Establishing my Affiliate Marketing company (Finding 1st Success in mobile) (17)
Establishing my Affiliate Marketing company (Finding 1st Success in mobile)
I've been putting off starting this follow along, mainly because I hate the spot light and also because I keep telling myself that I need to have everything in place before drawing attention.
However I decided to start it anyway, because like everybody else I need to make myself accountable plus I want to track progress.
As I've written in the title of this thread I want to grow this into a company, a team, doing big business. It's a big dream, I know...but I am working very hard to achieve it.
However to prove that 100% into this, I've done something crazy/stupid. I left my job. I was very well paid but I wanted to force myself to focus on building my dream. I do have money saved of course to take care of things for at least a year (according to my calculations).
I'm sure many will say that I'm out of my mind, but Hey! It's not the end of the world.
Anyway enough with the dreamy stuff and let's get going.
Where I am at:
- I ran a couple of successful campaigns last year on Decisive using mobile banners and Pin submit offers. I've seen green$$ but the offer got pulled and I got dragged into my day job and couldn't be consistent.
- My initial plan was to follow the Mobile Cookbook - The Appetizer method and focus on it for a while until I get it working then upgrade to Main Course and so on. However after talking to my AM and reading several follow alongs I decided to focus on Mobile Pops with PIN Submit offers & App installs.
- I will be focusing mainly on Middle East traffic, because I understand the market.
What I have done so far:
- I launched 2 campaigns both on Go2mobi. Payouts less than $1 one in Kenya and one in Egypt. Both spent over $20 without a conversion so I paused them.
Milestones:
- See my first conversion (I've converted a lot offers before, but what I mean is see my first conversion after leaving my job and focusing 100% on this) [DONE]
- Start seeing green. [DONE]
- Making first $10 per day profit. [DONE]
- Making first $100 per day profit. [DONE]
- Making first $500 per day profit.
- Making consistent $500 per day profit.
Action Steps:
- Decide on which pop traffic source to use first from the below list:
PopCash
PopAds
AdCash
Propeller Ads
ZeroPark - Apply to more affiliate networks. Currently with Araby Ads and applied to Mobvista
- Learn how to create and host mobile landing pages.
- Learn how to track using
Voluum and purchase it. - Setup my first campaign and launch.
I hope this follow along becomes entertaining for you.
I'm open to any suggestions, I know I'm still in the early stages but I promise I'll progress.
Let's do this!
Ahmed
Quitting job before setting up something is a very hard decision and needs huge balls to do 
I can't take that kind of risk for myself.
Spying on your competition is also a key factor. There is some useful guides about spying on STM.
Good luck on your journey
@halib, it was definitely hard, however I'm at a point in my life where I have nearly 0 responsibilities, I don't spend money on anything else except going out and travelling. I had feeling that I will never have this opportunity again. That's why I took the leap.
Anyway I just want to give a quick update, I chose an offer to run, details below.
Campaign Details:
Offer: Wifi Master Key
Affiliate Network: Araby Ads (Once I get accepted into other networks will split test them)
Payout: $0.10
Geo: Egypt
I've used Adplexity to see what is working for that offer and based on that I will start running on one of these traffic networks: PopAds, AdCash & Propeller Ads. Still haven't decided.
Also I've located some Landing pages the competition is using and I my Landing Page strategy will be as follows:
- Create 8 Landing pages
- 2 used by competition.
- The 2 used by competition with some tweaks.
- 2 new designs using angles based on solutions the offer provides.
- 2 completely crazy designs.
Also I've noted the following while spying:
- Many use a script on the LP to identify the the device of the user.
- Many affiliates use offer walls consisting on various apps.
- Many affiliates use rotate several utility apps using the same landing page.
Next steps:
- Actually creating the LPs
- Setting up tracking and launch.
Let me know if you have any suggestions.
The script to identify the device is a standard feature when you use
When it comes to the offer, the payout seems REALLY low for this offer specifically. Most likely it is being rebrokered from another network. You can use a tool like Live HTTP Headers to check the redirect chain of the offer and see if they go through other networks. This helps with payout and also with speed. Almost 100% of the times, the fewer redirects, the better the conversion rate.
Lastly, from the traffic sources you mentioned.. They all have pros and cons, and I've had campaigns work on one but not the other, and vice versa. I think PopAds is a better choice for someone starting out since they are quite quick to approve new campaigns, have good filtering options, fewer compliance rules and you get a lot of perks once you spend enough $$ with them. $10k spend is the threshold, if I am not mistaken, where you get VIP status which means instant approval for campaigns and can get postpay advertising credit, which helps a lot with cashflow issues.
