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The Affiliate Odyssey – An Ordinary Family Man’s Quest for Success (22)

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Hello all you fine Stackers!

Boring Background Part:skip if you don’t care

My name is Eric and welcome to my Mobile CookBook follow-along. Here you will find a run of the mill type journey, which is good in my opinion. Relatable to the layman. I will try to be as transparent as possible to give other noobs a realistic picture. Because, let’s be honest, there is a lot of big money talk, which may or may not be true, but is hard for the every day person to believe.
I’m a pretty average guy except I am extremely driven to personal success and work independence. Not necessarily massive wealth, but I will gladly take that along the way. Success is why most of us are here, right? So hopefully you can relate. I'm 29, have a wife and newborn girl and a full time boring, but easy office job. Luckily I am able to work at AM while at this job, even 2-4 hours a day! Otherwise I’d do this in the evenings/weekends, but since I have that double-dip time I try to spend off hours with my family (balance, ya hear?). I am committed to being successful at this to an addicted level. So I hope you all enjoy watching it happen!
All of your help along the way is much appreciated. I hope to reciprocate it soon enough. So many thanks are already to be had to the STM community. H/T @Caurmen @zeno @matuloo @dr_ngo @Mr Green @Malan D @Vortex and many others


Prologue
The Journey So Far:
I've already spent the first month of my journey just studying STM and AM, setting up my server, getting into affiliate networks, and studying more. To give hope to others. I have used computer all my millennial life, but I couldn't make a banner in photoshop if a deranged graphics artist put a gun to my head and yelled, "draw". But several youtube videos and one week later, i've got these passable banners below. Landing page coding is going at the same pace, thanks to Caurmen. So no excuses, teach yourself something new.

Budget:
I already have some entrepreneurial experience with Amazon FBA, so this is 100% a business to me, not a side hustle. I have ~$400 to start with after server/STM/other expenses(=~$300). After I sell out of my current FBA inventory in the next month or so I’ll have 5k to work with. Hoping it will only take ~1k to get a first profitable campaign and use the rest to scale. I probably won’t take anything out of my business account (towards student debt etc.) until I am matching my current job’s salary, which is meager.

Hosting: A VPS with HostDime - A veteran AM not on STM suggested this one to me as his favorite of all he's used in 10+ years. 48$/mo with coupon, fully managed. So far great customer service to this noob. Webhosting is way above my head. I may use a CDN later also?

Traffic Source: Go2Mobi

Affiliate Networks: PeerFly, Adsimilis, Mobidea, Addiliate, ClickDealer, AffiliaXe, F5

Vertical/Offer/Geo: Beginning with Mobile PIN Submit – AntiVirus - Vietnam: from Adsimilis. $0.5 payout
It's hard to get noticed by networks as a noob. This was the first to give me the time of day and suggest an offer.

Tracking Software: None yet but in budget. Thinking of using Voluum (Open to suggestions)

SpyTool: None yet, not in budget yet, that shit is expensive. Thinking of using Adplexity (Open to suggestions)

Onward!
This post represents my first month or more in Affiliate Marketing. As of yesterday I launched my first campaign so this follow along is now ACTIVE. Next post will be about that Anti-Virus.

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CHAPTER 1
Affiliate Pandemic: The Vietnamese Anti-Virus

I waited to start my follow along until all was ready to go. Well here I am after a month+ of prep and I'm excited to start learning hands on.

While I was waiting for the campaign suggested by my affiliate manager to be approved I learned Gimp (photoshop later) and made a bunch of banners for 2 angles. The first angle is what i'm running right now. Trying to figure out how to possibly split test the angles with my affiliate manager.


I ran the offer for several hours and spent 10$, got 230 clicks but NO conversions. I am thinking my tracking pixels are not set up correctly between Go2Mobi and Adsimilis. I followed The Cookbook but possibly the link ends are different for Adsimilis than F5 which he used. So I paused the campaign last night and am waiting for my affiliate manager to take a look at it. Won't restart until that is resolved, hopefully today. Not sure what else to say about it at this point. Cheers!

