Watch me become a mobile GOD in 90 days or less (or not?) (17)
Hey there,
it's been two weeks of reading on the forums, preparin, getting ready, getting accounts on affiliate networks, reading more, choosing a vertical, choosing a taffic soure, an now I'm ALMOST ready to go.
Since I've been having some difficulties figring out a couple things over the past few days I thought I'd start my follow along even before starting my first campaign, so other beginners (who probably have the same difficulties) can learn from my mistakes and see how I solved it for myself.
Where I'm at in my life
I'm almost 30 years old, run a marketing company but want to step it up a notch (income wise and experience wise). Seeing affiliates making in a day what I make in a month is making me angry (and wanting to amp it up) 
Where I'm at in Affiliate Marketing
- I read a few blogs (CharlesNGO's, IAmAttila's) as well as a couple hours a day in STM since I joined.
- Decided to choose pops & Redirects as a traffic source and go into PIN-Submits / Sweeps to get started.
- Got approved in 4 affiliate networks so far (GlobalWideMedia [Neverblue], Adsimilis, A4D and InterGMedia).
- Registered to a few different traffic sources, although I will focus on one for now (probably Zeropark, as I've seen it mentioned a lot as a good traffic source to start where you can easily get a lot of traffic to gather data).
- Set aside a budgt of 4.000$ for testing over next few months.
- Got accountwith MobileAdScout
My first big Challenge - Choosing a proper Affiliate Marketing Setup
So my first bigger challenge (apart from understanding all the technical issues) was to decide on whether to choose a VPS for tracking and hosting the Landing Pages or going for
I wasn't sure, so what did I do? Exactly, I posted in the newbie Q&A-Forum. Read it here if you want to see what others suggested (I haven't fully decided yet, but looks like I will go for
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...770#post237770
Preparing my first Campaign & my 2nd big challenge: Understanding spying
I talked to my Affiliate managers and asked for the highest converting offers with a low payout. The only offer that came up more than once so far is WhatsApp Wallpapers.
I decided to go for WhatsApp Wallpapers Mobile [MY].
ALthoug I know the first campaigns are solely dedicated at learning the ins and outs of affiliate marketing, tracking systems, landing page-creation, etc. I also want to give my best at every part. Therefore I decided to spy on the copetition before I start creating landing pages. Following a few posts I saw, I decided to go for MobileAdScout to spy on my competition.
After signing up for the app (using the 25$ off coupon from the forum) I started searching for competing landingpages - and am still trying to figure out how exactly to do it, how to get the most out of it etc.
Question
I haven't fully understood on how to spy on landing pages properly, and I haven't found too many on Mobile Ad Scout that seemed to be for the same offer (which confuses me, considering it's on a few networks AND it was recommended to me by my affiliate managers). Any tips on how to do this in a more efficient way? I read IAmAttila's ultimate spying guide for mobile but he uses WhatRunsWhere so I haven't fully figured out how to apply this knowledge to MobileAdScout.
HOWEVER, I will figure this out over the next couple days and will keep you updated as to how it works out
I scheduled the launch of my first campaign for the begining of next week, so stay hungry for more
Cheers
drpheks
Looking forward to seeing how everything goes!!! Best of Luck...
~Woody
First of all, congratulations on joining STM. I'm sure you are catching up many threads/ articles as how I used to be when I first started few months back.
For newcomers, we always encourage you to read on all this articles: http://stmforum.com/forum/forumdispl...g-2015-Edition
Also, you might want to try on lower payout offers so you don't spend so much on testing budget, pin-submit/ sweeps need to test on more variables, therefore more testing budgets are needed. If you are running on pop traffic, MobileAdScout is a good spying tool, provided that you must be creative with the keywords search. Read more and take even more action! Goodluck!
Good start to a great follow-along!
It's also a great research tool - make a note of some of the lander elements you see which you believe may increase the conversion rate (e.g. testimonials, certain types of graphics, countdown timer, themes that imitate apps / OS's.....) and apply them when modding landers.
With pop traffic there are basically 3 major variables: the offer, the lander, and the traffic source (targetting, bids, etc.) Basically what you'll be doing is optimize each variable so that the camp will be profitable overall. (Sounds simple doesn't it?
)Looking forward to your next installment!
Amy
Ooh I like your "leaked upgrade" angle, and also your lander designs! Interested in seeing how they do!
To make attached pics bigger, click on "Go Advanced" below the posting area, then click on "Manage Attachments" (also below the posting area) which will bring up another tab, click "Browse" and upload your pic file. Then you'll see a link to the file. Copy that link location, go back to the original tab with your post (being written), click the "Insert Image" button above your posting area, choose "From URL", paste your link url into the field, uncheck "Retrieve remote file and reference locally" and then "OK" - and your image will appear in full size.
Will be on the lookout for your test results!
