The diary of two hustlers - mobile pins (54)
The diary of two hustlers - mobile raging - In the middle of scaling!
Wassup wassup, we're live - we're back!
After we kinda gave up on aff marketing 6 months ago, we finally got our shit together, gave it another shot and will stick to it, till we really make it work!
We are 2 guys from germany, while one of us is located in Thailand and the other one is taking care of the company back in Germany.
What we did so far:
- Created a company to be really serious about it
- Learned the ins and outs about Server, HTML, CSS and tracking
- Started our first campaigns with mobile CPI and pop traffic
- Had our first profitable campaign ever
- Generated almost $5000 revenue in our first month
After promoting all these mobile utillity apps, we figured out its really hard to scale them on pop traffic, since traffic was much more expensive than on the initial trafficsource. So there we were, having small $xx/day campaigns, but totally unable to scale because of the lack of knowledge. As some offers got pulled, we finally decided to move on to mobile subscriptions, since these are usually more lax on restrictions, no caps and the higher payout might be better to compete with the high CPM bids on other sources.
During the last 6 weeks we basically just tried to learn as much as possible, but since all the basics are learned now, we really want to move on to another level and make pin submits work. We know there is serious money to be made with app installs, but restrictions are getting too crazy, so its better to move on now.
We will use this follow along, to keep track of our progress and to have a platform to analyze campaign data, document the changes and the results of every action. We dont want throw some money at it and see if it works, we really want to understand how and why this shit actually works!
The diary of two hustlers - mobile raging - In the middle of scaling!
So here is some report about the main campaign we have going on since the start of this month. Everyday we try out something new, but so far we couldnt push that roi higher.
Offer: WhatsApp Pin Submit
Trafficsource: PopAds
Payout: $2,40
How we launched the campaign:
- Created 3 selfmade landingpages
- Ripped around 15 other ones and translated them
- Modified them a bit with more aggressive scripts like intro+exit pop, sound, vibration, etc.
- Settled the CPM for 2nd top bid, which was ridicolously high (~$40cpm)
- Threw in 3 offers into rotation to splittest
- After more and more data came in we cut the worst performing offer + Lander
- CReate variations of the best performing lander on a daily basis
How we tried to optimize the campaign:
- Settled the bid down to $12 CPM after we had enough data to find best offer + lander
- Cut IOS, since it was converting at -90% roi at almost 10k impressions
- Optimized best performing lander on a daily basis (unfortunately old landers from past data seem to do better now, what to do in such a scenario)
- Cut placements with statistical significance
- Created a new lowbid campaign with low -%ROI targets to make a small profit of them
- Created a new campaign targeting all carriers + WIfi (Didnt work out, really bad ROI)
- Created a new campaign to masstest 10+ Offers (Spent 4x Payout each, Initial offer was the best)
- Cut poor performing Browsers ( In this case Chrome mobile at -20% roi after 70k impressions. Normal android browser hast %50+ but we sacrifice a lot of volume)
As we came up with the idea, that its just the geo, we applied for every similar offer in different geos, we translated the best lander into 6 more languages, applied for offers and started all 6 campaigns with a $50 budget on PopAds. Unfortunately the best result was some -85% ROI, some of them even -100%.
This was just yesterday, so the gameplan is to register on other Pop sources and try to focus on the promising GEO. We registred at like 30+ Sources today, but its really a hassle since not all of them are for mobile or have only display traffic available or yadda yadda. Tomorrow we will have a detailed look into it and want to expand to at least 5 Sources with a $50 testbudget each.
We would really like to try out stuff like Adcash, Gunggo, PropellerAds etc, but these ones require a high Deposit and we dont know if this is a good idea to just test this campaign. WE really have to keep an eye on our cashflow, since the budget we can work with isnt that big.
Any comments or ideas about our previous + future gameplan are highly appreciated!
Oh wow! I'm truly and utterly impressed with all the testing you guys are doing with offers, landers, and traffic source settings! Tweaking traffic source settings is the best way to figure out how a traffic source works. And when you do, you can formulate an appropriate/efficient optimization strategy. And it certainly looks like you've already optimized your campaign settings on popads - so like you said, time to look for more pop traffic from your target geo!
I feel your pain of having limited sources to scale to when it comes to pop. Here are some suggestions on how to find additional sources:
-http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post175840 <-- How to use WRW and Similarweb to find out which sources an offer is being promote on (you can plug in similar offers in the same vertical to cast a wider net; you can also "follow the trails" on similarweb while you're doing your research - one site will lead to another etc.).
-Use google - for example:
https://www.google.com/search?q=popu...utf-8&oe=utf-8
-Search on Linkedin by putting this into google search: site:linkedin.com pop traffic
-And of course you know how to search here on STM - there are lots of threads on this topic and since you're not a noob I won't bother listing them for you. 
Not all sources will be worthy of a test - be sure to ask them first for a list of traffic volumes by geo. And since you're promoting a WAP offer, ask them for volumes for mobile only. If your offer only accepts certain devices/carriers, then make sure the traffic source has enough volume for that before wasting money on a test. Also - if you're using an "aggressive" lander, it would be good to run that by their support/review person before making a deposit. You can actually craft a message with all these questions and just send one to each traffic source you find via their site contact form or email before taking the time to even sign up.
