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Newbie starting with popup trying to become profitable (11)

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Hello everybody,

i've joined STM during august and i've been reading like crazy. I've been doing some tests as Amy saw in the introduction thread, but i'm mostly adept at SEO, so my focus is to learn new skills in advertising.

I'm not sure POPUPS are my path to success for affiliation: i'm seriously trying to determine the effort (time and money) necessary to have a nice ROI while at same time keeping a flexible lifestyle. I have embarked in a road to free myself from material possessions and what i really love is to see new places and meet new people: i would hate myself if i found chained again to a desk after having left the 9-to-5 job in an agency.


The strategy

• Establish a budget of 1300 USD
• focus initially on geo 2-3
• focus on offers which have a payout under 2 USD
• testing several offers (4-5 at time)
• Scale to become profitable.

Actions done

• Deposit of 200 USD on popads
• Purchase of Voluum
• First tests in singapore and italy promoting sweepstakes through Affiliaxe, using direct links: no conversions and scarce data.
• Added a few affiliate networks to my arsenal and tried more offers in tier 2-3 GEO, again using direct links... obtained some conversions!

More details

I know i should use a lander(s) to amplify the results, but in order to become more confident my rule is: "start simple and then add details". If you start with too many variables at the same, you simply get more chaos.

Maybe i should have started immediatly with Adplexity, but that's what everybody does and i don't like to imitate other people: that's detrimental for learning.

So i've started a produtive chat with Stijn from Gotzha and we selected a few offers to try.



The sequence was:

• Turkey (0.40 payout) with 2 conversions (it says 3, because one was a test made by the manager) with a budget of 4 USD.
• Since the conversions were done on Apple, i created a new campaign on popads targeted toward apple devices only and restarted it again with a new budget of 4 USD: i did again 2 conversions without landers.
• At the same time i tried 3 more offers for Egypt, payout between 0.35 and 1.05: no landers and no conversions.

The next steps

The data is scarce, but i think that the turkish offer could become profitable.

I'm wondering what to do next ?

Should i cut some more or should i try to scrape some landers from Adplexity?

75% of conversions (3/4) come from Istanbul.



But wait... this is even more interesting!

The apple-only conversions come from the same website id! I can't possibly imagine which url is that, but i suppose it's an apple-friendly blog/magazin.



So my next steps would be...

• get adplexity... if it covers Turkey!
• look for the offers
• scrape the landers
• clean them
• upload them on S3+cloudflare solution
• add them to Voluum
• create a flow: popads > voluum > lander > voluum > offer
• And restart the campaign with 4 more USD of budget

Adplexity country list anyone ?

i can't find a comprehensive list of countries supported by adplexity: could somebody list them ?

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Hi Saitama! Glad to see a follow-along from you.

I agree with you that pop isn't easy to make consistent and long-term profits from. If you wouldn't mind the steeper learning curve, I would recommend FB/Search. If you have a big budget, native would also be a good option.

Getting an Adplexity subscription is almost a must. It's recommended to at least start by using tried and tested landers, even if you want to innovate later on - either based on them or build your own from scratch.

Another consideration about innovating on landers: Unless you have a way of keeping them out of spy tools, your custom landers will get ripped and used by other affiliates (probably the same day you start sending traffic). So if you don't know how to keep landers out of spy tools, it may be best to test variations of your best ripped lander - variations stay under the radar much better than custom landers that stand out in spy tools.

Adplexity does include Turkey in its list of geos.

Regarding your current camps/offers: Are they sweeps offers still? If so, then you NEED to use landers.

Before making observations like these, note the spread of traffic volume among the different entries.

Yes, most of the conversions appear to have come from Istanbul - but then, that's the city where most of the total traffic volume came from.

Same thing with apple conversions coming from one website ID - most of the traffic came from that big website.

So, just because something is responsible for all the conversions, doesn't mean it's the best converter - it may just happen to be responsible for the bulk of the traffic volume.

CR and ROI are the important metrics here.


Looking forward to seeing more stats when you have them!




Amy

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Hi Vortex!

I don't mind a steeper learning curve, i've read something about FB and i've done some small campaigns for local clients: my main concern is having the account closed down by Facebook. By "Search" you mean Seo or Adwords ?

Interesting consideration... So basically everybody is ripping the same landing pages again and again! Well, i'll follow the trend.

They where 1-click flows (enter your phone number to access the resouces/games).

ok so if got it correctly: i should run again the offers, this time using landers and see what happens. Then, and only then, i should cut some more.

Will do!

thanks!

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Nowadays even when you're running 100% whitehat on FB, you'll have to have a way to get new accounts, because there's always the chance of losing your account. There are lots of places where you can get accounts. This is as far as I can go in terms of talking about buying/selling of FB accounts - in fact threads on this topic are not permitted on this forum, so I'll refrain from discussing this further.

