percent don't make it because they are not prepared to keep failing for months. That's probably why a lot of follow-alongs just stop. I've been in a couple of other forums where guys with big goals post their stories, and most just suddenly stop posting.

Those who finally succeed are likely too busy making money and don't want to share their winning campaign in a forum

I guess it will take me a couple of more months, but I'll stick with Decisive and low payout offers. It is definitely possible to make money there, even if it might not be the best traffic source. And jumping around too much blaming it on external factors instead of your skill will keep you from getting successful forever...

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While i do agree with everything you said, i have to say that Decisive gives me some weird results lately.
For example, i have a number of CPI campaigns, direct-linked to Google play store, where i send like 400 to 1000 clicks and NONE converts.
All offer are top convertors of my networks and suggested by me AMs.

I know that this can happen. But how many times in a row?

Bidding works (i get high % of placements), angles work eventually by testing (good ctr, could be better), but zero conversions (offer link tested)

Of cause i have learned like a million things with Appetizer, but that's a different matter.

Im not saying im quitting Decisive altogether, i am just thinking loudly.

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Have you gotten conversion with direct linking and 1000 clicks in the past?
I have never, so just create a LP and go for a bit more clicks to see how it turns out.

If you're changing the traffic source I'd be interested how it goes with another one. But I guess it'll be almost the same, which is basically a learning courve until you figure out how to be successful on a specific traffic source...

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I will be definitely testing another source (and keep Decisive for now). not sure which one though I need a smooth transition.
If anyone has any suggestions.... im all ears

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I have had very similar results with Decisive. I just started using them this week and ran 3 offers there ( See Image )



ZERO conversions so far split testing a landing page and direct linking. Getting alot of clicks but i think 636 clicks and ZERO conversions is a bit tough especially since the offer is a short 1 page submit and have a high EPC on the network that i am running it with. I'll keep it running and see if anything happens but i just might be missing something since im such a NOOB!

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Thank you for that @gameover.
Im running some stuff on Decisive too. I read somewhere (i think it was Zeno) said that ctr and no conversions maybe mean 2 things.
1. Bot traffic
2. Bad angle (no engagement)

So, i will be testing more angles. Maybe same ctr with better angle will convert better!

Noob here too so i will just keep trying... Keep us posted too!!

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I would suggest spending a little bit more. Don't think it's bot traffic, all my new campaigns rarely get any conversion with the first couple of dollars spent. Just make sure the angle and LP are somewhat decent, the offer is easy to convert and low payout, and let it run till $15 and blacklist bad placements along the way.

Then check if you got conversions at the affiliate network to make sure it's not a tracking issue.

I had those some problems on the first couple days, just check out my Follow Along.

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I checked the live report for the campaign and apparently i am getting alot of Blackberry Traffic on the campaign with the most clicks. For some reason its not showing all of the clicks which should be a total of 644 ATM.



Maybe this has something to do with it? I'm sure Blackberry traffic is low quality and probably does not convert well in general (JUST ASSUMING).

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Here is an update:



Still No conversions, even on the campaign with 3,039 clicks! Total spend was only $8.71 which is REALLY CHEAP for so many clicks. Only if it converted! Im going to let it run through the weekend and kill it on monday if nothing happens.

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- Are you Direct linking or using a LP? If LP what's the CTR?
- How much is the offer payout?
- What kind of offer is it (app installs, PIN submit, ...) ?
- Are you cutting bad placements along the way?
- Have you checked if the tracking works / if there are conversion (and how many clicks) in the affiliate network stats?
- Is it an offer you got recommended from your AM that is working well for the GEO you are targeting?

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Did you setup everything right? I mean link to offer, tracker etc? You got any conversions from another traffic source? It seems to me that something wrong with offer or with your settings

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I know exactly how you feel...

I'm having the same problem... I only seem to get traffic from the very bad pubs. I block them and then I get some more. I've spent hundreds this week testing out 4/5 offers across 14/15 campaigns and not a single conversion! The offers are good and working for others.

I've tried different geos, cpm bidding, smart cpm bidding. Tested very high cpm bids at $5+.

Also a large percentage of the traffic doesn't seem to reach the offer. If I'm direct linking, only 15% of the traffic reaches the offer according to my affiliate stats.

My first few campaigns worked really well there but now I've kind of had enough of their platform.. might be time to take my money somewhere else.

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I havent tried this particular offer with another traffic source. Its definitely set up right, getting all of the clicks shown in Voluum and in the cpa network reports. My landing pages have gotten a 5.69% CTR and i split tested direct linking as well to see if anything would happen.

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I noticed that the majority of my clicks have been coming from blackberry devices. Is the same happening with you? I have a feeling that if i had that many clicks on iPhone or Android that i would have seen better results. Also, what types of offers are you running? I read somewhere before that Decisive would work best with app installs - i am trying lead gen/email submit offers that might not be ideal for blackberry traffic.

