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Trying to Crush Mobile with Pops - Modified strategy of Amy's Lessons (14)

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So to give a small update,

I am have paused for a day to regroup. I am going to start testing again, and I plan to test some direct links versus some landers in a head to head for the same campaign.

I am excited about the new newbie tutorial being re-developed by Vortex - i expect that to be amazing.

One other question I see myself asking - Is it fine to enter my cpm into Voluum for my campaign? why should i update the cost manually when i could just put my bid in? i know there are some click differences but it just seems like the difference is not material enough to worry about that badly.

Thanks again - will be checking back

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Hi! Thanks for providing so much detail! I've been wanting to reply for a few days now, but have been busy writing the revised and expanded newbie tutorial.

In fact, I'm writing a lesson on campaign optimization as we speak - aiming to finish that by the end of today. Hopefully that will help clear up some things for you as well.

BTW - the first few attachments aren't accessible. Uploading images to imgur.com, then pasting the bbcode links into posts here, would be a way more reliable way than uploading attachments to the forum.

Um...if I'm reading the numbers right, you've spent $37+ and made 2 conversions of $1.10/each? That's not at least one conversion per 5x payout. I don't think I explained the optimization process sufficiently at all in the original tutorial - so, apologies from me! This is one of the reasons why I decided to write a revised and expanded version.

The <-50% ROI rule of thumb can be useful, but it depends on when we apply it. If the camp is at -50% ROI BEFORE any sort of cutting, then it would be hopeful. But if it's at -50% ROI AFTER cutting the worst placements / segments, then that's no good.

It all depends on how much room there is to optimize further, and also, how much profit the profitable segments are making.

For example, if your profitable placements are jointly making $20/day, but your camp overall is in loss, you know that once you've cut the unprofitable placements etc., you could end up making maybe $10-15/day in profits (just an estimate). However, if you don't even HAVE profitable placements (or enough of them), or have profitable OSs/browsers/whatever else, then you should stop cutting - because no amount of cutting will yield profits when you don't have profitable placements/segments in the first place. Makes sense I hope!

But yes - I'm writing out all this in detail as we speak - will post that very soon.

I would say to not even wait for those smaller placements to reach 1x payout.

Focus on the bigger placements! The really small placements aren't going to make much difference either way. Don't count on cutting a shit load of placements to green UNTIL you've tested a reasonable number of offers and landers. Tweak your funnel first (lander+offer) so that you can make more of the available traffic profitable - this would be the smart way. Don't take a random offer+lander (in your case just offer) and spend a ton of money on cutting placements. That would be expensive and will leave you with little/no traffic in the end. Hardly worth the hassle.


Cutting more aggressively (e.g. at 1x payout instead of 2x) is good if you're faced with high traffic volume from a ton of placements all zapping money from your budget, and you need to cut fast. And India sure sounds like it fits the profile!

However - like I've mentioned - there's still the concern of cutting so aggressively that you'll be left with little/no traffic volume in the end.

Another consideration: You have limited time and budget (I'm assuming here). You can choose to tie-up your resources on doggedly cutting a ton of placements, or invest into the testing of more offers to find a real winner. The choice is yours - and I believe you may have just made the wise choice!


I agree with all the benefits you've pointed out about popads. I like to start my testing here because it has the best traffic quality as far as pop traffic goes (unless there's too little traffic volume there for my targeting, or when I'm so eager to get testing done sooner that I'd be willing to spend more on other sources instead).


Yup - unfortunately we can't have it both ways. I find that I keep bringing up the concept of efficiency vs. accuracy when talking about campaign optimization. You can save time and money but be less accurate, or you can spend more time and money to be more accurate. How accurately you should be cutting something, will depend on how much of an impact it will have on the campaign as a whole. For example. when cutting landers and offers, I would for SURE wait for stat sig - at LEAST 90-95% probability of being best for the superior test candidate, before cutting the inferior candidate. But for placements, especially smaller ones, rules of thumb of cutting at 1-2x payout should be good enough. I would wait for more spend before cutting the bigger placements though sometimes, just in case it was having a bad day or whatever.


I'd say ditch this unless you can find a traffic network that has more traffic for this geo - always try to make sure there's enough traffic before investing in testing.


For sure! It's the same issue: Lack of traffic. Even if you DO manage to get profitable, how much money would you make? In return you'll have to monitor it daily to make sure it's still profitable. Not worth it - you could be spending that time on testing new stuff to uncover new gems.


Looks like I'm one step ahead of ya - all answered above.


