Smashey & Nicy..or Rascale's Christmas Pop Picks! (17)
Greetings pop pickers.....
(apologies to all those that do not get that joke or do not want a load of 'pop' puns!)
Bit of background stuff:
As anyone has read my previous threads knows, I have mainly worked in App Installs. I moved to sweeps about a month ago when it became clear there were very slim pickings for decent offers. I started out running sweeps on what i knew best - mDSP's, in particualr decisive as I had a long hisory there and knew the platform well. However after their recent troubles and a whole heap of people (AM's, other affiliates) telling me to look at pops I have decided to give them a go.
I realise that christmas is probably not the best time to start...but I would rather get on with it as I have time off work to learn the ropes on this traffic source and start to build a system for testing.
I intend to update this daily with how things are going and no doubt with some rather stupid questions. This is to keep me accountable as much as anything!
So today:
- Got a recomendation on some offers from AM
- Picked one to launch today (no science here as I will launch all)
- Ripped/modded landers until I had 6 to choose from (already enjoying not working on banners)
- Uploaded them to CDN
- Set up tracking
- Launched on Zero Park (on recomendation of AM)
So how did my first day go?
Offer - Win an Iphone 6s - AU
Payout - $2.80
Spent - $84.15
Revenue - $11.20
ROI - (86.69%)
OUCH!
Lessons From Today
- At least I made something!
- AU on Zeropark burns through money.....must have done nearly 20xPO in a matter of hours.
- Of the 6 landing pages all conversion came from 2 which interestingly had the longest user interaction eg 5 questions instead of 3, loading scripts etc . Too early to make any real assumptions but something to keep an eye on.
- One landing page referencing a certain just released film had a shed load of clicks.....0 conversions so far though!
- Made a few optimisations on individual placements
Tasks for tomorrow
- Keep above campaing running for 1 more round to see if optimisations make a diffference / get significant data for LP's etc
- Launch another campaign (this time with lower payout, non tier 1/2 country)
Originally Posted by rascale
Where are all the daily updates here?Well, jokes aside, you did better than I did on my first campaign about a week ago. I was running a voucher offer and I had -90% ROI
.Anyway, AU is a pretty competitive GEO, I would suggest going for tier 2-3 countries where the bid is 4-5 times lower.
As you also said, it's too early to tell anything about landers. 4 conversions is too low, you need more data for a statistical significance conclusion.
I also started in a competitive GEO, DE and I found the bids too high on zeropark and probably would have been better to start in a tier 3 country. This is my plan for my next campaign, probably start a follow-along here as well.
Anyway, keep updating the thread and good luck!
I'd also recommend running your campaign within various bid points. If you know the average bid on ZeroPark for AU https://zeropark.com/volume/ then you can use that as a benchmark.
So, let's say the average bid is .02, I would setup multiple campaigns in bid prices like 0.12,0.14,0.16,0.18,0.20,0.22,0.24 <----depends on how much you're willing to spend/test. Running all these campaigns at the same time will help you determine that best amount of traffic you'll receive alongside with keeping the costs low.
Yup....bad on me had let the updates slip a bit over Christmas/new year but have still bee actively working.
Thanks for the responses as always gave me things to think about!
I knew AU was a competitive geo going in but wanted a proven offer to learn optimizing on a new traffic source.
Possibly the first thing I learned was how much the bid level matters on Zero Park, not that it doesn't matter on Go2mobi or any others just their algorithm works differently. Was a bit crazy to see money disappear that quickly however I went in to this knowing that I would lose money while learning so all good.
A read of the case study in Finch's Guides convinced me to have a deeper look at the metrics in the campaign and as my networks were mostly unavailable to approve new campaigns etc over christmas it made sense to use this campaign as an experiment.
So things I have done:
- Cut a few obviously bad performing placements
- Optimized on the basis of operating systems - made a huge difference!
- Cut lander's that were eating money
- Then started experiments with bid levels - This is still a learning point for me, I have adjusted it and got the campaign consistently profitable. However traffic levels have dropped right off so will be looking to start increasing this to see how traffic effects the ROI
Results for the last few days:
Offer - Win an Iphone 6s - AU
Payout - $2.80
30/12/15
Spent - $3.57
Revenue - $8.40
Profit- $4.83
ROI - +135.19%
31/12/15
Spent - $4.53
Revenue - $5.60
Profit- $1.07
ROI - +23.72%
1/1/16
Spent - $8.16
Revenue - $11.20
Profit- $3.04
ROI - +37.21%
Lessons from this period
- Starting bid level matters!! In future will start with a lower bid level overall and ramp it up slowly
- You can optimize to profit but the return is not always worth it. circa $3 a day is not a full time living for me!
