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Goodbye 9-5! Leaving The Work World Through Mobile Pin Submit (55)

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Hello all,

Follow along on my journey to leave the corporate garbage world once and for good! I know a good handful of people personally that have made IM work, so I have visual proof that it does work. I just have to make it work for myself
I have been on STM for about a month (early October 2015) and started launching my first campaigns at the beginning of November while following Caurmen's Go2mobi Mobile Appetizer.
I loaded up the recommended 1k to Go2Mobi and they even gave me an extra $200 bonus for the deposit
I'm going to be running Pin Submit / SOI type offers.
Not sure exactly what I want to drill further into with these offers.. I think I'm more comfortable running utility, game, sweepstakes type of pinsubmit offers.

Goals:
By the end of the year: Break even on campaigns, or see some minor profits ($50 a day).
January 2016 onward: $100 a day by the end of each month. (Feb $200, Mar $300.. etc)
June 2016: At least $500 steady/average income a day and quit my job forever.

After calculating, I will need $350 a day in order to live the comfortable life I want without a full time corporate job.

Question before I start for fellow Pin Submit runners: Do you guys pick a specific "sub-niche" within pinsubmit/SOI offers or just look at pinsbmit as a whole and just run what converts the best? eg, some adult, dating, utility, sweepstake, voucher, whatsapp offers.

Affiliate Networks (I'm a part of more, but either the AM doesn't respond or there arent mobile pin-submit/soi offers): Tapgerine, Adsimilis, F5, Avazu, Affiliaxe, Peerfly
Traffic Source: Go2Mobi (for now)
Tracking: None for now since I'm following the appetizer. But it will probably be Voluum.
Linking: Direct, for now.
Bidding: Auto (based off the Appetizer)
Budget: $30 a day per campaign (based off the Appetizer. I have a higher budget to spend however).

So far I have had terrible luck. Ran 8 campaigns and not a single conversion. As to the reason why, I am baffled. Currently waiting for 2 to get approved.
Here are the offers I have run:

1st campaign:
Offer: Micro Security Essentials - Pin Submit
Geo: Kenya
Network: Adsimilis
Payout: $.55
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Results (total for all 16 banners as I tried two different angles):
Clicks: 1,186
CTR%: 0.81
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $36.08

Highest Clicked Banner:


Notes: AM didn't actually help me find an offer since he wasn't responding. So I picked an offer under $1 that was in a foreign GEO as recommended.
Used PIXLR to edit and create the banner.

Offer URL example: ..tp://xxxxx.com/?a=xxxxxx&c=xxxxx&s1=Mic roSecurityKenya&s2={clickid}
That seems to look right since Adsimilis is using Cake.

Postback URL example: .h.ttp:/./pb.g2trk.c..om/pb/?api_key=xxxxxx..xxxxxx xxx&clickid=#s1#&payout=#price#
Does that look right?

Most of my clicks are showing up back in Adsimilis so I believe the URL's are setup correctly.
Spoke with Go2Mobi and they said the offers looks good from their end.

I decided that the offer was not working anymore, so I decided to run another offer in a different Geo:

Offer: Battery Saver - Pin Submit
Geo: Ghana
Network: Adsimilis
Payout: $.20
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Results (total for all 8 banners as I tried 1 angle this time):
Clicks: 381
CTR%: 1.51
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $5.26

Stopped the campaign as all the banners ran x3 times the payout.

Highest Clicked Banner:


I'm not worried about the money I'm losing at this point, but am really annoyed of the fact that I'm getting 0 conversions.

Since I got nothing back from my AM at adsimilis, I decided to grab an offer from Tapgerine.

Offer: ADDA Games - Pin Submit
Geo: India
Network: Tapgerine
Payout: $.25
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Results (total for all 16 banners as I tried 1 angle this time, but half hindi, half english):
Clicks: 948
CTR%: .63
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $47.25

Highest Clicked Banner:


Offer URL example: http://xxxxx.com/aff_c?offer_id=xxx xxx&aff_id=xxxxx&aff_sub=racingaddagames&aff_sub2= {clickid}
I hope I did this right since Tapgerine doesn't run Cake.

postback URL: http://xxxxx.com/pb/?api_key=x xxxxxxx&clickid={aff_sub2}&payout={payout}
Again, I hope this worked right as I am seeing clicks in tapgerine.


