First Mobile Campaign [Appetiser Style] or "Boy, am I hungry!" (11)
First Mobile Campaign [Appetiser Style] or "Boy, am I hungry!"
hey STMers,
this is my first mobile and my first CPA campaign. I just set everything up and wait for decisive to approve my ads.
my offer is a dating app install in beautiful(not really) Germany. Payout is $1.20
Banners:
[removed, sry guys 
]
The main angle is "[yea, I'm paranoid :P]" - and that's what those banners say.
For now I'm going to link directly to check how this traffic source works and if I get some clicks.
Maybe a little about me: I've been into IM fulltime now for a year, living with my parents and basically job-less(thanks mom!). I haven't made a penny yet from this shit & getting slowly impatient from the daily grind - it's hard to do this shit with no results for a year, ya know? Well, I've read "think and grow rich"(especially the chapter on persistance) early on and a lot of other stuff on motivation/mindset and productivity so I don't lose motivation (most of the time) and have a decent schedule that I follow.
Well it's late for me now, gonna check decisive tommorow & report if I get some stats or whatnot.
Peace,
Alright, so I had some amazing, amazing results in my first 1.5 days of running my first mobile campaign. My ad CTRs ranged from 1.6%-2.6%! 2.6%? W00t I was lucky when I could get a 0.2% on desktop campaigns. Needless to say that I'm hooked on this mobile shit.
But that's not the only awesome thing that happened. Today, after a very long time of running around in the desert I finally found some water! I made 4 commissions thus far for a total of $4.8 
Yea, it's probably just a few drops but that's all I need. There's money to be made. Now my left brain is finally satisfied.
Naturally, with stats like these, I built a mobile lander ASAP & did get a CTR of 50%+... but I had trouble getting the clicks to track on f5m so I paused that campaign until I figure out how to track shit. That's next up my todo list.
So, overall it's a tremendous success for me. I'm still amazed about the CTR (dude, 1c clicks!) considering that my only targeting is geo and os. My campaigns are now at $10 spent each and I will start with the next steps in the Appetiser guide tommorrow.
Tbh, I just set this campaign up in an hour yesterday. I was just brainlessly following the guide, didn't even now wtf I was doing and thought just to give it a try. You can guess my amazement over my cup of coffee in the morning Thanks caurmen for that awesome guide!
Anyway, I bet you wanna now what my stats are. I don't really now lol. It took me a while to figure out decisive reporting (gee, do you really have to hide the time span WAY UP where nobody can see that shit?) and I lost most of my ad spend to a phony site before I could blacklist it. Let's just assume that didn't happen I would have a ROI of -81% for up until now. With NO optimization & almost no real targeting. Now, I don't care what you say but THAT is an awesome campaign for me.
And I thought I'd write in here everyday a little summary of what I've been doing. Maybe it will help someone.
Alright, I'm late for my x-files episode! Cya tommorrow.
So, I don't even know where to start. I was a little bit overwhelmed by all the data that I get from decisive (man, I dig that traffic source. Or maybe mobile is just awesome?)
First the bad news: Out of my initial 7 banners that got approved only 1 shows promise. For now, I stopped all campaigns and banners except that one and decided to just keep it running in apps and mobile connection type. Don't ask me why, it just seemed like the best thing to do with the data I have. Also, my overall CTRs dropped somewhat. It seems like those banners burn out pretty quick. But CTRs for the first generation of banners are still ranging from 0.97%-1.5% so it's not that bad, besides I paused most anyways. Now I can actually reveal them to you
First generation banners:
Also, my LP CTRs where nowhere near 50%+, it was an error in my code which explains why I couldn't track it on f5m. LP CTRs sucked so I paused that campaign until I learn more about responsive webdesign. Sux if the devices nowadays range in sizes so hard...Gnargh, hate those media queries...
And here's the good news: The one banner I'm talking about has an overall CPA of $0.8 which means it makes me money(offer payout is $1.20). Now, I created 3 more banners that look pretty much exactly like it and just tried different images and a slightly different headline. So far, those banners have CTRs from 1.7-1.8%.
Also, I have taken my 2 best performing banners, converted them into 320x50, 300x50, 216x36, and 300x250 sizes and tailored a campaign (samme offer & angle) to Berlin(a city in Germany lol) and made sure to mention "Berlin" in the headline. Now, I still don't have too much data on that campaign but it seems like a total success. CTRs ranging from 3.4-4.3%
Now, you may notice that I don't follow the Appetiser approach exactly. Jim Rohn always said to be a student and not a follower. Cutting ads at < -50% seems just too robotic for me. I see that there is potential in my campaign and that with more tweaking(like the city targeting - Oh and there are a lot more cities in Germany than Berlin ) and a proper LP I can achieve some decent ROI. But hey, I'm a newb so what do I know.
For now I just let my new banners gather some data for me and decide what to do from there. At this point it is actually for the most part gut feeling what banners/placements etc. to cut because I don't feel I have the budget to really reach statistical significance. But so far, it's looking good.
Next up on my list is to learn a little bit more about twitter's bootstrap and responsive design in general so I can splittest some LPs while optimizing my banners.(Did I mention that I hate responsive design?)
