The Coming Of The Stack (17)
Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to STM & the whole AM scene (reading for ~2 months, running
campaigns for 3 days, on STM for 3 hours 
), so I'm going to document my
progress as a near-total newbie for others to learn from. Assuming I succeed in
stacking the money, this should make for an interesting read. If I don't...
well, shit happens 
# Some background
I'm 22, and have been a professional software engineer for the past ~4 years.
I have been writing code and messing around with technology in general for the
past ~10 years, and have a solid technical background. I have zero experience
running campaigns, but I have worked on advertising infrastructure components
before (coded an ad server + frontend, SDKs, etc). As such, I know a bit about
the underlying structure that makes up the AM world.
I should also mention that I've read Finch's Complete Guide to AM.
My personal goals for affiliate marketing are:
1. Break-even (starting small 
)
2. Reach $1000/mo in profit
3. Fully automate my operations with a focus on scripts, and scale indefinitely
@3, I plan on developing some tooling to autogenerate creatives + landers,
deploy them, test them in the wild, prune + optimise running campaigns, and in
general stack the money without human involvment. Before I can do that, I need
to be profitable on my own. This will be a long road 
I've started with a $900 budget, out of which I've paid for one month of STM and
another of
pure focus mode. With that out of the way, on to the campaign(s)!
Offer 1: DU Battery Saver
Network: Tapgerine
Payout: $0.26 CPI
Budget: $15/day
Vertical: Utility
Traffic source: PopAds
Ad Type: Pop-unders
Geo: TW
I've been running this campaign for a few days now, and have tweaked the lander
set twice so far, so I'll backtrack a bit to report on what has already
transpired before moving on to the good stuff.
I started out with 5 landers describing the application, 2 of which had the word
"Android" in the title. The landers were fairly basic combinations of a title,
subtitle, app icon, app title, teaser text (1 line), and a nice juicy call to
action button. I paid for translations on onehourtranslation.com and was off to
day 1 of my AM career:
Max bid: $0.003
5.8k impressions, 680 clicks, 5 conversions
$1.28 revenue
$14.56 cost
-$13.28 profit (-91.21% ROI)
Damn. Well, it can't get much worse After looking through the data, I noticed
all 5 conversions occured via the landers w/ the word "Android" in the title. 4
of them were from Taipei (capital of TW), and 4 from a single ISP. I didn't
drill much deeper into the data, as I wanted to collect more before focusing on
cities/ISPs, so I killed the other 3 landers and duplicated the two w/ Android
titles but with altered download buttons.
Armed with my army of four ass-kicking "Android yadda yadda" landers, I
entered day 2, to be greeted with:
Max bid: $0.003
6.4k impressions, 510 clicks, 5 conversions
$1.28 revenue
$13.67 cost
-$12.39 profit (-90.64% ROI)
ROI increased! Whoop. More or less no change though. Scratching my head, at this
point I signed up to STM for more guidance, and here we are. After asking my
friend and mentor @manu_adefy for advice, I decided to swap out the app icon for
a more generic image, and tweaked the titles to go with something more enticing
for the user (i.e. questions instead of boring labels.) In order to compare
performance relative to my previous attempts, I kept the copy on two of the landers
as before. I've also stopped tracking lander size since I'm not A/B testing it and I
manually optimize everything anyways. They usually can't get much smaller 
I'm currently waiting for PopAds to approve my new campaign with these landers,
and will report back after gathering more data. I haven't included separate
screenies for the past iterations since I don't feel they are valuable enough to even
look at. Keep in mind Voluum reports less traffic than PopAds for some reason, and
as such the costs are lower. The costs reported above are from PopAds, while the
traffic is from Voluum. I realize this biases the results towards the shittier end of the
scale (actual cost, reduced reported performance), but that only gives me a higher
wall to break-even over. In the end, the difference shouldn't matter. However, if
anyone from Voluum is reading this, it would be nice if your platform didn't drop data
Like I said in private too, definitely go more aggressive and specific with the copy, focusing on the problem the app can or could fix. You can invent a problem too 
And Taiwanese better in Taiwan from my tests on PopAds at least.
