I've Got A Working Campaign! What Should I Do Now? How Do I Scale It? (11)
I've Got A Working Campaign! What Should I Do Now? How Do I Scale It?
So you've got your first consistently profitable campaign? Congratulations!
This lesson will teach you what to do next - because the work, and the profit, is just beginning.
Don't Relax!
Here's the most important thing to know about having a successful campaign: you should not take this as a signal to chill out.
If you've got a successful campaign rolling, now's the time to milk it for all it's worth. Campaigns die as fast as they are created, and most of your campaign ideas won't work out - so when you have one that does, it's time to double down and push it as hard as possible.
And there's only one rule about scaling: if you think you've scaled as much as you can, there's always more to go.
Ways To Scale
There are tons of ways to scale - and you should investigate all of them.
- Spend more! If there's more traffic to be had by raising your daily budget on your working campaign, make sure you're maxing that out.
- Bid higher! If you're not in the top spot already, try bidding higher and seeing if you can raise your volume. Keep an eye on your ROI while doing this, though!
- Ask for bumps! If you're doing volume and the advertiser's happy with your quality, push hard for pay bumps on your offer. They're pure profit!
- Explore all placements!If there are more placement options on your traffic source, try 'em all! For example, if you're only doing 320x50s on a mobile DSP, try all the other placement options too: interstitials, other banner sizes, text ads, the works. They may need some tweaking to work - don't give up after one round of ads.
- Try other sites! If you're on a source like TrafficJunkie that offers multiple sites to advertise on, scale your campaign out to similar sites. Again, remember, you'll need to do a bit of optimisation to get them to work.
- Keep split-testing! Don't stop split-testing when you hit profitability. Keep testing LPs, keep testing new offers, and keep testing ads. Here's an example where Maynzie doubled his ROI to 310% by continuing to split-test.
- Make more campaigns! If there's more volume you could occupy on your current slot, make more campaigns for it! You can either duplicate campaigns (see below) or create the same campaign but with new, similar ads. That tends to reduce burnout. On most bid-based traffic sources, it's a good idea to separate the bids for each campaign by 1-3 cents to avoid competing with yourself.
- Duplicate! Clone the same campaign many times on the same traffic source. Many sources have similar internal traffic distribution algorithms. On many , just cloning the same campaign over and over with the same bid will give you a lot more traffic compared to a single campaign. Test and see!
- Think about going direct with the offer! If you can go direct with the advertiser, get in touch with them and ask what rates they'd offer you. Going direct can be a double-edged sword - you'll get paid slower and sometimes treated worse than you would with a network, but you can make much more money.
- Go direct on the publishers. If you buy through a network / DSP and you see a specific pub doing really well, contact them directly. Usually if you can buy all their inventory you can get it MUCH cheaper. You'll avoid the traffic swings caused by changes of bids from competition.
- Try other countries! If your offer is available in other countries, or if there are similar offers in other countries, try new campaigns there. Don't half-arse this - get translations done properly, and if you're switching between same-language countries, change slang appropriately.
- Try other targeting! If your traffic source offers targeting options, explore all of them. Older, younger, male, female, different ages, different interests, and so on. Try anything and everything your offer will accept.
- Try other traffic sources! Running on TrafficJunkie? Try Exoclick as well! Running on one mobile source? Try some others! And try further afield too - can you make your Facebook campaign work on ZeroPark? Sure, why not?
- Look for OBSCURE traffic sources A traffic source no-one knows about can be your best friend in the AM world. Look - and look hard - for places that you could scale to. Don't be afraid to get in touch with webmasters or intimidating-looking corporate ad agencies and try to negotiate a deal. Remember that many of these sources will be crap, but if you keep testing you'll find some gold too.
And if you've tried all of those and think you've run out of ways to scale, come ask on the forums and we'll think of some more things to try!
Scaling Tips
Scaling's a bit of an art - here are some useful tips when you're getting started.
- Don't get discouraged. Your first attempt or two to scale may not work - keep at it and you'll find ones that do.
- Don't go crazy. Scale steadily - don't go from $10 a day to $1000 a day in a single day. Try doubling your spend and see if profits remain constant first.
- Read Secrets Of Super High Volume Affiliates. One of STM's all time greatest threads, the Secrets Of Super High Volume Affiliates, is filled with nuggets of pure gold for scaling.
