0 -> $100/day Mobile Follow Along (Click Here) (13)
Welcome!
Stay tuned for daily updates of my mobile campaigns as I try and reach my first $100 profit day. I ran traffic for a few months in 2014 back when I was on IMGrind, threw in the towel too early. Long term goal is to develop the skills I need to do this full time - don't want to do customer service and admin work forever.
Feel free to reach out by PM or skype: tomdigitaluk
Start budget £4,437.18 ($6,193.68 USD)
Budget remaining £4,112.69 ($5,742.43 USD) as of 24/2/16
Campaign 1
GEO: Brazil
Traffic: Pops
Offer: Antivirus 1 Click (TIM carrier)
Payout $0.75
Targeting: Carrier - TIM, OS - Android.
Results for 25/2/16
LPs tested: 4 (PT language, 4 different designs using same ad copy)
6 campaigns on traffic source: Low bid, Mid Bid, High Bid (Popunder & popover)
Top placement categories
Low bid, Mid Bid, High bid traffic results
Note: I actually got 2 conversions so I made $1.50 revenue, these conversions didn't show on
Conclusions:
- Cut all adult traffic. Most of my top 10 placements are adult, also adult traffic as a whole seems that it isn't performing (wasn't expecting so much adult traffic)
- Cut 1118625 ( General/Internet/Search Engines) my 3rd biggest placement, spent 10x payout, no conversions and CPV is really high at $0.02 (could re-test when I get the campaign doing better)
- Re-test campaign and see how it performs on the new placements
Goal is to get close to -50% ROI then work on improving my landing pages.
Waiting to get approved on another AV offer recommended by my AM which is CPI so should be able to test that tomorrow evening or weekend, I'll chase my AM, once approved I can split test the offers. This particular offer wasn't recommended by my AM but was a 1 click flow so I thought I should try it (maybe not a good idea). I'd like to find more converting AV offers for Brazil. I'm trying to stick to high volume GEOs and easy to convert offers.
Results for 25/2/16
Top placement categories
Low bid, Mid Bid, High bid traffic results
Today's affiliate network stats
Yesterdays affiliate network stats
Conclusions:
I got mostly all new placements and categories today. The problem is I got 1,962 clicks throughs in
Looks like I'm having some click loss, which I understand is part of the game with pop traffic.
My landing pages are hosted using Caurmen's Amazon S3 and Cloudfront services tutorial, voluum is my tracker.
There's something wrong with one of the following:
LP angle
LP/server technical issue
Offer is weak
Traffic is weak
Something shady ie bot traffic
I've done some speed testing using the following sites
https://www.dotcom-tools.com/website-speed-test.aspx
http://www.pagescoring.com/website-speed-test
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/
http://www.webpagetest.org/
All my LPs load in about 1.2 seconds in Brazil and under 1 second for most of the world. I don't think that's too slow.
I've got no data to work with. I know another traffic source that converted for Brazil offers in the past, once I get approved on the Brazil AV CPI offer I can split test both on that source. I want to get something working in Brazil because it's a massive GEO in which I can scale up.
Hi Tom(assuming that's your name given your skype),
Great to see you starting a follow along! Here are a few comments:
Most important advice even before the landers/offers......When setting up the campaign are you choosing to target only Android users? I remember setting up my first app install campaign and I was targeting all devices and forgot to blacklist the IOS options. This made me spend a whole lot more than I needed to.
I honestly think the above is one of the main concerns of you not getting a fair amount of conversions.
The issues that I could see here are already mentioned in your post, but I'd like to give some recommendations for you to start with:
Traffic Source:
ZeroPark
Popads(My favorite at the moment)
Popcash
Adcash
Propeller Ads
Offers:
You've already done this I feel like. But make sure you're asking your affiliate manager to provide you with a list of popular offers on the network. Ask them more in depth questions as well such as for your AV campaign.... Which traffic source is this offer the best on? How much volume does it generate on a particular volume type(Facebook, Pops, Native)? What landing page does best for this offer?
I remember Charles Ngo said in one of his posts on his blog is that one of the major reasons why he's successful is that he is able to research about the particular offer/vertical he's working in before he even starts a campaign.
Landers/Spying:
Are you spying enough? If you're spying and you see a lot of generic landers out there that are repetitive.... Keep spying a little more and see if you can see an unusual lander that pops up. In those cases, those could be the winning landers and you can tweak them around to get additional ROI!
Clickloss:
Part of clickloss is due to using double meta refresh, do you have that option enabled in
Bidding:
Looking at your budget, I suggest starting your campaign bid low. That way you could tell if you're generating any conversions from the offer. Although, don't bid so low to the point that you're not getting any traffic at all. You can start changing your bid after you found the best offer/lander
I hope this post allows you to ponder about your campaign setup. Good luck!