I'm assuming since you guys are doing a bit of volume, that you've already asked for a pay bump? If not, do it NOW! Tell your AM about your plans to scale and that you need a bump to help you with that. Also ask your AM about switching to weekly payments to help circumvent the cashflow issue.
Also: It may be a good idea to start passing the traffic source id in your tracking offer link if you aren't doing that already, so that if a new traffic source should affect your lead quality at least your aff network will be able to tell you which network is causing the quality drop (they don't always bother but sometimes they do).
That's all the advice I can give for now! It sounds like we're at about the same experience level, so I'm looking forward to learning from this follow-along!
Amy
if you want to do volume pops you will need
Adcash, Gunggo, PropellerAds
Guys good luck, I PM you
I said it before but i'll happily say it again; ask your advertiser/network to bump your payout once you start doing (big) volumes. 90% chance they'll bump your rate around 10% which will more than double your total profits. Apart from that you need to continously optimize your campaigns on CTR, eCPM and CR of course.
Originally Posted by aaaart
How did you filter this on Popads?
On their browser targeting list, they don't mention these 2 browsers.
I'm awaiting approval to run some traffic targeted solely to their 'Unknown' browser category.
Is this where the 'Android browser' traffic can be found?
Originally Posted by vortex
As our AM is busy, because he became a father, he wasnt around that much this week. I just reached out to another AM and asked for paybump, because we are around breakeven and cant go on high volume yet, but we could with a higher payout.
Thanks for the detailed answers, will definitely try all of that out today!
Originally Posted by mindfume
Originally Posted by aaaart
Definitely ask specifically for a pay bump, particularly if the additional bump will help you get more volume. This is very much a case of "don't ask, don't get".
Yo lads and ladies, first of all we want to thank you for all the help and feedback provided in this thread already. The pay bump was a huge success and we got an increase from $2.40 to $2.70 right away - woooo!
We were really happy with the response of the email and the $2.70 payout, but we also had the last sentence of caurmen in the back of our head, so we asked for a $2.85 payout to make sure we can bring high volume without running any loss. It seems like its really important to get some kind of an advantage compared to the other affiliates at the similar stage, so we try what we can get away with. Usually were not that greedy - was it inappropriate to ask for more? We are still waiting for a response.
Anyways, ROI looking good so far, also we put an older lander back into rotation and trough the help of Amy and her smart A/B Split test calculator, we could cut out the initial lander with 100% statistical significance. Gonna do now some small change to have something to splittest over the night - results will follow tomorrow.
Our traffic source grind took longer than expected, so we finally managed to scale to 5 more sources. Campaigns and tracking are also set up. Still waiting for all the data to roll in. In addition we will most likely deposit on AdCash, Gunggo and PropellerAds as soon as payments hit the bank during mid week. Anyone knows how long it takes to receive and international transfer to an EU bank account?
Last but not least, we also got contacted by like minded people to create a mastermind. They are also working in a duo and in the same vertical - we are an exact copy of them as they said, hahaha. Really happy about it and looking forward to improve and learn together how to crack the code!
Cliffnotes:
- Got an instant pay bump from $2.40 to $2.70
- ROI of WhatsApp campaign looking more promising
- Scaled to 5 more DSP traffic sources - still waiting for data roll in
- Joined a mastermind with 2 like minded people
Gameplan for tomorrow:
- Evaluate all the data from new traffic sources
- Cut placements and look out for promising placements and other targeting
- Create 4 new variations of the lander with a small change (Most likely headline or image)
Questions:
- If the AM asks if the pay bump is enough, should we always ask for a little bit more than they suggested?
- After how many conversions/revenue is it appropriate to ask for a pay bump? It seems like its a huge waste of money if you wait too long to ask for it.
- When scaling to other traffic sources with best lander + offer combo, do we split test the same lander variation on every traffic source or only in our preferred one and wait for results?
You can always ask for what ever you want regarding pay bumps, lol. The worst they can say is No. If you don't know the quality yet then they may be hesitant. A better way to approach it is by telling them another network is offering you x.xx ... can you match or beat it? or... I need x.xx to really be able to scale. Hope that helps.
If those lame browsers are not converting well, try sending them to another offer using your tracker.
Use common sense for pay bumps, don't ask for them every 2 days, keep in mind the network also needs to make money to be happy and treat you well, so unless another bump is vital to maintaining the campaign alive, try not to abuse it
About the wire from US > EU it depends on the banks but i'd say you should receive it under 2 to 3days.
Mehdi
Woot woot woot! (Breaking out the champagne!) Way to making progress! So happy for you guys!! Goes to show that when people are dedicated, magic will start to happen!
It was recommended by Caurmen I think.If the AM asks if the pay bump is enough, should we always ask for a little bit more than they suggested?
After how many conversions/revenue is it appropriate to ask for a pay bump? It seems like its a huge waste of money if you wait too long to ask for it.
When scaling to other traffic sources with best lander + offer combo, do we split test the same lander variation on every traffic source or only in our preferred one and wait for results?
As for when to ask for a bump - I'd say as soon as you're close to breaking even (say by 10-20%) go for it! That is assuming you've been generating some leads during your testing. And keep in mind that you can ask for multiple bumps. Ask for one before you scale, and ask again every time before you take your scaling to the next level (i.e. with every significant increase in volume). As many have pointed out, the worst that can happen is you'll get a "no" - and rejection is just part of the game that never hurts anyone.
