Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns

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Fresh newbie diving into paid mobile traffic (19)

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Hello everyone!

I am a newbie to paid traffic and have been taking in quite a lot of information learning about the industry. I hope to learn even more from those who decide to follow along.


Current Roadblocks

1. I don't know what vertical/traffic type to focus on so I just started with mobile.
2. I am not very good at graphic design, so I plan on outsourcing to Banners and Landers.
3. I'm overwhelmed by the restrictions traffic networks and affiliate networks put on affiliates.

Current Goals

1. Create a checklist to follow before launching new campaigns.
2. Get at least one conversion from a campaign.
3. Reach -50% ROI from a campaign.

Campaign 1 - 5/18/2016
Offer: Pin Submit
Payout: $4.80
Vertical: Antivirus
GEO: South Africa
Creatives: https://i.gyazo.com/899014f24195e4c5...c6b97f0cca.png (Custom)
LP: http://img.clickdealer.com/938x582_1...2e37dba7da.png (Direct linked to advertiser's offer LP)
Traffic Stats: https://i.gyazo.com/8b7cca3ee42d8c1e...7b121f04d9.png

Campaign cost: $13.90
ROI: -100%

Notes:
This was my first ever paid traffic campaign and I royally screwed up. I paid way too much CPM, I did not budget, and I did not pay attention to my data. I quickly learned from this and decided to stop promoting this campaign. I felt bad for wasting money, but I was just really eager to get my first campaign setup successfully so I didn't really care about losing money.


Campaign 2 - 5/20/2016
Offer: App Install
Payout: $3.50
Vertical: Dating
GEO: US
Creatives: https://i.gyazo.com/52d666842305c218...4466b6f5a5.png (Advertiser's creatives no custom creatives allowed)
Offer LP: (Direct link to Apple store app profile)
Traffic Stats: https://i.gyazo.com/9e6f40e0f5315dd3...2d378f41cc.png

Campaign cost: $65.80
ROI: -100%

Notes:
As my second campaign I attempted to open up my pockets a little bit more to gather data, but once again I have not thought the campaign through, jumped the gun, and wasted money. I have since paused this campaign.

Campaign 3 - 5/21/2016
Offer: App Install
Payout: $1.05
Vertical: Gaming
GEO: US, CA, DL
Creatives: https://i.gyazo.com/0cd209857de046c7...a7c1ca4a0b.png (Advertiser's creatives no custom creatives allowed)
Offer LP: (Direct link to Apple store app profile)
Traffic Stats: https://i.gyazo.com/c41463afe82c7bfa...0743b84c22.png

Campaign cost: $77.01
ROI: -100%

Notes:
I wasted so much money on this campaign. One thing that I got out of this campaign was seeing the difference in CTR after making the CPM bid $0.25. This slowed traffic, but it allowed for more clicks. I also found that the only banner that was making the best CTR was the 300x50 so I decided to pause the rest and gather lower quality data on that one. I did not get any conversions, which is upsetting but understandable.

Campaign 4 - 5/25/2016
Offer: App Install
Payout: $1.90
Vertical: eCommerce / Savings App
GEO: US
Creatives: https://i.gyazo.com/166762679c017662...12c3a6d5d1.png (Advertiser's creatives no custom creatives allowed)
Offer LP: (Direct link to Apple/Android store app profile)
Traffic Stats: https://i.gyazo.com/3c59e3c073acbbb6...e4d4a9ee8c.png

Campaign cost: $3.17
ROI: -100%

Notes:
This was my last go at direct linking app install offers. Now it's time to actually put in some effort and not just throw shit on a the wall just to see if it sticks, because as well all know.. No matter how great the wall is, shit is still shit. I feel like I could be doing a whole lot better by taking my time and finding the right way to promote offers. I'm also going to stop targeting G20 countries and start going towards second and third world countries so I can hopefully get good data and conversions as I have yet to receive not one conversion.

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1. For offers like these, NEVER use advertisers creatives.

2. Do you think you are the only guy running ads?

No seriously, your custom banners say "protect your smartphone" and "scan for viruses"

Are you kidding me?

It's like running an ad that says "Lose weight" or "Get six pack abs"

I never want to see ads like these again. You understand?

LOL just kidding but I'm not.

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What should I do with affiliate networks that are strict with only using the advertiser's creatives? One of the affiliate networks I am currently with states that the advertiser's would like to protect the user experience and brand's reputation.

I know, the first campaign that I ran was horrible. I don't know what I was thinking, but I just wanted to get something up and running which I now regret but have learned from it. I did not put much thought or effort into creating the angles and in the end it came out as a crappy campaign which was my fault.

