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0 to $100 real quick (20)

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Hey guys,

Not gonna introduce myself, you can find that here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...wn-AM-business

After reading some follow alongs (mostly this one: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-marketing-day ) I decided it's really retarded to no write one yourself if you are really serious about stacking that cash. So there we go. Also, I really like traveltotokyo's format so I'm going to rip that off of him. Thanks man!

Chipping away at small goals slingshots you to smashing elephants - VIP Artur
So my first goal is to make $100 revenue from internet marketing by the end of February 2016. For those who say it's a laughable goal, fuck you. For others, it's better to give yourself a pessimistic goal and reach it earlier, than fail yourself cause you were too optimisitic.

0 to $100 real quick day 1/56

What I did so far:
introduced myself on STM
bought a domain for my business @ www.razorprofit.com
set up an email address artur@razorprofit.com with alias sales@razorprofit.com and getleads@razorprofit.com following the onboarding guide
put together a simple webiste under my domain hosted on rackspace file server
read through vast majority of the onboarding guide

What did I do today:
read through the Mobile Cookbook Appetizer blueprint for mobile campaigns
applied to F5 Media
send my F5 contact a "Hello"-type skype message
started an account with Go2Mobi

What's on my agenda:
Pick an offer from what F5 Media has to offer. I will request a list offers sorted by volume. For this I'm using the appetizer guide
Go through my finances to put aside $1,000 for campaign testing
Once, I have an offer I will brainstorm angles and come up with creatives

Overall expenses:
$99 - STM membership
$10.87 - domain name

Thoughts:
I'm a native Polish speaker which is a Tier 2 country. I'm thinking that advertising in that country will give me competitive advantage due to the 4x currency ratio and my native language skills. Also, Poland maybe an easy country to work with at first. What are you guys thinking? All I have in mind is: Nice! Great success!, but I might be too optimistic.

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0 to $100 real quick day 2/56

What did I do today:

My application to F5 Media has been approved so I started researching offers

Also yesterday I also sent my applications to Neverblue and MUNDOmedia.

I funded my Go2mobi account with $300 for testing purposes.

I sent an email to my AM, Sam Travaglini:

However I haven't received a response yet.

In meantime I started researching some offers by myself. I was hoping to find an offer that I can target for Polish market (I'm a native Polish speaker) reasoned by the fact that I'm able to produce effective creatives with no translation costs plus it's a Tier 2 country so my USD will go further there. However, the only 2 offers I saw for Poland were SOI Mobile Sweepstakes. The user interface in the preview was really confusing, badly explained and the conversion funnel required high level of investment from the user. It doesn't seem like something for a newbie like me.
According to the Appetizer guide I should be looking at offers with <$1 payout, non-US, no direct APK installs. I also think it's sensible to only shoot for Tier 2 countries for the start. All this led me to this offer:
And here is an offer description:
Questions
I think this looks pretty solid, however there are things that I don't understand here, thus I have a couple of questions for you guys:
In description they provide a bunch of banners that are really high quality and in many different translations. That looks great, but I assume it also implies to a lot of other people are using those creatives. Additionally, I'm not even sure if the advertiser will allow me to create my own banners. How do I check that? I understand that big part of optimizing campaigns is testing banners / LPs to find combination that converts the best. But how am I supposed to do this if I have to use their banners.

What do you guys think in general? Is this offer something newbie friendly?

I appreciate all feedback.

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Hey Vipartur,

I'll speak to banners. Yes, most Advertisers who have been in the space long enough, will load in enough creatives for publisher's to split test. What you will want to do is reach out to your AM's and ask them how each one is performing on their network, and see how much volume is being sent as well. That will give you a better idea of how saturated it might be. Also, if you have an account with WhatRunsWhere, login and check to see which banners are being used too.

If you're wondering about whether or not you can create your own display banners, that's a question you need to ask the merchant rep or account executive. In most cases, you can, but you'll need to submit it for approval.

Also, let me know if you have any issues getting onto GlobalWide Media (formerly Neverblue), I'll help get you setup with an account.


Chad Wilton | Team Lead, Network | GlobalWide Media

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Hey vipartur,

Just responded to your email, so take a look at that first. Now, in terms of banners and Landing Pages, they just need to get approved by the advertiser. So once you have spied, created, and have an LP to run, you just have to email it to me (your AM) and we can get that approved. Turn around is pretty quick, usually under 48 hours. Then you can start running traffic and optimizing.