Discouraged, I stupidly grabbed a US sweepstakes offer for Quiznos.
Offer: $100 Quiznos Gift Card
Geo: US
Network: Tapgerine
Payout: $1
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Results (total for all 8 banners, all Gifs instead of static like the others above):
Clicks: 46
CTR%: .49
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $22.26 (cut since the Appetizer said to get around $20)
my cpm was a whopping $2.34. I ran through the budget without any information.



I tested the offer since I was US and it didnt require a phone number submit, so I knew the offer worked.
But I'm so fed up with seeing a fat 0 for every single campaign.

So, now.. on 11/11/2015 my Adsimilis AM reached out to me, and he decided to assign me a different AM since he's actually a super high up director and has been very preoccupied. my old and new AM spent the next couple hours chatting with my and finding out the offers that would work with me (which I really appreciated!). I gave them a list of offers I picked and they said they were doing very poor.
They gave my a list of well converting offers and I narrowed down the list and picked 3. One of which I got up and ran 11/12/15.

Offer: Next Level Anti Virus
Geo: Malaysia
Network: Adsimilis
Payout: $1.75
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Results (total for all 8 banners, all Gifs and text translated to malay):
Clicks: 247
CTR%: 1.00%
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $24.88

Most popular banner:


Currently I am waiting for two offers to be approved.
Both are sweepstakes offers. 1 for an iphone 6 in the Phillippines and an iphone 6s offer in Iraq.

Here is an example of the banners I'm going to run for these:




As a wrap up for my initial, LONG post (sorry guys) I'm really getting tired and frustrated.
I've spent hours and hours making banners, talking with AM's, and researching through STM/MalanDarras/CharlesNgo.
My banners have moved from really boring and basic, to animated.. but still no results.
I've tried tailoring my Angles/Banner styles to match the provided Landing Pages from the AffNetworks as well.
Is it normal to run through 8+ campaigns and get 0 conversions in total? It makes it incredibly difficult to figure out what I can do better/change.
Any help from fellow STMers would be AMAZING!

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As an update I decided to put Pin Submits on a hold and try my luck at App-Installs (games/utilities/etc).
I've gotten discouraged.. not by the money lost.. but the fact that nothing is seeming to work. Oh well, after the depression of it all, I wake up every morning wanting to keep pushing forward as I know its part of the AM world for a newbie.
I wasn't able to figure out what half the pinsubmit offers were, what they were trying to accomplish and how the end user users actually got an application/service from them.
Is someone able to shed some light?
For a "media download" offer, do they submit their phone number and then after they convert do they get an application similar to one from the appstore?
I dont get why someone would pay money for an unverified, sketchy looking app they could get most likely for free from a trusted google/apple appstore.
Also, How do you test these offers? I dont get how you could test a "confirm pin" type of pin submit offer in malaysia without a phone number, phone and phone network to follow through with the conversion.

Anywho, I decided to run a couple of game app install offers that also did not convert.. *scratching head*. I talked with my AM and they said the offer was still converting well.
Here are my highest clicked banners after $20 spend of testing (give or take):


Results (total for all 8 banners, mix of gifs and static translated into german):
Clicks:127
CTR%: .35%
CPM: $.56
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $20.34



Results (total for all 8 banners, mix of gifs and static in english since offer is Australia):
Clicks: 59
CTR%: .23%
CPM:$.86
Conversions: 0
Revenue: 0
Cost: $21.91


I've decided to say screw it and I'm going to move to the Main Course part of the cookbook, get Voluum, a CDN with Amazon and sign up to Adplexity to spy on banners/landers and what is actually working.
I'm probably going to expand my traffic sources even though I deposited a large sum into Go2Mobi. Will try Decisive as another DSP and also move onto POP traffic.