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I've tried app installs and pin submits from 2/3 cpa networks.

At first I thought there was an issue with my VPS, I got that upgraded. Still had the same problem so switched trackers.. same problem.

It is all down to the placements really.

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Yeah, I had a very similar pattern minus trying the app install and pin submits. The offers them self seem to be doing really well on the networks as well. I'll try a new traffic source with the same offers and see if anything changes

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Any sources to suggest anyone?
I may give them a try too..

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Sitescout.. wait all day to get your ads denied

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I have being getting results with zeropark in some other campaigns, both mobile and desktop. Going to try these campaigns there.

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Bluntly put. If everyone runs battery and speed booster the exact same way on decisive then decisive is going to suck.

Run something creative not everyone is cookin and you will find success.

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Thanx for the advice! coming from u is big!

So you do not believe decisive has poor placements or you need big budgets to get some good ones?

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Decisive is an rtb platform tied into multiple dsps. Again if everyone runs all the same stuff with the same core angles phone is slow.. battery dying.. decisive will suck.

I am running something there and so far so good doubt many other people run this on mobile so many placements are positive roi.

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They have poor placements (fraud), as well as good placements. Like Atilla said they are plugged into many different exchanges which means they have access to thousands of different placements which makes it hard to control the quality.

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Thanx for your reply mr green!

What other traffic sources would you suggest for a noob with mobile cpi offers?

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:-) thanks, I'm just waiting for my very first appetiser campaign (speedbooster on decisive... lol) to get approved, so I'll know what to expect

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Thank you Luke for posting! We need the data!

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I've been thinking about what you said here for the last 2 hours and something just clicked..

I'm not creative. I come from a search background but I think I know where I've been going wrong! Cheers!

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I see what you say! I was thinking about Attila's words too. And I agree!

But honestly. We are taking about a single convention here! How creative should someone be for that! Positive roi is a different matter!

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Tried Decisive a couple of times but with no luck.
Last time I've started the same CPI campaigns (android, direct linking) with Inmobi and Decisive:
- Decisive - big amount of clicks and no conversions at all
- Inmobi - less amount of clicks but I see conversions

I've decided to work with other sources for now and get back to Decisive later.

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thank you for your feedback. valuable.

I tried to setup a campaign in InMobi , but when i try to enter my Voluum url in the App Market url, it rejects it as "Invalid Market/Site URL".

Did you experience anything like that ?

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Let's form a newbie alliance here to break the code!

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From a newbie perspective you'd probably think the problem lies with something YOU did when you have thousands of clicks but no conversions. It's hard to make a good judgement when you doubt your self.

Just do some simple checks and confirm your setup is OK. If all is well and you're not getting any conversions.... move to another source and test that one. As a newbie you need a conversion once in a while just to keep spirits high and realize you're on the right path!

When I went to Decisive, I sent 2,000 clicks to a lander. 1 visitor clicked through to the offer and actually converted. I left because it's not worth my time to sort everything out.

Any 'good' traffic source that sends me 2,000 clicks for that specific offer results in something like 1,400 clicks through my landers and 420 conversions. However, these traffic sources are considerably higher priced.

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Since the Appetiser thread came out, almost 1400 new members registered to STM Forum.
Not everybody became a paid user of course, but probably at least 1/3 of them read Caurmen's Appetiser.
This means 500 newbies fishing in the same spot, using the same method (really awesome for learning).
BTW If you want get profit from Decisive you really need to do something different from the mass of people, or implement what you learnt elsewhere

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@h0mp @dario
Thank you for your feedback!

Can u please mention some of the sources u would suggest?

@h0mp where do u get the 2000/1400/420 stuff? If its shareable of course!

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@globy14 since you've been asking for other traffic sources multiple times now already ;-) I will tell you that the one I initially wanted to try out is tapit.
My original plan was to avoid decisive exactly for the reasons stated here, however I then got sidetracked with trying to figure everything out perfectly (Voluum etc..) to the point where my own lack of action started to annoy me.
That's why I now returned to the appetiser first, just so I could make SOME progress and actually do something instead of passively reading each day.
So maybe you can try tapit. I did not try it out yet myself, but I plan on trying it after decisive, and I saw it mentioned multiple times while gathering info here on the forum.

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For this campaign that I tested over there, I had some extensive data that I'd been gathering over a few months. Actually, I wasn't really testing. I was scaling to other sources but my first campaign on Decisive.

On average and after some mild optimization, LP CTR was 70%, Conversion Rate of the offer was 30%. A strictly mobile offer for Canada but not an antivirus or battery booster.

