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Just started (with vortex step by step guide) and need help. (44)

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Hi seniors.

Was trying out a campaign to see how things work and as expected, it's in the red. But one thing i do not understand is the CTR. This is on mobile 3G. Here's the screenshot from mobidea and Voluum.

Both number of visits are not the same. CTR is 100% ?!? The rest are zeroes. Can anyone explain or analyze this kind of data? Possibility of bots running?

Mobidea


Voluum


Your help is very much appreciated. Still trying to make sense of everything at this moment.

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Hey there!

Are you running direct-linking? The number of clicks and visits is the same due to that, as you are probably running without the prelander.

Besides, you are not red, nor green yet, since the costs are not being tracked. This is happening with both platforms, so probably the issue is on the side of your traffic source. Are there costs already on the traffic source? If so, try to check all the settings again please. On the side of Mobidea while integrating the traffic source you'd need to set the estimated CPV..

Cheers!

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Hello baocoeny.

The numbers are your tracker, traffic source and affiliate network will NEVER match ... there is always some clickloss involved and there is basically nothing you can do about it. Just make sure your LPs (once you start using them) are running as fast as possible and that's about it.

I'm not sure how mobideas tracker is working - I'd say you can even use just that and skip Voluum, when working with their campaigns. Anyways, since you are not using an LP, they count every visit also as a click I guess, thats why the CTR is 100%.

Mobidea is very active on STM, so I'm sure they will stop by in this thread later today.

EDIT : hehe, they actually posted while I was typing this post

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On pop traffic, 3000+ impressions without a conversions is all too common. No need to be concerned yet. Keep an eye on your spend so that you know to stop running an offer when it's spending too much without converting (see lesson 7).

Matuloo and Mobidea have explained why the CTR is 100% - it's a result of direct-linking (without using landing pages).

One check you may want to do, is log into Mobidea to look at the stats, to make sure the impressions are actually reaching the offers you're promoting. If so, you're good.

Another thing to check, is whether or not there are conversions recorded on Mobidea. If you're seeing conversions recorded in Mobidea's stats, but not in Voluum, then you'd need to recheck your postback to make sure you've set it up correctly. (It may also be that there's a delay in conversions being posted back to Voluum - but if you still don't see the conversions in Voluum after a few hours, then there's probably something wrong with the way you've set up your postback.)

Have fun and good luck - feel free to ask further questions.



Amy

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Thank you all for replying. I guess now my next step is to set up landing pages and learn the steps. And recommendations? Can't find a good thread though.

I have also been reading about spy tools. Is that something I should look into, to see what is doing well now? Kinda lost once you done with the step by step guide.

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Hi @vortex, @matuloo.

Am I right to say that running mobile more successfully is to:
display ads >> landing page >> offer links >> sign up

I am also reading on banner designs. How do we go about uploading your banners in the ads?
Is there recommended VPNs? Tried tunnelbear and is slow. I feel I need to at least see the offer or landing page to get more information to market the product.

Feel so stagnant now because of the amount of knowledge and stuffs to read. Can't go on to further testing after vortex's step by step guide.

Your help is appreciated. Thank you.

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You can continue to direct-link and test offers as well, but yes, using landing pages should significantly improve your chances of finding profits.

You'll find lots of landers on Adplexity. Just download them and fix them up. These threads should help:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...e-STM-Discount

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Ripped-Landers


Are you wanting to continue running pop traffic, or try display traffic (i.e. banner traffic) instead?

Pop traffic does not involve banners, whereas display traffic does.

Your banners > landers > offers flow is correct for display traffic. If you sign up to a display traffic source like go2mobi.com, you'll be able to upload the banners when you're setting up campaigns.

As for VPNs - I've been using HideMyAss for years and it has an extensive list of geos available. Feel free to give it a try.

Yes there's a lot of information on this forum, but there are lots of guides and follow-alongs as well. If display is what you're wanting to try, here's a step-by-step:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...obile-Cookbook

I have plans to write additional lessons for my newbie tutorial, to include how to use landers, and also to describe how to set up camps on mobile display networks using banners. But don't wait around for those new lessons to come out before taking action. There's a ton of info on this forum. Just start taking action, then search for answers or ask questions here when you're stuck.



Amy

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Thanks again vortex!

So, when you mentioned pop traffic(i guess commonly called mobile here), this doesn't require us to design the ads banner (the very first thing end user sees)?
And display traffic (i would think commonly used is FaceBook?), we need to design banner and landing pages, and send them to offer page?

Thanks for the advice. Am always trying to move forward as much as I can, and cheapest way possible not to increase the cost of starting this new business.
Looking forward to your lesson still!