Yes, I do understand and you won't be seeing ads like that again. I plan on delegating the design aspect as soon as possible as it is not my forte, but I wish it was.

I really do appreciate your constructive criticism, thank you.

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Moved response to a seperate thread here.

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Holy cow ebaskin! I have got to say the information you just gave me has shined a light on figuring out angles and opportunities within the market.

The level of saturation markets are at from level 1-5 has brought clarity on finding angles, but I still feel as if it's going to be difficult to connect the angle to the banner, to the landing page, and finally to the offer. It seems hard, but I want to get it done and see the results. I'm ready to make this happen. Thank you so much ebaskin, you have helped me tenfold just within a couple of responses.

Regarding spotting opportunities within the market: I bought the three day trial for WRW but I did not like it due to the price and unable to utilize it as a seasoned affiliate marketer would have been able to. I feel as if manually spotting opportunities is going to be a tad bit more difficult due to the mobile segment requirements (i.e. iPhone, Android, GEO location, etc.)

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Those are good points you make and shows you understood what I'm saying perfectly.

But I'll leave it to matuloo and vortex to help you further. Writing up that mini guide drained my soul.

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Hello "affiliateguy", let me take a look at what you did and try to help you move further

First of all : Don't blame yourself for jumping onto your first campaigns pretty much "blind folded" I did exactly the same when I was starting and it was a perfect lesson that I will never regret. No theory or reading can match seeing a live campaign, loosing or not.

I see ebaskin already took good care of you and helped you to clear some of the confusion and put you on the right path when it comes to understanding different markets, competition and the saturation.

Since you've already started a few campaigns and didn't get any results, you need to stop for a while and form a plan. I would suggest that you pick one vertical and one traffic source, stick to it at least for a while, get your first conversions and learn the optimization process, then you can open it a bit.

The screens are from go2mobi if Im not wrong, so stay there for now its a solid traffic source. But rethink the way you are using them. I'm not sure if Im reading the stats correctly, did you really pay $5 per 1000 banner impressions? If that's the case, never do this again - always start with a low bid and then increase it. Your bids should be in cents not dollars, so start with 0.20 or so, depending on the GEO. I don't understand the low winrate tho, can you tell me more about the settings? A few more general rules - set cap to 1/24, use daily budget that you can afford, narrow the target audience down a bit if you are on a tight budget - for example 1 OS or one carrier ...

Now to the vertical - apps are not really working right now, there is no unsaturated app that would work well enough with broad targeting and whitehat approach. They do convert some, but you will loose on it with 99% probability. Some people still recommend them to new people to learn the optimization process, but I personally don't see much positives in doing so. In my opinion, simple lead gens, sweeps or PIN submit offers in "cheap" GEOs are a better choice. The key is to pick a low paying offer with short flow, so you can get conversions fast - the higher the payout, the more complicated the registration process will be. At this stage, you need conversions fast and you need many of them. So ask for offers in Africa, Asia, South America ... there are huge GEOs where you can make a lot of money even with low paying offers.

When picking the offer, stay away from those that don't allow custom creatives, as ebaskin told you, their banners are pretty much never good enough to work on paid traffic. They could convert or even turn profit if the traffic was from your own sites, but paid traffic is priced based on better performing banners since its an auction. Outsourcing banner creation is an option for sure, but you need to learn how to do them on your own too. You can get some done for $ by someone, but you need to be able to make small changes to them yourself, you can't pay for every simple change like adding a word etc. Mobile banners are small and they need to be simple and have a clear message, quite often it just takes a piece of text and a button You will have to test a ton of them, so really try to learn the photoshop basics

I see you are concerned about connecting banners with LPs and the offer - this sounds like an uneasy task but in reality it's not that hard and you don't really have to make a complete match. I'm gonna give you an example : One of my favorite verticals is adult dating and I run it for years. One of the angles I use a lot is what kind of women do people prefer... blonde/brunettes/slim/chubby/busty or not ... there is an endless amount of combinations but obviously the offer itself has just one registration page with just one woman used as the teaser. So how in hell do I connect the banner/LP where I push the "blonde busty milf" angle when there is a "slim 20 y.o. brunette" on the offer registration page? It's not possible of course, but guess what - in case you do enough pre-selling and give the important info on the banner and LP, the users get so hooked up and ready, that they don't look for details on the registration page anymore. You have to use the LP to explain them what they have to do on the registration page. If you tell them they have to enter an email address in some field, they will be looking for the field and won't really scan the whole page - well some of them will, but those are not our target audience

I see you also played with WRW, using a spy tool is a good idea but I always tell people to use them just as inspiration and that's what you should do too. If you can't afford paying for one yet, try to look for more with trials and save as much creatives as you can during the trial duration - if you can't save them, do screenshots. You will also need some landing pages, which is something you can also save directly from some spytools - I used adplexity and it's doable there. I would strongly advice to sacrifice that 1 month worth of access and create a solid storage of promo materials for later use - this is an investment that will save you a lot of time.