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Update:

I have been tackling tracking for nearly two weeks with slow progress. I’m pretty sure I’ve got my links correct between my ad network, traffic source, and tracker (picked up Voluum this week). Here is a list of sources that helped me understand it best:

• I am a visual/hands on learner. There are VERY little youtube videos about tracking, but this one was really helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wDe7iwPfqs
• This CAKE page explaining the destination URL for an offer: https://support.getcake.com/support/...ke-unique-link
• This CAKE page explaining what the hell tokens are: https://support.getcake.com/support/...d-party-pixels
• A great Go2Mobi resource page: https://go2mobi.zendesk.com/hc/en-us...rsion-Tracking
• This Dr. Ngo page explaining Voluum tracking: http://charlesngo.com/voluum-campaign-setup/

While these resources helped a lot. I think I finally got tracking by rewatching over and over THIS AMAZING VIDEO GUIDE: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ll-Video-Guide thanks @zeno!

And reading (and re-reading) this AMAZING TRACKING GUIDE: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ight=appetizer thanks @caurmen!

Using these resources and getting to talk actually chat with someone to ask the questions got me a long way. I had a lot of questions just trying to understand hows and whys of tracking. I think I understand tracking now..mostly..? Who am I kidding, I just hope it works.

(HUGE thanks to Zac at Go2Mobi for his patience and availability!)

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Update: 100 Dollars for 1 Dollars

It's taken me a couple weeks to figure out tracking. I'm still working out the kinks but I think I mostly got it.

I have spent 100$ on this Anti-Virus campaign, I think it's time to retire it. It's far past what the cookbook suggest. I first launched the campaign with 2 angles with 8 banners each, direct linking. This produced 1 click sometime between 20-30 dollars. I thought i'd stick it out with this offer since reading an Ngo article about how he cycled through offers with no success until he decided to stick with one until he spent 1000$. Well I don't have that much, but i decided to give it a chance. I did 3 more angles (also using the other angles from previous post in a 5 angle split test), each with 3 banners. and I created a landing page (well two, but the only difference is the picture). and after a 100$ spend I only got one more conversion. This is telling me that the offer page just isn't appealing enough, or my angles really suck at convincing the leads to convert, which is entirely possible. So for that reason i'm showing all! Below! Tell me what you think while I choose another offer


What are your thoughts STMers? Are these banners/landers complete crap and scaring off leads? Is the offer a dud?

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Take a look at a spy tool to show how most people promote AV offers.

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Since last update I joined a mastermind, this has been a HUGE help on the learning curve.

I haven't updated in a bit on my follow-along because i've spent most AM energy in this small noob-centric mastermind. It's really nice to interact everyday with other people in the same boat as you, but I thought i'd update on STM as well.

Ran another Anti-Virus Campaign, this time armed with more knowledge. I ran banner --> lander --> offer. Several mainstream click bait banners (not able to make adult creatives as I do all my work at an office aka NSFW). Split tested 3 landers and 3 offers. The landers had at least 50% clickthrough rate which is great, but I got NO conversions... which is not great, and odd. The landers were fairly aggressive, I ripped from what had been running for a while according to adplexity. But I think my conversion problem came from the lead not being convinced of a potential virus. Usually people think they got a virus because they clicked on some porn and get sent to an aggressive flashing vibrating landing page warning, because duh that's were viruses are born... porn. My banners were more broad appeal clickbait like "Pokemon GO now available in VN!" and they get sent to a warning page that they have a virus. Unfortunately, like I said, I can't make adult banners.
*Oh, I should plug in here that i know that AV offers shouldn't be run on display, but rather on pops. My mastermind group already yelled at me for that. But I had funds in Go2Mobi so I decided to try a clickbait strategy anyway* Oh well, I tried something new and lost $25. Meh.

MOVING FORWARD QUESTION: The whole reason I'm running AV is because it was the first thing an affiliate manager suggested so I went with it. Since AV deals so much with NSFW content, would you all recommend I move to something like sweeps/lead gen or even something else on mobile display? I'd like to stick to something and learn it instead of flopping around because something didn't work the first time. Or should I take all my landers that have good CTR and buy some Pop traffic?

Thanks!

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Have you split tested offers?

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Yes, I had a flow in Voluum for 3 different landers to 3 different offers. All supposedly good from my affmgr.

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They're probably converting for others, why do you think that is? You're using the wrong landers.

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Bro have you tried a simple app install offer with a payout lesser than $0.50? You might gain more traction from that kind of offer (there's a reason why they priced it at that level). Keep up with the work thus far!

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Also, make sure there is traction between your banner and the LP, a pokemon go banner to an antivirus offer doesnt rhyme with eachother. Also, your demo for pokemon go is not the right demo for AV, since these are younger people. They are too tech savy

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Thanks for starting this follow-along! You've come a LONG way - amazing job so far! Lots of learning. Profits will come later.

You've gotten a lot of good advice already. Here's mine:

1)Using a CDN to serve landers has become a standard. Can do wonders for page load times which will in turn do wonders for lander CTR.

2)It's tricky trying to run antivirus on mDSPs in a fully-compliant way. Some antivirus apps also have privacy protection features - for those, the best angle I know is the "don't let your boy/girlfriend spy on your phone" angle. Try larger banner sizes like 300x250 and use an image showing one person sleeping and the other looking sneakily at a cell phone.

3)Alternatively you can run antivirus on pop. If you do, try to run offers that allow aggressive marketing and/or don't require lander approval. Everybody else will be running AV aggressively - so if you don't, you won't survive. Just be sure you don't run so aggressive that you go against traffic source TOS and get your account banned. And don't use those compliant ones you made for display traffic - rip some landers from adplexity (or from spying in the wild).


That first attempt was a good one! Your banners and landers looked good which is rare for a complete beginner. And yes - testing multiple offers and landers from the start will improve your chances of finding something good.

Eager to see what you'll be launching next!


Amy

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So i've switched to pop traffic and i'm glad I have. Much simpler for the learning process. And my AV landers that I ripped from Adplexity are having much better traction.

Now i've run a flow of 3 different landers with varying degrees of aggressiveness. And split test 3 offers. I've run 55$ of broad Pop traffic and brought in 11 conversions. $7.90 revenue.

QUESTION: Now i'm torn how to proceed. To burn through more money buying broad traffic as I have? Or start cutting? What to cut first? Landers and offers? or details, like placements, OS, categories, etc.?

Here are my landers. They are split fairly even, with the most aggressive getting the most conversions. But I dont feel I have enough to do anything here.


Here are my offers. I cut the one offer after no conversions and 20$ spend. The other I'm keeping an eye on, but there seems to be a clear winner.



Any advice you can give? Any more data you'd need to make decisions? The cost of data is going to get expensive if I keep running so broad.

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How much can you spend with your current targeting daily?

If you have a ton of traffic available you might be able to cut down to profit after drilling further into the data.

And start testing variations of your LP.

one of your offers is at -63. select it and do a drilldown report to see LP performance.

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Can you please drill down to Offer -> Lander -> OS and look to see if there's any green anywhere? If you'd provide some screenshots we'll take a look.

Also - you'll need to test more landers. 5-10+ would be nice.

Another thing that could make a HUGE difference to conversion rates with it comes to pop traffic, is your bid. Consider setting up 3 camps at staggered bids - low average high - to see which one does the highest ROI, and how close to green it is. If you're testing using only one bid, at least make sure it's above-average so that you're not getting junk traffic. You want decent traffic that will do your offers and landers justice, thereby giving them a fair chance to perform.


Amy

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I did raise my bid from .001 to .0025 in yesterday's 20$ run. These two reports are drilled down Offer-->Lander-->OS. There's no green there. But maybe some trends starting to show.

I'll start looking for more landers. 5-10+ seems like so many though. I'd have to spend hundreds$$$ to get enough conversions to see which outperforms the others in a 10 lander split test.

Offer 1: Landers --> OS


Offer 2: Landers --> OS

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Thanks for the quick reply and the detailed screenshots!

Offer 3 + Lander 1 + Android looks like it may have some potential.

But yup - I would definitely advise to test more landers and/or offers.

Have you ever tested 5-10+ landers at a time? I can assure you that it's NOT going to cost you hundreds of dollars to test. Try it and you'll see. Most often you'll see one lander or a couple leading the pack early on which will allow you to cut a lot of the other landers. If you have multiple landers going head-to-head (performing about the same) then you could just pick one and pause the others.

Same thing applies to mass-testing offers. People are fearful of testing a lot of offers at once, thinking it would take a big budget. It isn't nearly as scary as it sounds. Try it once and you'll see what I mean.



Amy

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Offer 3 lander 1 is already almost breakeven on android! You may be able to cut placements to profit on this one!

Of course, test more landers and offers too

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Hey, thanks for the thread. Pretty interesting to follow along

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Great thread mate! Check inbox.

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First off thanks for all the feedback and responses everyone!

Slowly but surely I have got this campaign to hover around breakeven. This past run in the lows 10-20% ROI! Even though i only made pennies. I threw my fists in the air like Rocky at the top of the steps in Philly.

MY QUESTION: Optimization Prioritization!

I poured through my Voluum data these past few weeks between running spurts of traffic. Each time looking to see what what wasn't working in relation to other data and trying to figure out what best to cut. I want to know how you go about cutting vs how I am. My approach with cutting became to cut the least broadly impacting aspect I can when it hits the point of no ROIturn (get it..? anyway...). AKA 1.5-2X the payout cost. And to start the process from smallest to largest.

I imagined it like trimming a large tree (something i had to do to help build a tree fort last week). If i cut a large branch from the trunk I loose a huge chunk of tree. But if I still want that thick branch for say.. climbing, but just want to clear the unwanted density I follow that branch out and trim dead leaves, then twigs, then small offshoots. To me those dead leaves and twigs are placements. It is the end funnel of traffic tree that leads back to your bank account roots. As far as I understand every other aspect of the campaign/traffic leads from the placement back through the network of branches to the offer.
A lead can get to a placement no matter what OS, device, carrier, etc. So cutting dead placements logically will have the least overall impact on the health of your tree, uh, i mean campaign. What next to cut is a bit more complicated because which aspect of the campaign that is a bigger "branch" to cut off is harder for me to tell, being very new to this game. So, from smallest trim to largest trim I came up with this order: placement, category, connection type (wifi/cable), browser, time targeting, device type, ISP/carrier. (i'm sure there are more you could fit in there)
The only one that seemed out of place was ISP/carrier. I first thought this would be a huge branch to trim because if i cut one, I essentially cut off everything down the line (device, browser, etc) for a whole population connecting to a placement through that carrier. But that bubbled up as one of the most unprofitable branches right away. I had like 20 conversions from ISP/Carrier X but had spent like $60 on traffic from it. Huge -ROI%. I can't decide if i cut it too early because I associated -ROI% with the isp/carrier having bad traffic, or if I didn't drill down to see where the loss was really coming from. Maybe a certain placement? But I was cutting those as well. All I know is my back and forth cutting placements with -roi and carriers with -roi has got me to breakeven, now i mostly have placements to cut because there are thousands of those leaves. Sorry for my mediocre analogy. I would LOVE your opinion on my optimizing strategy/order because I could have it all wrong, what is YOURS??


Here's my non-strict theoretical cutting order from least impactful to overall traffic to most impactful:
placement, category, connection type (wifi/cable), browser, time targeting, device type, ISP/carrier


What do you think? What's your strategy? Would love to hear!

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Very interesting analogy!

I can certainly see your logic. However, when it comes to optimization priority, the main consideration that immediately comes to mind is the amount of time you're having to spend on analyzing and cutting something, and whether or not the cutting will have the potential to increase ROI by a large enough amount to be worth the time and effort.

I'm always encouraging people to focus on testing landers and offers first, to find a decent lander and a great offer before cutting everything that's not profitable. Finding a good offer that converts twice as well as your current offer (for example) will require a lot less time and effort than cutting a bunch of placements to achieve the same increase in ROI. Of course there will always be exceptions, but in general this is true.

Another approach would be to identify the most profitable traffic segments (e.g. an OS that's performing particularly well, or is even green right off the bat) and to target just those to get green faster. To do that you need to make sure the traffic segments have enough traffic volume to be worth your time.

As for cutting priority: Remember that a lot of the variables do overlap, so that when you do cutting in one variable, another variable may see an increase in performance. For example when you cut placements, OSs/browsers/carriers will see better ROI. So what I would do is cut traffic segments that look hopeless (like you said) first, then see how much improvement the other segments will gain as a result, and go from there.

Again, instead of cutting the worst, you could just choose to target the best. Or, you can do both (i.e. keeping running the original camp and keep cutting the bad, while setting up new camps to targeting the best traffic segments). Just make sure that when you break out a target segment into a separate camp, that it has enough profits potential to be worth your time and effort in running it. You really won't want to have a bunch of baby camps making pennies and dimes tying up all your time - valuable time you could be spending on testing and scaling new stuff.



Amy

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