Regards,

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Pop traffic is when the visitor gets a full page of ad (i.e. either 1.what we call a landing page, which the visitor would then click through to get to the offer page, or 2.the offer page itself) that would pop out at them while they're surfing on a site. When you run pop traffic, you can either direct-link to the offer (i.e. show the offer page directly) or use a landing page (which will serve to pre-sell the visitor before they click through it to get to the offer page). No banners needed.

Display traffic is when you need to use banners. Again, you can either direct-link to the offer, or use a landing page.

Mobile is technically NOT a traffic type. It's a sort of targeting. Mobile traffic comprises of visitors that are either surfing the net or using apps on mobile devices. You can target desktop and/or mobile on pop networks, and you can also target desktop and/or mobile on display networks.

Some display networks have only mobile traffic - we call these mobile DSPs or mDSPs or mobile display networks. Go2mobi is a good example.

And yes, I suppose you could look at facebook at a source of display traffic, although it's commonly referred to as a social traffic source.

At the end of the day, names are just names. The important thing is knowing how to monetize each traffic type effectively. Pop traffic has gotten quite competitive in recent months. It's still the easiest way to get into affiliate marketing, but I would highly recommend moving onto other traffic types as soon as you have the basics down.

Do tell us more about the campaigns you've been launching - let's see what we're looking at and go from there.


Amy

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thanks again vortex.

while names are just names, because i just started, i needed to make sure i am on the same page as everyone, so i know what everyone is talking about.

I am not trying to set up the amazon s3 with caurmen's guide, but couldn't seem to get pass even trying to get amazon and namecheap linked properly.
basically trying to find the cheapest way to start hosting, have a domain name i own, and start tracking for pop traffic.
i tried running direct traffic, and there is no conversion at all, mainly i guess there wasn't a landing page. now that to get the landing page coming into the picture, i need amazon to host, get domain from namecheap, and connect them. now i'm just stuck at this phase. progress is slow because also i have limited time.

any guide/advice is much appreciated.

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Are you referring to this thread?

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Cost-Way-Ever!

Are you trying to follow the guide but experiencing issues? If so, do ask questions on that thread so you can get some help.



Amy

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Yes thats what I was referring to. Yup have also posted and currently waiting for reply.

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got over that AWS bit.

now the landing page. I was looking through your guide, and other guides (tried to search), but didn't find what I wanted.

thus far, have always been looking at how to create html online and downloading it. Is there such a resource? (those drag and drop? not sure if they exist in such manner).

so here is the break in between. your guide is more of like a direct link to offer page. in between the pop and offer page, there is a landing page. how do we create the tracking from here?

Thanks again vortex! you have been very helpful!

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Congrats on getting AWS to work!

As for your question on landers....

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Q: Do I need to know coding to make landers?

You can survive by ripping and modding. In fact, it’s recommended that you start by using ripped landers at least to establish a benchmark, because the popular ones are tried and tested, vs. your own custom-made landers which are unproven. A very goo

You don’t need to know a lot of coding in order to fix up ripped landers (i.e. to correct the errors introduced during the ripping). Take a couple of online courses in html, css, js and jquery and get some practice fixing up a few landers and you should be good to go.

Some online coding tutorials:
https://www.codecademy.com/
https://www.w3schools.com/

If you want a custom lander created for you, here’s a service vortex has used:
http://www.bannerslanders.com (Disclaimer: AMC does not endorse any products/services, so please use at your own discretion.)

Once you’re making money, you can consider outsourcing lander ripping/modding/creation.

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It's really easy.

1)In Voluum, click on the little gear icon at the top (the settings icon) > Setup tab > copy the "Click URL". On your lander replace all outgoing links with this click url.

2)In Voluum, go to Flows > Landers, click on "+New Lander". Give it a name, paste in the lander url, click "Save". If the lander detects visitor information and displays it on the lander, such as country, device brand/model, carrier - etc. etc. - then you'll need to append those variables to the end of the lander url. If you need more guidance on this, post your lander code here as an example and I'll tell you exactly which variables to add to the end of your lander url in Voluum settings.

3)Then, when you're creating the campaign in Voluum, simply select the lander in the "Lander" section.

I have plans to write more lessons very very soon - but please don't wait around for that. Just update this thread to ask further questions as they arise.



Amy

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I predict a long pause before i continue to update on my progress. haha.

currently looking at mobidea and kimia, and using voluum. will post the stats and have you review them. thanks a lot!
i guess the 2nd point is learn-on-the-go kind of thing. will take note of that.

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LOL!

Exactly! The step-by-step for setting up your first direct-link campaign is only a spring board. To really succeed at this game, you need to be fearless in testing and trying different things. We'll figure things out together.



Amy

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So i have my landing page ready, banners ready.

banners --> landing page (this page replacing all outgoing links by voluum link in point 1) --> offer page .

so where does the affiliate link go? i can't see the flow here. I have the impression that out going links from my lander page goes to offer page by the affiliate link?
am i missing something here?

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Can you please take a look at this thread : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ding-Page-Link ? We are solving pretty much the same problem there

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Hi @matuloo, thank you for reading. saw the thread. it brings us back to vortex's step by step with Voluum.

Hi vortex, so here's where i am now, and links don't work.

1) copied and paste all out-going links with Voluum's link, that looks like this. http://blahblah.com/click (not sure if i can reveal this cos anyone who clicks this from here will be a counter i guess?)

2) created new lander



3) created new offer (proceeded to campaign in later stage but need to create an offer) with link given by kimia



4) created new campaign,



5) got a URL from this new campaign which didn't seem to work. ( http://blahblah.com/e889f99c-14ec-41ed-aea3-e6c37e77658b?zoneid={zoneid}&campaignid={campaigni d}&visitor_id=${SUBID} )



By the way, this new campaign is with kimia and exoclick.
I think i'm not far away from launching my 2nd campaign! please help.

EDIT. So when i open the landing page and click on all outgoing links, which seems to work fine. Is everything working like it should?

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Hello. I'm pretty new on these things but since I'm also on the other thread talking about the same thing, I'll try to help. I tested that campaign URL and it takes me to what seems to be an adult russian offer. I'm not sure if its the one you are using. Otherwise maybe it's because the GEO redirection. I read that sometimes you need a VPN to see your offer if your not in the same GEO.

I'm currently using the VPN service that the Opera browser has (it's not very good but for testing is enough for now). From Singapore and the Netherlands the landing page is not reachable but from Spain, Germany and Canada it is. Could it be the reason your not seeing the LP?

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I see these possible issues :

When testing the campaign, you need to use the campaign link generated by Voluum, if you go to the lander url directly, it will not work. Simply because Voluum doesn't know where to send you... if you click the CTA (with the click url) it will give you an error ... you need to follow the campaign link, which tells voluum what campaign it is and what offers is configured for that campaign.

GEO redirection : if you are using offers with GEO redirection turned on, you will not be able to see the offer unless you are in the same GEO... or using a VPN that simulates that GEO. It's quite complicated to do a manual check when using Carrier Billing offers, so if you are using an offers from Kimia, you might not be able to see the original offer ... however you should be redirected to a fallback offer and your LP itself should work fine. Please note that even a VPN is not enough at times.

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All the links and screenshots look good - looks like you've set up everything correctly.

Matuloo's post above has summarized everything perfectly. What remains is for you to actually test your setup using real traffic. I can't think of a better way.

The best way would be to set up a test camp at a traffic source that allows you to set a really low budget - PopAds for instance where you can set a budget as low as $2.50 - and check your Voluum and Kimia stats to make sure the traffic is being tracked and is ending up at the correct offer.

Do update us on your results!



Amy

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Hi @bachroll, Thank you for your help too. that's the right landing page but can you remove the thumbnail? Also, Is the VPN you using free from opera?

Hi @matuloo, you are right. I am hit with this error.



the outgoing links are as per what vortex recommended, which is http://blahblah.com/click.
When you mentioned campaign URL, this would look something like:

this is the link from kimia
http://buildange.com/L201P/21kq/1V06/jRFvBg-qLJy8e3LSsCGwAqfRRQRdnFScSo0Dx87wlX1J0MZd0L8yAw?31 A=exoclick+belarus{clickid}

OR

this is generated by Voluum, which brings me to my landing page when i tried it.
http://blahblah.com/e889f99c-14ec-41ed-aea3-e6c37e77658b?zoneid={zoneid}&campaignid={campaigni d}&visitor_id=${SUBID}

wouldn't this brings the users back to my landing page? Or isit because of my location/VPN settings, I just can't get thru to anywhere?

Hi @vortex,

screenshot coming soon. I just think the blahblah.com/click doesn't make sense cos it gave me that error as per above screenshot. Just want to get it right before we test it.

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Hello baocoeny. The thumbnail has been removed. Sorry for any inconvenience. The VPN service included in the Opera browser is free. It's very basic but to do a quick test it's fine. There is also a firefox plugin that offers a similir service, which I haven't tried yet. It's this one: Mozilla Firefox + Random Agent Spoofer. Of course, these are free tools and they can't compare to payed /professional ones. Hope it helps.

