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Newbie wants to master mobile (45)

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Okay, time to learn more by using a follow along.

First a little introduction:
I am not smoking-thomas, actually I am his lovely lovely nice wife. But we use one account.
Just 2 weeks ago my job ended (due to economical reasons) so time to start something new

Would be great if I can manage a business from home, combining it with raising our 2 sons, thats my main goal.


So back on topic.

I read the mobile cookbook: the appetiser. Applied to F5 Media and Go2Mobi and tried a few campaigns. So far no conversions . Going to set up a new campaign today, hope someone can follow it and give good advice


Question: If I have clicks but no conversions, that means technically everything is allright and it's "just" a matter of creating better banners?

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Hi Thomas' Wife.

It's not as simple as just that I'm afraid.

Where are you seeing the clicks? On Go2mobi (in which case they would be banner clicks)? Or on F5 (in which case they would be clicks to the offer)?

Assuming you're direct-linking - i.e. not using a landing/bridge page - the 2 types of clicks should be around equal, with the difference being what's known as "clickloss".

If the 2 numbers look about the same, then it means the visitors are ending up at the offer page successfully.

Next thing to check would be whether there are conversions recorded at F5. If not, then it means no conversions have been made.

If you're seeing conversions in F5 stats, but not in tracker stats or G2M stats, that means conversion postback hasn't been set up properly.

(Are you using a tracker?)

So - that's it for the technical side of things. As for the sales and marketing side: No conversions can mean your banners aren't "good enough" like you've mentioned. But it could also be because the offer itself just doesn't convert well. And let's not forget about the most important part of the equation: The audience. Both your banner angle and the nature of the offer (as well as how the offer is presented on the offer page) need to be a good fit for the audience you're targeting, in order for conversions to happen.

The best way to get helpful feedback from the community, would be for you to show what your banners look like, what the offer is, your G2M campaign settings (bid etc.), and what your campaign stats look like. Of course you're not obligated to reveal all, but the more you do reveal, the more specific feedback can be.

Also - if you're not sure about your conversion postback setup, let me know. We can verify that together.

Looking forward to updates!



Amy

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Thanks for the quick and helpful reply.

Looked into the clicks, there is indeed a difference between go2mobi and F5.
25.11 510 vs 407
26.11 205 vs 31
27.11 0 vs 1
No conversions in F5

direct linking yes!

A little difference can be because the timezone, F5 is system timezone and Go2Mobi UTC, but it can't explain it all right?

No tracker is used other than Go2Mobi.
So conclusion is: technically it looks right, although there is a lot of click loss (too much I think, like 20%)

(and sorry for dumb questions, I am really a newbie, coming from working at Human Resources )

So, I am now creating a new campaign and will share it here, including banners etc. It's time to get some succes

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I'm assuming the "31" is missing a third digit?

20% clickloss is not great, but still normal.


That means no conversions have been made - yet.


No worries - if you knew everything you wouldn't be here, and neither would I. My job is to answer newbie questions!


Sounds good looking forward!



Amy

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no there is no third digit missing unfortunately

again thanks for answering!

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205 vs. 31 clicks?? Are you sure? Doesn't look right.

You may want to compare your clicks again - between the aff network and G2M. If you continue to see such massive differences we'll need to look into the cause.


Are you using a VPN when browsing to the aff link?

If you're not, the aff network will often redirect you to another offer - because the offer you're running does not accept traffic from the geo you're located at.


Those banners are good for a first attempt, but you'll need to test more angles.

I don't have experience promoting sweeps offers on display traffic, but have run some sweeps offers on pop. The best-converting landers seem to be the spinning wheel type landers and the questionnaire-type landers. Do you have a subscription to Adplexity? If not, let me know, and I'll show you some screenshots.

My suggestion would be to try to extend the angles used in those landers, to banners.

You'll find examples of spinning wheel banners in this thread:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...on-this-Banner!

As for questionnaire banners - I found a couple on adplexity:





So I would start with these, and try to come up with additional angles. We have an entire forum section on angles:

http://stmforum.com/forum/forumdispl...can-post-here)


Have fun!



Amy

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Another great attempt!

You could certainly test those out on the battle field.

However - I don't see the "questionnaire" type working very well for 320x50 banners - they're just too small. Perhaps try splitting the words into 2 frames. That way there's not a bunch of small text squeezed into one frame.

Also, by having multiple frames, the animation will attract more attention as well.

It would be worth it to test 300x250 banners for this reason - the extra real-estate will allow you to be more creative.


