Last week we went over 9 things that are small, easy to forget, and can REALLY hurt your campaigns if you forget about them, or help if you make a point of remembering them.
But wait! There's more!
Yes, AM is a game of details as much as anything else - and after I shared the article with my fellow mods at STM, they suggested a whole bunch more things that it's important to remember. So here's Part 2: more quick tips that can boost your campaign.
Cut Ads That Will Never Be Profitable On CTR
You should never cut on CTR. Except when you should.
If you've got an ad which you can statistically prove will never see a CPC low enough for you to make a profit, kill it. Generally, anything that would require you to have a conversion rate of more than 33% in order to see profit fits in that category.
Payout is $1.40, predicted lowest possible CPC is $0.73? Kill it.
You'll often be able to tell no-hoper ads well before you have statistical significance for their CVR, and particularly on more expensive traffic sources like Facebook or Native, this can save you a lot of money.
Check the CAP
Many offers will have a per-day cap on the number of conversions you can produce. Sometimes they're really quite low - 100 or less on a low-payout offer.
DO remember to check if you have a cap, as well as when and if you can lift that cap. Not only is it a total waste of money to keep sending conversions after you've hit cap for the day (so set your spend accordingly and do check) but an offer with a low, immovable cap might not even be worth testing to begin with!
Make Sure You're Matching The Offer Targeting
This one's quite obvious but also really easy to forget.
A lot of offers will only pay out on specific carriers, specific types of handset, specific geos, etc. Whilst generally you'll spot the geo, it's very easy to miss a carrier or handset on targeting, and end up spending tons of cash on traffic that your network will just reject.
After you've set up your campaign, go back and double-check the offer to make sure there's not a hidden targeting gotcha you've missed - and then check your campaign setup on your traffic source to make sure all your targeting filters are in place.
If You Can't Set An Iron-Clad Daily Budget, WATCH OUT In The First Day.
Daily budgets are brilliant - they stop you blowing all your cash on a large demo in the first 30 minutes.
But some traffic sources, particularly older ones, have weird daily budget rules. In some cases, you have to set a huge daily budget to get decent traffic. In other cases, the daily budget is more of a guideline than a rule.
If you're operating with a higher daily budget than you actually want to spend or you're on a new traffic source that you don't know respects daily budget limits, watch your spend hard for the first day, and particularly for the first hour. A big geo can easily blow $100 or even $1000+ in an hour or two - particularly when you're starting, that can really hurt. Watch carefully and be ready to hammer the "STOP!" button the second it looks like the spend's going over the top.
If Your Tokens Are Broken You Have A Problem
We talk a lot about buying data as the critical element in affiliate marketing. There's a side-effect to that: if your data flow is broken, your spend is worthless.
Make SURE that all your tokens from the traffic source to your tracker are set up and tracking correctly. If you need to run your own geoIP database, keep it updated. And as soon as you've launched your campaign, hammer F5 on your tracker until you've verified that all the information that should be coming in from clicks is in fact being tracked properly. Don't assume it's working, come back the next day and discover that you've lost vital information rendering your spend from that day virtually useless.
Have A Reliable, Tested Backup Solution
We're in the business of buying data - information. And that information gets stored on hard drives which break from time to time - or the power goes out, or the entire server room ends up frozen at the bottom of a Canadian lake in winter. True story.
So make sure, if you run your own servers, that you have an iron-clad backup solution in place. That includes testing restores to make sure they work - too many people have set up a "backup" solution, assumed it worked fine, and only discovered when they needed to restore data that something had been wrong all along.
Likewise, make sure you're backing up your personal computer too. Dropbox is NOT a backup solution, although it's better than nothing. Use something like Crashplan for security.
Once You Have A Successful Campaign, Test Going Direct
Affiliate networks and traffic sources are convenient, I get it. They speak our language, they're easily available on Skype (usually) and they're convenient to deal with.
So a lot of the time going direct, either with the website that you're getting conversions from or the offer that's doing well, looks like a pain in the ass. But it can also seriously boost your profits. Not always, but sometimes.
So do make the effort. Get in touch with the webmaster. Sign up for the direct offer and give it a decent test. Your bottom line will thank you.
And that's it! Unless you can think of any more I've forgotten? Or you have questions? Post 'em below!