Ok, the posts is growing too long again, so let's end it here. Think about the vertical and traffic source, consider getting access to a spytool for at least a month ... and ask away if you have more questions

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Thank you for your detailed response. I do appreciate the time and effort a lot of the members put on here to give newbies informational responses.

I thought $5 CPM was normal for Go2Mobi US traffic as their spreadsheet stated the average cost was around that amount. I quickly decided to try $2 CPM and that worked well, but on my last campaign $0.25 was getting me traffic and slowly brought up my CTR. I plan on continuing the $0.25 CPM, but what I am curious about is how I'm supposed to optimize that number. I can only assume there is a formula related the the Win Rate and other variables, I'm just in the dark on the the topic of bidding optimization.

Regarding the offers and GEOs, I was really interested in app installs due to the fact that it seems like a short and sweet method. Geographical locations usually consist of the G20 and not other second and third world countries. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around coming up with angles to get someone to complete a pin submit or sweepstakes. I know eventually I will catch on, but right now it's difficult. I don't really get how you can make offers that pay little to nothing turn into green.

AdAction is the main network that doesn't allow custom creatives. They say that there isn't an issue with getting custom creatives from advertisers and that they've never had any problems, but I can't convert any leads on the offers I have tried so far so I'm going to assume the contrary. I am signed up to Max Bounty and ClickDealer which allow custom creatives, but I have not started down that path due to the complexity of it all. (regarding setting up the banner, lander, and offer to correlate with each other). I have bought Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator so that I can get to learning how to create and edit my own banners and landing page creatives.

Once again I appreciate your detailed response.

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Dont worry too much about their formula or how the algo works. There are only 2 things you need to care about here : 1. to get volume and 2. to be profitable. Sometimes its good to start with a bid so low it seems retarded, so like 0.05 for example and see if you can get traffic that cheap. If it doesn't work, you just push it up by small steps.

They pay little to nothing, but they also require very few steps for the conversion to happen. Thats how it works, the more steps are required, the higher the payout and the harder it actually is to convert the user. As a new marketer, you really need to start with these and reduce the costs of learning this way.

Its not as complicated as it sounds, just bite hard and take it one step at a time. Its a learning curve you gotta go through but once you get used to the process it will all look way easier than it does now. Focus on offers that allow custom creatives, that's the only way in my opinion. You need to be able to act fast and test a lot of stuff, waiting for approval or custom creatives is a mega waste of time.

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If you wanted to build a birdhouse, but you don't know how one looks like and you don't have any blueprints/instructions. Wouldn't you agree you'd have a hard time building that birdhouse?

Now, on the other hand, if you'd have a nice birdhouse at home and you would study it and take notes how the nails are set etc. Wouldn't you agree that you would at least have a good starting point for your project?

What I'm saying is, good angles are all around you. If you don't have access to a spy tool you can spy manually or use google images for insipiration.

Pick a vertical and take some time to study it.

You want to leverage the testing done by other people and steal the "conversion code"/"persuasion achitecture" of your vertical. Usually, you'll find there are no more than a handful of different approaches within a vertical. The rest is just variations.

a slight addition, MECLABS is talking about optimizing thought sequences and not websites. I like this a lot. So when you go to study other ads, don't simply notice the copy or the choice of images and colors. Really think about what an effect on the thinking the elements have and envision the thought path the visitor takes from start (noticing the ad) to finish (conversion).

This becomes your persuasion architecture. You want to build your ads so that they elicit the same proven thought sequence in the visitors mind.

This not only improves your chances for success but also allows you for more creativity and freedom in designing your angles.

Pretty cool, eh?

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ebaskin, another great response from you. I completely understand your analogy, but I have already lost my drive. I hate that I'm like this, wasting tons of money and then not following through... I just don't know where to start. With the affiliate networks I've joined having restrictions, traffic networks have restrictions, I am limited to what I can angle. I know this is a newbie's excuse, tons of people are making money and I hate that I can't figure out a formula to get this down and start cranking out campaigns. I feel like a failure already, especially for being in this loser's mindset of wanting to quit.

I've already spent $500 on resources and traffic all together, I can't quit. I just don't have any motivation to continue. It's pathetic.

Between click fraud, cloaking, affiliate network restrictions, traffic network restrictions, setting up campaigns, creating angles, creating banners for said angles, creating landing pages, split testing all of it. This is just so overwhelming. I don't know where to start. I wish there was some type of checklist or something that could help me get on the right track. There is so much great information on this forum, but I can't take it all in. I feel like I have twenty tabs open with information I want to read but I can never get around to fully digesting it. I feel like a complete failure with paid traffic and affiliate marketing.

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You're just trying to understand it all at once. Give yourself some time and acknowledge small wins. Break things down into smaller pieces.

Instead of focusing on this big mountain of stuff, focus on just a single task, otherwise you will get overwhelmed pretty easily like you have witnessed.

Set a goal for the day to set up a campaign on a traffic work. Or get accepted into a new affiliate network. And that's it for one day. Then the next day, you do another small task. Eventually, you'll get better and better and you get more done.

What I learn from this is that it's not a good idea to overwhelm a newbie with so much theory... so apologies for that. Just take it slow and use the information you got here as reference you can come back to later. It will all make more sense once you get more experience.

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Thanks for your posts ebaskin. I've read them and learned a few things ( I'm guilty of the "win an iphone 6" scenario )

I'm in the same boat as you affiliateguy, I've been reading and the more I read, the harder AM seem to be. I think you're trying to absorb too much information all at once. You're trying to learn angles, how to navigate the UI of multiple networks and tools, and now you're also trying to learn photoshop and illustrator. ( you don't need illustrator btw ). This is overwhelming. Try to be good at one thing first before moving on to the next...

What I've been doing is just dedicate a few hours a day to learn/action on AM ( due to my hectic schedules ) - this way, you don't overwhelm yourself with information overload, but you would have learned something new each day, and that is progress. Don't think of this as a failure, IMO, everything you learn in AM is a skillset that you can use in other areas of your career. Eg. If you learn photoshop, you'll have the skill to create your own graphics. Just think of what you know now, did you knew before you spent that $500? just consider it an investment for the knowledge you've gained. You might not think you learnt much, but I bet if you look back to before you started, you know alot more than most.

I'm just starting out too, so I can't give any advice on AM itself, but I think the mindset is the most important aspect of AM at this stage.

Although I'm new to AM, I've been making a living online through design/freelance/and running websites for a fair while now, so if you have any design/dev issues, I can give you a hand.

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MrT and affiliateguy : What you guys are doing here is over-thinking and wanting to control/understand/plan all in advance. You are thinking about optimization when you didn't get a click yet, you want to come up with more angles to split test when you didn't run the proven ones yet. You want to design banners when you didn't test ripped ones first... Basically, you're looking for problems to solve, sooner than they arise. And these are problems you are not able to solve yet, which makes you frustrated and wanting to quit.

Ebaskin made a very good point - take it one small step at a time. AM can be pretty easy if you don't make it complicated yourself. I'm not saying it's easy to start making $1k a day, but the fundamentals are easy and it's no rocket science.

The beginnings can be very frustrating, I remember it very well, but you simply have to keep going. This thing works, there is no secret to it, all it takes is to find the right combinations and that's done by testing ... lots of it

You have to realize one thing, no business is easy, there are burdens to overcome in any business - online or not. AM is actually one of the most friendly when it comes to cost of entry. All the limitations by networks, sources and advertisers only look too complicated when you are starting out, in reality it's just a rather small set of rules to follow - you will learn them pretty quickly.

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It didn't take long for me to completely waste this month away. Voluum is out and STM is about to be out for renewal as well.

I fucked up.

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So you're about to give up? After a few weeks of trying something new?

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Hell no! I'm just really irritated that within a month I haven't progressed.

I am rethinking my strategy, and instead of feeling bad for myself I'm going to go ahead and invest in AdPlexity and start ripping funnels while split testing my own creation of the ripped funnels.

I have to make this work. I am going to make this work. There is no quitting.

I have $650 left over from the $1,000 deposit from May 20th - June 15th. I haven't really invested in anything except a little traffic ($175 worth) and tools like Voluum and Stack That Money.

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Ah, it took me way more than a month to crack this thing

I will an arm and a leg that you had progressed indeed. You learned a few things, right? That's your progress right there. This biz has a learning curve, like anything else, you gotta get through it and it takes time

Investing into a spytool is a wise decision for sure.

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Matuloo you read my mind. The first thing I did last night was purchase AdPlexity spy tool. I'm going to build off of what is working and split test from there instead of split testing at random.

Yes, I did learn quite a lot from the experience. It did cost me $300 but I'm grateful I have the ability to look past that and invest more time and money into this industry.

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