Also: You may want to experiment with landing pages. I don't know if you have experience with pop traffic. A quick way of finding a good landing page, is to rip a whole bunch from adplexity, fix them up so they'd display and function properly, and test them on pop traffic to find a winner. When fixing them up, make sure the misleading text is changed (e.g. from "you've won" to "you have a chance to win" etc.), and that all logos are taken out. This is because mobile display has a lot stricter rules regarding banners and landers.

Then, you could just make your banners look like your winning lander, so that the visitor will experience a continuity going from banner > lander. If you want to be fickle, you could further adapt your banners and lander to look like the offer page, e.g. by using the same background color, font, or even images.

Yet another tip: There are sweeps offers that have landing pages BUILT INTO the offers! Affiliate managers call them "pre-landers" - so just ask your AM for offers that have pre-landers built-in and they'll recommend you some. That way you won't need to mess around with landing pages yourself. You'd just need to make some banners that look like the pre-lander.

If you DO test offers with built-in pre-landers: In addition to trying relevant banners you've made yourself, also throw in some "generic" banners. I talked about those in this thread:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...isplay-Traffic

Basically, generic banners do zero preselling. All they do is entice the visitors to click on them, thinking they're part of the site/app the ad appears in. They can work wonders when coupled with offers that can work without preselling - for example offers that come with their own pre-landers. And of course you could also test them for the situation above, where you're using your own lander, so you'd have generic banner > lander > offer.

Here's another idea: There are a LOT of quiz apps, the sole purpose of which is ask questions. If you download a bunch to see what they look like (or even just look for images online without having to download them), and imitate the layouts on your banners, you may entice visitors to want to answer the "question". Of course, when the visitor clicks through to your landing page, they should see the same question and layout.

Here are lots of screenshots for various quiz apps:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=quiz+...UIBigB#imgrc=_

They should give you lots of inspiration!

That should keep you busy for a while! And don't be afraid to come up with your own angles and ideas - you never know if an idea would work until you test it! It takes a lot of trial and error to find the right angle, but this is the type of exercise that will make you a good marketer.

I've said a lot of things, and not everything may be clear. Please do ask lots of questions as they arise. The more questions you ask, the faster I can clear things up.



Amy

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Thanks!!! This is really helpful!

I had 4 conversions on one of the running campaigns. Nowhere near a good ROI, but it's a start! This is motivating!

Will be looking into other size banners and how to make the split screen banners.

(sometimes I will be a bit late with responding, just sorting out some things at home which takes time)

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Okay, I just made a campaign in Go2Mobi with the banners posted before.
I just want to give it a shot. Will look further into split screen banners tonight.

Choose Smaato as exchange.
No carriers/devices specified.

Now fingers crossed

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WOW congratulations!

That adrenaline rush that comes with that first conversion - you'll always remember.

What's your ROI like? How many banners? 1 offer? What's your targeting like? What are you bidding? Which geo?

Don't worry about responding late. We're here whenever you need us. It's not easy being a newbie - every step can seem like a big challenge when being done for the first time.

Animated banners are actually quite easy to make - I talk about it in my 30-minute photoshop vid:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...mplete-Newbies


Is this a different camp from the one where you made the 4 conversions? Same offer or different offer?

Since you're getting conversions on the other one, there may be potential to try to improve that one instead of starting another one!

Please provide details - as many as you can give. Otherwise, the help you'll get will be very limited.

Looking good so far - eager to see more details!



Amy

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Okay...so I made 1 conversion....Too low to continu but it's a sign I'm on the right track.

Now I'm gonna rethink: continu this campaign with new banners or trying a new campaign (or both)

stats after changing banner:

CTR: 0,56%
Clicks: 268
Conv: 1
Costs: $54

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Hi! Sorry for the delay in replying - just got back from AWA and caught up on sleep.

Ouch! So you've sustained some pretty major losses.

You can't really cut banners based on 0 or 1 conversions - that's not a large enough difference.

However, I've noticed that 3 of the banners that have converted, have "PRIMARK" as text that really stands out. There's not a lot of data yet, but seeing how 4 of 8 banners had "PRIMARK" in a big font, and 3 of them converted, it may mean that visitors are drawn to that brand.

Your banners are still a bit too complicated, i.e. look "busy". I wonder if something really simple would work better....for example have dotted lines as a border (to make your banner look like a coupon/voucher) and text that says "€2000 Primark Giftcard", perhaps with the dotted lines in a "moving" pattern to attract attention. (Example: https://bjango.com/images/articles/i...low/dashes.gif)

Anyway - the banner advice above is for future reference. I would not suggest continuing with this offer. The ROI is too dreadful.