And DO look on other networks to see if you can find the same offer elsewhere. Test all of them! Having multiple places to go with to run that offer will give you massive leverage when negotiating pay bumps (you know what I mean *wink*).
Regarding the need to split-test the same landers on every traffic source: It IS true that different landers will perform differently on different traffic sources. However, re-testing all your landers may spend more money than is worth the benefits. What I would do is just test the 1-3 best landers on each new traffic source and go from there.
Really nice to see how everything's heating up for you guys! Will be watching this space with excited anticipation - keep up the awesome work guys!
Amy
Yo guys, in the morning we woke up quite excited and checked the stats in the morning, which looked really promising with an %70 ROI or so. Unfortunately conversions dropped around mid day and not many more cmoing in, so ROI dropped to %30 which is still alright - but not satisfying. So we asked ourselfs what could have the biggest impact on ROI? THE ANGLE!
So we remembered that we tested around 20 different lander designs, with almost all the same angle. What we are working with right now, is just the best design, but we didnt try many different angles yet. So we came up with 4 unique angles and put them into rotation. Waiting for the data to roll in till tomorrow.
Also we received all the data from new trafficsources. 1 of them is profitable right away, but traffic is slow so we might raise the bid a bit and see what happens. The other 4 seems to be like -20%, so we will take a more detailed look into placements and see whats possible
Unfortunately one trafficsource doesnt have any volume for our geo. we contacted the AM and he said they dot have any pop traffic, only redirect, so we changed the settings and got promised 30k impressions/day. Till now we received around 300 and 0 clicks, lol. Min deposit was $100, there is no volume + not even a single click. Is this a legitimate reason to request a refund?
Cliffnotes:
- Whatsapp campaign looked promising in the morning, but died a bit during the day
- Decided to test new angles to increase ROI
- 1 new traffic source already profitable with lower volume
- Other ones have potential with some optimization
- 1 dont have an volume for the geo, $100 Deposit is stuck
Gameplan For Tomorrow:
- Cut new angle landers with statistical significance
- Cut Site IDS and replace breakeven placements to a lowbid campaign
- Create 4 new splittests for the winning angle
- Spy on competition what kind of stuff is running right now
- Register at AdCash and scale the campaign
- Working together on the mastermind
Questions:
- How would you guys deal with the Issue regarding to the low volume on a trafficsource?
- What is a satifying roi, where you can justify lower ROI for bigger volume?
Originally Posted by aaaart
Great progress! 
How would you guys deal with the Issue regarding to the low volume on a trafficsource?
What is a satifying roi, where you can justify lower ROI for bigger volume?
As to what constitutes a satisfying ROI - that would depend on what your business costs are as well as how much/little you'd be willing to work for. Examples of costs: taxes you'll be paying on your profits, fees that will get deducted with each payout from your aff network, taxes/fees associated with deposits into traffic sources. Taking these fees into consideration, you may have to be making 10-20%+ ROI "on paper" to be breaking even in reality. Profits above and beyond all the costs will be your "real" profits - and you'll just have to ask yourself how much that will need to be, to be worth all the time and effort you're putting into this campaign.
Regarding cutting placements - remember that your current goal is not ROI, but to get enough traffic for your lander testing. Of course you'll want to accomplish that for as cheaply as possible, but you also wouldn't want to further restrict traffic. Therefore I'd suggest to only cut placements that are big budget drainers, and still keep the ones that are losing money but making leads and giving you data.
And if you're finding cashflow to be a problem, I would suggest to hold off on the scaling, and just use that money to mass-test landers (and offers if you can find others). When you have the best offer and lander, that will make scaling so much more rewarding. You won't want to get into a situation where you're in the middle of scaling and testing and run out of money. That would slow down your momentum - not good at all.
Amy
They have traffic that works just lot of bots to get rid of first. How about the SelfAdvertiser representative on here drop a list of those crap sources that are most frequently blocked?
Originally Posted by ploppythejailer
Originally Posted by egor
If there is no volume, immediately get out of there. I would focus on sources where you can at least spend $300 a day. Then you could either scale into a few geos, or find a few other similar traffic sources, for far larger spending each day.
Ditch the small potatoes.
Hi aaaart,
How often do you distribute traffic among different offers? On
Originally Posted by ploppythejailer
Originally Posted by lanikai87
Was a really long day, not just affiliate wise. As mentioned in the post above, we will follow Lanikais advice and drop all these small $1-$10/day campaigns and just let them run and die out. Focus should be on the bigger ones, which is definitely the Whatsapp campaign we have still running and trying to make it work.
What we split tested yesterday, was playing around with the frequency cap and it seems like putting it lower was beneficial for the lowbid campaign. We gonna transfer the change on the initial campaign too, so we are able to get more traffic. The Angle test bombed totally tho, none of them were really performing good - let them run down to statistical significance and we gotta rinse and repeat. A great source of ideas is this genius post by Finch. This will be our bible for the next week, so we will try to test as many variables as possible. The idea of the frequency cap comes straight from there!
Another thing we did was trying to optimize our technical stuff, so we got a CDN to increase loadingspeed. This move increased the loadingspeed of the page from around 2 seconds to 1,4. We dont have that much data yet to say it really affected the CV, but CTR seems already better and pretty sure CV should also be better, even if its slightly for this specific lander.
We also worked on the mastermind and have some interesting plans we will work out in detail tomorrow. As it seems we will hit our first $1000 revenue day by the end of the day - unfortunately at around %10 roi tho. But we are motivated to make it work. The Volume is there, we just have to focus increase ROI day by day with small steps.