Gogo!
Nice background! This looks like it will be a great follow along!
Professional software engineer! Your coding skills will definitely give you an edge when it comes to creating landers! Welcome to STM and thanks for starting this follow-along!
deploy them, test them in the wild, prune + optimise running campaigns, and in
general stack the money without human involvment. Before I can do that, I need
to be profitable on my own. This will be a long road
You may be interested in checking out traffic monetization services like Monetizer.co and YTZ.com to get some inspiration. I can't imagine being able to do everything you listed without ANY human intervention, but a part of it I'm sure can be automated. And I do hope to see you prove me wrong in the first part of that statement!
Being a software engineer yourself, I'm sure you have lots of ideas on how to get that automation machine started, but it wouldn't hurt to check out this related thread:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...utomate+python
As you can see, there are a few other members that have expressed interest and shared experiences on the topic. Potential mastermind opportunity perhaps?
another of
pure focus mode. With that out of the way, on to the campaign(s)!
Regarding your landers:
-I could DEFINITELY see an improvement from your 1st batch to your most-recent batch! And yes - asking questions in headlines can be very effective!
-Another suggestion: Ask your translator to be as concise as possible when translating ad text, especially the headline. Right now the sentences are too wordy - I'm guessing nobody would have the patience to read them. We'd be lucky if people spend a fraction of a second browsing our ads.
-To make your ad text even more concise, consider taking out "Android" (because you're already targeting just this OS), version numbers (most people aren't tech-saavy enough to care), and mention of "improvement in performance" - but instead point out the SPECIFIC improvement such as "phone will be faster" or "battery will last longer".
-Here's an example of concise ad text - feel free to split-test this against your current landers if you like:
headline: 手機太慢？ (Phone too slow?)
sub-header: 一鍵提速! (1-tap to speed up!)
CTA: 馬上搞定！ (Fix it now!)
The text is in Traditional Chinese, and is Mandarin and not Taiwanese (I'm of Chinese decent but not from Taiwan so don't know much Taiwanese). Manu's observation that Taiwanese converts better is interesting indeed - although I happen to know that a lot of the people living further north (e.g. Taipei) don't understand Taiwanese.
-I agree with Manu that you'll need to be aggressive when running pop traffic, because everybody else is! (Disclaimer: Please make sure the traffic source AND the offer owner/advertiser/aff network are OK with you running aggressive.)
Tip: Although I've never run DU battery myself, I've seen through spying that a lot of people are using the same tactics as for antivirus offers. Landers that "scans and measures phone speed" (and then tells you your phone is too slow - some landers even have 2 status bars, one depicting the "current speed" and the other showing the "speed you can achieve by installing our app"). Landers that trick people into thinking they're phone system messages - warning about the slow speed, or threatening the phone would die if you don't install an upgrade. Etc. etc. So what you could do is do some spying in the wild, rip a bunch of antivirus landers, and adapt them for DU battery. AGAIN - please make double sure this is OK with the traffic source and the offer owner. (Either that or you can cloak and risk getting caught - but you've been warned.)
Great start and nice progress! Looking forward to your next update!
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
And using Taiwanese in the ads will actually make it feel more natural to us.
Originally Posted by vortex
For the specifics I even meant things like "Battery lasts 50% longer", or whatever other claims that have some exact numbers to it.I know I struggled with this when starting out, was always too general and never went concise and VERY exact.
Thanks for the replies everyone
shared experiences on the topic. Potential mastermind opportunity perhaps?
for a skype group to join, but haven't see anything recent/related on STM yet.
I've translated my four previous creatives to Taiwanese after Manu's suggestion,
and added @vortex's concise Mandarin copy to test alongside them (thanks
) Iwould convert all four previous landers to concise copy, but I've already burned
cash on translations and want to have data to back up the differences on my end,
so I'll let them run for today. I can see the point though, short and concise
definitely feels more likely to convert.