Amy
Great job on getting started. It can be frustrating starting out and waiting for a bunch of different things to get approved.
I believe your traffic spend could be used more efficiently. Currently, you're split testing designs for an unproven angle that may or may not work. Nobody knows.
Instead, I would suggest taking one lander design that you've seen a lot spying (if it's around a lot, it's making someone money), and testing 2-3 different angles on it. This will spread yourself a bit wider - a good angle will convert, a bad one might not. Design can be optimised once you know the angle converts - with a $15 daily budget you've gotta prioritise (if you can bump it up even further, that'd be ideal)
Hi drpheks,
Wishing you best of luck - hope you're gonna make huge numbers.
I would suggest to test a few more campaigns as this will spread your risk and diversify your investments, which means a higher chance of getting profitable soon.
15$/day/campaign is a good start but you need to let it run for a few days before you can make any conclusions with this kind of budget.
From my personal experience, I always apply the following strategy
1. Run as broad as you can; meaning every placement you can get hold off
2. Cut the ones that are not profitable once:
- 2A. Banners get 100 clicks or more and are not profitable
- 2B. Pops get 10,000 impressions or more and are not profitable
- Dont run any campaign if tracking isnt working (properly); test this thoroughly before going live
- Decreasing the bids when not profitable generally doesn't work as this will get you access to only shitty/shittier traffic and will convert less.
- If you are very profitable (+30-40%, you can always try to increase the pay out a little bit to see if volume bumps up proportionally or preferably even more than the % you increased the bid with)
Wow, you are literally doing the same exact offer as me at the same exact time, with the same exact mindset. We should colab haha. Working together would probably help us both. Let me know if you're interested my skype is: ItalysChamp
Update:
Traffic source: Zeropark
Offer: Whatsapp Wallpaper MY (Pin Submit)
GEO: Malaysia
Budget: $15/day per campaign
Angle: Leaked WhatsApp Upgrade
Payout: $2,40
>> DAY 1<<
Ad Spent: 15.04
Conversions: 0
ROI: -100
>> DAY 2<<
Ad Spent: 15.03
Conversions: 1
ROI: -84%
What I will do now:
1. I am having issues with getting tracking setup properly on
2. Going to try a new lander with different angles together with @emwork, focussing on this offer for now.
I am using
Hi @drpheks,
Thanks for trying AdsBridge!
The information about setting the Postback of your converions from your Affiliate Network up is specified here https://www.Adsbridge.com/partner/tracking
Also please find this information below
Server-to-server postback URLs are the most secure and reliable method to count conversions. Use the URLs below to pass conversions from affiliate networks. To get your postback links working you have to:
1. Include your affiliate network's token into your offer's URL. We will pass our "tid" parameter (unique click ID) in the indicated affiliate network patameter. To do this, check the box "Tracking token" when creating an offer and fill in the name of your affiliate network's token, the one that can pass dynamic parameters (for our "tid" parameter to be passed through it).
Please note: when filling in tokens on the first step of your campaigns creation, make sure you do not use the same token you've entered in the field " Tracking token " (otherwise, the "tid " parameter might not be passed to your affiliate network and you won't be able to track conversions).
2. Copy-paste the S2S postback URL to your affiliate network panel. Make sure to replace YOUR NETWORK TOKEN text with the parameter, you've entered in the "Tracking token" field. For example, replace YOUR NETWORK TOKEN with #s2# if your affiliate network uses the CAKE platform or {aff_sub2} if they use HasOffers one. Ask your affiliate manager for the relevant token if the network uses a custom platform.
Please note: '#' signs before and after the s2 parameters are special symbols of CAKE platform, allowing the platform to understand that s2 parameter at the end of postback URL must be substituted with the value, that came to this parameter. This characters are different for each affiliate network, therefore ask your manager or support of your network about them.
You can also postback the value of payout, transaction ID or your custom data from affiliate network. To do this, use dedicated parameters: "amt=" for payout, "txid=" for transaction ID and "cdata=" for custom data from affiliate network. (for example, amt=#price#,txid= #tid#, in CAKE).
Please note: the amt, txid, cdata parameters are optional, you do not have to use here. You can use " cdata "," cdata2="..." cdataN " are additional and won't be saved in our system.
If I were you, I would do it this way:
1)Take the best-performing lander so far (the one with -70% ROI) and set up several camps at different bids (3-5 camps), assign something like $20 to each. Set up at least 3 camps, one at average bid (you can see this in Popad's inventory chart), one at low'ish bid, and one at highest bid (just higher than the max bid - again you'll find this on the inventory chart). (Be sure to assigna low budget especially to the high-bid camp if you don't want to lose your shirt, but definitely try bidding high because often you won't actually be charged at that bid. This is true for popads. Some of the other sources will always charge at the bid you specify so don't try this approach elsewhere!) Preferrably also set up 2 additional camps in between. This will let you know pretty quickly which bid is currently giving you the best bang for your buck. Surely competition will change etc., but I find that it still helps to save a lot of money by finding out the approximate bid that will keep subsequent testing costs as cheap as possible.