If anyone has input as to my pin-submit confusion, please chime in! All I hear about is how "hot" pin-submits are, and after reading about them... I still dont understand how/why people even subscribe to an AV app, Game, Content when it's free or cheaper through a trusted IOS/Android app store.
Will keep posting when I have more!

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Hey man I was in your position, having run campaign after campaign and not a single conversion. At this point my suggestion would be to get a spy tool and Voluum. I wouldn't worry about CDN, it may complicate things even more. And honestly if your not getting a single conversion, I don't think a CDN is going to change anything.
I would eliminate banner all together and run on POP. This way, 1 variable is removed. Good Luck.

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I and 3 other people asked for a refund from Decisive because they have a problem with their traffic system.

Just saying.

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Thanks for the input Webdev! The CDN would be for landing pages. That's the only way to get them up aside from a server right? I've been going through a good amount of follow along's and it seems that so many people, especially newbies are hitting profits very quickly. I will take your advice and start running pops. I got a spytool as well today and will get Voluum as soon as I'm ready for new campaigns. I really appreciate your help

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Thanks for the warning!
I'm probably going to run pops as webdev recommended.
p.s. I've been reading through your follow along and am impressed with how fast you've picked everything up. We have similar goals and I'll see you at 100k in 6 months

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We're all gonna make it, bra.

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Dude, &clickid=#s1#&payout=#price# should be: &clickid=#s2#&payout=#price#

Did you spot that? Might have affected your Adsimilis campaign.

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Oh, crap.
I'm pretty sure I only did that for postback on my first campaigns. I just checked my newer ones through tapgerine and used affsub2... is that just for tracking or would that make conversions not work??

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Big Update!

It's been quite a while since i've posted to my follow along. Main reason is I was doing what every newbie does and scraps something when it doesnt work and searches for the next vertical that "seems" to work.
After screwing around I decided to try and stay focused.
I then decided.. hey, everyone is running POPs and Sweeps, I want in on that action!
So by mid December 2015 I got in touch with an awesome AM and saw my first conversion ever come from a sweepstakes campaign! SHOUT OUT TO DARREN AT MUNDO MEDIA!
After starting to get campaigns closer to break even profit, and starting seeing profit early in January, I paused all my sweepstakes campaigns.
Reason being is I didnt really have motivation to run Sweepstakes campaigns.
Mid January I figured that I would jump on the mobile gaming vertical.
I signed up to a bunch of new gaming/cpi networks and tried running some offers with display traffic... Back in the rut I was in when I started. $20 revenue, $300 spend.. No thanks.
I stopped everything one more time and really sat back to assess where I've come so far. Yeah, I'm making forward progress.. but it is slow.. slower than I want.
Then a bright idea came into my head. It went a little something like "Hey, you idiot.. didnt POP traffic actually work for you compared to everything else?" DING DING DING!
Got in touch with my AM at Mundo, got my hands on a utility app campaign with no caps on January 20, 2016.
Ripped some landers, created angles and launched in multiple geos after the first geo did +50% on RON!
I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. From January 20 to January 25


Although they are pretty nice profits for my first crack at pop+utility CPI, I really had no actual process for optimizing and scaling these campaigns.
I randomly saw a RON do +80% ROI, decided to pause it and created a blacklist campaign. The blacklist campaign screwed me and I was at -20% ROI. I then went back and re-ran the RON campaign and it was back around +50% ROI.
My ROI went down as a whole after a couple of days running (sunday seemed to be the worst).
I screwed around with bids, cutting, etc but I was all over the place and that killed my ROI.


I ran back to the forums after a couple of weeks of not check back to get some darn answers to the best way of going about optimizing and scaling!
Went to Ruby's pop tutorial and Bigeasy123's thread on how he uses a 'pooling' system for campaigns.

This is what I got out of this (advice/input is greatly appreciated):

1 higher bid whitelist campaign.

1 mid bid test campaign.

1 lower bid whitelist campaign.