I will also test out aggressive landers after this batch, I've already seen a
few when manually spying and will rip/modify them. My network doesn't have them
banned for this offer, but I'll confirm with my AM.
model, browser etc. That definitely improves performance a very high percentage
of the time.
My three PopAds campaigns were approved overnight, so we're off to the races! I
split my original single campaign into three with different max bids: $0.001,
$0.003, and $0.005, with a massive difference in CTR already visible:
The unknown campaign entry is a result of my manual testing. I will keep the
$0.005 campaign until it hits $4 ad spend, and will pause it in favour of the
other two. I realise this is very early, but it is already unprofitable and
clearly behind in CTR. I am not sure what calcs I should use to decide when to
pause a bid-staggered campaign, so any suggestions would be welcome here
Also switched to running a TW-specific version of the offer on the same network,
and asked for a pay bump. Now at $0.33/CPI instead of $0.26 <3
Annddd some fine Moby to start the day:
Automation focused mastermind thread here
Right, so, that didn't go very well. At this point, either the offer is simply
not converting (unlikely, as I've heard from Manu it converts well & it seems
like a fairly generic offer that is likely to work anywhere), or my landers are
just not up to the task. Here are today's stats so far:
5.47k impressions, 943 clicks, 0 conversions
$0.00 revenue
$9.44 cost ($7.68 reported
$-9.44 profit (-100% ROI)
I stopped the $0.005 campaign when it hit $4 spend on PopAds, since its CTR was
far lower than the other two. However, after doing so, the $0.003 campaign CTR
also dropped, which makes sense; the $0.005 was getting all of the impressions.
How does one actually test staggered bids? Not simultaneously? I'll do some
googling.
In my initial tests I had disabled adult traffic and blacklisted two placements
that seemed to be bots (although I am not certain of this). I kept the blacklist
here but enabled adult traffic, and as such burned through my budget much
faster. I am not sure if adult traffic is a good idea here, so I would
appreciate any pointers
I've made an entirely new set of landers, this time with more generic copy
suitable for any mobile phone cleaner/optimization application. I won't post
them here immediately, just in case they are actually decent and someone rips
them (what are the odds of this?) but I will ship screenies after an initial
round of tests. I'll only say I added two more buttons and gave it a more native
Google-ey goodness feel. I will run without a blacklist to gather fresh data,
along with no category restrictions (let the porn moniez flow).
The offer itself is good but the affiliate network matters.
They could just have a lousy backend and people fail to redirect through their whole system.
Although the offer might not get you to positive ROI in all geos, on all traffic sources, I can definitely say it's a better than -100% ROI. I would keep that, perhaps try to get another affiliate network in to split test.
The other 2 big variables are the traffic (PopAds in Taiwan) and the angle in general, which reflect on your landers.
The previous iterations were definitely very tamed. They are more styled for banners than for pops, which is interruptive advertising.
I honestly don't understand why AMs still recommend DU battery saver and speed booster to new affiliates... These offers are way over-saturated by now and new affiliates have exactly 0 chance to make them work, especially with whitehat methods. Maybe a lucky shot here and there, but that's gonna be on some specific placements and low in volume. These were excellent offers when they were new, but its pretty much over now.
For the specifics I even meant things like "Battery lasts 50% longer", or whatever other claims that have some exact numbers to it.I know I struggled with this when starting out, was always too general and never went concise and VERY exact.
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ing-Parameters
And yup exact numbers will definitely work too!
Example ad text:
Warning: Phone operation critically slow. Physical damage may occur.
Model: [actual brand] [actual model]
Error: x0399de
Recommended Solution:
Step 1: Click "Resolve Problem" button below
Step 2: Download and install app on the next page.
I've used similar tactics to promote antivirus offers successfully. No reason why the same won't work for phone-optimization apps.