Hi Tom! Thanks for starting this follow-along, and for providing so much detail!
This is a LOT of spend for such a low-payout offer. And 1-click offers tend to convert pretty well too!
Antivirus can convert well for adult traffic, so that's not an excuse either.
I usually don't suggest for people to give up on something - but really, I believe you should test another geo.
It's a LOT easier to take something that at least kind of works, and make it better, than to take something that doesn't even show promise and try to make it work.
Sticking to large geos and trying to make it work is a good idea - but Brazil isn't the only big geo. And to be honest, Brazil isn't the easiest geo to make profitable. I'm sure there are people that are making profits from it, but personally I've found many other geos to be easier.
You page load times are fine, and your lander CTRs are high - so high that I'm suspecting there may be a lot of bot traffic, but then one of your landers has a low CTR which indicates that that's not the case. And you DID get a couple of conversions, which means your linking setup should be fine.
For future reference though: It would be better to include more landers in the initial test, and also start split-testing offers at the start if possible. Doing so will eliminate some of the uncertainties.
You're doing everything right though! I hope you're not discouraged by the lack of conversions in this first attempt. You sure got chuck in the deep end, but things aren't usually this bad, I assure you. 
Thanks Vortex and Simon for your responses!
Brazil is on hold for now.
Campaign 2
GEO: Turkey
Traffic: Pops
Offers: Antivirus 1 click - Split test 3 offers network A and 1 offer network B.
Payouts: $2.40, $2.40, $2.00, $3.20
Targeting: Carrier traffic only, OS - Android.
Results for Thursday 3/3/16
Overview
Offers
Landers
Placements
Carrier
Brands
Campaign name
LP3, LP15, LP17 had conversions. Carriers Turkcell, Vodafone, Superonline also had conversions.
What I did next (Friday night) was re-test with the only changes to the funnel being targeting the converting landers and carriers and I hoped this would get me a lot closer to break even and cut some of the non converting traffic, didn't cut placements as I hoped to get conversions testing only the best landers.
Results 4/3/16 to 5/3/16
Overview
Offers
Landers
Placements
Carriers
Brands
Categories
Campaign name
Campaign performed worse second test.
A few placements that converted in my first test didn't show up in my second test but second test did show some new placements with 1 conversion.
The offer/traffic just isn't performing well enough for me to make optimizations which would bring me to break even.
I had set up a whitelist campaign with the converting placements from my first test but the results didn't look promising.
Final look at total stats for this campaign
Conclusions
- I think I need to move on to another high converting offer/GEO to test on my source. I'm sticking to one traffic source for now but I'm tempted to run the same offers on different sources to see if they do better.
- Unless a campaign results in -50% ROI or better after my first test I'm going to cut more aggressively to see if there's a chance of the campaign working.
I think the low, mid, high bid strategy is good. When I launch a campaign I want to find the converting placements ASAP, I do lose a bit more money on my high bid campaigns but I'm more concerned of walking away from a campaign when there were loads of good placements that didn't even get tested. Think I'm doing the right thing here.
You seemed to have done everything right! The only thing I don't understand is why you would have a list of campaign names in a couple of your screenshots? Aren't your stats from the same camp? You do know that you can't aggregate data across camps right? Cause each campaign is getting traffic from different placements/OSs/carriers/devices/etc.
Your initial testing brought you close to -50% ROI before you even cut anything! This is usually a very good sign that you'd be able to bring the camp to profitability after more optimization. TR is a big geo with lots of traffic, so it may be worth it to do more testing before giving up.
I've combined your lander and offer stats over the 3 days. Offer 22420 is ready to be cut. None of the 3 remaining landers is ready to be cut (LP17 is getting close though).
The fact that you were no longer getting traffic from the best placements, may mean that you got outbid. Raising your bid may get you back that traffic.
All of my suggestions above are given under the assumption that your stats are for a single camp. If they were collected across multiple camps - then you can't draw any conclusions from them.
The staggered bids exercise is mainly for 1)gauging promise and 2)identify the bid that will give you better ROI so you could then use that camp for your testing, to test more cheaply. It would be unnecessary (not to mention expensive) to keep them all running and testing offers and landers separately. And aggregating data across multiple campaigns is just not a good idea.
For a big geo like TR, if you get profitable, the potential profits from the sheer traffic volume will be worth your while. But if you're sick and tired and want to test other geos I'd understand as well (not that you need anyone's permission lol - least of all from me). If you need a quick and dirty strategy for testing multiple geos see the last part of this post.