There should also be guidelines on the offer that tell you what you can and cannot do for your creative.

Great to see you starting a follow along, and looking forward to working with you. Add me on Skype (in my signature), and we can get more in depth with your questions!

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0 to $100 real quick day 3/56

What did I do today:
I did more research on offers. I read through a couple of follow-alongs for the Clash of Kings offer and realized that this is probably a very saturated market. CoK has been advertising for a long time now, the demand is low and it's one of the easier offers to get going so there is a lot of people doing it. Not the best choice. I also read through Mr Green's guide to what's up in 2015. It looks like sweepstakes and PIN submits are the new big players in mobile. Also, the offers suggested to me by my AM are both sweepstakes, so there has to be something to it.

I looked through the offers suggested by my AM. I'm a bit confused on how to go about implementation still. I don't know if I'm going to direct link it or create lander. I just feel a bit confused on how setting this up looks like. However, I also realized that I have just never done this before and a lot of things will get clear if I just make a step. So today, after quite a bit of hesitation I finally applied for an offer. It's the following:

It satisfies all the requirements of the Appetizer guide: it's below $1 payout, non-US and not a direct APK download.

What's on my agenda:
Once I get approved for promoting this offer I'm going to have to figure out how technicalities of setting up my campaign will look like. Do I direct link? Do I set up my own lander? What copy to write and where to get translations?
Also I want to do more research on the offer on the internet. See WRW for it as well.

I'm patient and can afford doing things slow. I learn more this way.

Overall expenses:
$99 - STM membership
$10.87 - domain name
$300 - deposited funds to Go2mobi

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Sweepstakes generally convert better with a lander.

The best way to operate when getting into a new vertical is to spy and rip a whole bunch of stuff. You'll learn a whole lot faster seeing how each lander performs and iterating off that, as opposed to fumbling blindly writing your own copy on a random design.

Best way to do that:

- Adplexity is a good investment, WRW is trash for finding non-cloaked & up-to-date landers.
- Get on a VPN, hit some torrent/free movie streaming sites with a mobile emulator and get spying yourself, you'll quickly get an idea of what the vertical is like.

I highly recommend doing the manual VPN spying even if you do get amongst Adplexity. Seeing what runs on what type of site, bid positions (what pops first, etc) is important - all little bits of information that tell you how a vertical is performing in a given geo.

If you found the site through the first page or so of Google, chances are it is pretty high traffic.
If someone is appearing often there they will be spending a lot.
If they're spending a lot... they're probably making cash, so you would be wise to pay attention to what they are doing.

Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate. Take your time imitating and try to really understand what is going on behind the scenes.

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Thanks stitch. I appreciate your insight. Will definitely follow your suggestions.

I came up with 4 candidates for an offer to promote.

below $1 payout
non-US
no direct APK download
CPA - SOI
Italy (~36,593,969 people - ~60% of population is internet users) compared to 4,000,000 in Singapore where the competing offer is located
This one was recommended to me by my AM.
The offer looks great, however I don't think I can effectively run a campaign in a language I completely don't know. Even if a get translations, they are probably not going to be the best.

below $1 payout
non-US
CPA - SOI
Singapore (~4,000,000 people using internet)
This was also recommended by my AM.
Same story: the offer looks great, however I don't think I can effectively run a campaign in a language I completely don't know. Even if a get translations, they are probably not going to be the best. Additionally, Singapore is much smaller than Italy so worse volume.

above $1 payout
non-US
CPA - PIN Submit
Poland (24,000,000 internet users)
This is something I found myself. The advantage here is that I know the language and I can run effective advertising without a need for inaccurate translation. This can both help me create great campaigns and make it easier for the start. Unfortunately, the payout is $2.40 which is against the Appetizer guide. They recommend a payout below $1.00. Can you guys give me some feedback on how important this factor is?

below $1 payout
non-US
CPA - it says "offer converts on 1 click" - what does that mean?
India (402,000,000 internet users - huge market)
The reason I added an Indian offer to this line up is because: internet market is ridiculously big, I can easily use English without loosing almost nobody and it's a Tier 3 country.