But let's try to learn as much as we could from the stats before moving on - after all, you've spent money collecting these stats!

Please drill down to the following and see where all the conversions were made:
-OSs
-Mobile Carriers
-Placements

And really, I've given you the best advice I could in a previous post above:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post296102

The major pieces of advice I gave in that post were:

1)Experiment with landing pages - sweeps offers usually need them to convert (unless the offer comes with a pre-lander built-in).

2)Test offers on pop traffic first to find a really promising offer and lander, and THEN test that on banner traffic and just test banners.

That way you can potentially save a lot of money.

I hope you're not giving up just yet! It's common for the first few camps to be a complete flop. That's how we all learn. Getting over the fear of losing money is not easy, so you've made a lot of progress by getting over that fear. And I assure you that you usually don't need to spend $300 just to test out a single offer. Looking forward to seeing you tackle something else real soon!



Amy

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been away myself for a few days. youngest kid was ill and we had some bad nights past weeks..

But...back on track.

working on some banners with your advice, which is really great!, and will come back with an update soon!

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okay...what is POP traffic, how do I test there?

I've made a plan. I am going to run 2 campaigns on Go2Mobi, 4 banners each.
Both are sweepstakes in the Netherlands. One is from F5 and one is from Adsimilis.

Banners will be 300*250, that way a questionnaire will be readable.

Thanks for the good analysing of the banners, will definitely put the logo in it and also work with dashes. It really makes it more attractive.

About the lander: the offers have a pre-lander as far as I can see, so a lander is not really necessary I think. I think it works best for me to find a working campaign and if it works try to make it better with a lander. Especially since I can't build a lander right now, have to learn that skill

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Ok. So the first one is " win a iPhone" the lander is saying: how do you want to receive your iPhone, post or pick-up. So if I make a questionnaire stating that you can win by answering the question, that sounds trustworthy.

Now back on making landers

Oh and sorry if it looks like I'm not doing anything with the feedback, I am! But it is really all new to me, so it takes some time to find out what everything means and than learn how to work with it (sometimes I think I'm trying the impossible).

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Pop traffic is popunder/popup/domain redirect traffic. You know how when you're on a torrent site and click around, you'll see a full-page advertisement pop up over the original website? That's a pop ad.

Some of the most popular sources are popads, zeropark, propellerads. They should be sufficient for testing purposes. (Disclaimer: STM does not endorse the use of any traffic network. Please buy traffic at your own discretion.)

There are LOTS of follow-alongs done on pop traffic. If you read a couple you'll get a good idea on how they work. You can find some here:

http://stmforum.com/forum/forumdispl...long-Campaigns

And of course if you document your pop camp in this follow-along I'll provide guidance the best I could as well.


Sounds like a plan! Are the 2 offers different types? Or are they both "win an iphone" offers? If they're the same type and can use the same banners, then there's no point in putting them in different camps - just rotate them in the same camp so you can compare performance and cut the inferior one.


Ah OK I agree! In that case not having a lander may actually work.


For sure! Making the banner > [optional lander] > offer funnel consistent is one of the keys to effecting a good CR.



Amy

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one is win an iPhone and one is win a shopping voucher. so not the same, but both the same categories.

Finding the

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So that was an old reply still under the button..

The shopping voucher didn't work out, the links were to total different shops the voucher was saying, so I didn't trust it enough.

The iPhone campaign was rejected, but I looked into it and noticed it was on some exchanges. so I choose rubicon and am now running the campaign.

But...with Go2Mobi it costs me $10 just in the first half hour!? is there a way to slow it down.

Also, been working on my photoshop-skills, thanks for the tutorial Vortex!

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Ah found out, the problem is probably rubicon. Paused the campaign after spending $40 in one afternoon.

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Elaborate please? Which voucher? And which links leading to which shops?


Again - some details would be nice! Did you get rejected by the mDSP you were running with (e.g. Go2mobi) or the various mobile exchanges (like smaato/mopub)?

And were you given a reason? Was is the offer that got the camp rejected, or the creatives (banners and landers)?


G2M doesn't have a throttle option, so technically there's no way to spread out your traffic throughout the day.

What you can do instead to curb your spend, is one or more of the following:

-Set a limit spend on placements.

-Place a lower bid to "win" less of the traffic.

-Set up rules in your G2M camp settings to place spend limitations on OSs/Exchanges/etc.

-Implement dayparting to target what typically are the better-converting hours (after work and before going to bed - for the local people; if that's not enough traffic, include the daytime work hours as well).