(Again, these tactics are aggressive to the extreme - so yes be sure to check with your AM first. Not even every traffic source will allow this stuff, almost most do.)And matuloo is right in pointing out that this app is old and saturated. I didn't want to bring that up in my last post because I HAVE seen newbies make really old apps work by trying new angles. But yes - DU has been running for several years now. Basically you're up against affiliates that have had a huge headstart in testing and optimizing their creatives, who know which placements work etc. etc. I did check appannie.com for trends for DU in TW and saw it was still doing quite OK, so I won't suggest for or against continuing with this camp. Also, you're learning a ton in the process of coming up with angles etc., which for a newbie is really more important than the actual campaign ROI IMHO. It's nice to get lucky and hit on success early on, but then you wouldn't learn as much in the process. So either way it's all good.
When you're ready to move away from promoting DU though, antivirus pin submits could be an option. Marketing approach would be similar (i.e. using scare tactics) and there are a ton of antivirus pin submit offers available for a variety of geos.
And using Taiwanese in the ads will actually make it feel more natural to us.
f3rnok: Just one thing though regarding your new landers that are supposedly in Taiwanese - I don't see any Taiwanese terms in any of them. @kalarr could you please confirm this?
Amy
$0.005 campaign until it hits $4 ad spend, and will pause it in favour of the
other two. I realise this is very early, but it is already unprofitable and
clearly behind in CTR. I am not sure what calcs I should use to decide when to
pause a bid-staggered campaign, so any suggestions would be welcome here
The goal of the staggered-bids test is mainly to see which bid will give you the highest ROI so that you can use that camp to test your offers and creatives. You can also gauge how promising the offer is in the process. You don't need to compare the staggered bid camps using statistical methods - there'd be little point in doing that since the bidding landscape is always changing. It's just that by doing this initial test and using the highest-ROI camp to do the rest of your testing, you would probably be saving on test budget.CTR isn't really relevant when trying to decide on campaign performance, because it does not directly impact on ROI - whereas the conversion rate does. But without a single conversion, we can't compare performance between different bids.
It really helps to know that your friend has promoted this app in this geo with success (hat's off for his generosity in helping you with that information!) Looking forward to seeing how more effective landers will do!
Amy
Originally Posted by matuloo
I still don't think it's a bad offer to start off with. A newbie affiliate, especially when on a small budget, cannot test 100 variables at once. There's a chicken and egg problem that no matter how good the offer, it doesn't convert with a bad angle, and also no matter how good the angle, a bad offer won't convert. You cannot find the right angle without having an offer that gives you some conversions, and in this case DU Battery is not so bad. It should allow you to test the angle without worrying the offer itself is completely dead, because it isn't. Once the angle works, you can try all other similar apps, from all networks.
I definitely agree that DU Battery is way past its peak but then again, it's not about always jumping on the hottest trends but learning how to test certain variables. Most people starting out struggle with understanding what variables matter and how to test them, not with finding the right offer. They can't even tell what the right offer is because of not understanding the other variables! Once that is in place, the right offer(s) become much more obvious.
Countless follow alongs had some of the best offers running and still didn't do so well, jumped ship to something else, and didn't learn anything about the process.
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
Yeah, once there's some reasonable confidence the angle works, testing more offers makes sense. And that is considering the smaller budget and the advice received here on STM Saves some money from testing :P
BUT, if a newbie affiliate takes this offer, his first impulse will be to promote it on well-known sources where six hundred guys before him had the same idea and saturated those placements. So if offer in question produces some conversions. will it produce ANY conversions for said newbie affiliate running it on the same placements where a handful of guys are running it at the same time?
As far as I can tell, people use clean DU Battery landers as safepages when they're cloaking and running it on high volume and solid bids because their cloaked stuff allows them to. good luck competing with that?
It is some chicken and egg stuff indeed. but only if you think in a vacuum. instead, newbie affiliates should simply rip stuff they see running right now. rip the lander and rip the offer. there you go, up the bid high enough and you should see conversions on at least a few placements.
You will probably be still in the red but congrats buddy, you lost ur AM virginity. Now use your head from here and think (T-H-I-N-K) how to make this work. You have an offer that is proven to convert. Now what angle can you come up with to get some warm bodies to this offer?
STM and the old direct marketing books are great stuff to get some mental cogwheels spinning
EDIT: and how the fuck did I end up in a thread that is 2 weeks old
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