Originally Posted by the wish
Thanks a lot manu_adefy and webdev
Based on your feedback I will be changing the offer to the following:
Offer: SecretBox - Android
Affiliate Network: Bidder Place
Payout; $0.48
Geo: Egypt
I will use the same strategy for LPs.
Currently I'm working on creating the LPs then I will move on to setting up the tracking.
Ok so still working on creating LPs.
First time creating mobile LPs so it's taking a bit, but I wanted to give a quick update.
I've been researching my chosen offer and geo on Adplexity a bit and came to the following conclusions:
- The offer (SecretBox - Android), have been running for quite sometime on various geos and sources.
- The main traffic source used by competition is In-App (according to Adplexity)
- The offer have been running in my chosen GEO (Egypt) for sometime, however not much on my chosen traffic source (Pops).
- Also other affiliates don't seem to be working with any creative angles.
I am trying to make sure that I have some advantage here. Since I know the GEO well and can think of some out of the box angles to test.
Also seems that not many are targeting Egypt with pops for that offer, so it might be a good thing or a bad thing.
Will find out.
Hope to get these LPs ready ASAP.
I haven't updated the thread in a week, the reason is I was busy learning what I was missing.
Here is what I've done so far:
- I tackled all the things I needed to learn, mentioned in my first post (creating a mobile LP and hosting it (I used Amazon S3 and Cloudfornt),optimizing for speed, setting up
Voluum ) - I spied on the competition using Adplexity and ripped the top landers in my chosen GEO that have been running the longest for my offer and similar offers.
- Chose 6 of the top landers to run, worked on optimizing them for speed. They all now have a loading time of 400ms to 500ms (not the best I know but good to start with until I find a winner)
- I chose Popads.net to be my traffic source and setup my campaign in
Voluum and launched.
Campaign Status:
The campaign have been running for around 15 hrs as I'm writing this post and I have some stats to report.
First of all a quick recap:
Offer: SecretBox - Android
Affiliate Network: Bidder Place (I want to test it on idvert as well but they still didn't approve the offer for me)
Payout; $0.48
Geo: Egypt
Budget: $15/day
Bidding: originally I had it set at $0.002 but it was spending too fast so I changed it to $0.001
PopAds set to spend a max of $3.6/hr.
Running only smartphones (Android v3 or above based on the app requirements)
LP angles I used (based on the ripped ones):
1. Google Warning theme
2. WhatsApp FB Theme Spy
3. Android Error Theme
4. Error theme
5. Phone is hot Alert theme
6. Update Black theme
Campaign Stats:
Spend so far: $12.01
Revenue: $3.36 (7 conversions)
Net Profit/Loss: ($8.65)
ROI: -72.01%
Visits: 10,826
Clicks: 1,813
Voluum Screenshot:
Landing Page Stats:
1. Google Warning theme - ROI 16.74%
2. WhatsApp FB Theme Spy - ROI -100%
3. Android Error Theme - ROI -100%
4. Error theme - ROI -51.27%
5. Phone is hot Alert theme - ROI -100%
6. Update Black theme - ROI -100%
Voluum Screenshot:
Notes:
- Google LP is the only one in green so far.
- Placements, I am seeing 3 in the green so far.
- I think the campaign is spending faster than it should.
- More stats are need to take action IMO
Next steps would be doing statistical significance, cutting bad placements..etc
Please let me know your thoughts on these stats and what should be done next.
Glad to get things rolling
The campaign ran for full 2 days and I have some new stats, however there seems to be some discrepancy between Popads and
Popads.net Stats:
Spend: $30
Impressions: 28,589
Spend: $23.41
Revenue: $8.16 (17 conversions)
Net Profit/Loss: ($15.25)
ROI: -65.15%
Visits: 22,242
Clicks: 3,461
Voluum Screenshot:
Landing Page Stats:
1. Google Warning theme - ROI 36.30%
2. WhatsApp FB Theme Spy - ROI -75.08%
3. Android Error Theme - ROI -87.91%
4. Error theme - ROI -62.35%
5. Phone is hot Alert theme - ROI -100%
6. Update Black theme - ROI -100%
Voluum Screenshot:
Placement Stats:
Only 1 placement spent 3x payout without a conversion.
The other placements either spent less or got a conversion.
Apply Amy's spreadsheet for cutting placements with 40% ROI and 100% confidence tells me to keep running them all, however with 95% confidence I need to cut 2 placements and with 80% confidence I need to cut 5%
Notes:
- Google LP is by far still the best performer.