Glad you find it useful!


More details please? What do you think the problem is?

Also - have you gotten your first conversion yet? I want to make sure your tracking set up is correct.

When you navigate to your aff link using a VPN set to the target geo, are you seeing the right offer(s)?




Amy

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a shopping voucher for H&M and Primark, but the links lead to Aldi and another supermarket.


The offer was partially rejected. The banners were rejected by some exchanges, that's why I tried Rubicon, only to read later that rubicon was mostly US so that's why there were no conversions. Tried the link on my cellphone (it was NL, so I live in the right area) and it was working fine.

Thanks for the tips on Go2Mobi, will try that for the next campaign.

At the moment only trying campaigns in NL, that makes it easier for me and since all the stuff is pretty above-my-head right now I think is the best I can do.

And decided I need to spend more time reading, expanding my knowledge about mobile/affiliate (which is still very little).

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Were you using a VPN set to the target geo when navigating to the aff links?

Would be really bad if the links were incorrect - you really should alert your AM to this!


Ah OK - yes individual mobile exchanges will each approve/reject camps/banners according to their own set of rules.

"that's why I tried Rubicon, only to read later that rubicon was mostly US so that's why there were no conversions." <--- This doesn't make much sense - if you're targeting NL, then no matter which mobile exchange you're targeting, they should only send you visitors from NL, no matter which country comprises most of their traffic.

Sometimes you'll get a bit of traffic from countries you're not targeting, but if the percentage is big, then you need to speak with the traffic source to see if they would reimburse you for that traffic.


Sounds good! But don't hesitate to write out details on how you're setting up your campaigns and running them, or ask lots of questions in this thread - we're here to help! You should see how long some of the posts in other members' follow-alongs are (and how much longer my responses are)! As a new person, every bit of decision-making can be a major challenge, so don't be afraid to ask lots of "newbie questions". We all got to start somewhere right?



Amy

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Very valuable observation indeed! But are you sure it wasn't because the "congratulations" banners got rejected by some of the mobile exchanges?


Yes! This should be the case.


What did you find out when you drilled down into countries for this mobile exchange? Was the traffic actually from the geo you were targeting?



Amy

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Yes the traffic is from the correct Geo! (did something good Yay! )

IIRC the reason of rejection was because of the iPhone-logo in it.

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Something just occurred to me: Are these banners animated?

If not, you should test by making the dotted frames move!



Amy

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Yes I definitely should!

Still finding out how though, but will make it a priority to learn that this week.

EDIT:
okay...watched a tutorial, made an animated gif, but can't save it because of some photoshop problem (it shuts down itself)

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First of all, real sorry to hear about your temporary setbacks!

Secondly - please feel free to post some stats from your 50 camps so we could do a post-mortem together - like in this one for example:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...mp-POST-MORTEM

Provide as much info as you can, and we'll see what we can learn from them. After all, you've paid your tuition on collecting the data.

The post-mortem thread linked to above, you can benefit too from reading - it's the same sort of situation (i.e. direct-linking and cut placements).

As for your current camp, could you please show some placement stats? Let's see what we're looking at here.

With direct-linking to offers, it will take testing tons of offers to find something profitable. Ideally, once you have some experience with direct-linking and analyzing stats, you should move into using landers. I'm writing that part of the newbie tutorial right now - should start coming out over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, if you read a few pop follow-alongs, there's ample information on how to rip and fix up landers and test them with offers.

Alternatively, consider leaving pop altogether, to pursue something with higher profits potential and longer-term viability, like FB or Search (Adwords etc.) I put my thoughts on the topic in this post:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post321311

It's always hard to break into a new field in the beginning. Think of it this way: Many people would spend $100k and 3-4 years on a university/college degree, to make $50k-$150k/year after graduation. Affiliate marketing has higher profits potential than most if not all jobs, why would you give up after spending just a few hundred of a few thousand? Of course there's never any guarantees of any return on your investment, but I'd say the longer you stick with it, the better your chances - as with almost anything else.

Ultimately it's your call of course, but know that for as long as you'd be willing to stick to this, we'll be here to help.




Amy

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Oh Amy! I'm very sorry, just reading your reaction today. Didn't get a mail that there was a reply so I thought nobody read my rant.

Definately gonna read the links you gave!
And I am also another newbie-thread where you are posting really great stuff and advice.

I think I know the basics, don't gonna make big money by direct linking so I am switching to banners. Have to do it someday so why not now.