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Ok, let me try to go over the whole process again, I know it can be confusing for the first time

First the Voluum setup :

1. create an OFFER and use the link from Kimia for it, append this at the end of the link "&subid={clickid}", so if I used your example, the link to use for the offer setup would look like this :

"http://buildange.com/L201P/21kq/1V06/jRFvBg-qLJy8e3LSsCGwAqfRRQRdnFScSo0Dx87wlX1J0MZd0L8yAw?31 A=exoclick+belarus&subid={clickid}"

- next thing to do is to setup your postback with Kimia, it will look like this: XXXXX.trackvoluum.com/postback?cid={subid}&payout={am} ... replace XXXX with your voluum prefix, you will find it in the settings. (trackvoluum can be also different so double check).

2. Now the LP, setup a landing page in voluum by using the URL where the LP is really hosted. EVERY link (CTA buttons etc ) that is meant to take the user to the offer, has to be linked to the click url, so like "http://www.blahblah.com/click" .

3. Then create a campaign, pick the offer, pick the LP and save it. Voluum will generate a campaign URL for you, use this at the traffic source. It will look like

http://blahblah.com/e889f99c-14ec-41ed-aea3-e6c37e77658b?zoneid={zoneid}&campaignid={campaigni d} ... depending on how many custom variable you have defined.

THIS MUST WORK!

Of course, if you are using geo targeted offers, it might stop somewhere and you won't be able to see the offer.

And of course that you are getting the error as per the screenshot - because if you load the LP directly, there is no way for voluum to know where to send you, to what offer. The only way for voluum to know what offer/LP it should route the clicks to, is when you actually use the voluum campaign URL as in point #3. Otherwise it will give you that error, it's completely normal.

Is it clear now, or you need more help with this?

Matej.

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The most important sentence in matuloo's very complete and detailed explanation, is this:

Thought I would point that out in case it gets overlooked.

Another way to saying the same thing: You got the error because you browsed to the lander url directly and clicked on the outgoing url. In order for Voluum to direct you properly, you'll need to browse to the Voluum campaign url, which will take you to the lander - THEN if you click on the outgoing link, you'll be directed to the offer.

Hope that makes sense! Remember to just give it a test by running actual traffic - you can do this for $2.50 on PopAds - would be the easiest way of verifying whether your setup is correct or not.



Amy

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Hi @matuloo and vortex,

Thanks for again for the guides. it all makes sense to me now.
I guess it was 2 issues, the other one being my host, which intermittently goes down, which is hard for me to track...

so basically, in my campaign with exoclick, I will have to use a link that looks like that from Voluum to direct people to my landing page.

http://blahblah.com/22ba7748-fd89-47cf-96c5-23a09fce7310?zoneid={zoneid}&campaignid={campaigni d}&visitor_id=${SUBID}
(i can see my landing page with this link, and i notice it captures a visit once i enter this url)


once they are there, the outdoing links from the buttons will be:
http://blahblah.com/click
and this link will bring them to the offer page.


I can't see the exact offer due to my location, but i still see the usual redirected page. so i would think it is working properly.
one question here, so if i have another campaign, i use this link for outgoing link as well?


my second question now is then, where does the postback with kimia goes to? it looks like that in the Voluum settings page:
http://blahblah.com/postback?cid=REPLACE&payout=OPTIONAL&txid=OPTIONAL


I am running my campaign now. and i will come back with a printscreen of this.
at the same time i keep testing my url(which has been going down intermitently), which was one big issue. fingers cross.

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You can use the same LP for an unlimited number of campaigns, that's why its absolutely CRUCIAL to send traffic to the Voluum campaign url! Voluum handles everything in the "background" - since the click was sent to an actual campaign url, voluum now knows all the other settings for that campaing (like what LP to use and what offer to send the clicks to). The http://blahblah.com/click activates a piece of code that pulls all the necessary data from the settings of a particular campaign. So it's not like you are sending all surfers to the same URL, you are basically telling voluum : "Ok, I want to send this user to the offer, check the campaign settings and send it where I configured it to go" ...


You need to send the postback to your AM at kimia, they need to implement it on their side. Copy it from your voluum settings, it should look like this : XXXXX.trackvoluum.com/postback?cid={subid}&payout={am} If you have a custom domain with voluum, you can also use this format: http://blahblah.com/postback?cid={subid}&payout={am}

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Hi @Vortex,
Looks like it's working now, with the site up most of the time (still monitoring).

Voluum


Kimia


Does this make any sense? I ran it for a short period on exoclick.