By Search I mean Adwords/Bing, not SEO. SEO requires a lot of patience - something that frankly I don't have much of. I came from a SEO background myself. Same goes for a lot of other members here. And for good reasons.


Actually, 1-click flow offers does not require the user to enter their phone number.

All they need to do is tap on a single link/button (e.g. "Subscribe to the Service Now") - thus the name 1-click.

Reason why you're under the false impression that a phone number is required, is probably because the aff network or offer advertiser often won't let you see the actual offer page, unless you're browsing from the SIM card of the accepted carrier using a data plan from that carrier.

At any rate - 1-click offers are definitely worth testing using direct-linking. You can test landers as well, but your lander would need to be SO GOOD that it can offset the "damage" it does by requiring the visitors to click through yet another thing. Most 1-click offers don't require a lot of pre-selling, which means there isn't normally a lot of room for landers to do their job of pre-selling to increase the likelihood of getting visitors to subscribe to the offer in the end. But I HAVE seen landers used successfully with 1-click offers, and if you do enough testing to figure out a lander that works well (AND keep it out of spy tools) that can give you a major edge over most other people that are running them direct-linked. So don't let me dissuade you from testing landers.

(If you do test landers at some point, keep them really simple because it doesn't take much to convert people on 1-clicks, and nobody has the patience to read a bunch of text before subscribing to a simple game or vid subscription offer. An attractive graphic, plus a really short but powerful headline, plus a CTA would be a great start.)


I wasn't referring to landers at all.

I was referring to what you said about "most of the conversions are coming from [one city]/[one OS]/[one website id]". It's easy to conclude that those segments are converting the best - which would be an erroneous conclusion if most of the traffic volume is coming from those segments in the first place.

e.g. Say 90% of a geo's traffic was coming from their capital city, then just because it's made most/all of the total conversions, doesn't mean it's the best-converting, or the one giving you the most value. Some people come to the screwy decision of cutting all the other segments, or whitelisting JUST that segment, thinking it's the best-converting segment. But that wouldn't make too much difference - because either way, most of the traffic would STILL be coming from that main segment.




Amy

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To answer myself, i've extracted the country list.

For forum reference the supported countries are:

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Quick update!

Since there were many variables i've decided to go for a slightly different approach:

- i've scraped the inventory of countries of popads with the current data (nothing weird, i've just disabled the css using "chrome web developer plugin" and copy/pasted the list into excel.)
- i've also download the country list from mobidea and did a vlookup to match the traffic potential of popads with the country clicks generated by mobidea
- The inventory may change slightly, but at least i have a frame of reference of which countries to test while i use popads as a source.



So to speak, Nigeria may generate a lot of clicks for mobidea, but i can obtain only 14K clicks per day: not good enough when you start cutting down!

Step 2: simple is better than complex

After speaking with mobidea, they explained to me how a smartlink works: they rotate offers optimized by country and i just need to send traffic and analyze the results. Very interesting!

I decided to use the Thailand as a traffic source, because there is more traffic and it's quite cheap.



I selected a mainstream smartlink (which does publish only non-adult offers) and add it as a direct link on Voluum.

Since i wanted to have more tests running, i've duplicated the campaigns on Voluum and added more campaigns on popads targeted to : Perù, chile and Turkey.

For some weird reason the Turkey campaign was declined by Popads (something related to Google safe browsing) while the other campaigns were accepted.

I've also added two campaigns adult-themed: a grand total of six campaigns, with 5 USD of budget each.




The results so far


The Thailand is going well with 9 conversion: digging the data i've noticed that the first conversion were generated by "high quality" websites, so i cut down websites with quality lower than 6.

The cost has dropped while the conversions have remained steady.



The other countries are a disappointment, therefore i'll stop them.

The next phase

i will explore more geo and at the same time i'll focus a campaign directly toward the offer which has generated more leads in thailand!

Let's see what happens!

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Interesting!

What are "country clicks generated by mobidea"? Sounds interesting - would love more details!


Interesting indeed!

And there are other networks that have similar "smartlinks". Afflow, Kimia, Brokerbabe, Glize, Bitterstrawberry, Mobifreak, Mobusi, YTZ - just off the top of my head.


Not uncommon for smartlinks because there are different offers in rotation. Sometimes if you clone the camp and resubmit it will get approved. It all depends on which offer the review happens to see when they're checking.


That's just awesome!!

Are you targeting a specific carrier? Or wifi? PopAds has a LOT of traffic for TH - and this is one of my very favorite geos. Large volume and relatively cheap traffic plus high conversion rates for the right offers.

Another thing you can do is split-test against smartlinks from other networks.

Looking forward to seeing more stats when you have them!




Amy

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Hello there!

Regarding the country clicks and other data in Mobidea there is an "opportunity" section when you can evaluate the amount of clicks, signups and revenues generated by the network.



Since you can download the table, i've decided to match the countries of Mobidea with the countries listed in Popads, using a vlookup.