So yeah, if a source gives me 0.05% LP CTR there's no point for me trying to get it to work and squeeze out the bits of traffic that might actually convert.
Decisive topped the charts but it certainly wasn't the only one full of it. Airpush, for example, had some horrendous ad formats as well.

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Decisive is a good source for learning but it has it's pros and cons.

As people have mentioned... if you popularise a traffic source this kind of thing will happen - you'll need an edge to do well and this isn't easy for a newbie.

This has been exacerbated by the fact that networks have, for many months, been recommending the same offers... PSafe Brazil anyone?

But that doesn't mean the act of launching campaigns that fail isn't beneficial, because it is - especially since Decisive gives you a very good overview of the amount of data/variables involved in mobile traffic.

Learn on Decisive, get the basics down, then head to greener pastures.

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lol @zeno I just launched a Psafe browser offer on Decisive. Shit.

Its a little unfortunate when the Cookbook formula we follow is "get list of top offers on network under $1" it leads us all to be staring at the same offers. Psafe, Du, Dolphin, UC Browser, etc.

My network has some new offers out, maybe I'll just start testing those to be a little different. Maybe its time to start thinking up some off-the-wall angles too. It's probably safe to assume the obvious angle with these popular offers has been beat to death already on Decisive, but a new angle.....may have some life.

Great thread and discussion. Thanks for sharing to both the noobs & experienced guys.

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Started my first try-out campaign today (following appetiser) and so far 3 conversions out of 2000 clicks, so it's not entirely useless.

And I learned my first valuable lesson as well: always double check your postback URL because even though I'm sure I had entered it previously, it was no longer there today. So my 3 conversions are only showing on the network, but not in decisive.

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Manually fire them postbacks :-) yeah its quite surprising really that psafe, uc etc are still ranking high in those reports, you'd think there was no one left to install those apps haha

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This thread really brings out the pessimist in me, but I launched a "done a thousand times" offer (Psafe Brazil) right before I read it. So I said hell let's see what the data says. Campaign was direct linking with 4 different connection/audience combos, similar to cookbook approach.

Data at a glance:

>>8447 clicks sent via Decisive's reporting.

>>2338 clicks received via F5 reporting

>>31 Conversions

>>Spend: $43.77
>>Revenue: $12.40

>>ROI: -71%

.......this isn't THAT bad.

Especially when I look at some of the connection/audience combos that just burned money there may be some profit somewhere in here.

My best connection/placement campaign went only -36% ROI over the last 2 days.

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That's indeed not bad!
We'll done!

This thread was not meant to bring the pessimist out of anyone (although it did, and that's for a reason)

With this thread I tried to prove my thoughts wrong and I failed so far.

There are no (or too few) success stories with noobs / decisive and mobile so far!

That's all!

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This week has been somewhat good for me as a newbie. Not that I just made huge $$$ (or any money), but in fact I spent quite a lot $$$ on Decisive and was able to pump out four campaign offers one after another.

It was back in the summer when I launched my first appetizer campaigns and I honestly felt clueless in many ways at that time. At the end of the $15 dollars spent of them, I had ZERO conversion as well and that kinda bumped me a little bit. I didn't keep pushing and in a way I think I lost my momentum to continue. I started to go back to read more threads instead of pumping out MORE campaigns to order to learn and become MORE familiar with Decisive. My lack of action was mainly due to my fear of looking at more empty spaces in the Conversions column!

Fast forward to December, I am still fresh and still learning to interpret the report data before my eyes, but there ARE suddenly conversions coming in and to my amateur eyes, I was surprised to see some other numbers other than "0"! It is up to me to master this and make the system work to my favor. I have yet to learn how to optimize and scale these current campaigns (or should I even do so since my payouts are so low!). But I am sure such knowledge and skills will come along the way if I persist.

P.S. I don't think my numbers are that impressive to any of the super-affiliates; but to me, they only show that I am indeed moving forward though slowly.

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These numbers may not be impressive to super affiliates, but they are to me!

Well done dude! Very inspiring story!!

Keep it up and keep us up to date!

Thanx for sharing!

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The Cookbook is almost a year old.

In AM world, that is an eternity.

Traffic sources can change, they can get saturated, and offers can change, get pulled, and even regulations can change all a year.

In fact, anyone who has done mobile advertising this year will attest that ALL of this has happened within the past 12 months.

This is a dynamic industry. I look back on what was successful for me 12 months ago, and what is successful for me now, I would say only about 25% remains the same.

You owe it to yourself to split test everything. You may take the Cookbook as an initial starting point, but if you are not quickly thereafter split testing everything, then you will be competing with thousands of newbie affiliates who are doing the exact same thing as you. That is a quick race to the bottom.

Split test same offers against different traffic sources, split test different offers against same traffic sources, split test different affiliate networks for the same offer, split test, split test, split test.

Nothing is gospel in this industry. The only truth is what your data tells you.

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