Amy
I did continue with my Turkey AV campaign however after gathering more data and picking the best LP's and offers I was still unable to reach break even despite coming close. I did make some further optimizations but the campaign still didn't reach break even, I decided I spent too much money on the campaign and wasn't getting enough out of it and killed it. I'm going to try and optimize and test my campaigns quicker from now on so that my testing doesn't drag on for days and end up spending more than I should be.
Below are stats for a new Antivirus campaign I started yesterday in Vietnam.
GEO: Vietnam
Traffic: Pops
Offers: 3 PIN submit Antivirus offers
Payouts: $0.48, $0.44, $0.48
Targeting: Carrier traffic only, OS - Android. (PIN submit offer but thought WIFI might give lower quality so targeting only carrier traffic and will add WIFI once I start scaling)
Campaigns:
14 campaigns total in my traffic source, separated by popup/popunder, adult/non adult and different bids.
I've decided I will cut all but the top 4 performing campaigns and focus on optimizing them to profit. Really, I wanted to focus solely on the best 2 campaigns since they are losing me the least money. I won't touch the best two campaigns for a while but will make cuts to the 3rd/4th best campaign if I start losing too much money.
I'm running 16 different landing pages and 3 different offers.
LP breakdown for best campaign
2nd best campaign
No clear winners, since I'm not losing too much money I will let run and build data to statistical significance and then start cutting the weaker LPs.
Offer breakdown for top campaign
Offer breakdown for 2nd best campaign
Like my LP's I will continue to let offers run. Like Amy mentioned above, I'll remember to monitor these campaigns separately since they are different bids/placements so best LP/Offer combo may vary.
It feels good to see so many conversions, especially since this is a PIN submit and not a 1 click flow.
Conclusion:
Increase spend on the top 4 performing campaigns, develop statistical significance on the best LPs/Offers so I can get profitable and start scaling.
You deserve some applause for the way you've set this up! 
VN AV is DEFINITELY easy to make profitable on popads! I'm running there as well.
I'm not going to talk too much here because you're doing everything right. The only thing I'll suggest is that before cutting any landers, drill down into your data to check every major traffic segment (i.e. an OS/carrier giving you a lot of traffic), to make sure that that lander isn't the best performer for ANY major traffic segment.
If it so happens that a lander you've decided to cut based on overall lander stats, turns out to be the best-performing lander for a specific major traffic segment, then it may be a good idea to test and cut landers for that traffic segment separately.
Looks like you'll be doing 3-figures/day very soon.
Amy
Latest stats
Antivirus Vietnam:
Having landing pages reviewed meant I had to stop traffic for a few days, got set up on the same offers on other networks but now I have my LPs approved.
Total stats for Vietnam so far 23/3/16 to 12/4/16
I have so many campaigns because I'm testing so many different bids (I don't want to miss out on a great placement). I understand that different offers/landers may perform differently but I'll include top offer/lander stats below because it's mostly held true throughout each campaign/bid I've tested.
Top converting offers overall:
Top converting landing pages overall:
I know I need to treat each traffic segment separately but most of the LPs/offers high on the list are performing similarly on most of my placements/ISPs/bids
Now one thing about Vietnam is that Viettel just doesn't convert for me and unfortunately it's the biggest carrier in Vietnam, I spent too much here before cutting.
On 11/4/16 I cut Viettel, some of my weakest LPs and ran only my best performing offer which brought me very close to break even
Stats for today (1 offer, 6 landing pages, 13 bids)
Stats for last 3 days combined (since focusing on the one offer and cutting Viettel) and lander breakdown of top two campaigns
Top 2 campaigns from screenshot above (Lander breakdown)
Conclusion
- I'm close to break even and have cut down to the best offer
- I've narrowed down from 16 landing pages to 6, I will build some more data and cut down to 2 landing pages which will hopefully bring me into profit. Then I'll work on improving those best two landing pages.
- Will be testing the same offers on more networks to see if there's any small performance gains. Once everything's dialed in maybe I can get an offer pay bump if quality is good.
I'm not sure I will be able to hit $xxx revenue a day on this traffic source with the amount of volume I'm getting but we'll see what I can do. Despite some campaigns having a higher bid than others I don't necessarily get a significantly higher volume of traffic weirdly enough, just different placements (My best campaigns I keep campaign funds over $100+, disable throttling and always keep account balance over $100).
Looking very promising!
Definitely prioritise testing on more networks. When you say "small" performance gains - I've seen 100% ROI gains from switching network with an offer. It can be an INCREDIBLY big deal.
The rest of your plans sounds great.
Amy
Update
Unfortunately I couldn't get the Vietnam Antivirus offer to work. I had optimized up to -30% ROI (after clickloss) as in screenshots above, I then brought in an improved version of one of my landers, new images, colours, flashing text and this brought the campaign to break even however the LP was too aggressive for the advertiser and I was asked to pause that LP. I did try my safe LP's on other sources however they didn't perform as well as Popads.