- Keep in touch with your AM and advertiser. If you're scaling up, chances are that means you're making more money for your AM too - so stay in close communication, and make it clear you want to make this a long-term thing. If they're good, your AM will be able to give you all sorts of tips and info to maximise your scaling potential.
- Keep an eye on quality. Don't ignore quality while you're scaling like crazy - nothing sucks more than being thrown off an offer you're about to scale through the roof. Get your AM to ask your advertiser for feedback regularly.
- DON'T SLACK OFF. It's awesome to be making $100 a day, but it won't last forever. Scale it to $1,000 a day, then relax when the crazy ride finally comes to an end and the campaign dies. THAT's the time to go hang out on a beach for a bit.
BONUS ADVICE - No, Really, Don't Relax! - Advice From A Super-Affiliate
It's easy to get this wrong! You've got a profitable campaign doing $1k a day for some time and you think you made it.
You start multiplying that number by 30 to see monthly potential income ( underline potential ) and sometimes that number by 12.
It doesn't work that way...
When you have something doing well MILK IT! It's not going to last for long , that's how affiliate marketing works.
It's way easier to scale a winning campaign then coming up with a brand new campaign doing the same numbers.
I have been guilty of this in the past, but not anymore. When I have a winner I put even more effort than when I test new stuff. "
- bbrock32
Originally Posted by caurmen
Just duplicating it will drain the performance fast, because everyone is seeing the same lander much more often and right after each other.
What worked well though is doing those two things:
- Setting at different bids, one campaign very high bid, one medium, one low - all for the same targeting
- Using different angles for the same offer for the duplicates. Even if the angles are not as strong as your main angle, it will keep the angle from burning out.\
CAURMEN already mentioned some great gems here, in the end there are so many more little tricks and techniques that are being used out there, not just for scaling but for everything. Just be creative and try something new out. The great thing in AM is that we can just test a theory and see within days or sometimes even hours if our assumptions were correct or not. And if it works, you got one step closer to getting an edge.
Originally Posted by kepe95
Originally Posted by kepe95
@spartanen - yeah, that's a common problem. It's comparatively easy to optimise a lot of campaigns to profit, but lose all your scale in so doing. That's why we tend to emphasise banner and lander optimisation and split testing first, since that doesn't lost you volume.
Having said that your specific case sounds weird. There should be plenty of Android impressions out there! Have you done a lot of optimisation other than that, cutting carriers or placements?
@caurmen i think its because i had a low bid! I upgraded my bid now... (extra edite: upgraded the bid and did again a few cuts and got almost no impressions). Maybe its takes a while to kick in? (popads btw).
also now i understand why you need a higher bid because you get much more data to cut bad placements etc... i am a bit stuborn as you can see and needed to see/test it for myself! also i wanted to know if i could get green with a lower bid... yes i can... haha
I cut 5 websites and now i wanna start a seperate "campaign" on a few good performing websites. Is that a smart move and do you have tips for that?
furthermore i just cut mobile phones and only have tablet because i saw a much better conversions rate on tablets. Smart move?
And i cut a few browsers.
1. Increase your bid and see what the effect is. Don't think in % but in absute $$$ terms. Its better to make 10% on a $50K campaign than to make 25% on a $10K campaign
2. Add more banners and landing pages and start bidding on those as well - get as much traffic as you can when you are in the green
3. Start testing out new (and comparable) traffic sources
4. Negotiate with your network to get more countries live or to get a comparable campaign in the same or different country. Test those out.
5. Don't sit idle - keep on working on your landers, banners and mediabuying strategy.
6. Work fast - every campaign will eventually die out so you want to make as much as money before it does. Focus on the upscaling, but keep on testing & optimizing along the way
7. Get your network to pay you weekly so you have good cash flow to fund your traffic buys.
Hi,
I've got a few profiting campaigns in the health niche doing xxx$ a day, but i can't scale anymore, i'm using bing ads. tried to use google adwords but they didn't accept my ads, tried using Sitescout and even some media buying in Adult sites but ended up losing my shirt! Any advice?
Originally Posted by iliass95
Yeah, Native would definitely be high on my list of things to try in that case.
Awesome read
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