Hi @matuloo,

noted on your points. will speak to my AM and see what she says.
Any comment on the tracking?

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Looks like you're using a lander - 23 visits and 5 click-throughs to the offer.

Coincidentally judging by your Kimia stats, you have 23 clicks to the offer? The 2 screenshots must have been taken at different times?

At any rate - traffic is ending up at the offers, which means your tracking is working. Do look into Kimia's stats to make sure that traffic is ending up at the specific offer(s) you're running.

The only other thing that remains would be for you to make your first conversion - if that shows up on Voluum also, it would mean your postback is working as well.

Congrats on getting that to work!



Amy

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Number of clicks in Voluum = 218. Number of clicks in Kimia = 213. Very minimal clickloss - good.


The 3 conversions in Kimia are obviously not showing up in Voluum - so there's probably a problem with the way you've set up the postback. Here's what you do:


1)In Voluum, go into each Kimia offer, and append the following tokens after the affiliate link:

&clickid={clickid}&trafficsourceid={trafficsource. id}

So for example if your aff link was:

http://unicorbott.com/XEW82/Onc0/HP6...VL_1?FnM=68152

Then the link should look like:

http://unicorbott.com/XEW82/Onc0/HP6q/RWLyPQ1r4R9KIE_YcMAaauyD-u6NhX8IZHwfMXJMvjuBJPuKVL_1?FnM=68152&clickid={cli ckid}&trafficsourceid={trafficsource.id}

The {clickid} is crucial if you want the postback to work. The {trafficsource.id} is optional, but is recommended - so that if Kimia or an advertiser should ever find an issue with your lead quality, they'd have the option of telling you which traffic source is responsible for the bad quality, so that instead of being kicked from the offer altogether you could stop running on the particular traffic source.


2)In Voluum, click on the little gear icon at the top right to go to settings. Click on the "Setup" tab, and copy the url in the "Postback URL" field. It should look something like this:

http://yourvoluumdomain.com/postback...&txid=OPTIONAL


3)Next, go to Kimia > Tools (menu at the top) > Callback URL, paste the link you just copied into the "Callback URL" field. Then change the link to the following:

http://yourvoluumdomain.com/postback?cid={clickid}&payout={am}

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However - your Exoclick stats looks very confusing indeed! 215k impressions, 1304 clicks - are you sure you're running pops and not banners or text ads? Please check to confirm this.

At any rate, the 1304 clicks does not correspond to the 2336 visits recorded by Voluum. Are you sure you have the correct date range on exoclick and Voluum? Also - watch out for the potential difference in timezones between your Voluum settings and the one used in Exoclick's stats. Exoclick stats are shown in EST (New York, Toronto):

https://www.exoclick.com/faq/time-zone-statistics/

Which timezone is your Voluum set to? Go to the little gear icon again at the top and by default you should be at the "Profile" tab, where the "default timezone" is displayed. If this isn't EST, then there may be a discretion between the stats in Voluum vs. Exoclick when you have them set to the same date.

___________________

Regarding the ROI - you're absolutely correct, it's way too low.

I'm assuming you're direct-linking to a carrier-billing offer? If that's the case, I would recommend cutting the offer if it doesn't convert at least once every 5x payout.

If it DOES meet that criterion, monitor your placements stats and cut placements that are in loss by 2x payout or more. See how many profitable placements you have, paying special attention to the bigger placements that have most of the volume. If you have very very few of the bigger placements that are profitable, then it wouldn't be worth it to keep cutting unprofitable placements. It's kind of like when you have an apple that is half-rotten - if a large-enough portion is still good enough to eat, then you can justify spending the time on cutting the rotten parts; however if most of the apple has gone bad already, then you'd need to spend a lot of time on cutting out the rotten parts, plus won't have much good apple left for eating in the end. Same type of deal with placements.

Also drill down to OSs and browsers etc. - if you see segments that are bringing in lots of traffic that is converting badly, it may be possible to increase ROI considerably by cutting them. In this case, it would be worth it to retest some of the placements you've cut before that point - because they may be profitable then.

If you didn't have the {clickid} token in your voluum offer link though, then there'd be no way to know which placements have converted. We can't even do a post-mortem in this case. I'd suggest to just start another camp running a different offer. This time, run it to 5x payout and stop it - not an easy thing to do on exoclick. It would be easier to test such offers on PopAds first (they have both adult and mainstream traffic), and then scale the promising ones to Exoclick - it's much easier to control your test budget on PopAds as you can assign a very low budget to any camp.