Cliffnotes:
- We will cut out low volume campaigns and focus on the bigger ones
- Reduced frequency cap which resulted in more volume - good for testing!
- Moved to a CDN and improved landingpage speed by more than 30%
- Most likely will hit our first $1000 revenue day
- The advertiser is happy with the quality and we have the OK to scale - Need to improve the funnel first tho
Gameplan For Tomorrow:
- Work on the mastermind
- Create new splittest based on Finchs split testing post
- Cut site IDs and look trough other targets we could cut or improve
Questions:
- We are really unsatisfied with an AM. She takes a lot of time to respons, sometimes doesnt answer at all, approves offers after couple days and rejects landingpages which are okay for other AMs. Our communication is really not harmonic like with the others, is it okay to request another AM? Who should we talk with to ask for a change?
- We spend a lot of time on A everyday, but we think we could work more efficient and get much more done. Do You guys have any tips on which tasks to focus that have the highest impact on the AM career? For now its testing, but is there something more we are not aware of?
Originally Posted by hlyghst
Alright, weve lost a bit the path after the whatsapp campaign somehow perfomred worse from day to day. After that I had to change apartments in Bangkok and am in Germany to visit family and friends. Didnt do much with the campaigns for the last 3 weeks and started a new campaign with sweeps yesterday.
Offer: [1] Win a Samsung galaxy S6 / [2] Media Markt Voucher in Germany
Payout: 1,80€ and 2,00€
Trafficsource: PopAds
What we did:
- Got a Top offer List for sweeps and German offers seemed to do well
- Spyed and ripped 10+ Lander (Some english and German)
- Exchanged pics etc to match our offers
- Corrected misspelling and translated the english ones into german
- Seperated into two campaigns for adult and non adult
- Set bid to Top 3-5
All the ripped landers were in FB style, we didnt see ANY landers, not having this style. I read long time ago, that FB style sweeps not working great anymore, but we gave it a try. It must work for someone if its running, haha. This are not all, but they have all a smilar design and angle.
- - - - - - 
- - - - - - 
At first we targeted all mobile phones with a $50 budget fur the adult and another $50 for the non adult. We started the campaign at 10pm german time and ran trough all the budget within 1 hour. The adult got only 1 conversion, the non adult had 7 conversions. We topped up the campaign for another $50 to have enough spend per each lander, but unfortuantely not a single conversion came in.
Conclusions:
- Sweepstakes work better on non adult traffic
- Both offers seem to convert at least
- Late hour traffic might be worse for sweeps?
Questions:
- We got recommended to set the bid high, but everytime we do it our budget runs trough within 1 hour and mostly this ends in really bad ROI. Is this correct to do?
- Do FB style landers still work on pops or should we be creative and do our own landers? We are wondering, since we only see this ones while spying
- Is there any possibilty to find out the inverntory of Popads? We really wont to spy on no adult sites, but we just cant find any. I looked up some from plugrush, where they show the actual site ID, but no chance for popads. Is there any non adult trafficsource showing real site IDs?
- Would you try to optimize this campaign and drill a bit down to specify the targeting? Or should we let it run for some more to gather more data, to have statistical Significance. We ran the landers trough statistical significance, but there are still a lot left cause they arent below <10% chance to be the best
- Whats is a reasonable CTR for sweeps? Our seems to be horrible compared to app installs or Whatsapp offers.
Our Next Step:
- Rerun some CPI offers, since we improved our funnel a bit
- If these show promising, we will contact advertiser to go direct with them. Any tips?
- Rerun the whatsapp offer too and also go direct with the advertiser if somehow promising.
- Analayze this sweeps data and make a plan how we can improve it.
Alright, as we thought it doesnt really make sense to work with the old landingpages, because of bad CTR, we made our own ones. We got some new Ideas from a video, which @randomdude was kindly sharing with us. Thanks again for this! If anyone is doing sweeps, I can highly recommend to watch it, since there was a lot of valuable info imo.
How to make $100 a day with Mobile Sweepstakes and Voucher Offers
So we picked up some tips, stopped with the FB landers and made our own variations of other themes with similar adcopy. We hoped that we can fight against the blindness of all these FB style landers. Ended up with a variation of Googleplay/Android/IOS and custom games, unfortunately the results showed the same results as before. CTR< 2%, thats just horrible and no way we can optimize this campaign just with tweaking targets etc.
We really dont know how to improve the CTR, since we have already Intro + Exit pop and backbutton script. Is it helpful to be more aggressive with the intro pop doing sweeps?
Conclusions:
- The landers with our own angle games were the best CTR wise, but still bad
- The Instant winner Landers had the worst CTR, so it seems to be more credible if the user has to put in a little bit of effort to believe he really has won something
- We started with average bid, but got slow traffic and no conversions at all. After increaseing the bid twice as big, some conversions came. So in the future we will set a high bid and low budget, to see if the offer even converts on the high quality placements and adjust from there.
As mentioned before, we reran old CPI whitelist campaigns and tried different bids, found the sweet spot with around %20 ROI, not great, but at least we can start testing without losing too much money again. We will try some new trafficsources and see if we can make something work with this.
