Mobile Sweep - already GREEN - now SCALING (51)
Hi
joined STM about 2 months ago. Learned so much from all of you. Amazing forum!
After reading for a month, I decided to take action =)
Started out following the "Mobile Cookbook" step-by-step.
Realised after 3-4 days that most new people on STM are doing this. If something is explained in detail and everybody is doing it....it's time to switch
So I switched gears to Pops. This removed one moving component as well. Seemed easier for me to master landers, without worrying about banners.
Accomplishments so far:
- accepted to 8 Aff-Networks
- tested 5 traffic sources
- Split tested about 20 different lander styles
- Split tested about 100 different angles
- Split tested 10 Offers
- Created my own lander, casino style with a spinning wheel. *Total Disaster*
- Set up my infrastructure (Beyond Hosting CDS, Cloudflare, WRW,
- Worked at least 10 hours a day for 30 days in a row on affiliate (while running my main business at the same time)
- Got from no former aff-experience to green campaign within 2 months
Status Quo: It's Green
As a result my best lander / offer combo is performing at 30% ROI. Clickloss is included with a 20% markup in
Tip: CDS combined with Cloudflare reduced clickloss by 15%.
Getting to this point did cost me $1,439.40 with $954.85 in revenue. So overall testing ROI -33.66%. I guess -50% ROI is more accurate, took some time till I learned about clickloss.
So far only one source is working for me. Zeropark was a total disaster. Popcash and Popads were profitable after cutting out bad placements, but the remaining traffic volume is so tiny, it's simply not worth the trouble.
Now I'm a bit confused what to do next.
My Current To-Do List:
- Testing the managed buy networks
- Direct Linking for ROI improvement
- Payout Bump
- Further split tests (vibrate script, android sound vs fb, geo-detect)
- Improving my Whitelist/Blacklist skills
Some questions:
- Is it normal that only 5-6 hours of the day are profitable? The day-parting is crippling my traffic volume drastically.
- Is it already the right time to roll-out to other geos or shall I focus on my current geo and squeeze it out?
With day-parting, cutting bad placements aso. the remaining traffic is limited
Thanks guys!
-Sebastian
Hey Sebastian,
congrats on your success. I am newbie, so cannot help with your answers yet. Just wanted to ask, how did you learn. You took all the feedback from testing or chatted with others, had someone to look over you?
GL!
Work on removing the middlemen where you can.
Make your own sweeps offer
Buy traffic direct from source and remove ad networks.
Thats how you can increase roi fast.
Originally Posted by balint
Haven't talked with anybody about my campaign beside my AMs. Started to change this today ;-)
I read almost all mobile sweeps threads on STM. Whenever I found a golden nugget, I simply tested it.
For the rest....staring at
As well my AMs helped with an hint here and there. "Ask, and it shall be given"
Good tips that I have already implemented:
- Sweeps are running well with Pops
- Most FB landers are saturated
- Forget about the small traffic sources
Tips I got and haven't tested yet
- The managed buy networks have lots of traffic for sweeps
- Stop running FB landers, go system style
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
Your blog helped me getting started. The Spying guide and popunder traffic guide....outstanding articles!
First off, congrats on your quick success sebastian. Always good to see people succeed when they work hard. Keep it up.
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
Glad to hear that Adcash is working for you. Thanks for sharing your case study!
And I'm back.
Had fallen of the track a bit, couldn't get the old campaign stable, and the day parting was crippling the traffic.
After reading all of Finchs' premium posts and watching an video from AffiliateFix about mobile sweeps, the fire was burning again and I had some tremendous paradigm shifts.
Started a new campaign, same country, same vertical, but different offer and different lander.
First day was red, but I saw the potential. As well I had already bought data for a couple thousand $, so I undertook some educated guess work....
21/08/2015
Cost: €84.45
Revenue: $50.6
Profit: $-33.85
ROI: -40.08%
22/08/2015
Cost: €140.8
Revenue: €255.2
Profit: €114.4
ROI: 81.25%
23/08/2015
Cost: €153.2
Revenue: €356.4
Profit: €203.2
ROI: 132.64%
Feels to good to be true at the moment, my stupid mind is just waiting for the traffic source to die or the lead quality to be bad. Well I guess it takes some time to get used to the game.
Pro-Tip: Struggling with sweeps? Read the premium posts and watch the video. Then start acting on it.
Your numbers look good and especially the pace at which you are upscaling (114 euro profit/day to 203 euro profit/day) looks impressive.