Amy

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Noted. will come back with some more screenshots for this.

you are really sharp. I tried pops earlier and I found that there isn't much control and variations to what I can do. Almost anyone can just run pops and if you are lucky you get your returns. please correct me if i'm wrong, but thats how i feel.

So now i'm running banners, mobile 300x100, exoclick. I have yet to try other sites for sources and because I have credited some amount and find that they do categorise some of the targets, i wish to try with them and see how it goes.

what you saw is a current campaign i was testing. So, I do realise that exoclicks are usually higher, voluum and kimia's are nearer. I am not sure, but do you think most people click them accidentally, thus closing it ASAP and never made it to the landing page?

I am going niches (not sure if its the right term here). So initially the geos have like 7m target. it's crazy. the campaign ran a while and my limit was up. So now I am down to 600k+, still a lot IMO, but i guess manageable, with $0.1 per 1k impression (if you think this doesn't make sense then i have to stop this too.)

So now I am toying around with BANNERS, LANDING PAGE, ANGLE, PICTURES, CTA button, i guess these are the different variations.

So my immediate question now is:

1) how do you know if that offer cannot make it, since most of the time we don't get to see the offer. Do you test those that you will work, and apply "cutting the offer if it doesn't convert at least once every 5x payout" to them? and how much is the spending here?

2) do you create a new campaign in voluum, traffic source (exoclick in my case), to track and make use of the data? What's the best practice? or your practice?
reason for asking is that my 1st test was to see if anyone is keen, then i would go into different angle, or different copy, and many other variations. since data here is useful and needed to compare whatever you are doing is better or not.

Thanks again Vortex!

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Haha thanks! Doesn't take a genius to figure that out actually - any time a traffic source is showing impressions AND clicks, you know banners must be involved.

Customizing your banner angles to different categories is one of the smartest things you can do to increase ROI! Doing so will require a lot more work in preparing banners, and you'll have a lot more (smaller) camps to manage, but if you're relatively new and don't have any other edge, then hustling harder than your competition is a good way to go.

Example: Target the BBW category using the angle "Fat and ugly women need sex too!" And of course all the images will need to showcase big women - not necessarily ugly but of course avoid ones that are too good-looking for visitors to feel they stand a chance with them.

Regarding the discrepancy between Exoclick and Voluum/Kimia: Have you verified the timezones as I've suggested? If Exoclick's impressions were HIGHER, then we can attribute the difference to clickloss - but based on your stats, Exoclick was actually showing WAY FEWER impressions. Something looks wrong there.



Hmm....could you please explain this more?

Are you targeting RON or ALL placements? Please don't do that! As you've mentioned, there are tons of sites on Exoclick - you can lose a lot of money very quickly. Because there are so many sites, there is naturally a lot of them that will convert badly for you, that you'll need to cut. So before you tackle RON, make sure your funnel is solid and the best - the best banners, the best lander, the best offer etc.

And in order to do the testing required to find the best everything (banners etc.), you need to use a reliable website - one or a couple of the premium websites for example will do the job.

Here's a post I wrote over 2 years ago about this subject, that still applies today:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post200678


Good question!

Answer: Once you introduce banners into the equation, you can't use that rule-of-thumb anymore.

It would be a lot better to stay away from rules-of-thumb when setting a budget, and basically aim to test more and more banners and more and more offers. And you can alternate the testing of offers and banners.

So for example, in the beginning, you throw a bunch of similar offers together with a bunch of banners, and throw money at them to see which banner and/or offer seems to be converting OK, then use it to do further testing.

So if you see an offer converting OK, you could use just that to test banners, then when you find a good banner angle, you can make more banners with the same angle. Then you take your best banners and test another batch of offers....etc.

Or, if you see a banner converting OK, you could use just that to test offers. Then when you find a good offer, you can use that to test more banners (different banner angles and/or multiple banners with the same proven angle).

Important to point out: Instead of cutting an offer when it has reached x payouts, you would want to keep cutting the obviously inferior ones, leaving 1-2 that look like they're converting the best.

You can use this tool to compare and cut offers:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...211#post289211

You'll be able to compare and cut offers more accurately if you're using one banner to the whole batch of offers, instead of using multiple banners. However, using a single banner will accelerate banner-burnout. I would suggest to either 1)use a single banner when testing offers, but only test maybe 3 offers at a time to avoid banner burnout, or 2)use several banners to test offers, but use banners that have the same angle; also, set the offer cutting point at 100% probability of being best to compensate for the inaccuracy of using multiple banners instead of one banner.


You mean start a separate campaign to target each category? If so, the answer is yes!

Or are you talking about different banner angles? There's no need to start a separate camp for each banner angle, but make sure you have a system of organizing your banners or you'd soon go insane. Starting a spreadsheet to keep track of the different angles, and which banners belong to which angle, which banners you've cut, which banners are working better than others, which banner angles are working and which ones aren't - would be a great idea. Having a good system for naming your banners would also be crucial to staying organized.

Since you've ventured WAY outside of my step-by-step guide, it may be good to start a separate follow-along. I would love to continue to provide guidance and will continue to do so to the best of my ability, but it's been a long time since I last focused on adult. Matuloo is the expert in this area - if you start a new follow-along and state that you're doing adult in the thread title, he'll most probably notice it and provide valuable advice. It's up to you entirely whether you want to do this. (If you do start a new follow-along, update me here in this thread, and I'll give matuloo a message to invite him to take a look for you.)



Amy

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Amy gave you so much stuff to think about, that I don't think I really need to jump in here much, just wanted to give you a tip or two on exoclick.

With exoclick, you will always see more visits in Voluum than exoclick itself reports. Keep this in mind when setting the CPC in Voluum. That's how their system works - part of it are bot clicks that they don't count.

When working with banners and carrier billing offers, you need to aim for max CTR, 0.6% is not enough ... its possible to go over 1% in India which will lower your CPC. It also depends on the carrier.

In exo, you need to find the good placements ... I assume you are running RON, you might want to focus on premium placements for now, until you find some good offers and banners. I've found that for carrier billing, sometimes the footers 300x250 had better results than the 300x100 headers, test them too.

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damn, nothing can eliminate bot clicks? doesn't it makes it harder for you to make sense of the data collected? what works and what doesn't?

yup, i'm working on the CTR, and eliminating sites with lesser CTR. Carrier wise it's fixed by the offer, so that's not possible to change, unless dropping the offer?
what's your take on an offer you think it's time to drop?

same reply as above at the moment, not sure about the RON, but selected sites to run the banner ads on.
yup will give 300x250 a try too!

Thanks matuloo!

P.S. with both your reply a lot of thinking is going through my head now. which is good, and sometimes lead to headache + excitement.

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I can't tell which day is which in your stats - but the discrepancy certainly looks a lot less than before. It would help if you could make a list, perhaps on a spreadsheet, for each day, of how many clicks were registered on Exoclick, how many impressions on Voluum, and how many impressions to Kimia. Perhaps nothing is wrong and it was a misunderstanding due to differences in timezones and specifying date/time ranges incorrectly.


Yup your DNS speed is fine - always a good thing to verify early on!


You're on the right track, but I would suggest to pick 1 big premium site to target for testing purposes, so that you know you can trust the traffic quality. Also, when you're using one site (better, one placement on that one site), then you can compare your banners more accurately because they would be subject to the same traffic. (Whereas, if your conversions are from all different sites, results would be less accurate when you compare the performance of one banner to another - whether you're comparing CR or CTR.)


Out of market just means not everyone can run the offer directly, mostly due to there being a small cap. Usually you'll see these offers when running smartlinks. If the offer converts well for you, you can ask your AM to open it up for you. They won't always say yes (especially if you haven't been sending a lot of traffic) but it's worth a shot!

To compare the performance of offers to see which is the best, you can use this method:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...211#post289211

The payout isn't the only consideration - you'll need to consider the CR as well. Usually higher-payout offers will have lower CR. In the end all that matters is whether the offer is making profits. Or, if you're running multiple offers, just keep cutting inferior ones using the stats tool described in the post I linked above.


Yup for sure! Feel free to ask any questions you like - that's why we're both here!


No I don't feel you're moving too fast at all! Actually I've been advising everyone to move out of pop as soon as they feel they're ready to take on other challenges. I'm not saying there's no future for pop, but it has gotten so competitive, and the inventory may shrink starting next year (due to google chrome coming out with a new ad blocker), so diversifying into other types of traffic would DEFINITELY be a smart move.

And since matuloo has found this thread, there's no need to start a new follow-along - he's all the help you need when it comes to running adult camps.

I may participate less and less in this thread though - because adult isn't my strong area. But will learn alongside you while matuloo provides further guidance.


You can stop targeting a website that has heavy bot traffic - I think there's just about all you can do.


I'm glad! Inspiration will lead to motivation which will lead to action and progress, which is always good!





Amy

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This is simply an ongoing issue with exoclick, they always show less clicks than a tracker records. It can go into extremes, especially with carrier traffic ... I've seen 100 clicks in exo and 5000 recorded by Voluum in one case, go figure ...

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Yes, it does make things more complicated, but there is no way around it, you simply have to make this difference a part of your calculations.

