Hi, y’all,
This is going to be my public success journal and I think you all know what that means - if I obviously fuk something up then point that out 😃
I’m gonna keep the introduction breif and will get down to business.
I’m a complete newbie in IM and I have never started a mobile campaign before. I tried Teespring tshirt selling a few months back, spent $200 on ads to earn $20 back. That is my total AM experience.
I have been learning about affiliate marketing for about 5 months now, started with desktop and now the past two months have been studying mobile marketing and that’s where my full focus is going to be in this thread.
My background. I know how to use a computer (yay!) but have never done anything that can count as a website or anything else on the internet. I have mostly done film, videos, editing, photoshop, after effects etc. and the final result has always been a video. I would say that I’m quite good at it but as it seems that makes no big difference where I’m starting out right now. So I have no experience in manipulating, marketing or interaction after rendering the video.
Ground Zero
I have aquired some skills and tools during that time for start.
What I have
- HTML - Basic understanding and can build a working website, landing page
- Can understand and create CSS code
- Know how to make banners in Photoshop
- I have setup an Account in Amazon S3 and Cloudfront and have a working and tested CDN
- I have HostGator Baby hosting plan but that’s more for personal email and static pages not for langing pages.
- Willingness to learn anything - I have time and I’m dedicated
- A budget of $1000 and growing
- Books about copywriting and marketing
CPA Networks and Traffic Sources
- I’m signed up and accepted to CPA Networks
- F5media
- ClickDealer
- I’m signed up with Traffic Sources
- Go2mobi
- PopCash
- PopAds.net
- Avazu
Got declined from ZeroPark, gotta grow some experience and try again 
What I DON'T have
A DOMAIN for Mobile landing pages.
Here I have a few questions here and need some guidance. As I understand I can buy a domain from GoDaddy.com but how is this going to work for my landers?
- What name shoud I use. I know that I can use any name that I want but should it be something totally non-sepecific. For example I’m not gonna use my www.dogtraining.com for iphone landers or dating. Any examples would be great from you guys. If I would have to guess then I would go for something like www.bestoffers.com (not that its available but the idea is to be generic that it would work with any offer and I could load hundreds of landers under subdomains there?).
- And this is the main problem - I read on some thread here in STM that I should use a subdomain (www.offer1.bestoffers.com) or a subfolder (www.bestoffers.com/offer1/lander.html) for any offers lander. Am I correct that if I use Amazon S3 and CloudFront CDN for distribution then I put a CNAME in the GoDaddy domain settings linking to my S3 and CDN. But that is for the whole domain (www.bestoffers.com) and I cannot make subdomains there if I don’t have the GoDaddy Hosting. —— I was digging in my HostGator settings and maybe answered my own question. As I have in GoDaddy domain settings nameservers linking to HostGator Hosting then I CAN'T enter the CNAME in GoDaddy but CAN enter the CNAME into HostGator instead? And in HostGator I can make several Subdomains and can have several CNAME’s linking to different CloudFront CDN’s? Huh, I hope anyone understands what’s my deal 😃 . I have HostGator till 2017. Doesn't so many redirects make the overall loading of the landers slower (godaddy->hostgator->S3->CDN)?
Tracker -
As I understand then this is the best to start with and even keep? No competition here. So I’m gonna get that and learn to use it properly. Any reasons why I shouldn't?
Spy Tools - ?
Now this is tricky. There are many options and they are costly so I can’t test all of them. Adplexity, WhatRunsWhere, AdsExposed, MobileAdScout. I almost went for Adplexity but I saw this thread and many (incl. Vortex) say that AdsExposed is way better than the rest. And the price for STM members is also good for a start and to keep.
But I still haven’t figured out is there any spy tools for banners? Seems like I have to make these myself? (damn! actual work
)
Conclusion
- If there ain’t any reasons why I shouldn’t go for
- I’m gonna wait for responses for the Spy Tools and make a decicion after some feedback.
- Also going to get a domain name after feedback to my pseudo domain problems 
Then I think I would be good to go to start testing everything out.
Thanks for reading it thru and I would really appreciate the feedback.
Cheers,
Metastannic
I signed up for some more Networks and Traffic Sources. That’s enough for the beginning or maybe even too much - that might have been procrastinating. Wake up! I know to stick with one traffic source and a few CPA Networks in the beginning, but just in case I need to scale I have more traffic sources available. On with the things that matter the most.
Bought a
Getting use to that is gonna take me 3 more days. This thing is essential. And I must say - a little nerdy-kind-of-exiting 
I read and followed CharlesNGO tutorial on how to set up Voluum http://charlesngo.com/voluum/
Registered a custom name domain for a Voluum tracker.
Applied for an offer in AU to test Voluum out in the field.
Gonna read more tutorials.
AdsXposed
Bought a monthly subscription (thanks STM for the discount https://www.adsxposed.com/members/signup/stm)
This thing I don’t understand at all from the first impression. None of the search terms I tried gave me any results.
Tried to look up an offer in Singapore - not available, tried to look up an offer in UAE - not available.
This is probably due to my newbie unskillful approach. It’s probably a good tool and I will get deeper into that after I have mastered Voluum.
Coming Up Next
Register a custom domain for my landers
Get approved for an offer
Make my first mobile banners with Photoshop
Get Voluum up and running for testing
Going to stick with one CPA Network and one Traffic Source
It's Friday! - so staying home to read, study and test.
So Stay Tuned For Oncoming Newbie Struggles!
)
Thank You Very Much, Amy!
I'm glad that you didn't read the thread. Exact answers that I needed. Really. Even about the stuff that I took action on already. Will be putting it to work and gonna report soon.
Right now I'm learning
Cheers again, Amy!
Congrats on getting things started!
Yes, believe it or not people do sign up for the "Win an iPhone" offers. You'll find successful affiliates working in a lot of different niches, but the sweepstakes niche is one that works.
Things are heating up! Gotta love it when you have an actual campaign set up and have stats to check. There's an excitement associated with it that can't be expressed with words. 
I hate to be the one to slow down your momentum, but I'm not liking the fact that
And really, if you wouldn't mind describing that "boring stuff" regarding your voluum setup, I really wouldn't mind verifying them, or doing some troubleshooting. Tracking is just one of those things that are really boring but also really important. And you only have to learn to do it once.
And I really like your banners! Design-wise they look fabulous. The only suggestion would be to make the text stand out more, and to play with animation a bit more in order to draw attention to them - such as making the words blink once per second, or making the plane shift from one position to another and back again. People's eyes are naturally drawn to movement. Also try the infinite loop.
I've never promoted this type of app, but one angle just occurred to me: Find out what the most popular vacation spots are for Australians (from articles like this one) and write headlines such as "Win a Free Trip to [wherever]!" I'm sure you could come up with better headlines, but you get the idea. 
Another thought that may be worth a test, is to target only the "travel" category in Go2Mobi campaign settings. Doing so will for sure limit the amount of traffic you'll get, but the ROI can potentially be higher.
Amy
^ What Vortex said. DEFINITELY make sure that your tracking setup is working 100% before you spend more. We're more than happy to go through tracker setups in mind-numbing detail to make sure they're working right for you.
Thanks, Amy and Caurmen,
you are like guardian angels in this community. But You asked for it and so I’m gonna deliver my question(s) / problem(s).
Might be a good idea to make a cup green tea before diving in there 
My problems with tracking. I will write out what I understand and how I have set it up. In between I aks questions and if anyone sees my errors, do point them out. I’m gonna write this as I was a 3rd-grader.
The first thing is that there actually is no good full tutorial how to set up
1. The Offer Link
I use F5media that uses Cake platform. So the first thing I do is get my affiliate link by clicking on the offer and then clicking on “Creatives”. There is the link.
http://f5mtrack.com/?a=124276&c=111766&s1=
Here I am a little bit confused. I try to explain why.
I understand that Cake has two constant value slots in that link that Cake does not want to be changed. That is “a=" an affiliate ID and “c=" a campaign ID. These will stay the same so Cake can identify my “name” and the campaign “name” that I’m running. Ok.
As there is a variable “s1=" in the end that means that I can paste this link to
Actually for this case I understand that I cannot add my unique ID variable there right away because Cake only allows s1 to be a constant. That is just the way Cake is set up. So s1 is a constant and s2-s5 are variables. Cake is actually waiting a constant value from me as a default. I can’t imagine what that would be as it already has my name and campaign name. This one is no problem for me and I understand that but that would be a question.
Question - What constant would I want to put there as s1?
Ok. Moving on.
So after I have copied the link with s1= in the end I want to change the s1= to s2=. So I will have a link like this:
http://f5mtrack.com/?a=124276&c=111766&s2=
2. Voluum - Setting Up the Offer
Now I will go to Voluum and go to Flows->Offer->New Offer. I’m going to make a new Offer. For the name I enter the Name of the offer that I got from Cake. That does not actually matter and I can enter here anything that helps me understand which offer this is. So I enter
Win a $1000 Flight Voucher
For URL, I paste the URL that I copied and changed the ending to s2. So this one
http://f5mtrack.com/?a=124276&c=111766&s2=
I understand that now I need to put here a token that will be changed to a unique ID number and that will be passed on to Cake. So I need to put a unique variable token after the “=“ sign. As I can see Voluum has many tokens available. And I would definetly go for the {clickid} token as that indicates that this will enter a unique click id. The link I put in the URL field is going to look like this
http://f5mtrack.com/?a=124276&c=111766&s2={clickid}
So before Voluum passes that link to Cake it will replace the {clickid} with an actual click ID and the link is gonna look something like that
http://f5mtrack.com/?a=124276&c=111766&s2=12345
Ok. I get it.
So for the country I choose Australia. Affiliate Network as F5media (i have that set up earlier and in this step it just adds the Affliliate Network name to the Offer name above. For entering a Affiliate Network I just went to Affiliate Networks and Add Affiliate Network and add a name. There is also an option to "Append click ID to offer URLs” so I also ticked that because Charles NGO said so. Don’t know the reason.).
Question - What is this "Append click ID to offer URLs” for?
3. The Postback Link
To finish understanding Cake and Voluum interaction I’m also gonna need to tell Cake to notify Voluum when there is a conversion in Cake. That is called a “Postback link”. And you can get the post back link right there in the offer window of Voluum in the Postback URL field. It looks like this
http://isoah.voluumtrk2.com/postback...&txid=OPTIONAL
Ok. So I need to put this into Cake. But before I need to understand and change what is going on in this URL. The places where there is REPLACE and OPTIONAL are meant for changing before giving it to Cake. So I’m gonna go over it on by one.
The point of this link is that in the event of a conversion Cake will send this link to tell Voluum that there was a conversion. Before that Voluum will send a variable s2=12345 to Cake with every click because we set that up before as s2= (every next click will have a unique number). Cake will know every click’s unique number. Now if there is a conversion we can ask Cake to send Voluum that notification about that conversion with the unique id. So we can later see more detailed information about that click in Voluum (where it came from, what device, what time, what os etc.).
For Cake to know to include the unique ID, I have to set up that link the way is understandable for Cake.
So first thing is the click id. For that i need the first part of that link where it ends with "?cid="
Question - What does “cid” stand for? (conversion id?)(as i understand that can’t be click id otherwise it would be named "clickid")
Ok. I get this link with the cid= in the end and it looks like that.
http://isoah.voluumtrk2.com/postback?cid=
Question - Can this link work just like that also - http://isoah.voluumtrk2.com/postback . The point being that Cake will send Voluum a notification that there was a conversion but no info about the conversion (no click id)?
Now this “cid" is a Voluum's language “word” and Cake does not understand this. This is only for Voluum to understand. If there is going to be a number after cid= then this is the conversion unique id. Am i correct?
Now, what comes after the cid= must be understandable for Cake. Then Cake will know where to put the unique id. Here I need to use Cake’s langeuage.
I go back to Cake and my offer window is still opened with the offer link in the “Creative” tab. Now I press the “Testing and Tracking” tab and there is the place where I can put the postback link. But not yet. I need to get the Cake’s token and put it after cid=.
On the left side there is a list of Cake’s tokens and explanations and I have to choose the right one.

Hmm.. Here I am confused. I know that I should put #s2# because some tutorial said so buuuuut… not good enough for me. I need to understand, why.
Thinking...
Ok. I think I got it. As Voluum is sending a unique click id number to s2 slot for Cake then Cake actually does not know “what is is”. It’s just a number in the s2 slot. The s2 stands for SubID. So it’s just some random number for Cake not the unique clickid. So If I want the unique click id to be sent back from Cake I need to tell Cake to send me the number that Voluum sentbefore to Cake in the s2 slot. I could have used any s slot (s3, s4, s5) for that matter.
So now for Cake to understand to put that s2 number back to the postback link I need to put the s2 token after that cid=. A token is a “slot” that is being replace by the value (number or else). Voluum’s tokens are in between { } and Cake’s tokens are in between ##.
I want the s2 value back so I need to put #s2# where I want this value to placed. So this goes after the cid= in my Voluum’s postback link and will look like this
http://isoah.voluumtrk2.com/postback?cid=#s2#
The thing is that I want to understand all of it and therefore I’m gonna have a shot in the dark and explain what I understand about the other things in the postback link that say “OPTIONAL".
Payout
Voluum can also recieve and understand payout sum it will be given. As Cake is intelligent enough it can send value of the payout because it's the Network and Network knows it's payouts. I can see token for that on the same Cake’s token list (need to scroll down a little).

So for Cake to know to include a payout sum i need to put #price# in the Voluum’s postback link after the "payout=“. And all the Get Requests (as cid=#s2#) functions are being separated by “&”. And the link would look like this.
http: //isoah.voluumtrk2 .com/postback?cid=#s2#&payout=#price#
txid=
There is also a &txid= in the end of the postback link. This is a transaction ID and it is used for multiple conversions that come from one single Click ID. For example if there is a person coming to my landing page and wants to buy the thing and can choose amount of 2 of these things. Then there are going to be two links sent back to Voluum with the same unique Click ID and in the end is going to be a different txid= (…..&txid=00001 and the second link ending &txid=00002 or something like that).
The offer that I have right now allows only one single opt-in so I don’t need the txid= variable to be included in the postback link and I leave the link as it was with the #price# in the end.
Now I paste this link in to the slot where it says "Postback URL (Server Pixel):” in the Cake offer window under the “Testing and Tracking” tab.
Hit Save everywhere where there is a button (Cake, Voluum). And this should be it for setting up and offer and the postback link.
4. Traffic Source
Adding a new Traffic Source
In Voluum I go to Traffic Sources and add New Traffic Source (actually I already have it so I’ll go on the my traffic source - in this case Go2mobi - and press edit).
Name: Go2mobi
Postback URL:
Here I go and log into Go2mobi and go to ACCOUNT and press on Conversion Tracking button below. Up comes a window with a lot of text. And on the top there is a postback link, again.
http://pb.g2trk.com/pb/?api_key=4t7SiDaALKIPRVSfZWYjUW1OQHBAn1IvuaOv7CJHU 1h65kpxh3zwxIeSC7QnkxWPH&clickid={clickid}&payout= {payout}
Now this link is different because this is for Go2mobi to know when there was a conversion. So the path of this idea is the same as between Voluum and Cake (Voluum put a postback link to Cake to get info from Cake; Now Go2moni wants info from Voluum and will put a postback link to Voluum).
This is going to be a precise science because Voluum does not have the info about the conversion and has to get it from Cake first. So the path of the Conversion info is from Cake->Voluum->Go2mobi. And each of them is speaking a different language and it all has to fit for it to work.
In the end of that link there is also two Get Request pairs.
clickid={clickid}
payout={payout}
Now there is no REPLACE or OPTIONAL variable slots here and Go2mobi kind of expects these names and tokens to be universal but I believe this is not the case. It actually has to be kind of the same looking link as Voluum gave for postback and it had REPLACE and OPTIONAL in it. And the tokens need to be replaced with the language of the tracker (Voluum). (it does not have to have REPLACE and OPTIONAL in it when all the trackers use the same tokens and names)
Question - do all trackers us the same tokens and names system?
So here starts the trouble. I think...
I will paste the link in the Postback URL slot in Voluum just the way it is because I don’t know yet are these tokens and names communicating properly with Voluum.
My main source of problems is this little fellow:
{externalid}
I don’t know where does this token stands in Voluum but I will keep going and see where it takes me.
So I pasted the link in the postback field and there are many tokens available from Voluum. And the {payout} is greyed out because this is included at the end of the Go2mobi postback link. It means that it is used. But at the end is also the {clickid} token and in this list of tokens by Voluum - there is no such token. But I feel that this is the most important one to have here.
Ok. Going on.
Pixel redirect URL: - i don’t know what that is so I leave it empty.
Impression Tracking
There is a tick box after it. Of course I want to track impressions to my banners in Voluum. But if I press it it a yellow box appears and says this:
"When enabled, you can use the impression pixel URL listed in the Campaign's Advanced section to track individual banner impressions and CPM costs. Note that this feature requires your traffic source to support impression pixels."
Whaat?
Just in case I will leave it un-ticked. But would love a detailed answer how to track impressions. This seems like the most basic thing.
Ok. And now the fun.
Click on the Advanced button and a table comes out.
My old friend again - External ID
So I know that this is the part where I can put all the variables that are possible from the Traffic Source to pass on to Voluum. These variable slots are going to be in the final Campaign URL and going to be filled with info by Go2mobi.
I’m going to explain the Custom variable first because I feel this is the part that I understand.
So there are 10 Custom Variables. And each variable has 3 fields: Parameter, Placeholder, Name.
These are basically tokens that I want to be filled by traffic source and pass to Voluum. And here I need to speak in the language of the traffic source. I go to the Go2mobi and find a place in the Campaign section, under the Destination URL there is a link Add URL Variables. I press that and out comes a window with Go2mobi’s tokens.
As this is universal for Go2mobi then I believe that is findable also in the web or in the support section. It looks like this:

Here I can see what Go2mobi is capable of extracting from the info of the click. If I include {crid} in my link from Voluum then Voluum will recieve the information about Creative ID - that means if I have 3 banners then I will get the name (id number) of the banner that was clicked by that person who clicked.
If I could, I would enter all of them in to Voluum to see what’s going on with my click but surely this is not necessary, yet. And Voluum has only 10 slots for them.
I will choose which ones interest me and can be beneficial for my tweaking the campaign and I enter them into Voluum, into the table.
I choose
{isp} - Carrier
{os} - OS
{device_model} - Device Model
{imp} - Impression Dimensions
{year} - Device Year of Making
{crid} - Creative ID
If I write into the first slot (parameter) then the second slot gets filled automatically. The parameter is the thing in the URL that is going to be before the “=“ sign. For example if I write “imp” in the parameter slot then in the placeholder (token) slot there is going to be {imp} and in the URL it’s going to look like this
imp={imp}
Question or assumption. I can write anything into the parameter slot as far as the placeholder slot has the Go2mobi language. (You have to first write the parameter and then change the placeholder because they are bonded together). For example I can have a parameter named “rabbit” and the placeholder to be {os} so it will look like in the URL like this
rabbit={os}
Because it a custom parameter and I am giving it a name and Voluum is linking it afterwards together.
And the final slot is for what I want it to say in the reports. If I still have the rabbit in the parameter and the name as "Operating System” then in the reports it’s going to say
Operating System - Android OS
This paramater question is just for making the URL’s shorter or more not-obvious to the person who clicks on the link and sees these parameters in the URL of the browser.