Since then I've tested many new offers (most were recommended or top offers) and some new traffic sources:
#1 Desktop utility
Did a RON campaign for every T4 country the offer accepted and found a few barely profitable countries, only 1 had potential in terms of volume and is currently at -20% ROI and $64.80 revenue. Tested that country on Selfadvertiser, Popcash, Mediahub but performed significantly worse. I'm working on building better pre-landers but due to the volume (offer only accepts Macs) I don't think it's likely I'll get more than $10 daily profits but I'll continue to test while its close to break even.
#2 Mobile browser utility
Tested 3 GEOs on this offer, 1 is profitable. I've done $70.50 revenue in the past week and after click loss it's about 10% profit, I tested this on 3 other sources where the campaign performed terribly but I will continue to optimize on my current source and search for other traffic sources. This is an offer people on this forum said went cold but was recommended by my affiliate manager in a cheap GEO. Not a huge amount of volume on my source so this campaign doesn't have huge potential.
#3 Poland AV
Currently around -40%, my bid is quite low and I'm doing $0.0018 EPV, I do have some small profitable days (of a few dollars), I will continue to optimize and test some other sources.
#4 Netherlands sweepstakes
Tested this the other night and did $10 spend (after click loss), $6.40 in revenue. Will continue to test
#5 Hungary sweeps
0 conversions after $20 spend
#6 Spain sweeps
0 conversions after $20 spend but then realized I forgot to delete a line of javascript code redirecting my traffic to another affiliate on the same offer so I'll need to re-test this one.
#7 Redirect network Blitzkrieg
Spent around $120 sending RON traffic from every country their pops rotator takes at 0.0003 bid, no real winners, found 1 country close to break even and will be testing it further (although volume is pretty low and its a competitive country)
#8 Antivirus rotator
Ran every accepted country at minimum bid, around $100 spent, only 1 country break even and I'm running further tests.
#9 App install for fast food restaurant
No conversion after 10x offer payout.
#10 TR Adult dating
-80% ROI after around 20x payout, didn't show potential so paused campaign to focus on others.
So 3 months into running traffic I've tested just over 30 offers in total. I'm focused on one source but recently branched out to a few others to test campaigns that had potential.
I've spent around £3,391.87 ($4,911.41 USD) on traffic and tools (tracking, spying, STM forum) and have generated £944.40 ($1,367.49 USD) across 3 affiliate networks.
Conclusion
- Optimize the campaigns above that showed some potential and make them profitable or pause ASAP
- Test more high performing offers
- Test more quality sources of traffic (sticking to popunder for now)
- Cut campaigns that lack potential sooner so I can spend that time launching more campaigns on other offers/traffic sources
Feel free to send me a contact request on Skype if you have any other advice, any questions, or if you just want to network: tomdigitaluk - also thanks to everybody above that have posted great advice!
Did a RON campaign for every T4 country the offer accepted and found a few barely profitable countries, only 1 had potential in terms of volume and is currently at -20% ROI and $64.80 revenue. Tested that country on Selfadvertiser, Popcash, Mediahub but performed significantly worse. I'm working on building better pre-landers but due to the volume (offer only accepts Macs) I don't think it's likely I'll get more than $10 daily profits but I'll continue to test while its close to break even.
Tested 3 GEOs on this offer, 1 is profitable. I've done $70.50 revenue in the past week and after click loss it's about 10% profit, I tested this on 3 other sources where the campaign performed terribly but I will continue to optimize on my current source and search for other traffic sources. This is an offer people on this forum said went cold but was recommended by my affiliate manager in a cheap GEO. Not a huge amount of volume on my source so this campaign doesn't have huge potential.
Another possibility of course, would be to test this on display/banner traffic. There may be more traffic for your target geo.
Currently around -40%, my bid is quite low and I'm doing $0.0018 EPV, I do have some small profitable days (of a few dollars), I will continue to optimize and test some other sources.
Don't be afraid to test really high bids - but be sure to set a low campaign budget just in case!
Tested this the other night and did $10 spend (after click loss), $6.40 in revenue. Will continue to test
- Optimize the campaigns above that showed some potential and make them profitable or pause ASAP
- Test more high performing offers
- Test more quality sources of traffic (sticking to popunder for now)
- Cut campaigns that lack potential sooner so I can spend that time launching more campaigns on other offers/traffic sources
It looks like you've got the magic touch - a high percentage of all the camps you launch show promise. You must have very good intuition, some knowledgeable AMs, and luck on your side. Looking forward to seeing how you optimize some of these to take them to green!
Amy
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