2)Once you know which bid will give you the best ROI, set up 2 camps at that bid, one to test landers and the other to test offers.
After that it will just be a matter of rotating new offers and landers into the tests and continuing to check for statistical significance and removing the losers. In the process if you see placements that are draining the budget, you can blacklist them for the time being to decrease your testing cost. Just know that when you have a better offer and a better lander in the future, some of those placements may turn out to be profitable so you may want to retest them at that time.
And of course, every time you find a better lander using the lander-testing campaign, replace the lander used in the offer-testing campaign. And every time you find a better offer using the offer-testing campaign, replace the offer used in the lander-testing campaign. Doing so will further decrease testing costs.
Once you think you have a pretty good offer and lander combo, test and cut all placements that don't meet a certain ROI threshold you set (e.g. 30%) and start scaling to other sources.
Amy
Awesome Post, thanks amy. When rotating landers, I understand it in a way where you also rotate the angle, right ?
Originally Posted by drpheks
When doing lander testing there are a lot of variables you can test. e.g.:-overall nature/type of lander (survey, wheel of fortune, whatever else you see during spying or can come up with on your own)
-background theme (IOS/Android system message, FB, Whatsapp...)
-lander copy (I don't have experience with whatsapp wallpapers, but taking sweeps as an example, the "every Monday we give out [whatever] to a lucky visitor" angle is stale; whereas the "[isp] is rewarding customers with a chance to win an [electronic device/voucher] in exchange for customer feedback on their service! Please answer the questions below!" would be a better angle although not entirely new either)
-headline
-image
Also scour STM for posts that talk about how to increase lander CTR/CR. Testimonials work for certain offers. Also check out these code snippets:
http://ppcmode.com/landing-page-code/
Have fun!
Amy
So first of all, thanks everyone for your feedback.
After my last post I decided to switch back to Zeropark (I initially deposited a larger amount of cash there so I'm going to work with Zeropark for now).
For the past three days I was running three different Landers, two of them have a similiar angle, one is a bit different (the one that has the lower ROI).
I wouldn't mind too much sharing the landers yet, but they have some popup stuff etc. on them, so a screenshot wouldn't help much. If anyone cares to see them, PM me.
Current Situation
Targeting: For now the Zeropark placement was only targeting the carriers specified in the offer, but I am allowed to target more carriers & WiFi
Alternative Offers: I have 2 more offers for the same GEO that I can splittest (one with slightly lower, one with slightly higher payout)
Alternative Landers: I have 3 more landers that I would like to test
Bidding: My bidding position on Zeropark is 3
Traffic Type: Only using Non-Adult Traffic
Especially I wasn't sure whether to cut the -80% ROI Lander (I made a post about the stats here, they seem to be inconclusive at this point): >> link <<
Questions:
- Should I use the same landers and rotate offers
or
- Keep using the same offer and rotate more landers
or
- Keep everything as it is and broaden the targeting (more carriers, WiFi, Adult traffic)
or
- Play with the bidding position (as suggested by Vortex for Popads earlier in the thread)
or
- Do something completely different ?
I am asking because I feel like I'm burning through a lot of cash for my first campaign (my daily spend is about 25$ for this campaign at the moment).
My Idea (if nobody gives me different input):
Make a targeted Campaign with the higher CR Lander that only targets the placements that already showed positive ROI, go higher with the bid, maybe also target specific times of the day (so far it seems to be performing better in the evening and at nighttime (of the GEO)).
Thanks so much for all the input, looking forward to those green numbers
My Idea (if nobody gives me different input):
Make a targeted Campaign with the higher CR Lander that only targets the placements that already showed positive ROI, go higher with the bid, maybe also target specific times of the day (so far it seems to be performing better in the evening and at nighttime (of the GEO)).
That seems like the way to go. However, I think the danger with that is narrowing down too much to the point that you won't get too much traffic. But once you're in the green, you can go higher with the bid to get more traffic.
Your first lander with the 4.65% CR seems to be doing the best. Have you considered optimizing that lander to see if you can bring up the CR? I feel like you're right there and maybe some tweaks to it can take you into the green without having to narrow down your traffic. If you're able to bring up the CR to the point that you're ROI is in the green, then you can just scale up by bidding higher.
WARNING: I am new to this but that seems like the logical choice. I want to hear an experienced affiliate marketer's opinion on this.
Good luck!
I came back to this thread cause I was taking a look at your data again. Each click is costing you around $3.76. I'm assuming that by bidding higher you'll be paying more per click unless you can bring your CTR up higher and that would be done by optimizing the lander.
I'm really curious to hear a more experienced affiliate marketer's opinion on this.
Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns