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If there is one thing I can do.. (35)

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If there is one thing I can do to not lose rookie money on my first pop campaign, what would it be?

Mention one thing you can share, please.

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I will start :

Don't use automatic bidding

Who's next?

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Make sure your campaign links are working correctly and double check your budgets/bids.

Campaigns that turn profitable right off the bat are very rare. Pops are competitive, so expect to be losing money(buying data) before you go green.

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Buy information before you run campaigns. AdPlexity for pops gives you way more value than you gather through buying traffic for that amount.

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If you are going to use ripped landers double check variables like device model, brands, dates (not having double dates).

Also check the flow from start to finish if there are any issues with tracking and offer link. When possible a test conversion will remove doubts if the everything is setup correctly or not.

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@platinum- By that do you mean edit the device model, brands, dates (not having double dates) on the lander itself?

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I have read about affiliates reverse engineering adplexity to find winning offers, landers, and more. Any strategies that you apply when spying that you can share?

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Yes, since you already are using spy tools and ripping landers you should be sure you've cleaned everything before sending traffic to those landers. Here's a guide from Amy on How to Fix Up Ripped Landers

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In particular I found that I mess up the offer URLs. Say I plan on launching 20-30 campaigns today, I'd obviously want to do it ASAP though I've had quite a few cases where I've messed up the tokens. Same goes for postbacks if you paste them in manually instead of using a global one. The safest bet here would be to test your final campaign URLs before launching and seeing if everything goes through correctly and looks ok.

Another one would be picking the right country for any given campaign, though I guess this depends mostly on the tracker you use.

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Right, you're the media buyer, you gotta control your campaigns. Algos of traffic networks are there to make money for them, not for you

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Suggestions Noted. Would using the Voluum global post back link work in general for any affiliate network?

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What should be done when traffic source makes you choose a bid and then uses smart cpm system? Should traffic be ONLY coming for the bid placed or allowing traffic networks to play with bid okay sometimes?

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Make sure the ad and the angle matches the landing page.

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Ill provide an example. Am I on the right track?

Offer: AV app install

My lander: Either promoting benefits or scary you have a virus

Angle: What they could gain or what you could lose if you dont etc

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There's this guide here by Amy: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Ripped-Landers

Of course, no guide beats learning and understanding completely what scripts do and how they affect the whole funnel, not just the landing page. Some technical/coding skills are very useful, maybe even required so my suggestion is to learn about it as you go and not neglect this part.

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SMART CPM only moves the bid lower, not higher. So you set the max and they charge you a bit more than your closest competitor (below you) is bidding. This system is way better than flat CPM, use it whenever you can.

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My feedback for newbs...

You will lose some money along the way from mistakes and learning, there's no way to avoid that.

To add to the tips given above that is often overlooked...

ALWAYS set your initial campaign budget really really low.. to like $10-20 low.. that way if for some reason something isn't setup correctly, you will quickly see that when you go in to review things and will not have lost a ton of money.

While you're a beginner, ALWAYS set your campaign to day part for only the best hours in your geo.. from around 6pm to midnight. That will help your budget go further and give you better data for your adspend.

Lastly, don't worry about losing money. You will lose money 90% of the time in this business and in your campaigns.. its about minimizing your losses by using a simple but fixed process and to sustain you until you hit the 10% of campaigns that are big winners.


Best of Luck,
Andrew

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Thanks for the share. From that post - answered a few questions.

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...eaky-redirects

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post292411

What are your thoughts on outsourcing all technical stuff? Should hiring a Freelancer or a committed VA be something to consider at this stage to handle all landing page work?

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Making sure I understood:

1. If there is SMART CPM available, choose it.
2. If I am targeting #1, I should make a high bid (example: $15 cpm), to pay a bit more than the top guy. Hope that I will end up paying is something like $4.5 cpm (Using this example for the sake of using a number).
3. If SMART CPM is not available, I always stick to my bid and create different campaigns for high bid/low bid.

Thanks

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Thanks Andrew. Will definitely keep the budgets fair. Geo day parting, makes a lot of sense.

Regarding, You will lose money 90% of the time in this business and in your campaigns.. its about minimizing your losses by using a simple but fixed process and to sustain you until you hit the 10% of campaigns that are big winners.

1. Do you still lose 90% of the time?
2. Does your statement refer to everybody or affiliates who run multiple traffics, verticals, etc?
3. Does your data from other campaigns in the same geos & verticals get reused?
4. Why were you losing a lot in the beginning? Was it the offers, networks, anything, or you?

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1. What I mean by this is your test campaigns will fail the majority of the time. As you get experienced that ratio will improve but still, the majority of the time you will lose money from testing campaigns. Doesn't mean you have to lose a ton of money.
2. Everyone, everything, every traffic type, every part of every thing you ever do. Most of the time things fail, and its from those failures you learn how to navigate and improve to eventually win.
3. Yes
4. Me.. it's always me. And You will experience the same. You lose when you don't know what you're doing. Once you know what you'e doing you lose less often and find solid winners more often.

At some point, you will be better off by not asking these kinds of questions and just taking action. Be logical with your approach and be smart with your money.



Andrew

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Outsourcing is generally good but if it's just the beginning of your business and have little to no idea about the topic you want to outsource, I would learn about it first. You should know enough about the thing you want to outsource to be able to judge if the person you outsourced to is any good at it or not.

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Making this topic. Being scared of loosing money is number one fail at affiliate marketing.

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Yup all correct.

One small warning thou : when bidding really high in order to get the top spot and counting on the smart cpm to actually push the real price way lower ... keep in mind, someone else might get the same idea and you will end up bidding against each other and really paying that mega bid Make sure to watch your campaigns as much as possible and when you notice that the bid started to rise quickly, act accordingly (lower or pause).

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Lots of really solid advice here for beginners!

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Thanks for the solid advice. Starting a follow along soon.

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Thanks. Agree with you. Solo until stable.

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Noted. This sounds like a mistake I would have made.

Hypothetically speaking, I end up in that position and my campaign is super profitable & stable.. What should be my response to a competitor?

Should I keep my ground and keep the bid up high hoping they back down, while paying a high cpm or pause regardless and see competitor behavior?

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This is a tough call, you can do both actually. The truth is, the competitor is most likely trying to scare you away, they don't want to pay that high CPM either. If you can afford it and the ROI is really that good, hold it. If you feel uncomfortable by doing so, pause.

You can also try one trick, bid a bit lower, so you are under the competitors bid now, which will raise their bid again...

Another tactic is to pause, then restart again, then pause and restart again ... the competitors traffic prices will be jumping up and down, which might scare them off again as nobody likes such erratic behavior.

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Thanks Matuloo

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Choose your battle wisely. You can be drawing dead by choosing the wrong GEO, vertical or traffic source.

Spend some time doing proper research to figure out what GEO / Vertical / Traffic source combination is currently working.

Best source is your AM, Adplexity, live spying and other mobile pop affiliates.

--> Master reverse engineering

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Thanks for the heads up. I believe I have figured out what I am going after. Starting a follow along shortly.

I'd like to ask about Adplexity. Any specific filter or type of searches you like to run to find data when spying?

I only search by keyword.

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Guys, I have started a follow along as well. Click here.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I will provide update on my follow along if I see this situation.

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Not be scared of losing money was the biggest eye-opener, if you can call it that, for me. One of the things that helped me getting past that was to start a company, and pay myself a salary. The money spent on traffic, tools or whatever is the companies money.

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