Next Steps:
- Start new sweepstakes campaign with different offer and geo
- Start the updated CPI campaigns on other trafficsources
Questions:
- How do you imrpove your sweepstakes CTR. Is it the lander or is germany just a tough geo? In the video they mention 10% is good, but we barely can get 2% with ripped landers, which seem the work with others. Just clueless at this point.
- Is it worth to run the german sweeps campaign on another source or better focus on other geo? We currently run on PopAds only. Would highly appreciate any advice if someone has experience in this vertical. For CPI Popads was always good for us.
We got recommended to set the bid high, but everytime we do it our budget runs trough within 1 hour and mostly this ends in really bad ROI. Is this correct to do?
Do FB style landers still work on pops or should we be creative and do our own landers? We are wondering, since we only see this ones while spying
Is there any possibilty to find out the inverntory of Popads? We really wont to spy on no adult sites, but we just cant find any. I looked up some from plugrush, where they show the actual site ID, but no chance for popads. Is there any non adult trafficsource showing real site IDs?
Would you try to optimize this campaign and drill a bit down to specify the targeting? Or should we let it run for some more to gather more data, to have statistical Significance. We ran the landers trough statistical significance, but there are still a lot left cause they arent below <10% chance to be the best
Whats is a reasonable CTR for sweeps? Our seems to be horrible compared to app installs or Whatsapp offers.
The FB themed landers are still working for sure, although the effectiveness will eventually decline because people are seeing them everywhere. Definitely test other themes, but also try to make the FB themed landers better because the theme is just a part of what makes a lander convert - there are so many other elements.
Yeah I wished there was a way to spy on Popads targets as well.
If you want to do some spying, go to zeropark, start a "TARGET" campaign in your geo, and you'll see a huge list of actual urls you can spy on (you don't even need to finish setting up the camp to see this list).If you're testing very different landers to start, you don't need to cut landers down to the last one. Wait for stat sig to cut the worst landers. Make a note of the few landers that look like they have the most potential, then start testing versions of one or more of those landers. You can pick what appears to be the most promising lander and just test versions of that to find out what works. Different angles/text, play with different questions on surveys (also test different numbers of questions - 5 questions is too many - try 3), etc. etc. Make sure to test these elements: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-Code-Snippets
Since Germany is a big geo and you're getting more traffic than you have budget for, you can definitely drill down to targetting (os/device/carrier etc.) and at least temporarily blacklist some of them to make your testing cheaper. After optimizing your landers and offer you can always re-test the blacklisted items.
Regarding lander CTR: I tested DE sweeps briefly a while back and got around 10-15% CTR (this was with the backbutton script - I have no idea what CTR would be without). My CV was similar to yours (around 0.05%). I never did get around to doing any optimization though - other offers took my attention away.
How do you imrpove your sweepstakes CTR. Is it the lander or is germany just a tough geo? In the video they mention 10% is good, but we barely can get 2% with ripped landers, which seem the work with others. Just clueless at this point.
Is it worth to run the german sweeps campaign on another source or better focus on other geo? We currently run on PopAds only. Would highly appreciate any advice if someone has experience in this vertical. For CPI Popads was always good for us.
You can for sure try setting up this camp on another traffic source. And of course, you can test other geos and offers. Once you find an offer that converts OK, you can then mass-test landers etc. etc. - you already know the drill.
BTW have you tested other DE sweeps offers yet? If not you definitely should!You have lots of choices as to where to go from here.
If I were you I would spend a bit more time on DE since you already have all those stats and landers. Blacklist the major money drainers at least temporarily (os/device/carriers/models/placements), test more DE sweeps offers (using what looks like your best lander) until you have the best offer. Then test versions of your best lander. Maybe also test another traffic source. If the testing is still very expensive or if things don't improve significantly, test other geos and offers.Hang in there!
Amy
Thanks aaaart for the PM. I've responded with some things you can try to improve your lander. I obviously won't "out" your lander, but thought it would be nice to post some of the tips in this thread as well - I've taken out parts of my PM that could "give away" information about your lander.
************************************************** ************************************************** ***********************
Some things to try:
-Put yourselves in the visitor's position - if you saw something like this you'd think "this is too good to be true" and click back. So you guys will need to get creative in providing a VERY short but BELIEVABLE story to provide the "WHY". Look through the landing page dynamic tokens in
-I actually found the survey lander to do well, because when people do something for you first, and you offer a chance to enter them into the draw, it takes away the "too good to be true" feeling a bit. I saw you guys were testing a survey lander before. Perhaps try new questions - and if you can align the questions with your "story" it will help as well! Don't just copy exactly what other people are doing. Innovate! Also try different numbers of questions as I mentioned in my post.
-Add testimonials! Those make a difference! And if those "winners" can post a picture of themselves holding the prize as well - then even better. And look up "the most common first and last names in [geo]" and name your "commenters" accordingly. Don't just copy the ones you see on every lander out there! (If I see that Karen chick as the first commenter again I'm pulling my hair out lol!)
-Is this offer mobile? If so - and if the traffic source allows it - try adding vibrate and audio (if you can get a girl with a sweet voice to do a voiceover that could really help).
-Also test this: Tell people how many units of each prize you have left. You can play with the amount. HINT: Scarcity is a great tactic, but in this case it may not be the best one to use. If you were being entered into a draw, would you bother if they only had one iphone available to be won? Or would you be more excited if they had, say, 50? You get the idea.