Remove placements/landers after statistical significance (10-15x payout/lander, 2-3x payout/placement) that are working in my test campaign and putting them into the whitelist campaigns.

Question is, now that good placements are gone from the test, what is recommended as far as re-adding those placements with new test landing pages? I'm using Voluum, PopAds, Cloudfront CDN.
Should I, readd those good placements to the test campaign, or just throw those new landers into my whitelist campaigns as a split test?
If anyone follows this method, do you only run 3 campaigns in total as mentioned above or do you create new test pool campaigns?
Any more insight would be great!

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Nice to see you hit the green. Keep going. Hard work pays off.

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Yeh test your new landers in both your test and whitelist campaign or just one or the other - up to you! But probably both if you don't mind potentially sacrificing your ROI until you reach statistical significance.

How are your campaigns going?

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Congrats man!
It is always cool to see green colors in the tracker

I have faced the problem that it is hard to spend money on popads. Did you experience this issue as well?
We bid above average and the traffic is way too low.
And even if we get all the impressions that PopAds forecasts it will be still like $15/day spend (3000 impressions).

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Keep it in the green buddy! You're on your way.

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Popads is actually my favorite traffic source to be honest.
Make sure you check the report tab to make sure the geo you are targeting doesnt meet target requirements.
On top of that, keep in mind that they show gross traffic on the geo if everything is ran open.
You probably arent going to target iOS and Android at the same time.
Also, people upload campaigns with higher bids than you constantly so what it forecasts in the campaign summary can change at anytime.
I dont remember what geo I was testing, but it showed at least 50k impressions until I removed iOS and then it dropped to less than 5k.



Thanks for the advice! I ran into a stupid issue earlier this week (check my update post above).
I'm back in action though!!



Thanks! Once you see the profit hit all you can see is how much potential IM really has! I will never quit!

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Did you notice a lower CTR on ur landers? Exactly how did you check this? Run it on ur phone?

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Thanks for the tip. How do you think G finds out and decides which websites to flag? User submitted reports?

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I honestly am not sure. Maybe they do a key word check every so often?

It killed both my CTR and CR by ALOT! I just was checking a token issue with Voluum passing parameters using a live link and noticed the warning page.
After setting up a new website by CTR and CR sky-rocketed back up.


From sunday (day after I fixed it)

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Hey guys! Big ol update.
I expanded from PopAds to Popcash and found that popcash was giving me 2x the profits. Who knew?

From Sunday's fix to Wednesday evening (not all the way done)
Revenue: $1,209.80
Cost: $825.98
Profit: $383.81
ROI: 43.67%

noteable, I moved to popcash late monday night, so my profits from Tuesday alone were $150 and close to $100 so far (wednesday evening).

Also I'm working on moving from Voluum to Thrive Cloud Tracker!
After crunching the numbers from my daily average, I really do not want to deal with the obsurd overage charges from Voluum with my pop traffic.
Thrive's Cloud Tracker should be just what I need after talking with their staff.
On top of that they do boast higher speed when using double-meta refresh... so onward I go!

Will update sometime later this week.

Anyone running pop traffic and mobile appinstall/pinsubmits shoot me your skype name in a PM!

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Nice man, keep scaling that baby!

What reason are you switching from Voluum to Thrive for? Mainly the faster redirects?

Also IIRC you're running the standard antivirus type lander. PopCash said they don't allow "fake virus" landers, so I'm not sure how yours got through but figured I'd warn you.

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Nice to see these green numbers. Congrats man!

I'm testing both, PopAds and PopCash, with some pin submits, but haven't had success yet.

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2 reasons, Thrive boasts faster speed when blanking referrers (important for pops) and the overage costs are freaking ridiculous with Voluum. The way Thrive has its pricing for the managed cloud is perfect for me.



Thanks!
You'll crack the secret code soon!
Get 4-6 landers up and test with a semi low bid initially. work from there by blacklisting/whitelisting placements!

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Quick question that I cant seem to figure out.
I am currently going off Voluum stats, not actual traffic source > Aff network stats.
Look at my Aff network, I have at least $40+ more revenue generated vs Voluum.