So I need to choose what to promote from those 4 offers. I presented you guys with my analysis and so far 6688 and 7730 are my favorites, despite AM's recommendations. I would really appreciate feedback from your side. I want to know if my pros and cons I listed for each are worthwhile considerations.

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1 click flow is just that, user clicks once on either content or button and normally the pixel will fire if MSISDN has been captured or on pin submit.

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Just came back from beautiful Los Angeles, CA. Last 7 days were amazing. I met some great people including the producer of 70% of legal marijuana in the US, one of the main photographers working with Playboy these days and various people associated with the dating company I work for. We shot great material for a new digital product and as always I learned loads about life and myself. But going back to Affiliate Marketing...

So I decided to go with offer 6688. Now I need to figure out how to build multiple campaigns that will give me good basis for obtaining a data sample. So, with 19th of January, back to work on AM.

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F*** being on some chill shit.

Good thread, keep it coming !

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I would recommend to go with an offer suggested by your AM. You do not want to go in the dark and just do an offer because it appeals to you. Is always best to go in with knowledge on the offer. You need to know if it converts, if the offer still good etc.

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@vipartur - test all of them, in the order you've listed them. You'll go through a lot of offers, and none of those you've suggested are really bad ideas, so go for it.

You absolutely can run campaigns in languages you don't speak. I don't think there are many successful affiliates who haven't done that at one time or another. Get decent translations done and you're good to go.

I'd generally recommend mostly running offers that you've been recommended, but it's also a good idea to get off the beaten path and try different stuff from time to time - and "I think I can run this" is as good a reason as any. Do check with your AM that there are no problems with the offer, though, and get them to fire a test conversion.

Don't worry too much about the payout on the third offer - it's a bit high, but you should be OK.

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I'm two lessons further. I ran two campaigns with pretty much zero ROI but I learned a lot on my mistakes. Below follows a summary.

Lesson 1: creative sizes that get the most exposure on my traffic source (Go2Mobi)

offer: (6688) [WAP] Whatsapp Wallpapers - Yamoja - PL
budget spent: $56.92
conversions: 1
revenue: -$54.52
total impressions: 223,901
clicks: 2,357
creatives used:

method: direct linking
offer flow: MO flow

I prepared 9 creatives put together from what the offer provided on the offer page to cover the 9 sizes from most traffic to least according to Go2Mobi guidelines.
I direct linked the campaign to the offer.

Issues
Go2Mobi did not record my one conversion. I'm not sure why is that, but I saw the conversion only in my affiliate network. The setup seems to be correct. I'm confused on this.
My AM wasn't able to test the conversion flow as he requested a test link from the tracker. I did not have a tracker set up for this, so couldn't test the conversion flow.
Also, it's a MO flow which requires the lead to put in their phone number first and then also send a text. I thought these are two very high compliance steps and thus the offer is not converting

Result
After $54.52 spent on traffic and only one conversion I paused the campaign. I'm following Mobile Cookbook: The Appetiser which recommends stopping the campaign if there is no conversion after your $20 spend. At that point I had only one so I kept it going. After hitting $54.52 I decided to stop though.

What I learned?
I identified the creative sizes that yield significantly more impressions than the rest with some CTR. Specifically:

From here I deduct that the best creative sizes for mobile are: 320x50, 300x250, 320x480, 300x50, 768x1024. The last one is a huge display so I assume most of those clicks are accidental clicks rather actually interested leads, but that's just a speculation.
Lastly, I need a tracker for more data and to be able to test the conversion flow according to my AM.
Pick and offer with conversion flow that requires less compliance from the lead.

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Lesson 2: sometimes shit happens

offer: (8776) AntiVirus - Black - Glomobi - 1-click - PL
budget spent: $48.15
conversions: 0
revenue: -$48.15
total impressions: 164,865
clicks: 1,217
creatives for angle 1:

creatives for angle 2:

method: landing pages for each angle
flow: MSISDN Flow

Using the data for creative sizes I acquired from Lesson 1 I focused on preparing more creatives of preferred sizes rather than covering all the sizes.
I picked an offer that has an easier flow (MSISDN) to see if the conversion rate will be better.
I also used The Mobile Cookbook: The Main Course as a guide. I wanted to increase conversion rate by providing a landing page that will allow for a better bridge from my angle to the actual offer. Also, I would have more data to play with.
Lastly, I set up Prosper202 as my tracker.