Did some testing last week, without results, but my landers sucked. Just learning the basics for programming and getting better every week (I hope)

I am testing a campaign ATM, with landers.
made 2 landers with 3 different texts, so that makes 6 landers (a1,a2,a2,b1,b2,b3)
Game, in Iraq.

Will let you know the result.

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A lot of campaigns tested...a lot of it didn't work...(well, read that as nothing worked)

Currently running a campaign with Kimia.

Let's say it converts, how can I track which banner converted? How can I see that in Voluum? What do I add to the offer link to track that?

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This is specific to every traffic network, you need to setup the traffic sources properly. You don't need to submit any extra info to the offer url or send any parameter to the affiliate network. I assume that you have conversion tracking setup correctly, right? So when a conversion happens in Kimia, you see it in Voluum too? True?

What you need to do is to modify the traffic source settings in voluum - every source uses some tracking tokens, that you can utilize in order to get information from them - for example the banner ID. What traffic source do you want to set this up for?

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Thanks for the quick reply!

Kimia is the traffic source. These are the current settings:

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Ok, so you didn't configure anything there, ask them for a list of supported dynamic tokens.

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Ok. I will do that! Thanks!

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Oke, finally it looks like I have a working campaign.

Not profitable, but making conversions so I want to give it a good try.

Had 4 landers, 3 converted, one not. So now left with 3 landers.
But what would be better

make 3 campaigns in propeller ads (one for each lander) and test with a budget of $10 each
make 1 campaign testing all 3 landers and with a budget of $30

Split-testing a campaign seems like a good plan, but raising the budget so get more traffic too. What to choose?

Any insider tips?

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Hey!

If you have 3 landers on one GEO+Vertical I recommend to create 1 campaign and split-test all of them in one place.

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thanx! Doing that now so hoping it will convert well while I take a (hopefully) long sleep this night

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https://imgur.com/a/zqm0t

okay..should I ditch lander 6 or not?

the difference looks small by absolute numbers (4 versus 8 on the top lander) but 8 is twice as much.

(already ditched lander 1)

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Here's the process for cutting landers:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Banners-Part-1

I would suggest not to increase the bid yet - you're already getting conversions so that's enough for cutting landers down to the last lander.

Ideally, you should test more landers than 3. But let's see how well the winner from this batch can do first.

You can always test bids later. For now, if you're getting conversions and not in great loss, I'd say focus on testing landers and offers first.




Amy

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Thanks! Great advice (again )

Today the campaign only converted once

But it was banned on Propeller Ads (adult content) and I copied the campaign, but the copy isn't converting as well as the original unfortunately.
(Also tried PopAds and Exoclick but no/minimal conversions)

Maybe I have tried to much, should let the campaign simmer a little longer? I will definitely read the thread you linked to (didn't find it myself, but I was searching on optimizing/scaling, cutting would be better)

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There happened a lot after my last visit...I decided to not go further with AM. After a year I still didn't get it profitable. I guess it isn't my thing, my passion.
But...I found something that is! So now I am working hard on that I noticed a much happier me while working on my next project

I want to thank you all, but especially Vortex, for all the help. And I certainly learned a lot marketing-skills I can use in my next project.

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So sorry to hear you weren't able to get profitable! But you are right, AM isn't for everyone.

The learning curve is very steep. Sometimes it takes a person many months to learn how to make profits consistently. And if campaigns aren't your passion, it would be hard to keep plugging until you start seeing proof that it works.

I'm glad you've found your passion though! That's the most important thing - I wish you all the best with your new project! Thanks for giving AM a chance!



Amy

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Thank you for your kind words!
Working on an app right now which I hope to finish this week.

(if you are interested or want to follow us, this is our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/toolkidapps/, we are making apps for children like our own son. We made a few we use at home and are going to share them with the rest of the world )

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That looks like a really useful app! I can completely understand why you would ditch pop camps for this. This app can change lives for the better by keeping kids safe. Kudos on that - and best of luck!



Amy

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Speaking of keeping safe.

Searched for 30 minutes in the woods last wednesday...when my oldest (4yo) was missing..A police helicopter was on it's way already, because it was going to be dark soon..but we found him in a nearby garden. (needless to say, that were the longest 30 minutes of my life!).

But yes those apps can help.
Our next one is a youtube one where you can set a timer
And thanks to STM I know how to promote it

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OMG - I'm so glad he's OK!!

That's like every parent's worst nightmare. I'm shuddering at the thought right now (I have an 11 year old).

On the bright side - it sounds like you're well on your way to developing an entire suite of tools!

I've liked your page already - so will get to see how far you take this - have fun!



Amy

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