- Applying Statistical significance, Google LP is the only one meeting the Minimum Viable Conversion.
- Using Peak conversion calculator the other LP don't stand a chance against Google LP. It has 98% chance of being the best when compared to the second best lander "Error theme".
Questions:
- Is the clickloss significant to worry about it?
- Looking at the stats I'm not sure if I should run more spend to be more sure or should I start cutting landers and placements? If should start cutting, what should I cut?
- Any thoughts on bidding? Currently my bid is $0.001 and I'm getting enough traffic. Should I create campaigns with low, mid, high bids?
Other thoughts:
I'm thinking of duplicating the campaign in a new GEO, Kuwait. The reasons are:
- Payout is higher and traffic cost is not much higher than Egypt.
- It can split-test several networks with this GEO.
- The GEO is similar to Egypt
- The app is doing well in Kuwait according to App Annie.
- Although traffic volume is low for this GEO, I will scale to other sources if proven successful.
Let me know what you think
I would really appreciate any feedback.
Ok ran the campaign a bit more before starting to cut things.
Below are the stats.
Popads.net Stats:
Spend: $43.53
Impressions: 42,093
Spend: $33.62
Revenue: $10.08 (21 conversions)
Net Profit/Loss: ($23.54)
ROI: -70.01%
Visits: 32,448
Clicks: 5,153
There is still clickloss obviously.
Landing Page Stats:
1. Google Warning theme - ROI 0.44%
2. WhatsApp FB Theme Spy - ROI -73.97%
3. Android Error Theme - ROI -82.98%
4. Error theme - ROI -65.26%
5. Phone is hot Alert theme - ROI -100%
6. Update Black theme - ROI -100%
Voluum Screenshot:
Placement Stats:
Several placements spend 3x payout without a conversion.
Voluum Screenshot:
Here is what I did next:
Placements Optimization:
I killed all placements that spent 3x payout with at least 1 conversion. I used Amy's spreadsheet to confirm killing these placements
Landers Optimization:
I used statistical significance and peak conversion calculator and both indicated that Google LP is the only one that stands a chance, so I killed all the other landers and keep Google theme only.
Next I will be introducing new variations of the winner + new angles
Campaign Updates:
I duplicated the campaign after optimization and created a High Bid campaign ($0.004) and a mid bid campaign ($0.0025). My current bid is at $0.001 so it is the low bid.
I also duplicated the campaign and changed it to Popup to if it is better than Pop under using the same bid ($0.001)
I'll see how these updates affect the campaign, however I need your thoughts on the below.
Questions:
Is it worth it continuing this campaign or should I kill it already?
The offer I'm promoting accepts Incent traffic, any ideas how I can utilize this?
Appreciate your support!
Sad day today...I killed the campaign after analyzing the data below. Let me know if you have any other thoughts.
Quick recap on the updates I've done yesterday:
- Killed all landers except Google theme.
- Killed all placements that spent 3x payout
- Duplicated the campaign for MidBid, HighBid and Popup.
Popads.net Stats:
Low Bid Campaign Popunder (original):
Spend: $48.73
Impressions: 47,299
Low Bid Campaign Popup:
Spend: $10.06
Impressions: 5,231
(Midway in this campaign I increased the bid to bid higher than the HighBid but it did not produce much results)
MidBid Campaign:
Spend: $10.08
Impressions: 4,933
HighBid Campaign:
Spend: $20.11
Impressions: 8,272
Low Bid Campaign Popunder (original):
Spend: $37.35
Revenue: $10.08 (21 conversions)
Net Profit/Loss: ($27.27)
ROI: -73.01%
Visits: 36,183
Clicks: 5,698
Landing Page Stats (for the original campaign):
All LPs were paused except Google LP continued until I killed the whole campaign.
1. Google Warning theme - ROI -39.12%
2. WhatsApp FB Theme Spy - ROI -73.97% (Paused)
3. Android Error Theme - ROI -82.98% (Paused)
4. Error theme - ROI -65.26% (Paused)
5. Phone is hot Alert theme - ROI -100% (Paused)
6. Update Black theme - ROI -100% (Paused)
Voluum Screenshot:
Low Bid Campaign Popup:
Spend: $7.86
Revenue: $0.48 (1 conversion)
Net Profit/Loss: ($7.38)
ROI: -93.89%
Visits: 3,868
Clicks: 736
Voluum Screenshot:
MidBid Campaign:
Spend: $7.75
Revenue: $1.92 (4 conversions)
Net Profit/Loss: ($5.83)
ROI: -75.21%
Visits: 3,742
Clicks: 1,018
Voluum Screenshot:
HighBid Campaign:
Spend: $15.90
Revenue: $3.84 (8 conversions)
Net Profit/Loss: ($12.06)
ROI: -75.85%
Visits: 6,410
Clicks: 1,915
Voluum Screenshot:
Clickloss as usual in all campaigns in Voluum.