-Lastly, sweeps is working very well with mobile display traffic as well. Generic banners like facebook type icons with a flashing letter icon signalling a message work really well. These banners do not aim to provide any information or presell visitors - they only aim to get as many eyeballs to the landing page as possible. This is the best anyone could do to make display traffic work like pop traffic. Not every traffic source or exchange will allow that type of banners though so you'll have to ask them. May be worth a shot after you guys have optimized your lander and have tested offers to find the best one.
Amy
Wassup Wassup, the day started really good after having a look at the stats of the relaunched CPI campign. Since we were quite excited about the numbers, we reschuled our sweepstakes survey on tomorrow - we were just busy all day long!
Since the relaunched offer looks quite promising, we tried to scale it onto 5 more trafficsources + translated and launched this offer into ~20 more geos. Just finished with the whole process and set a test budget of $15 for each campaign. Waiting now for the data to roll, maybe we will find another gem between all those geos!
Gameplan for tomorrow:
- Let all the data roll in and analyze all campaigns in detail.
- Look for more trafficsources to run, still waiting for some approvals.
- Translate the sweepstakes landers for the new offer and GEO - We received the translations already - at least we can check if the CTR is different than in germany.
- Follow Amys tips and add some more innovation into our landers and rerun them on another trafficsource, not on PopAds.
Questions:
- We signes up at Adcash DSP and let our campaign run. Got insane volume from one placement and no click and blacklisted it. Unfortunately, we receive around 1/3 traffic from IOS, altough we dont target it. This traffic cant convert at all and we didnt have any offer to redirect this traffic yet. Do you have the same issues with Adcash? We always tought its a really good trafficsource, but this is just ridicolous.
1/10/2015
Cost: $425,55
Revenue: $726,84
Profit: $301,29
ROI: 71%
2/10/2015
Cost: $401,84
Revenue: $673,38
Profit: $271,54
ROI: 67%
3/10/2015
Cost: $387,71
Revenue: $777,20
Profit: $389,49
ROI: 100%
4/10/2015
Cost: $434,96
Revenue: $847,88
Profit: $412,92
ROI: 95%
5/10/2015
Cost: $533,68
Revenue: $1.083,51
Profit: $549,83
ROI: 103%
Yo boys and girls, as you can see things are going pretty well again. Did put in a lot of work, reading and thinking recently and we still dont know what kind of direction we will head. We are waiting for a Quality check since a week already, really looking forward that the advertiser is satisfied with the leads and we can stay on the offers. But for now we have to keep it low, since we will run into cashflow issues soon. We are working with diffrent networks right now and are still waiting for september paments, since we are new to these. Our AM told us to push us on weekly and bi weekly, so hopefully the money will hit the bank soon, so we can increase our spending in the next weeks.
Regarding trying out new types of traffic, we did a lot of reading. Just finished Finchs new ebook and are pumped to try out new stuff. We just cant decide into which direction we should go and for now we have to wait anyways, since we will safe our cash for the current running campaigns. There is no room to spend much more for testing new stuff.
Do you guys have any suggestions what we could work in the meanwhile? The Office really pushed our productivity, but for now there is just not too much work to do, when we cant launch new campaigns. We create new split test and tagreting options on a daily basis, but thats it. Mostly we spend the time just reading and planning - gaining more knowledge. The problem we have, that this doesnt feel so productive, since this are not income producing activites. Not like launching and scaling campaigns, hehe. Any thoughts regarding this?
nice one guys. I like spending my spare time learning coding and copywriting. Not sure what could you do income producing activity now in regards to paid traffic...
What balint said.
Also, corporate stuff if you haven't done so yet: setting up a company, creating an ideal currency exchange and tax situation for your company, and looking into outsourcing work/hiring more people. And all the steps to improve what your employees can do (guides, routines etc).
Good to see things are still going well for you guys, I'm also fully committed and making a lot of progress right now. Keep it up!
Get funding and scale that bitch.
I don't think you should do anything else than riding this wave.
If you don't want to push because of missing quality check, replicate with another offer. Or go different GEO/Offer.
Thanks for the kind words, we give our best!
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
Well if this offer is from the same advertiser (likely as its the same offer just for different GEOs) and after doing the quality check he thinks your traffic isnt as high quality as he needs/wants then chances are he wouldnt really like you to run other GEOs and maybe you shouldnt want to either.
But if we are talking about sending traffic to another GEO in order to "milk" the offer I dont think there is a problem. As long there isnt a "problem" with the traffic then I dont think there is any harm. If/when the advertiser will say he doesnt think your traffic is good enough, you just pause.
You can also ask your AM if they have a simillar offer in the same GEO. If in PL there is now demand for "win an iPhone" offers (demand from users I mean) then maybe offers like "win an iPhone 6+" will work as well...
hey aaart any updates?
Just read through this from the start, great read and loving the dedication and details from you guys and the likes of Amy. Super motivating
How are you going this week?
would love to see an update on the latest
Wow guys, awesome follow along! Keep up the heat!
Happy to see you guys enjoy the Follow Along! First of all we need to apologize for not responding in quite a while, but weve been super busy, bounced into a lot of problems and we didnt have much motivation to update.
October summary:
On the first sight, this result looks awesome, but unfortunately this number is far away from the actual profit.
First of all, we got issues with an advertiser, because they saw an uncompliant landingpage rotating in one campaign. We were mass testing a lot of .apk offers during that time and fucked up with the flow settings. SInce this were so many offers, it kinda slipped into it - our fault for not checking. So long story short, it seems the advertiser wont pay the whole revenue of around $6000. Our AM tries to do their best and I asked if we could negotiate a percentage of the payout, but we didnt hear back from them since like 2 or 3 weeks.
Second of all we have somehow a huge amount of monthly costs.
After realizing this, we desperately started to go after new verticals where the money is. Wanted to get started in Nutra, read and learned a lot, but then we realized testing budget will be too huge. Also we dont have any possibitly to run facebook, so we abonded this. Now we are working on sweepstakes running pop traffic on adcash, but best results are like -70% roi. Really dont know which vertical we should stick with. We know there is a lot money to be made, but all motivation is somehow gone. Weve been doing it for around 5 months fulltime and pretty much did only a little bit of pocket money.
Any suggestions what we could do to get a little bit more of confidence back? Right now we often have the thought to start something different, but this is apparently the worst we could do right now, I guess. Any feedback, thoughts are ideas are highly appreciated!
Take care Lads and Ladies
Don't get dis-encouraged so close to the "finish line" You're already further than 95% of people starting out ever get, and big profits are not far away.
And you would have $6k profit already if there would not have been the issue with not getting paid 
(and definitely keep pushing to get at least a part of your payout)
From my experience the difference between $6k, $12k, or $24k monthly profit is surprisingly small.
You're on the right way, just hang in there! Maybe take a weekend off and have some fun. And then get back to it
It's not easy and that's why AM has such a great community, only those who are able to push through this are the ones staying around. So the way I view it for myself, the point you're at right now, if you quit or keep going is what makes the difference between who you are , how you define yourself.
And I guess you already know who you want to be - the ones who keep pushing even through the hard times with no motivation and lots of uncertainty And even if something does not work, there is this sense of pride and accomplishment in not giving up, especially when it's hard. And especially when you know others are also going through this, those are the guys and girls you want to associate with, the kind of community of people you join by doing something most people would not be able to do.
I have huge respect for anyone pushing themselves so far, because I know how it feels like, and I know I'll be back at this place of uncertainty/no motivation/fear many many times in the future And I also immediately know that anyone else successful has the same kind of respect for me and everyone who goes past their limits to do something you believe in. It's not a matter of how successful you'll be, or how fast you'll be successful, only about how far you'll push yourself trying to succeed.
Maybe it'll take until page 10, or page 20, or page 100 of this follow along for you to make a lot of $$$. But it's certain that at some point you'll be very successful if you don't give up, most likely it'll be sooner than later.
-
It's also always hard to find the right balance between going for the shiny things too fast vs. staying with something that's long past it's prime. Just make sure to think about this clearly for yourself, if it's really the right time to get into a new vertical right now.
This is going to sound bad but it's what I believe.
You guys should actually give up.
Like most things in life, if there's doubt, there's no doubt.
I'm in the same position after running pop traffic for the last 4 months (as well as the people I network with).. very hard to keep motivated when you're working off pocket money wages..
I have been here before however about 7 years ago with SEO and affiliate marketing.. I pushed through even though I only made like 20k that first year... but really glad I did as the money that followed the years afterhas literally changed my life.
I'm not sure whether POP can be "mastered" to be hugely profitable, or whether its got to the stage where the margins are so small its just not worth all the effort.. however I'm only talking from my own experience so far, and sure there are a few out there doing big numbers (as with seo).
It's always hard as an affiliate, so maybe its worth thinking outside the box a little and seeing how you could profit in any other way from what you have learned so far.. I don't have all the answers for this but I have a few ideas I will be trying out before I move on from pops.
Best of luck guys and keep us updated.. if you want to chat anytime add me on skype tnbturbo1
Some great encouragement from Kevin (kepe95) above. And here's mine.
Guys - financially you may feel like you're back right where you started. But in reality, you've accomplished a TON over the past months, including:
-Figuring out all the technical stuff - server, tracking, programming, etc.
-Gained experience on how to test massively - offers landers etc. Know how to tell when there's promise, and how to optimize and scale a camp.
-Experienced temporary setbacks more than once and have bounced back to become better than before.
All this experience is retained and is something you can never lose. No matter which vertical or traffic type you may decide to go into next, the fundamentals will still be the same. You guys know more than enough to be making the big bucks. F*ck yeah!
Having said all that - if you guys are feeling demotivated at the moment, just take some time off! Completely put all current camps on pause. Go out with friends, spend time with family, just relax at home and watch movies - just completely let yourselves go and forget about AM for a while. Once your heads are cleared and you feel like testing stuff again you'll get back into things naturally.
Do a lot of spying in the wild to see what kinds of offers people are running on various traffic sources and the creatives they're using. Read posts on STM to get inspiration on what verticals and traffic types you can explore. Browse through offers on affiliate networks to see what verticals there are and see what catches your eye. Just browse around randomly and bounce thoughts and ideas off each other until you guys feel so excited about an idea that you've GOT to test it out - THAT would be a good time to get back into the game.
There's nothing worse than having to force yourselves to "desperately find another vertical that works". The more demotivated you feel, the more you guys need to relax and take it easy. Trying to rush into things just for the sake of making something work very soon will likely result in bad judgement calls.
If money is a problem, get a part-time job temporarily if that will alleviate some of the stress. Also, some of the costs can be cut down.