Having all the data in excel put things in perspective:
- sort data by conversion rate (descending) and by potential traffic in popads (descending)
- divide 5 (USD) by the average CPM in popads: how many visits may i get on average?

By using this method i tried another country which had interesting CR (in mobidea) while the traffic was not that high: Serbia.

I launched the campaign with 5 usd... and forget about it completely!

...and the campaign become green for the first time!



..but it didn't last, because after 3 days it went in the red again.


Doubts

- Everything feels very random. Completely erratic. It feels i have to keep constant attention in order to keep the machine running. It feels like a lottery and i'm not sure i like it.
- it doesn't feel scalable: when i try specific offers, which are usually restrained to specific carriers, the traffic decrease a lot. And they don't convert as much as the smart links.
- how can i add the landing pages of adplexity in this scenario?

Regarding the thailand:
- even using specific offers the ROI is lesser than the smartlink campaign.

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Hello saitama,

let me address your doubts that you have listed

There is one thing that is very typical in AM, the lower volume you are running, the more random the results can be. It's not a 100% rule, but it happens a lot. The reason is quite simple, you're only buying a fraction of the traffic, which gives you a traffic sample that is not representative/significant. You might get a burst of clicks at once, than nothing for a while, then a burst again ... the only way to fight this is to buy enough traffic to reach STEADY delivery. Generally speaking, the more % of the available volume you buy, the more stable the results will be. It's annoying especially when starting out, but that's how it works.

Keep in mind that you are only testing on one source with a limited amount of placements, there is a ton more sources, there are more traffic types ... in any given GEO, there is more traffic available than you can afford to buy, guaranteed. There are POPs, banners, redirects, native ... all on a number of sources ... In case smartlinks work better for you, then use smartlinks ... I made a LOT of money with them too

You need to look for GENERIC LPs that are compatible with a lot of verticals/niches ... these are harder to find, but they do exist

Already answered above, TH is one of the GEOs where I did very well with smartlinks.

Good luck

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... Hello from Kimia! ... and as it has been mentioned in the past, we allow you to see on our stats dashboard the actual product that is best converting for your different segments of traffic on a smartlink. Therefore you can created your own smartlink template, customized. We also allow you to use external links for certain traffic segment that you wish to reroute externally, because you know they works best on a specific offer and dont wish to loss that performance/competitive edge

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Thanks for that information! I'm actually not too familiar with the Mobidea interface. Your method is definitely worth a shot - it makes good sense.


Random and erratic - that's pop traffic for ya!

To succeed in pop, you'll need an efficient and replicable system for testing broad (lots of offers and landers), and optimizing and scaling fast.

Focus on the big stuff and don't sweat the small stuff. e.g. Focus on locking down a good lander+offer first because these will typically have the largest impact on ROI. Secondly, test bids and cut placements. Should also drill down to various traffic segments such as carriers, OS, browsers, devices, and cut ones that perform badly. Main idea is to focus only on things that will have a large-enough impact on ROI for them to be worth your time. So for example only look at the bigger placements and OSs etc. Instead of over-optimizing a camp past the point of diminishing returns on your time, spend your time on testing new stuff.

Don't set up a camp that you know will receive little traffic volume - the more volume you start with, the faster you can test and optimize, and the more stuff (placements etc.) you can cut and still have enough left over to profit from.

Spend more time on testing offers until you find a good one that can make a good chunk of your total traffic profitable, and with high ROI. Camps with higher ROI will withstand more volatility. Don't keep a camp running if it's only doing less than 30% ROI on average - won't be worth your time or cover your business expenses, and secondly low-ROI camps can easily dip back into red.

To be more efficient: Having an efficient and replicable system for testing, optimizing and scaling will help. Having a team working for you will help. Having automation will help.

As for landing pages - if you're talking about 1/2-click offers, you won't find many of those on adplexity. These offers are mostly run direct-linked. It would be difficult to find landers that will do more good than harm. Remember that landers are a double-edged sword - requiring visitors to have to click through one more thing WILL decrease the number of eyeballs on the final offer. The idea is for the lander to pre-sell the visitor effectively enough such that the increase in CR will more than offset the negative effect mentioned (i.e. the decrease in number of visitors to reach the offer page). Since 1/2-click offers typically don't require much pre-selling, it would be more difficult to make a lander that will result in an overall positive impact on ROI.

Having said that - I HAVE seen cases where simple landers have made these offers convert better. So if you'd be willing to do some testing to find a lander that works for a particular offer type - for example gaming or video subscription offers - then that could give you an edge over the vast majority of affiliates that are running these offers direct-linked. Simple would be the way to go - an appealing image, a short and powerful headline, and a CTA would be a good place to start.


That's entirely possible - after all, the idea of a smartlink is to direct visitors to the best-converting offer(s).

Try testing smartlinks from multiple networks to see which one performs better for your geo/carrier/etc. Each network has different offers.





Amy

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