You can do a lot with the banner too, don't just cut lightly, as soon as you cut a placement ... it's gone and your volume will suffer. Some carriers show higher CTRs than others, hard to say if it's because of their user base or exoclick just has problems counting it properly.

As for when to drop an offer ... the best way is to run several offers head to head and simply focus on the better performing ones.

If you selected the sites from their list, it means you're targeting premium sites.

It can be overwhelming at first, but you will get to a point when all of this info seem natural, don't worry

Keep us posted

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I don't see a problem - you're direct-linking, correct? If so, then you won't see clicks, just visits.

Have you checked Mobidea's stats to make sure the traffic actually ended up at the right offer?

If so - and if you're targeting carrier traffic, and bidding average or slightly higher - if your payout is less than $2 and you've spent $10+, it may be time to test another offer.



Amy

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Yup, what is the problem? 3000 pops directlinked to an offer and no conversion - this is nothing unheard of, it happens. You're jumping from banners with LPs to directlinked pops ... I'd suggest to slow down a bit and pick one, then focus on it.

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@vortex, yup it's peerfly, and saw the stats. I was just wondering what can be done for propeller, since i have some credit there. the targeting, i don't know if we even call it targetting, cos it feels like a spamming effect to me. people usually cross and exit as soon as the pop up shows.

@matuloo, yeah I was waiting for my site to propagate, but it seems like it didn't work well. change it back to old settings again.

will update both again with latest stats. any threads you guys think i should be also reading at my level? am budgeting and should be getting adplexity and hidemyass soon.

I notice that my Voluum tracking doesn't automatically tracks cost? I also notice that when setting up a campaign there is a "auto" function. I'm using exoclick for now. how do I configure that?

Also, do you guys usually try different offers, whether or not it is the top performing ones? or only go for those already performing well?

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Yes - pop traffic is annoying in general, but that doesn't stop advertisers (including affiliates) from making money from it. People are only willing to pay for as long as the traffic is making money, and bid only as high as they can still make profits.

Targeting has nothing to do with that either. Mainly, you'll need to target according to offer requirements - each offer has restrictions on what traffic it will accept - from which geos, carriers, OSs, browsers etc. That's what I was referring to by "targeting".

And when you said you were "wondering what can be done for propeller" what did you mean?


I would suggest to read some of the longest-running follow-alongs, and make notes of the tips.


AFAIK, Exoclick does not allow for automatic tracker cost updating. Here are instructions from voluum on how to manually update costs:

http://feedback.Voluum.com/knowledge...al-cost-update


When testing and cutting landers, it would be good to start with top-performing or AM-recommended offers, because you need at least one offer that converts semi-well in order to collect the conversions required to cut landers.

But after that, I wouldn't stick to just running top offers. I would often test all of the ones available for the particular niche+geo. That's just how I do it. Some people would do research on spy tools to find offers to target based on volume trends for example, which is a good strategy as well.



Amy

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maybe I because I have done some marketing previously, and was quite into FB. The targeting is very specific. Other geos, carriers, OSs, browsers, they can include interest. so far what I have been doing is a lot like impression only, hoping to get interest from a group of people, happen to be for example, using this certain carrier.

as I was following the step by step guide, propeller was recommended. now i have some credit there but thinking of how much more specific I can target the audiences. that's what I meant by what else can be done. currently it's like popping up ads to anyone who most likely close the ads.

ROGER!

ok that sucks. currently using exoclick.

I see. I guess you are right, especially now for newbie like me starting out, it's better to try top performing ones. i guess plenty of morale booster here is needed!

now all i need is a bit more focus, like @matuloo suggested.

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Ah OK I understand what you're getting at, and agree 100%. You're referring to targeting by demographic, interests, etc. Not just geo, carrier, device, etc.

If you're used to FB, then it's no wonder that you'd find pop annoying. It's interruption traffic, plus the broadest targeting - if you could even call that targeting (quoting what you said). Basically you'd be targeting everyone and their dog.

The closest thing you can do with pop, would be to target by category. Some pop sources have that option. Or, if you have a way of finding out the website urls of the placements, you can target sites that are the most relevant to your offer.

However, doing so would probably greatly limit the amount of traffic you'll get. I don't have much experience with targeting placements by category, but if I remember correctly, most of the biggest publisher sites are torrent sites anyways, which would explain why I haven't seen great improvements by targeting specific categories. YMMV though.

Generally speaking, to run any volume on pop, you'd need a broad-appeal offer to suit the broad targeting (or lack of targeting rather), that ideally has very simple conversion flow unless the payout is high enough to offset the low CR.

Thanks for the discussion!




Amy

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