Tasks for tomorrow
- Chase approval for other offers and creatives that I submitted before the holiday period.
- Get those up and running on zero park
- Test effect of upping the bid level on above campaign now placements etc are more optimized
- Test a variation of best performing lander in above campaign (added exit pop in)
- Ask for dedicated AM from network that I am mainly using now
- Add my goals to signature so I can tick them off as I go (always like looking at them in other peoples)
With that in mind I want to thank the people that have contributed so far and wish everyone a happy new year and here's to crushing it in 2016!
so not as good today:
Offer - Win an Iphone 6s - AU
Payout - $2.80
02/1/15
Spent - $14.24
Revenue - $8.40
Profit- ($5.84)
ROI - (41.02%)
Campaign has spent much more that it has been each day, could this be the weekend effect?
Also seems likely there has been increased competition as I have seen this offer on a number of network emails etc
lander blindness could also be an issue, I have implemented some slight tweaks to the landers so will see what affect that has
Done today -
- Chase approval for other offers and creatives that I submitted before the holiday period.- emails and skypes sent will chase tomorrow if no response
- Get those up and running on zero park-waiting on above
- Test effect of upping the bid level on above campaign now placements etc are more optimized-have duplicated campaign with slightly higher bid to see effects
- Test a variation of best performing lander in above campaign (added exit pop in)-done
- Ask for dedicated AM from network that I am mainly using now-email etc sent to network
- Add my goals to signature so I can tick them off as I go (always like looking at them in other peoples)-done, see below!
Lets see what effect that has on things!
Tasks for Tomorrow -
- Chase approval for other offers and creatives that I submitted before the holiday period
- Get those up and running on zero park
- Make contact with new AM if given one
- Make contact with rep at zero park
A very quick update today as I have been working on new landers for another campaign to launch tomorrow and its getting late!
Offer - Win an Iphone 6s - AU
Payout - $2.80
03/1/15
Spent - $20.46
Revenue - $19.60
Profit- ($0.86)
ROI - (4.21%)
A much improved day as almost back to breaking even.
Lessons from today
I am noticing that one LP is converting much better than the other. I spent a good portion of today re-reading Vortex's post on cutting landers and having input the figures again I have cut my second landing page based on proper stat significance. Hopefully this will start to have an effect on ROI
Also Done Today
- Chase approval for other offers and creatives that I submitted before the holiday period - done
- Get those up and running on zero park - ready to go once ZP approves them
- Make contact with new AM if given one - Done, good chat with them about how we can work together
- Make contact with rep at zero park - email sent
Tasks for tomorrow
- Need to get a variation of sole working LP up and running
- Launch new campaign in different GEO
- Read Vortex post on cutting placements as a reminder...probably something I have missed there too!
and with that..good night!
Not a full update but just realized a major newbie mistake I have made
this might explain how my ROI was looking today...
To be fair it was only a few words in the copy (not massive santa pictures or anything) but still let that be a lesson to people!
Update time
Offer - Win an Iphone 6s - AU
Payout - $2.80
06/1/15
Spent - $1.55
Revenue - $0
Profit- ($1.55)
ROI - (100%)
Lessons from today
At first I wasn't sure where all the volume had gone but after chatting to my rep at ZP it became clear that if your balance drops below a certain amount then traffic drops off. For those interested it appears to be between $60 - $50
Lack of traffic means I have not been able to draw any great conclusions on this but I have now topped up the balance and added another LP in to see if that makes a difference.
Other things done today
- Submitted creatives for 2 other campaings
Chatting to my AM (who has been very helpful) I've realsied I need to have more campaigns on the go at once.
I would be interested to hear how many other people have on the go at once? ie how many campaigns does someone who still works on their own but is doing well manage?
Tasks for tommorow
- Get new campaigns up and running - Providing creative is OK
- Check figures for above campaing are improving
- Translate more LP's
If you don't mind, can you share what's your average CTR on your landers? I assume it's the typical iphone sweeps landers, probably with different script, etc. The problem is, with ZP I get in a tier 2 country 0.14% CTR with a survey-type lander. I found this to be toooooo low to be able to make this profitable. The thing is, I ripped this lander from spying the top ones, it seems to be used in every geo, etc. My tracking links are ok, so it's not a coding problem or anything... This makes me think there's a lot of bot traffic on ZP
The lander that made most of the profit for me last week had a CTR or around 0.67 .... So still not great but enough to get some profit.