Also one thing that might hindered me in making $$$ is that I was afraid of entering the big 3 markets(getting laid, paid and health/fitness.) I was kinda fishin in smaller ponds - with no success. Guys, I'd say don't make the same mistake I did, there is plenty of money to be made in those markets. Especially if you have an exclusive angle and the right appeal.
Alright, that's it for today. Cya tomorrow.
Landing Pages!
So, today I had my nerd pants on and messed around with Bootstrap & responsive design in general. Conclusion: It is not efficient to use responsive design if you want to test a variety of landing pages fast.
Instead what I did was first to design a mobile layout in Adobe Fireworks with a width of 350px. Then I simply magnified it to 960px width when I coded it. I just multiplied all widths, heights, font-sizes etc. by 2.74 and tada, I had a HUGE(p font-size 38px) mobile layout. Because almost all browsers display pages in full width & the screens are smaller, it looks good on basically all mobile devices. Quite a quick and dirty hack for you guys if you want to create mobile landers with basic html/css.
And here's the big fat but: My LP CTRs where literally non-existent. I've sent around 180clicks before I decided to stop that campaign. For some reason, my landers just SUCK. Now, I have crazy high CTRs and a decent amount of traffic. The offer converts basically on cold traffic so the appeal is right. Now my bottleneck is my landing page. Tomorrow I will have to consider the psychological aspects of my campagin AKA make people want the offer -REAL BAD- through the written word (&pics of hot chicks.)
The Berlin campaign was profitable so far but the volume is very low. I will target more cities tomorrow to compensate for that. Oh, and the 320x50 banner sizes got the lion share of traffic, so I will only stick with that.
Other than that, I think I pushed it now as far as I can for now with them banners. My main focus will be coming up with a converting lander.
Well, that's it for today. Not too much happened because I spent a lot of time coding.
Cya tomorrow.
Good luck man sounds like you are on the right track!
Alright so from here I don't have much to tell you guys.
It get's pretty straightforward:
-test well performing banner variatons
-test completely new banners
-test new angles(what's going on right now? culture, seasonality, holidays, news etc.)
-test new offers(look around, ask AM)
-test LPs
-scale the shit out of profitable campaigns
-test, test, test, cut the fat, test some more
So I guess that concludes my follow along.
Summary:
I just jumped into this new world of mobile and affilaite advertising without overanalyzing this stuff. And here's a golden nugget for you newbies: Don't just read, read, read. You are not in school and you are wasting time. Another example of bad conditioning by our (dis)educational system. It does not matter how much you read about this shit. If you step into the arena, you are an AMATEUR, regardless of how much you've read about it.
You may be reading things and you think you understand them und you get a feeling of making progress but trust me, this is not the case. I've been there. Without context there is no way for you to understand. Without context it's just information and not knowledge.
I emphasize this because there are a lot of people thinking they can avoid failures, mistakes and bad campaigns if they just read enough upfront. Don't be a fool, please!
Read just enough to get you started, then DO IT. If you come accross your first roadblock, THEN you can go and read about it so you can overcome it and make progress until you meet your next challenge.
There is no way to avoid failure.
Okay, I stop it now :P (but this is really important!)
Anyways, I jumped in, created several campaigns, learned from the data I got and basically used my head to create a few profitable ads. All in what, 5 days? So yea, it's really not that complicated. Gotta love online. You can test your creatives real fast!
STM has been a wealth of knowledge for me. I think it catapulted me at least MONTHS ahead on my learning curve.
tyvm.
Awesome to see your progress Luther!
So what's the current status of that campaign? Killed it? Still optimising?
Hey zeno,
some banners have a positive EPC while some have not. I am still optimising but have some trouble doing so. Blacklisting placements then uploading new banners screws up the data.
Should I run new banners on those not totally crappy placements again? Or just stick with what is left? Either way, it seems to me like I'm wasting money. Maybe it's just a judgement call?
I also had problems with my webhosting, so the LP creation process was delayed for me. It's still direct linking.
If you are blacklisting a lot of placements and concerned with the data, just launch a new campaign with a blacklist already in place to give you fresh data.
You can certainly test out the old banners to re-confirm their performance - it's good to think about stuff like that, e.g. did the older banners I paused suffer due to the poor placements, etc.
For an LP, do you need webhosting? Is it HTML/JS only? If so, you could just whack it on a CDN and go from there.
Webhosting problems are straightened out!
I've taken a week or so off after my massive action to let it all sink in. There's this corny quote that I dig:
“Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear.” - Lao Tzu
I really learned a lot in a short time and my time off helps me get everything in perspective again.
Now, I really hate to do this but I'm on a tight budget atm - I think I'm down to under $500 or smth - and I'll have to let my STM membership expire... Once I'm off from my financial thin ice tho, I'm going to update this thread with my progress.
Thanks again for all the gold in this forum & especially to you zeno! You've been really helpful and very patient in answering my questions
Now, excuse me, please. I have a shitload of campaigns to launch.
People avoid the "competitive" verticals all the time - and it's actually a huge mistake, because they're competitive for a reason!
The same holds true outside AM - people avoid "competitive" markets when launching new businesses and find that they're having a harder time than if they'd just gone into the competitive market guns blazing. That's actually something I've corrected in one of my non-AM businesses recently - I'm making a major pivot and entering a very competitive market for exactly the reasons you state.
Nice one. And looking forward to seeing you back after things stabilise!
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