Your ROI% is very high which gives you the opportunity to increase the bids on your most succesful placements. This will cut back the ROI% but increase the volume significantly so that you can increase your 203 euro profit/day to hopefully 1,000 euro profit/day. Its all about testing & optimizing the pay outs and hence the tradeoff between ROI% and the absolute profit numbers you can drive.
At this point you can also reach out to your network/advertiser and ask them for a slight pay out increase since you are constantly increasing the volumes you deliver. Based on my own experience and given the numbers you are doing, I think there is a near-certainty they'll increase your pay outs with 5 to 10% at this point.
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
You need to have sponsors that buy the data you generate, and coreg partners to fill up the pipeline, as well as some ads in there.
You need a very good CRM system that 1) keeps fraud users away and 2) maximizes the revenue per user in real time
We used to have our own sweeps, but then started focusing more and more on the Affiliate side of business as this has a higher return for us, and is easier to scale up
Today two things that I actually already knew did bite me in the ass. Not so much ROI but timewise.
1. Do not change landers while traffic is running / do not start tests during the middle of the day
I first learnt this from Finch Premium Posts, but today I lost it a bit.
I was so pumped that I plugged in some changes my programmer made without verifying the code.
I realized after 5-6 hours that something is wrong. The lander funnel is kinda komplex, so it took me another 2 hours to fix the mess. The ROI effect was not dramatic, loosing 2-3 hours to fix it was.
--> prepare tests and landers the evening before
2. A couple of conversion do not say shit
Yes, all the talk about statistical significance has a true core. I gave in the temptation to push all my traffic to a modified lander after 3 promising hours of testing. Well that motherfucker did bite me hard when I reached significant numbers.
--> I wont go under 90% certainty from now on http://getdatadriven.com/ab-significance-test
Overall: ROI is still nice, I did cut off some unprofitable placements and increased CPM for the profitable placements about 40%. As well got a small payout bump, a bigger one is possible, but my AM needs to know how much traffic I can push. I postponed this issue for a couple of days, till I know myself.
Tomorrow I will test new additional GEOs and haunt some more traffic for the original GEO. Need to get focused again and get shit done, wasted to much time with unnecessary and revenue destroying tasks.
Funny anecdote: My traffic source did send me 110k impression within 3 minutes after starting a new campaign. Seems that the country filter was not working. Was my first world wide campaign... Let's see how this plays out. I guess thats at least a STM top20 negative result. 3 Minutes, 110k impression, 0 conversions.The traffic is not included in the following figures.
24/08/2015
Cost: €155
Revenue: €372
Profit: €217
ROI: 140%
Hei Man,
Subscribed!
What an insightful post! Really happy to see the green stats
keep us updated!
Hey sebastian_r,
Are you still only working with pop traffic like adcash instead of banners for your campaign?
Thanks!
Today only a short update.
Biggest lesson learnt:
Focus on the few, not the many. If a traffic source can only push 10k impression before cutting, it's simply not worth the effort. After cutting thats maybe 1-3k impression...
Of course, 10 of those sources would drive decent traffic as well, but with the buggy systems most of them have, it would be a 24hour job to juggle all of them.
To test a traffic source I set up a quick RON, if the numbers are tiny for my initial targeting, I just move on without giving it a second thought.
Yesterday was spend fighting against the buggy black/white list system of my main traffic source. Fight is not over, will probably hit my numbers hard today....
25/08/2015
Cost: €176
Revenue: €403
Profit: €226
ROI: 128%
26/08/2015
Cost: €205
Revenue: €535
Profit: €330
ROI: 160%
27/08/2015
Cost: €248
Revenue: €546
Profit: €298
ROI: 119%
great thread. keep it up!
Today only a short update in regards of add positioning.
The bugs on the whitelisting system of my main traffic source forced me to stop my campaign.
Consequently I lost the first add impression to position 2 and 3 (after figuring out an work-around and restarting it). This alone crippled my CTR and CV about 50%!
Who could guess that people don't click through the second or third add in a row....
Needed to increase my bid about 20% to fix that mess.
I read a while ago that stopping your campaign can kill the campaign. Now I understand. My ROI is high enough to absorb the higher CPM. With a low margin campaign, this would be the end.
Nice hit me up so i can share some ideas where you can scale these babies to with mega volume you dont hear about 
Really inspiring....keep going man!
Had a little chat with Attila that fired me up to push even harder. Full focus on the current campaign, no distractions.
As well, I read this thread.
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ume-Affiliates
Simply can't be satisfied when big money is waiting.
Traffic problems are temporary solved after three days of hustling.
Interesting how your mind gets creative when money is on the line.