That being said I had another lander that had a CTR of 59% and I saw only 1 conversion from it. Those were both in AU. For same campaign and targeting etc.
While CTR is a good metric I think it's only one part of the equation eg you could put "free Justin Beiber tickets" on your lander and receive a huge CTR but if the offer is rubbish (or doesn't have any relevance to the lander) then it's probably not likely to work. The best lander that I had, though it didn't have a great CTR was designed to look like the offer page etc to provide continuity.
As to ZP having bots....that's probably as true as any source, I've been trying to keep a close eye on placements.
I'm learning more about it everyday I use it at least!
LOL, I assume for the page with 59% ctr you were using a back-button script, so that doesn't count
I know the CTR is not important, I've had simple landers with just links to offer pages that had higher CTR, but the CR was crap, while the survey landers have lower CTR, but way better CR, compared to the other ones. It's got to do with how much you get to "warm" or "presell" the visitor before you get him to the offer page.
As for ZP having bots, I check the cloudfront logs and you won't believe what I found there. I started a thread about this here and just so you can have an idea what I've found, check this:
40 requests from a single IP
all coming from onclickads.net
all unique zoneIDs
all of them in an interval of 2 minutes or less
I'm still working on the reports to have enough info to show tomorrow to ZP when I'll contact them. But it's pretty obvious from what I've seen that at least 30% of lander "visits" are duplicated (scripts/bots, whatev). The spend is very little, a few $, so we're not talking about refunds here, but I want an explanation from them before I invest any more money in their traffic source.
No just a random angle that I have to admit was pretty much click bait lol.
Interesting read about the bots. I'll have to set some reports up myself.
Yet another thing to start worrying about!
Originally Posted by rascale
So I have launched a new campaign in the same GEO to compare how it performs agains the previous offer:
09/1/16
Spent - $68.59
Revenue - $22.40
Profit- ($46.19)
ROI - (67.34%)
10/1/16
Spent - $76.63
Revenue - $16.80
Profit- (59.83)
ROI - (78.08%)
11/1/16
Spent - $24.95
Revenue - $2.80
Profit- (22.15)
ROI - (88.78%)
So the 11th is even after I have made some optimisations on placements and non performing landers. Will probably leave it run out for the rest of today to see if that makes any difference but after that will be moving on to another offer I have lined up and am waiting on creative approval on.
One of the things I am having the most trouble with is bid levels. Either I am too high and thats not profitable or too low and not enough volume. Are people essentially running campaigns at low bids across lots of traffic sources to make up one larger number? ie $20 profit on 5 sources to get to $100?
One thing I want to try on my next campaing is some other pop sources. Many seem to have much lower minimum deposits than ZP so easy to test out on
While I might not be in profit yet I am at least getting conversions and did have some profitable days so I'll just be keeping testing until I find one offer with a great ROI I can get fully behind.
Do wish my aff network would pay out before $1000 though!
Did you give up on the iphone offer ? or running that into profit now ?
With running more campaigns you mean different offers, or same offers but different campaign settings ?
Originally Posted by soulfly1
Update on how things are progressing:
12/1/16
Spent - $29.59
Revenue - $11.20
Profit- ($18.39)
ROI - (62.15%)
13/1/16
Spent - $1.51
Revenue - $2.80
Profit- $1.29
ROI - 85.73
Think the 13th has more to do with conversions from the previous day coming in late.
I also set up a test on Popcash with the same offer to see how a different traffic source would convert. I've noticed recently on the spytools that this offer seems to be running more on Popcahs and Popads rather than Zeropark which I have been using.
Sadly after 48 hours I'm still waiting for approval of the campaign on Popcash and emails/skype to them have gone unanswered. So I am going to load it up on Popads and see what difference that makes.
In the meantime, I really need to get more offers up and running at the same time. My mini-goal for next week is to have 3 campaigns up and running by Wednesday that way I can keep rotating out the weakest one each time to test more.
Looking at my overall spend levels so far:
Total Spent - $776
Total Revenue - $156.80
Really need to get that figure to the $1000 mark so I can get it paid out and re-invest back in.
On a positive front at least I have made something! This is also only really 3 weeks in to my journey with pops so hardly time to quit when I am learning things everyday.
Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns