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Scaling on a new traffic source from 0 -> XXX (22)

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Hello everyone,

Instead of the usual follow along that starts from the beginning I thought I'd skip that exciting part and begin in the middle and look at 'scaling'. Hoping to get some advice behind the way I do things and also hopefully this can help others.

Background:

• I have a profitable offer + angle that runs on another traffic source (prefer to not say since I'm paranoid others will push my bid up) that pulls in around $XX/day. Think I've done what I can in terms of optimisation and would like scale this across traffic sources.
• Just got approved on Zeropark (took me 3 months to sort this out, urgh) and will be testing on this
• Before you ask: I run sweeps on mobile pop traffic, I run a few geos (with different offers but same results) so for sake of this follow along I will just choose 1 of the offers from Tier 1 geos so that I will either burn through all my cash in an almighty blaze or be filthy rich and posting a success story in STM.

Some rules for myself:
Aim - Reach $XXX/day for 3 days straight
Timeline - 20 days or if I run out of budget
Budget - $300 (PS offer payout is around $2)


First Update
Set up 2 campaigns with $5 budget on RON Pop Ups:
Campaign 1 = Lowest possible bid at 0.0001 to see if I can actually get any traffic
Campaign 2 = Bid at 0.0006 since this is the lowest on other sources like PopAd, PropellerAds so wanted to see what traffic I can get from this.

Hope to get SOME conversion to get a sense that I'm on the right track. Expect to update in an hour or two because the rate zeropark is eating my $$$ is surprisingly fast... but with no conversions.

Anyways open to suggestions even if it is to tell me that I am an idiot, though hope not.

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Have exhausted the budget of 1 of my campaigns which has 8k traffic and 0 conversions.. Looked through the data and can't seem to find anything and usual CV for this offer + lander has around 0.08% so this is uncharacteristically low and a little worrying. My CTR rate remains reasonable at around 20% so I don't know what the issue is, only guess I have is that all the "profitable" sources require a higher bid and have been taken by the higher bidders?

Anyways have launched 1 more campaign before I call it a day. This time $5 budget with 0.0013 bid, lets see if I can get conversions otherwise I'd have to investigate to figure out if something is wrong with the traffic network because my campaign loads fine for me.

Would appreciate anyone with zeropark experience to chime in since am unfamiliar with this traffic source.

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Just be sure to Monitor ZP closely. It is one of the more volatile traffic sources and there's plenty of people competing so your bids can change 5/6 times a day. They do have lots of volume depending on where you're running. Be sure to play around with bids as it is a flat bidding service and you may end up paying more CPM than you need to. There will be others who will be able to chime in with far more experience than I have.

Interesting follow along, keep us all updated.

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Thanks Eoin. Have been monitoring it closely and still with zero conversions but have gotten a conversion on another offer I was testing so at least it seems I should've set it up right.

The question then becomes how much leeway should a person give when testing a new traffic source on the scaling process i.e. how much of he information from another traffic source is prevalent across another traffic source and what are the key factors that affect it? I.e. is it scale of the traffic source, sophistication of the backend..

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Day 2 out of 20

Yesterdays results:
P/L: -$13
ROI: -87%
Conversion :1
Campaigns: 3

Findings:
- My flow works since I got 1 conversion at the higher bid. This result would support my theory that most of the good targets are probably taken on zeropark by the higher bids.
- To save money I will limit both of the new campaigns to just IOS and Android traffic since things outside of this even if profitable is likely limited in scaleability.

Action:
- Launch 2 campaigns, 1 with the mid bid of 0.0005 and 1 with higher bid 0.001 each with $10 budget to collect more data and seek out converting targets.

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Your budget is too low to scale this to zeropark. There is so much crap that you need to cut out, it will burn your $5 without giving you any actionable data. Not sure where you got the campaign to profit, but propeler, popcash or adcash are better sources for scaling this IMO.

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Is that traffic that bad for ZP? And what kind of budget do you reckon I would need? I'm happy to put up more $$ but wanted to take baby steps first and learn the traffic source or would you advise to start at a tier 2 geo that I have had some success in since there is just less traffic overall in ZP on it so assume reaching profitability would be quicker?

My plan was originally blast out enough data for conversion to build a whitelist and then just build upon it by adding target after target.

Anyways quick update:
- 0.001 higher bid ran out have only 1 conversion, mid bid campaign still running

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Im not a ZP expert, I have run multiple tests there tho, and the amount of crap was really surprising to me. Its optimizable but you gotta watch it closely and block fast. If you step into a large GEO, you will need to burn a few 100s to actually stand a chance to find the good spots. There is a lot of spots and you need to give some time to each of them, its really not a source to optimize with $10 per day budget.

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To be transparent I am actually trying to scale this to popcash as well but seems they have a lot of placements as well, so hitting similar hurdles as ZP. Though would love to hear your thoughts.

Anyways an update (no figures as i am out).

Despite matuloo's advice I intend to stick to ZP for now because of a few reasons:
1. Works well with Voluum
2. Lot of traffic and targetting options so learning this traffic source will be handy regardless of vertical I run

So the question then becomes how can I improve my approach? The way I see it the options are:
1. I use my whole budget to run a much larger campaign with a significantly higher bid, idea is not to be profitable but locate segments of profitability. The issue of this is I would be subject to skews due to time/day since my budget will not last a whole week.
2. I go for a tier 2 geo with lower amount of traffic so I will reach significance faster.
3. Be more specific in my targetting on the onset using my knowledge from other traffic source i.e. filtering to only iphones (example only) when i do not have the stats on ZP to back it up but could hopefully improve my speed to. profitability.

Anways will be given it a thought but skewing towards a combination of 1 and 3. Will make my decision this weekend and possibly launch the last campaign of this follow along.

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Start by using your most profitable targeting right off the bat. You can always go back and test more broadly but by starting with what you know works elsewhere is an advantage you should not take lightly.

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Thanks deondup, was originally thinking whether visitor behavior would transfer across traffic sources assuming from your experience it generally does? Since this is my first time really scaling across traffic sources hence am not sure what is the most efficient method of doing so.


Day 6 Update

So far I have:
Spent: -$43.34
Revenue: $12 (6 conversions)
ROI: -72.4%
Campaigns launched: 3 (Campaign 1 & 2 still ongoing because my bid is probably low so not enough traffic to use it all and I've also increased the budget of campaign 2 to $10)

Findings:

• Need a CPM $1 to acquire a good amount of traffic
• My angle/offer still converts but need to filter out the traffic source

Action:

• Launch a new campaign with CPM$1 and a much larger budget ($50) and let it run until completion
• New campaign will be more targeted based on what I have working on other traffic sources
• Start blacklisting sources on a daily basis (if I can) using statistical significance testing
• Expect this campaign to use up all the funding in 2-3 days and ideally a ROI of better than -70%

Thats it for today, will post when I have something substantial to report

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Oki dokie, stick to ZP if you want, and let me give you a few tips and suggestions

1. this is a valid argument, Voluum costs can stack up fast with volume and this way they wont charge you for ZP traffic events - assuming this special is still active.
2. any traffic source that you master is a big positive for your career, so agree with you again

With a source like this, the most important part is to either create a black list or white list. In other words, to actually test anything else (banners/landers/offers) you need to make sure you are buying real traffic of at least "Decent" quality. Unfortunately the only way to find out is to blow your money on the initial testing. The good news is, that if iphone traffic from certain source works, android should work too, there will also be some "overlap" when talking about GEOs. So you dont need to run global tests with loose targeting in order to asses the quality of each spot. Pick some cheap geo for the start, narrow the targeting down quite a lot and start testing. Just dont overdo this, you still need to run decent volume or the results wont help you much. When compiling the white/black list, focus on cutting out the worst, dont aim to pick just the best placement as you dont have the rest of your funnel in order yet. If you have any tools/tricks to detect fake/bot traffic, focus on this first.

I see you asked about how transferable stuff is from one network to another. Generally speaking, it is transferable, tho not 100%. For example, if I have a working funnel on source A, I can take it to source B and it should give me at least decent results. Its not gonna kill it necessarily, but it will definitely work better than a blind test. @Deondup is right, that having a proven funnel or even creatives, will give you significant advantage. It makes optimization easier, especially when it comes to detecting fake traffic spots.

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@Matuloo solid advice as usual am running this and seeing how it goes think the mistake I made initially was to be too broad and I agree with building up a blacklist first and I'll start working on a whitelist when my existing campaign reaches breakeven on ZP. Was tempted to try a different geo but the benefits of knowing Tier 1is too many and seeing as I am still net profitable and not relying on AM income I thought I'd take on the challenge.

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Well turns out that even with a $50 ZP was able to drain it in 9 hours. So the results of these 90 hours were as follows:

Day 7:
Revenue: $16
Cost: $50
ROI - 68.01%


What I did:
- Find 1-2 placements to blacklist but nothing substantial
- Notice that iOS was preforming better than Android (based on statistical signifiance) and decided to cut Android because I wanted to reach profitability ASAP but will revisit Android once I get in the green since Android could in theory be profitable but the optimizations path required would likely be longer
- Put in another $50 for testing

Overall results:
Cost: -$93.34
Revenue: $28
P/L: -$65.34
ROI: -70%

Signs of improvement albeit slowly which would make sense since I have not made any drastic changes. Expect it will take my whole budget of $300 before I see signs of green. Will update again when my campaign finishes running.

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For Zeropark you got to blacklist fast, lots of horrible placements there

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Campaign still running so no update but wanted to know if anyone has felt that blacklisting holds up across geos or do you have to start from scratch? Of course assuming same traffic source.

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Day 9 Update:

Last campaign results:
Cost: -$50
Revenue: $24
P/L: -$25.85
ROI: -51.85%

Overall results:
Cost: -$150
Revenue: $52
P/L: -$98
ROI: -65%

Thoughts:
- Progress in-line with results, have done more to filter traffic which seems to have had a positive impact but the rate of traffic I am getting have severely decreased which was evident in how much longer it took to use up my budget.
- At this point am limited with what I can do other than run more traffic, may consider raising the bid a bit to see if higher quality traffic will have an impact on things.
- Using a rule of thumb whereby 4000 visits and 0 conversions will lead to the placement getting cut regardless of price of traffic (allows me to make adjustments as it runs quickly without having to test for significance every time)
- Also considering putting in some code to the lander to fire and identify bot traffic but am concerned this will slow down landing page so will not do it just yet.

Action:
- Putting in $100 for testing and blacklisted an additional 1-2 placements (the increase in budget is because there is limited tweaking I can do and I just need data so might as well let it run).

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The WORST placements usually suck across GEOs, those that are just "poor" can work better in a different GEO Such is my experience.

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Honestly I am bad at documenting (urgh) and as I reach the point of running too many campaigns that I am beginning to forget why I blacklisted it in the first place.... Really need to work on that especially after hearing that I need to figure what is "worse" from "bad"

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Dont want to confuse you too much, so basically focus on cutting spots that are really horrible in the first step, and put those into an universal blacklist if youre building one. As for those under-performing, you can decide what to do with them as you move forward.

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Day 13 Update:

Last campaign results:
Cost: -$100
Revenue: $44
P/L: -$56
ROI: -56%

Overall results:
Cost: -$250
Revenue: $96
P/L: -$154
ROI: -61.6%

Observation:
- Amount of traffic significantly lower since my filtering has gone up
- Results have been lack luster with no significant improvement, continue to blacklist placements but due to the wide range of placements does not seem to be able to reach profitability quite yet.
- Also offer itself did not perform well as well on my other traffic source so not sure if it is some widespread effect on the offer itself.


Action:
- Run 2 campaigns: existing one which is the black list campaign and another whitelist campaign now that I have more data
- Whitelist campaign will be simply anything that has a conversion (as I do not have enough statistical significant sources to go by)
- Will increase bid on both to get more traffic with whitelist campaign having a 1.5x bid of the normal campaign. Will decrease budget for now to see if it works and set both budget at $25 a piece and see how long it takes to use up.

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Day 17 update:

Last campaign results:
Cost: -$45
Revenue: $14
P/L: -$31
ROI: -69%

Overall results:
Cost: -$295
Revenue: $100
P/L: -$195
ROI: -66.1%

Note: I screwed up my whitelist campaign as I forgot to change url as I was duplicating it... stupid i know...

At this point I have spent close to my original target budget of $300 (though my loss is only $200) so as a result I have decided that even if I were to spend another $100 the results of this campaign will remain solidly in the red as it is clear that there are only the following paths left to profitability:
- Identify enough good placements to run a whitelist campaign off and achieve profitability
- Improve my funnel significantly to increase my conversion leading to profitability via changing offer or lander

Though admittedly there is 1 filtering that I did not properly test which is to test for carrier. But given that this is an email SOI convert I felt that the likelihood of success is low since it is likely that those spots are occupied with pin submits.

Hope people have found this helpful and admittedly I will now heed Matuloo's advice of testing Tier 2 :P but will not bother with a follow along.

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