Pop ads has timezone reports
Voluum has timezone settings
Aff network is stuck in EST
Popcash is stuck in GMT

How can I get accurate spend vs revenue from traffic source to aff network? The timezone's dont line up so it's hard to get legit data.

Anywho, here are my Voluum stats!

Wednesday's stats:

Revenue: $397.66
Cost: $216.18
Profit: $181.48
ROI: 83.95%

Thursday's stats:

Revenue: $389.59
Cost: $190.66
Profit: $198.93
ROI: 104.34%


Friday's stats:

Revenue: $350.12
Cost: $203.14
Profit: $146.98
ROI: 72.35%

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I would check the 'errors' tab in voluum to see if any of your postbacks are not being fired off correctly for whatever reason.

Im not the most familiar with mobile, but my guess (from past experience) is there might be some slight problem with certain postbacks firing off correctly; either your not passing through a subid correctly somewhere, or its setup wrong on the aff network side somewhere.

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how did you fix the chrome issue where they flagged your domain?

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Check if its the same offer that your have +40 more revenue. You may get traffic outside the country your targeting and that traffic ends up to a different offer and converts. And obviously you won't see a pixel fire back to volume because you don't have a postback to that offer. (unless you have global)

Another option is to manually add conversion. Get all the click id that have conversions from ur aff network, and than upload to voluum. Duplicate click id won't be affected. This way you should get all yoru data providing ur set-up was done correctly.

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Get a new domain.

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I'll need to contact Voluum and see what's up. I spoke with my AM and he said that my links are setup correctly.
Thanks for the input John!


Thank webdev!
I do have a global revshare offer that takes care of my spare traffic, but that shows up in Voluum. Now that I think about it.. my Aff Network does have a fall back redirect offer built into all the offers. I'll look into this!

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Saturdays huge (for me) earnings!

Lets just say, staggering bids with winning placements is a recipe for success!
Currently on two traffic sources.
I think it's time to scale to a few more


Saturday:
Revenue: $628.44
Cost: $333.44
Profit: $295.01
ROI: 88.47%

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Great job! Are you running this on mobile or desktop?

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Thank you! I'm only running on mobile with pop under traffic

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You can push that to x,xxx/day, just a matter of running it on all available pop sources. some will work, some might not. Propeller, Adcash, Zeropark, Wiget, Exoclick, Selfadvertiser, Mediahub, DNTX, wwwpromoter....that should be enough. If you're running on all mentioned, you can look into display. Have often scaled pins from pops to display successfully.

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Thank Sebastian!
I am in the process of approvals on a few of those sources. Sent you a PM. If you have a moment, lets chat on skype

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We had the same issue with the difference in Voluum and network stats.
If you check your conversions tab, the number of conversions should be equal to that in the network.
There are two columns named Postback timestamp and Visit timestamp. Voluum tracks conversions on a Visit timestamp basis.
So basically if the user sees your ad on Monday but converts on Wednesday you will get this conversion tracked for Monday.
Just check these two columns and you'll get the idea.

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You will get to 1k profit a day in no time, you got the hard part down just keep scaling. Also if you dont mind me asking, what is your LP ctr %?

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OH! That is most likely the case. I find that the next day if I check the previous day stats they randomly start going up in small increments.


Thanks! I'm really going for it! Almost hit $300, so thats my short term goal next goal is $500, then $1000!! Its hard to say what my CTR is since it varies from 200% on some lp's to 15%. I've found that CTR barely has an impact on my CR. just looks cool to see a high percentage. the CTR just ends up costing me more in my tracking system lol. I previously had a script that made is so any click/tap on the LP would push the user to my offer. Split tested the difference and it was really about 50/50

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Sunday's stats:

Revenue: $814
Cost: $555.11
Profit: $259.36
ROI: 46.72%


I'm getting to the point where I'm contemplating putting my 2 weeks notice in at work. Having a corporate job is really dragging me down. I took a couple days off and got so much more done!