Ok..
Two more guys left and I’ll take the payout first. It could get real messy from here.
Payout
VERSION #1 (i think this is the wrong understanding by me)
These variables (payout and externalid) are not custom, they are set and the name fields are greyed out. So this means that these variables are expected.
This payout={payout} is also included in the postback link from Go2mobi. So Go2mobi asks Voluum for the payout amout to include in it’s reports. This is Voluum giving the payout amount to the Go2mobi.
Voluum->Go2mobi
In the setting up Traffic Source section we are inserting a slot to be filled with a payout amount. So Go2mobi gives a payout amount to Voluum after the person has clicked on the banner.
Go2mobi->Voluum
But the payout is not included with every click but only when there is a conversion. So the path is like that
Click->Go2mobi->Voluum->Cake->Conversion->PostbackToVoluum->PostbackToGo2mobi->{payout}ToVoluum
This can't be right.
Question - I don’t get why I need to include payout in the tokens in Voluum to fill out by Go2mobi and send it back to Voluum again.
VERSION #2
When I hover over the Cost ? sign in Voluum under the External ID it says:
"Add this parameter if your traffic source can pass click / visitor costs. This will enable you to automatically track costs using the Auto setting in campaign setup."
Does this mean that this "payout={payout}" is not actually a payout of the offer but a cost per click / visitor in Go2mobi.
Question - In that case how is this calculated per each unique click as cost per click is calculated with all the data gathered? What is this payout={payout} actually for?
And now to the External ID
This is the part that is not explained in any of the tutorials that I have read and this is the connecting dot that I am probably misusing.
Here is my explanation for it.
In the URL this is going to look like this
clickid={clickid}
This is the token of the language of the Go2mobi. And the first part of the pair “clickid” is the language of the Voluum. So later on when Go2mobi has replaced the token {clickid} with a unique id for example 12345 then Voluum knows that this is “clickid”. But does it really know that. I did not manage to find any list of tokens for Voluum that says that "clickid" is Voluum’s equivalent for SubID. And I can change that parameter to anything that I want in the parameter field.
Somehow now the External ID is connected to parameter “clickid" and “clickid” is connected to the Go2mobi’s token {clickid}.
And there is a Voluum’s token {externalid} available.
A little piece of text is on the next post because I reached the limit on 20,000 characters 
Continued...
My guess is
- I have to make a change in the Go2mobi postback link so that clickid={clickid} is replaced by clickid={externalid} so the Go2mobi postback link would look like that
http://pb.g2trk.com/pb/?api_key=4t7SiDaALKIPRVSfZWYjUW1OQHBAn1IvuaOv7CJHU 1h65kpxh3zwxIeSC7QnkxWPH&clickid={externalid}&payo ut={payout}
Is that correct?
The payout token would stay the same because there is a token like that available in
And as {externalid} is available and it is connected to the clickid={clickid} then it kind of makes sense that this is the one to choose.
Very disorientating!
Also. Now if I go back to the offer link from Cake that I set up with the s2 variable that is going to pass Cake the unique click id
s2={clickid}
How come was that {clickid} token available there by Voluum? And is not available in the Traffic Source.
Oh, man. I’d rather not write on because this is the place where it all gets fuzzy. And it's that one thing. It’s probably a very simple answer and I’ve been overthinking it.
I thank the people who actually read thru that “question” 
Amazing how writing it all out can make it all much clearer and take so much time 
Man, true, this is actually really fun! Laughing and reading and studying at the same time. I wish school was like that. Thanks for the answers - exactly what I needed and again, I'm glad that you left in your answers that I finally found out on my own. The learning process is much faster this way. With many angles.
As for my tracking for the offer I think I learned so much myself while writing that my tracking was not set up the way I wrote
so I will set it up again and then If I end up in trouble I would be clad to ask for your online help. As you said - I only need to learn tracking once. Will report soon.
Cheers,
Awesome! this is a bible for start!
good stuff. tracking is a very confusing thing to figure out! this will help a lot of people.