Newbie needs some advice (8)
Hi all STM members!
I followed Amy's wonderful step-by-step tutorials for newbies on running
So I tested dozens of Video and Gaming offers (mainly SOI and DOI, few pin submits) in following geos: Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Qatar, even tried run a bit more expensive traffic to 2 offers for South Africa. Some offers were selected by me, some were recommended by my AM in Mobidea, all with <$1.5 payouts.
Generally I was bidding in a range of $1.17-2.5.
But unfortunately my results weren't good: I got only 1 conversion out of whole load of traffic. I stopped every campaign after their spent reached 5x-10x of offer's payout (that's a rule of thumb if I got it right?). The campaign with 1 conversion was allowed to run until it reached 15x payout spend, and I stopped it as well since there were no more conversions.
So I couldn't even get to the point where I could start learning campaign optimizations, as of all campaigns were at -100% ROI :-(
My questions after getting my hands dirty in AM field are:
1) should I still keep testing these kinds of offers?
2) should I try another vertical or traffic source?
3) should I stick to one geo or keep trying multiple?
Would appreciate any advice on how to proceed, what should I change and pay more attention to.
P.S. I am from Ukraine, and we have an Aff Network here with e-commerce offers, and these offers have XML Feeds of their e-commerce products with aff links already included. I was wondering how it would be possible to take advantage of that? Like applying coding skills to create an affiliate's storefront and promote the products using Facebook & Google product feeds, GDN, etc. Would appreciate to hear some thoughts on this as well.
P.P.S. English is not my native language, so please don't blame me for grammar mistakes if there are any :-D
BR
Eugene
Hello Eugene,
first of all, your English is awesome!
In case you didn't read it yet, please take a look at one of my articles, it talks about situations like the one you are in right now : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Read-This-Now
Let me know if it helped you a bit 
Feed like the one you described, are usually used to build sites from, so like "whitelabel" shops. I've done a few sites like this myself, but the goal was to get SE traffic to them, not to buy it - the reason were generally lower margins.
Hello matuloo,
Thanks a lot for your response. Will make sure to read your post and adjust accordingly.
I got a question though: should I still continue working with direct-linking offers to save budgets and time on learning how to get campaign to green (i.e. optimization)? or is it worth to put additional efforts into using banners and creating pre-sale LPs?
Speaking of feeds, I hesitate a bit here: I've got good coding skills to automate generation of Facebook/Google Search/GDN campaigns (1 ad group - 1 single product), which would result in tens of thousands of ads on very low bids (like 0.05-0.1 cents per click in UA). But on the other side there's no way to quick-test this approach: it requires a lot of time to create (having a full time job). So not sure if it's worth to put a lot of time and effort just to see if it works.
BR
Eugene
Originally Posted by sedan7668687
Not sure how the system you mentioned would work (Fb/google) but it sounds like you wouldn't really be able to do any optimization with it - you'd receive clicks from all over the place in low quantities, I assume it would take weeks or more to actually see what converts and what doesn't ... that would be a time consuming operation indeed. Then again, if the setup is good and the traffic is cheap ...
Things become more clear, thanks for your input, appreciate it :-)
Fully agreed regarding the system, doesn't sound like a very good idea at the moment due to time for implementation and other cons.
Ok, so with the LPs, which verticals would you recommend as "newbie-friendly"? I'm aware of sweeps, dating/adult, software offers, etc. But I'm totally not sure how to pick the one that fits best as a newbie's starting point.
Thanks in advance
Eugene
Originally Posted by sedan7668687
In case you decide to take the adult route, here is a guide to follow : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...here-you-start!
Sorry for pointing you to other articles, but all the info is there so it would be pointless to write it again here
Sorry to hear that you're not finding success with direct-linking!
The trick with this method is to test many offers. I know you've tested dozens - perhaps just a streak of bad luck. But if you've been testing tier3/4 geos and sticking to the 5x payout rule, then testing lots of offers shouldn't break the bank.
Also be aware that there are more and more people going through this same tutorial and following it to the "T". When you have everybody testing the same offers on the same aff network and traffic network using the same bid, the method will lose effectiveness. That's unavoidable - my goal was to make a very easy tutorial to get people to take action. Now that you have some experience, expand into other aff networks and traffic networks. Kimia for example has very good carrier billing offers.
For 1/2-click video and gaming subscription offers, direct-linking will often work better than landers. Landers are a double-edged sword - it introduces an additional step for the visitor to have to go through. Ideally, if the lander can presell adequately, it will offset the "damage" of this extra step and more. But for really simple conversion flow (1/2-click carrier billing) and offers that have attractive pages (e.g. good graphics that make the visitors want to play the games / watch the vids), then there's not really a big need for pre-selling, thus it would be difficult to find landers that will at least off set the damage of introducing the extra action step.
There are other offer types you can test if you want to experiment with landing pages. Just subscribe to Adplexity to see what types of offers people are using landers for. Sweeps, AV, gambling, biz op, and some apps - are typically verticals where using good landers can help a lot.
I'm getting around to writing more lessons - to include using landers, and also an intro on running mobile display camps. Just have to get some backlog cleared before I get around to doing that. In the meantime, read some follow-alongs and you'll get plenty of tips on how to use landers.
And of course, feel free to update this thread with any questions! We'll be here to answer them.
Amy
Take some of your recommended offers and then plug the affiliate link into Adplexity to see what type of landing pages people are running in front of it (search by advertiser and select all of the above for the "search in" box). Adplexity will also give you an idea of which traffic networks people are running the offer on, as well as some other useful info (devices, placements). Just be sure you are starting with a good offer. If your AM recommends it, and you see it running lots of volume on Adplexity, that is a good sign. Some networks also give you a list of the top offers. You can go off that too.
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