To do still:
-Move from Voluum to Thrive (Just got my Cloud server today!)
-Incorporate my business!

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Congrats on your success! Hard work pay off.

Is there a retention rate on those mobile cpi offers? I would check with my AM to make sure everything good.

I've been burned on those offers before.

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When you initially start a RON campaign are you in the green or red?

Is most of your volume/profit coming from whitelisted campaigns after choosing winning placements? Or from RON campaigns?

Thanks.

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Great read and love seeing your progress!

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Very inspiring read, congrats and keep it up!

Are you monetising your "wasted" traffic in any way? i.e. the traffic from desktop or non-targeted geos. Could be a good way to squeeze out an extra few %. You could consider using Monetizer. STM's Mr. Green is one of the founders.
Check out this thread http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ight=monetizer

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I would do this ASAP and let a payment or two make it to the bank account before quitting. I've ran good traffic to the networks I work with for years but lately I'm getting emails and questions a lot more about banners/landers/promotion methods and I'm always in compliance. I've never not been paid though but it's always a good idea to verify everyones happy when you start sending volume.

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Congrats davizzle! Before you hand in that notice, make sure you can still get by and have a safety blanket if say, your network doesn't pay, tracker goes down, offer goes down etc. It's very easy to hit a wall in affiliate marketing. Getting past that wall, be it lasting, weeks, or months, is what separates the good from the great.

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This follow-along has been a slap in the face for me. I actually remember stumbling upon your thread months before (around the time I got my first profitable campaign). I thought to myslef "oh man this guy has a long way to go" and this was around the time I was going hard and made some offers profitable. Now a fewmonths later, I took my foot off the gas pedal and i'm kind of back to square one and i'm seeing you with consistent profits and a lot of success.

Way to go dude!

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Got Skype? Would love to share some advice with you and help you expand your biz.

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Nice

But may i know what does it mean by placement?
Is it different types lik banner, pops etc?

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Ey davizzle! how is your campaign running!? Your follow along really inspired me! I´m going to start mine. I was looking for inspiration and I have found it! see you at the top!

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Oh ya you are not running on go2mobi anymore?

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first 2015/16 follow along I Read from start to finish from someone who's not mr green or caurmen.
Was awesome seeing your ads progressively getting better, I was honestly surprised to see 0, 0, 0, 0, conversions.
I'm trying to show the love I feel for you writing this up but I'm still too new to find the words.

i'll be checking for updates don't let me down

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Love this follow along, having a similar experience. Was following the mobile appetizer and also deposited a big amount on go2mobi. Have had 0 success with them so far. One day out of frustration said fuck it and experimented with pops and got my first few and now consistent daily conversions. I still have a few campaigns running with Go2Mobi but it's not looking good. Using Popads now but will definitely try Popcash after seeing your success. Thanks!

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Have you gotten a payment yet? You see...In 3 years I've had a handful of campaigns profitable with RON and those were just good runs...Have you "cracked the code" as you said? Or are people converting because they've been tricked or scared into converting? You'd think advertisers would be happy to see volume but every one of them is suspicious first...I hope I'm completely off and you have figured it all out...

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^ If you haven't peeked around spy tools lately, that's what everyone is doing for app installs, "tricking or scaring them" type landers. Going fully compliant aint gonna cut it.

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I have and it was advertisers themselves doing it...I thought this had basically been shut down awhile back for affiliates. But I'm not here to preach to you...When you start asking your network for $1000-$2000 a day...They're going to protect themselves and make sure the advertiser is happy before you get paid. We're not talking about skirting on the edge of compliance...If you're doing exactly what they outline not to do...With big warnings that you will not get paid...How are you not just a scammer to them now?

And I could be completely wrong...I can't even find an offer to look at anymore...OP says open cap so maybe anything goes...Just a warning that volume gets people looking for a reason not to pay you...And they will keep an advertiser happy first.

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Thought this was a cool follow along. Did you get to quit your corporate job? I'm rooting for you.

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Great follow along! Starting with mobile traffic myself and thinking about trying pop ads right from the beginning

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