Issues
Getting the tracking right was not as straight forward as I thought it would be. Despite having an open source solution of Prosper202 and my extensive software engineering knowledge, I still had to apply some manual modifications in tracking to get it right. Eventually I figured it all out though.
My AM advised that testing the conversion is as easy as issuing a HTTP reques to the postback URL. Unfortunately, that didn't work and it wasn't triggering a conversion in my tracker. I still don't know how to the test conversion from with my affiliate network. That is a huge issue since I don't even know if my setup if working right and recording conversions.

Result
After total spend of $48.15 I had zero conversions. I'm not sure to this point if the offer is not converting or my tracking is not working. I thought that it should be at least recorded on the affiliate network side, which was also at 0. I assumed no conversions.
After reaching $48.15 my traffic source Go2Mobi stopped and rejected my campaigns due to redirection to a malware software site. This is unacceptable in my book and I decided to kill this offer.

What I learned?
A lot about setting up tracking. I'm pretty sure I know almost everything I need about tracking and tracking software by now. To big extent I dissected Prosper202 including inspecting it's database design and how it uses internal variables to track. That's huge!
The malicious redirect in the offer is completely out of my control. So I guess shit happens I reported this with my AM so they can act on having this offer in their network.
Lastly, I moving forward I will not be preparing landing pages until direct linking campaign records conversions. It's too much work to get landing pages set up without having zero data on the validity of the offer. Landing pages are to be established in optimization of an offer that records more than 0 conversions.

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Moving forward, I'm still confused on what guidelines to use when choosing an offer. So far the offers I've seen don't provide any reliable way of testing the conversion flow which is a major issue.

Also huge appreciation for my AM, Sam, who has been ridiculously helpful and extremely responsive. It's a pleasure to work with this guy!

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Your first step should be to match the traffic type with the vertical. After your tests, it seems obvious that this is off: almost no conversions, and offer getting flagged by Go2Mobi (more likely the exchanges but you get what I mean). Even if you had made it work, it would have been taken down.

I think you should:

a) talk to Go2Mobi about what verticals they can recommend to run on their traffic
b) sign up to more affiliate networks
c) gather intel from ALL affiliate managers you will get: verticals, traffic sources, compliance, KPIs, etc.
d) reevaluate your traffic source and vertical.

As for tracking, self-hosted usually seems like a bad solution.

Make sure you are tracking on a good enough server, with low enough latency. Setup DNS through Route53 or similar service on your domains, makes it much faster.

Regarding geos, don't get stuck into your home country. Spend $5 on translations when you need them, it will be worth it to explore other geos.

Hope you see some good results on your next test!

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Hey, great thread. I am just starting out like yourself and have a lot of similar questions so I will be following your thread and making my own soon

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What exactly do you mean by match? Match in what sense?

Great advice. Thank you.

What kind of intelligence are you talking about in here? What verticals are performing? What traffic sources they know are a match? What is compliance? What kind of KPIs should I be after?

What specifically do you mean by reevaluating?

I'm hosting on rackspace which is a quality service, so I assume their response times are decent. However, that's my speculation - I could definitely run some tests.

Great advice again. I will start looking at that.

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It's known that certain verticals perform better on a certain traffic type. You will find quite a few threads here on STM about it. The What Works In 2016 thread is a good starting place That's what I mean by "match".

What verticals are performing on what traffic is a good start, especially in your situation imo. Compliance: How aggressive and/or misleading can you go with your ads without getting in trouble with the affiliate network or the advertiser. KPIs are different for verticals.. Apps have retention rate (2nd, 3rd, 7th day, etc.), e-commerce usually has % of people making a purchase, leadgen has others, etc.

Regarding reevaluating: Since what you did so far has warning signs that it doesn't work, after you gather more intel through the above steps, you should reevaluate what your traffic source or vertical is.

Rackspace is a quality service from what I know too, just that some things are not obvious or optimized as a default. I think you will be able to optimize a few things there if you look deeper into all ways you can improve latency. This would be after finding a traffic + vertical match. Without having something that generates data, it makes little sense to optimize the rest

Glad to help, looking forward to your next updates!

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Quick update. For now I switched to working with Facebook traffic and I'm experimenting with campaigns on that traffic source. Check out my follow along on Facebook campaigns here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ebook-approach

I will be back to mobile traffic soon.

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