The red day and the following low profit is an result of the already mentioned problems an the cost of scaling.
Give it a thought: What if I had stopped pushing even harder after this temporary problems? Can't give up easily.
Next update will be posted when I hit the next big milestone.
Two nice Milestones achieved here:
- one 100$/hour revenue
- 1000$/day revenue
Biggest Lesson Today: Can't stop testing even if things go very well. Improving CR from 0.4% to 0.5% with a new lander means 25% more revenue right in front of your nose.
Ps: From today on, I will stop posting ROI. I only have one big campaign running, so comparing returns on invest and opportunity costs are irrelevant for me.
28/08/2015
Cost: 323€
Revenue: €186
Profit: -€136
29/08/2015
Cost: €169
Revenue: €193
Profit: €24
30/08/2015
Cost: €351
Revenue: €472
Profit: €122
31/08/2015
Cost: €378
Revenue: €1075
Profit: €697
Good hustle keep it up man!
That is good case study sebastian_r just keep pushing big success is near 
This case study is motivating. Nice job man!
Can you scale to other geos?
One of the things I never do is postbacks to the traffic sources.
Originally Posted by kash50
waoo very nice keep it up
Do you use adcasch managed account or self managed?
hi great thread but quick question how much is the payout from your offer? i mean you achieve this numbers with sweep offers like email submits 1.50$ - 2$ payout or with pin submits which obviously there the payouts are higher.
iphone 6 email submit, street payout was 2.3$, bumped payout 2.45
That took a bit longer than initially expected, but here it is, the next milestone accomplished.
20/12/2015
Revenue: $2,442
Cost: $1,289
Profit: $1,153
Lessons learnt:
- 1k/day profit is the bare minimum to do AM full time. Fix costs are summing up easily to 3-4k per months, even with a lean setup. After deducting fix costs, taxes and fees, 30k profit will leave you with 10-15k at the end of the month. Not too much for running a high risk business...
- Only your bank account tells the full truth. Currency conversion, payment fees, banking fees, tracking costs...they all eat profit.
- First years' focus needs to be on building a war chest. Non-payments....traffic source runs with your money....higher than expected tax payments...it happens from time to time.... be prepared.
- If you want scale and stable profits, don’t try to make something work that’s not meant to be, e.g. sweeps on pops
- If something is hot, you can normally see it immediately. Of course its possible to make something work with lots of time and effort. In the mean time you could have already scaled something that was hot from the get go to x,xxx/day. I rather test 40 offers and scale the winner, than investing 10 days in making an mediocre offer work.
- I have zero trust in any traffic source; they steal every day from me by knowingly sending bot traffic. If I can detect 30-50% bot traffic, they can. They just don't give a fuck.
- I care a lot about the relationship to my AMs, they are the only ones in the complete chain who are playing in my team....team revenue. It's not team profit, but after all revenue is the name of the game. Sales cures all.
- Scaling an already working traffic source is the easiest way for instant revenue growth. Several campaigns, several accounts, loose frequency capping, campaigns with lower cpm for weaker performing os, browsers, placements.
- Mobile is not the monster many people with interest in it want you to believe. It's technical warfare without too much room for innovation. You can only say "your smartphone is going to explode without installing antivir immediately" in so many ways. You can only say "you lucky sucker, you've just won an iPhone" in so many ways. If you want stable profits, there are maybe 2-3 verticals on mobile you can tackle. In all honesty, I've only found one so far.
- Intellectually, affiliate marketing (mobile) is not very challenging. In an recent newsletter, the talk was about an monkey with an stick making money after seeing the networks top offer list. Throw enough shit against the wall, see what sticks, scale it...pretty straight forward.
- Emotionally, affiliate marketing is a motherfucker. For me the only way to go is suppressing all emotions. No emotional ups, no downs. One level, steady, consistent. Everyday I sit down and invest 10-12 hours no matter how I feel, no matter what
- After all, AM is the easiest way to make a couple hundred k per year besides i-banking. I worked in i-banking, business development, founded a small tech business, worked as author... in hardly no other profession or industry is it possible to make x,xxx / day profits after 4-6 months with only a couple k start-up costs. The money is out there. Every single day. You just need to scoop it.
-All I know about AM comes from this forum, finchs premium posts, attilas' blog, mallan daras blog and working my face off. I've not read a single word about AM outside those sources. Success in AM is shockingly easy to replicate. Learn from the pros, don't follow the herd, create an bulletproof daily process, put in the hours, never give up.
That’s it for today.
Next milestone is waiting.
well spoken.
Hard work pays off.
Nice, this is awesome man. What network do you use and what program do you recommend I use (newbie) to make landers like you?
Is it necessary for me to learn HTML+CSS?
it would be great if folks to share some resources to get me started. i'd love to post these numbers with you guys once I get the hang of it. I'm just struggling with the baseline right now (I am all about taking action, I will shoot myself if I hear that again). Once I get things rolling, im like a machine (used to work in Investment Banking), so I can crank stuff out.
Any help would be apprecaited. thanks dudes/dudettes
Originally Posted by wwofbreakingbad
Spy & Copy from Adplexity https://adplexity.com/
Amazing progress dude!
"Intellectually, affiliate marketing (mobile) is not very challenging. In an recent newsletter, the talk was about an monkey with an stick making money after seeing the networks top offer list. Throw enough shit against the wall, see what sticks, scale it...pretty straight forward."
This is true until a certain point!
However, if you want to start hitting more scale consistently then you have to apply more than monkey mentality.
You need do more than a monkey would do (have the ability to launch more campaigns than a solo affiliate could ever do).
You need think more than a monkey would think (instead of purely spy & copy, come up with your own bidding strategies, tweaking and optimization processes).
You need to create exclusive partnerships & deals, with traffic sources, advertisers, and/or affiliates.
Can't wait to hear your progress, you're moving quick!
@sebastian_r You are a good man, I appreciate the resource.
Congrats on XXXX/day profits!!
And great tips in the thread, everyone trying to make it in mobile should read this follow along very carefully.
Originally Posted by Mr Green
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
-> creating a team or partnering up
-> going direct
-> creating processes and systems
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
Originally Posted by spartanen
New creatives, a big zone that is one fire, new/empty advertiser database. Hard to bring all of those together in Tier 1/2.
An offer that runs since 8 months combined with an Facebook/Apple Store/Spinning Wheel lander in an tier 1/2 country on pops won't make you much money.
Saturated market with old creatives won't fly too high.
On the other hand, if you find an good converting sweep e.g. in South America, Arabs or Asia you can do lots of damage even with an old fb lander. But those offers are hard to find. I did run one in Brazil, plugged it in and it was profitable. I didn't need to cut a single placement. Same lander in Germany, I had to cut 90% of all placements.
Sebastian, you have dropped another golden nugget here again 
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
For you case in germany, after you cut away 90% of placements, are there significant volume left to hit at least high $xx/day? Or did you eventually give up for that campaign?
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
Thanks sebastian_r
Waiting for positive update.
Congratulations! Your progress is amazing!
Quick update
Closing in to my one year anniversary on STM next week.
Roughly eleven months ago I bought my first traffic. It was a nice ride so far.
First year revenue is in the mid xxx,xxx.
Sweeps, antivir, various pin submits, nutra.
The money is out there, and AM is still alive.
Its just a bit tough.
It's certainly not for everyone. The good thing, it's easy to find out. Buy some traffic, you'll know.
Doing six figures was relatively easy.
Cracking 7 figures seems to be a whole different ball game.
Hitting a big campaign once in a while is nothing special. All it need is persistence. Doing it month after month, year after year needs however an competitive advantage.
I’m currently running camps full-time.
Will now switch to halftime and build an asset the rest of the time. That was the plan right from the beginning.
It’s madness to work full-time on short term profit.
Talk soon
@sebastian_r
what kind of competitive advantages are we talking aobut? Higher budget? better relationships with AM? I'm running AV/Pins/App Installs right now on pop..
Originally Posted by randomman
Originally Posted by sebastian_r
Sounds a bit odd to me when you're speaking about living in Russia. I guess it's because you heard that tax rates are low and you can do whatever you want running business? Or you just like Russia? If the first, I am going to dissapoint you cuz things are a lot more complicated than you've probably thaught.
P.S. PM me if you want to chat about Russia, I can answer some of your questions.
P.P.S. Thread is awesome, some gold is here for sure! Everyone should read it attentively
Hey Sebastian,
congrats on your success. Half a mil in the first year sounds not bad.
Do you still continue working with pops and pins?
Originally Posted by lansky
Sounds a bit odd to me when you're speaking about living in Russia. I guess it's because you heard that tax rates are low and you can do whatever you want running business? Or you just like Russia? If the first, I am going to dissapoint you cuz things are a lot more complicated than you've probably thaught.
P.S. PM me if you want to chat about Russia, I can answer some of your questions.
P.P.S. Thread is awesome, some gold is here for sure! Everyone should read it attentively
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