Landing Page Stats:
Only Google LP was running for the new duplicated campaigns.
Thoughts:
My original campaign (LowBid) performance decreased significantly after optimization. It stopped generating any conversions.
However the MidBid and HighBid Campaigns were generating conversions, so apparently I was outbid! Since the Popup campaign with the low bid was doing horrible as well.
Also it is worth noting that the first couple of days when I started the campaign using the lowBid Popunder campaign it was the weekend and the performance was much better. Things started getting worse as the weekdays started.
Although the HighBid campaign was converting the best, at this bid my winning lander was NOT statistically significant. In addition no placement was eating up my budget so couldn't blame it on the placements as well.
I tried to drill down to find pockets of profits in carriers, browsers, models...etc but did not find anything significant.
It made sense to me to kill the offer and move one. I mean it's not statistically significant anymore...not meeting Minimum Viable cvr... and it got enough traffic. Right?
IMO I think I spent enough on this offer to move on...right?
One more point that I think was acting against me was that in order to count the conversion the user had to download the app, open it and enter his/her number, not just download & open type of app, which could be a reason for it not to convert well...right?
Questions in mind:
- Could I have tested more angles? Or the offer did not show promise already?
- The offer was added to another network today, should I test that or just let it go?
Anyway, I wanted to let all my thoughts out and would LOVE to know your feedback and thoughts on what I did.
Now, let's move on...
New Campaign:
Offer: Wifi Master Key (Android)
Affiliate Networks: Araby Ads, Mobvista, Blackfox
Payout: $0.10, $0.19, $0.20 (respectively)
GEO: Egypt
Traffic Source: Popads.net
This was the offer I was going to run initially, however based on the feedback I got I skipped it because the payout was too low.
But I decided to go ahead and test it because:
1. it was recommended by AM and it is one of the top in my GEO and on the network
2. I found higher payouts on other networks (I only had the $0.10 in the beginning)
Bidding: From the very begging I will start with low,mid and high bid campaigns
Landing Pages:
When I first started this thread I went through Adplexity and ripped the top landers on pop traffic for my vertical in my GEO and similar GEOs and created a Library.
In my first campaign I tested 6 landers and only Google theme proved to be the best.
In this campaign I will proceed with best from the previous campaign (since it is the same vertical) test some more ripped landers from my Library and also create a couple form my efforts.
Again for LPs I will be optimizing for speed (at least 400ms - 1 sec to start with) and adding sounds, exit popand back button to a different lander.
Landing Page to be used:
- Google theme with a copy for this offer (since Google did well in the previous campaign)
- System Alert theme
- Google Play theme
- App upgrade theme
- Simple lander with headline & benefits
- Completely wacky theme relevant to the GEO
Budget: $20/day
Process to be used (learned it from the previous campaign):
- Run the campaign for a couple of days.
- Then kill placements that have 5x payout without conversion (since payout is very low) also will confirm using Amy's excel sheet.
- Apply statistical significance and peak conversion calculator to LPs and start cutting losers.
- Add more LP variations.
- Repeat above until profit or killing the campaign
- Kill the bad bids.
- Kill under performing networks.
- Find pockets of profit after drilling into the data
- Test popups
Now off to create the landers and launch the campaign.
Please let me know your thoughts, I will be really grateful for your advice.
Hey Ahmed,
I'm newer than you to all of this, but your follow along is inspiring to me. It's great to see your dedication and commitment to the process. It looked like the Google Warning Theme LP had a lot of promise at first. I was hoping that would turn into a winner for you. I'm excited to see what you come up with for your new campaign. Keep up the good work and keep posting!
Tom
Hey Tom, I am really glad that your like my follow along and I will do my best to keep moving forward so you and I can learn and reach success
I know how beneficial these follow alongs are to every one and I hope to set an example.
Amazing topic. I really like how you set a system in your head! good luck with future campaigns bro!
Finished the landers and launched the campaign.
It has been running for a day now and here are some stats.
Since there will always be a difference between
What I did for this campaign is I launched a LowBid ($0.001), MidBid ($0.0025) and HighBid ($0.005) campaigns, each for $20/day.
It ran for 1 day so far.
Bid Campaigns Stats:
Notes:
- The LowBid campaign did not spend its budget, the HighBid campaign consumed the budget in a few hours. However the MidBid campaign consumed the budget efficiently throughout the day and it also has the highest ROI.