Like many other members, I've been following you guys through all your ups and downs, temporary setbacks and successes. We've talked on skype and shared tips with each other. You two are a big inspiration to a lot of people and everyone's rooting for you guys to make a comeback. You've been knocked down before and have bounced back, stronger. This is just another one of those setbacks. $6000 may seem like a lot of money to a starting affiliate, but if you guys stay in this industry, one day you'll be so successful that you'll look back and wonder how you could have considered giving up over losing just $6k. That is what I wish for you guys, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your success, whether it be through AM or other endeavors.
Lastly - a small gift for you. One of the things us mods can see that normal members can't, is how many people have seen a thread. Well, this is how many people have seen this thread since you've started it:
And if you want to chat - you know how to reach me. Hang in there...*HUGS*
Amy
I would not put too much hope into sweeps on pops. The user comes from a shady environment...submitting personal information takes trust. It's hard to make this work on pops. You need to cut boatloads of placements, which leaves you with not much scale. It's simply not a good fit.
It is possible to make money with sweeps on pops, but lots of things need to come together. If you want to dive into sweeps, fb is the way to go.
In general to your situation: don't rely on motivation. If your business depends on positive emotions, you won't make it. No matter what the business is. Commit to a certain amount of time you invest per day, or better, a certain amount of tasks you perform, then do it no matter what.
Keep testing, and you will find the next winner.
Man, the support you guys are getting is overwhelming, you can't quit now!
I'm kind of in the same position as you two: being burned out after working full-time non-stop on this, without too much to show for it. After I really looked at my profits and how much money I have left, it's pretty dissapointing to be honest. As you probably know I also tried something else (mobile/sweeps) instead sticking with what I already know (adult) and it didn't work out that well. I believe that sticking with what you know is the way to go, atleast for the short-term.
It's probably smart to think about something else, especially if you're kind burned out by doing the same thing all this time. However right now I think you should try to get one good campaign rolling and then when that one dies out just learn something new. Or take a long break right now and then start something new when you get back.
I'm actually planning on doing some travelling pretty soon. You have to remember why you're doing this, after all. For me it's the freedom and the ability to travel whenever and wherever I want, it's not really about the money. So I think it's a good thing to take a break every once in a while, to make yourself remember why you actually started doing this. I guess you should find out your motivation for working on AM and then actually doing what you want to do with it (your motivation for working).
There's a lot of people rooting for you. Good luck!
Thanks a lot for all the nice words guys, Its awesome to see how many people actually read this stuff and might get motivated or even learn something. This week we took a break from AM and didnt care about campaigns or making money, which felt quite good. I talked to several people and all told me to not give up, since we learned so much stuff already. Indeed, this was almost half a year of work, an investment into our selfs.
As I was reading a loot this week, I stumbled across a book called "the millionaire fastlane", which was recommended by Kepe95 quite a while ago. After reading this book, I realized that as an normal affilite you can amke a decent amount of income, but you are still not in control! You can be making 10k/day, but if the offer gets pulled, the traffic source bans you or whatever else, you are fucked. We had this 3x in this short period of time, which is just annyoing. So thoughts came across to build either your own offer, adnetwork or trafficsource. As we dont have the budget to start a thing like this, we came to another solution - EMAIL LISTS!
So heres the plan fellas. We will work on creating a funnel, to capture emails and build a list. This might not be the fastest way to earn a quick buck, but this is the only thing you will have something stable - forever. You have an asset, which doesnt cost you anything at all once built. From there on I can market ANY product fitting the demographic, without any restrictions. I can use any wording I want to, any product I want to without having the fear of breaking some bullshit T&C. Also the scale is huge. You need to REACH millions to MAKE millions, and this is what it is. There is no trafficsource, who will lose publishers, increase CPMs or even ban you. There is no specific offer that will go down and you are left with nothing. You can always adapt to the demographic of your list and milk it every fucking week - for years - even if u stop running traffic from today on.
So for now its time to make a solid plan how to capture mails and build a list. Also a lot of reading about email marketing. Probably gonna open up a new Follow-ALong for this. Ill keep you updated!
If anyone has tips on how to get started or so, we highly appreciate it. Kisses
Originally Posted by aaaart
Guys - I got chills running down my spine as I was reading about your plan. I’ve been contemplating the same thing: building lists and milking them! I do have some experience with that from my years of doing SEO. The main thing to keep in mind is that it's not the size of the list that matters the most, but how targeted the list is. I sense a LOT of enthusiasm and positive energy from your post, and very much look forward to hearing about your next success! You guys rock!!!
Amy
You probably know this too, but just look for user "johna5150" in STM. He's the master of list building. What you can do is subscribe to his email lists and look at what he's doing and try to emulate.
I'm in one of his Adult email list (I subscribed with no intent of *that* kind lol), and damn those are good.
That'd get you started alright.
Originally Posted by adsflo
Thanks for the tip bud! Would you mind telling me where to sign up for that adult email list? That's exactly what I have in mind!
Think: penis pills, extenders/stretchers, pumps, exercise ebooks (jelqing etc.)....
Amy
Oh well might as well search for the post.
Here you go. Warning: this thread contains gold.
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-You-Invest-In
Thanks adsflo, did read all the thread and it was one knowledge bomb after another - great share!
For all people who are interested in the shit we will focus on doing, or just want something to read while having their coffee break can follow us here: The diary of two hustlers vol.3 - Building a list because grown up people do so!
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