- The total conversions here are 46, however the actual number I have from all networks is 72. At first I thought it was a massive discrepancy, however this was not the case and I'll reveal what happened in a minute.
Affiliate Networks Stats:
Notes:
- Mobvista is the best performer by far, BlackFox is the least performing and Araby ads has a good CVR but a low payout which is affecting the ROI compared to Mobvista
Overall Landing Pages Stats:
Notes:
- Red Page Alert & Google Play themes are the best performers so far (although Google Play has a very weird CTR, not sure why)
- Too bad the 2 angles that I created by myself are doing the worst lol
Placements:
No placement is significantly eating up my budget(4x payout) without converting so far, so I'm gonna leave all placements for now and cut whenever needed.
Conversions Discrepancy:
As I mentioned above the total number of conversions I am seeing in the actual networks is 72. 18 in Araby Ads, 1 in BlackFox and 53 in Mobvista.
Turns out that in some landing pages I added the back button as the raw URL of a landing page with no tracking so the stats are not showing up in Voluum. The offer URL on that landing page however was the Mobvista link with a SubID identifying that it is the link on the back button lander and that was how I was able to know that these conversions were coming from here. (Honestly I didn't expect much conversions from it so I just ignored the tracking lol)
The fix: I'm gonna setup the back button as a campaign in Voluum and place it in my original landers instead of just the raw LP URL. (let me know if you have better ideas for setting this up)
Mobvista is a definite winner after adding these missing conversions. The revenue from it is now $10.07 so the ROI should be -9.28% I think that could be a good start without any optimization.
So my next steps will be as follows:
- Bids: I'm gonna kill the LowBid Campaign and HighBid Campaigns and keep only the MidBid Campaign. I will also create 2 new campaigns one with a slightly higher bid than MidBid and one slightly lower bid.
- Networks: I will kill Araby Ads and BlackFox and keep only Mobvista.
- Landers: Kill the Wacky lander and keep the others a bit more after cutting bids and networks.
- Create that back button campaign in Voluum to start tracking conversions from it.
- Let this all run for another day and analyze (kill landers, placements and start looking for possible pockets of profit)
Questions:
- Do you think it is worth adding these new bids campaigns or should I just stick to the bid that worked for for now?
Your support will GREATLY appreciated
I haven't been able to update the thread or work on the campaign much as I am currently travelling, doing a bit of a Euro trip. (in Munich, Germany as I write this)
Been having trouble connecting to the internet as well, but I finally did and I have some exciting updates
Here is a brief on what happened since my last update:
Bids: The MidBid campaign has proven to be the best performer after testing 4 other bid points, so I kept the MidBid only and paused all others.
Networks: Only kept Mobvista running.
Landers: So far I paused all LPs except "Google Warning" and "Google Play" (updated stats below)
Placements: Did not find any major budget drainers so I didn't cut any placements so far, however I did find some winners so I created a white list campaign with the top placements. However,although it showed some potential, the volume is still low (since I had 5 placements only in that campaign) so I decided to focus on the main campaign and keep the white listing for later.
Campaign Stats After doing all of the above (Last day stats 4/3):
Landing Page Stats:
Back Button Issue:
So as you can see the campaign is only profitable with the Back Button.
However, although I was able to track the conversions coming from the Back button campaign, I can't link it back to Placements and other campaign details. I can link it back to the LPs though by looking at the Referrer in
Does anyone have solution for this?
I will only be able to cut placements confidently and find pockets of profits after finding a way to have all the stats from the back button and the LPs in one place.
Next Steps:
- I will run the campaign as it is now a bit more. The stats above are for the last day, although these LPs were going strong the days before, I still want to see if they will stand.
- I want to test the "Red Page Alert" LP again after adding back button script to it. It was showing promise in the front end.
- So far on Mobvista alone I've generated 390 conversions, do you think I should as for a payment bump?
- I want to ask my AM about the cap, since the offer says 500 cap in one place and open cap in another place in the network.
- I want to check the traffic quality with my AM as well.
Questions:
- When adding new Landing Pages to the campaign, should I create a separate campaign for them in
- Any suggestions on scaling? Should I start going into other ad networks with what I currently have or should I wait till I fix the back button issue (if there is a solution anyway).
- If you have any recommendations for the back button issue please let me know.
- What are your overall thoughts on my campaign so far?
I will REALLY appreciate any feedback or support
Thank you.
What's the back button redirecting to?
Seems you are overcomplicating tracking of backbutton here.
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