Such nice words to give me the motivation I need to try and finish the newbie guide ASAP! The expanded guide WILL cover landers. And you are right - although it is possible to make money direct-linking, using landers is a lot easier. Please stay tuned!


If only that was the case! I'm assuming you're talking about popads?

In some geos (*ahem* Thailand *ahem*), the actual cost can be as much as TWICE the amount of what's shown in Voluum when you pass costs automatically using the [BID] token. It's still useful, as long as you know the percentage difference between the two and adjust in your head, so that you don't keep running a campaign thinking it's making you money - when it's not.

And most other traffic sources don't have a token to allow costs to be posted to the tracker automatically. In those cases, you'd need to either update costs manually, or do the math in your head (which has been my lazy approach) based on your bid and the number of impressions (e.g. 2k impressions at $1 bid = $2 in cost).


Will come back for your next update!



Amy

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Wow Amy-

Thank you for taking so much time to respond to me. I am eternally grateful for all of your time spent on helping us. I will never take it for granted.

I have been spending the last few days diving deeper into pops. I have been testing an offer that at the moment is just on the brink of going green.



I have cut a number of placements (I ended up using 1x payout this time) and I am stuck with some placements that are nearing that number but are not quite there yet. I am tempted to loosen my criteria and start slashing placements that have had a decent number of visits (maybe 500-1000?) that still haven't converted. Or i could be a little more patient and just wait for them to reach 1x - but it is so hard



I want to see that greeeeeennnn! LOL - well i am tempted to start slashing faster because it seems like there are a couple placements making up 80% of the conversions - so in theory if i focused on those that are consistently providing conversions that i could have a decent campaign.



The other thing is I have a placement that is converting but not giving me a profit - I am tempted to let it run a little further. do you give these ones a little more leway?



Also i know i tend to really go overboard with the questions per post... but I want to know your opinion on duplicating a campaign for a geo + carrier and running another offer. Not just testing but running parallel because in theory you would always want to send your traffic to your best offer only, so should i just test offers and then replace, or does it make sense to run multiple offers in parallel to the same targets?

thanks again for EVERYTHING!

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Aw - you're welcome! You're entitled to this type of help as a member! But gratitude is a great-feeling energy both for the giving and receiving parties - keep finding people and things to appreciate and see your life change for the better in front of your eyes.


Good to hear!


Remember that efficiency vs. accuracy concept we've talked about?

As long as you don't mind sacrificing accuracy, you can cut as aggressively as you like.

There are different optimization strategies. And cutting placements aggressively for quicker profits is one of them.

You've been running for more than a couple of days now. Basically you already know what the biggest placements are. And you've observed that a few of the placements are accounting for 80% of the conversions.

So - you can choose to go by the 80/20 rule, and just cut the rest of the placements (or some of them - whichever you like; just keep in mind that propeller has a 1000 zone limit when it comes to excluding placements).

Of course, you can always continue to wait for the other 20% of placements to reach 1x payout or 2x payout in loss until you cut them, to squeeze that extra profit. That can give you a leg up over your competition, and if you're planning on investing this kind of money so you could benefit from the extra bit of profit by continuing to run in this geo/carrier again and again in the future, it may be worth the time and trouble.

That would be your decision to make.

And, now that you've cut most of the biggest and worst placements from this camp, you can clone it, set a higher bid, and see if you trigger traffic from the higher-quality placements.

And you can repeat this too - cut more placements from this clone, then clone it again and up the bid more.


It would make more sense to rotate through several offers - when split-testing you need to subject all test candidates to the same set of conditions. Running them in different camps may expose them to traffic from different placements etc. like you said. Not ideal. Not a big deal either, but why take the trouble of running multiple camps AND suffer this disadvantage at the same time?

Overboard with a couple of questions only? Hardly! Have you seen some of the monster posts in other follow-alongs? (By both the OP and myself.) Ask all the questions you want!

I feel that we may see some green soon!





Amy

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Well I had a feeling yesterday was going to be a great day,

Then I realized that I did the ole add the good placements to the blacklist trick...

Hey at least i caught it this morning! Back in running so lets see what happens

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Haha! Been there done that. If you're not making mistakes it means you're not taking enough action.

So - kudos!



Amy

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So at the moment that campaign is still converting for me but not giving me a lot of profit, I ended up creating a WL campaign out of three placements, and raised the bid, which is the reason for the reduced profit. I am going to let it run another day and probably reduce the bid.

I have started testing a few other campaigns and utilized the placementkiller spreadsheet - This will definetely take a little longer to test but i think it is beneficial to have a plan to stick to instead of switching between methods.

I have also started testing another campaign for a iphone sweepstakes offer - it found it on another network that had an incredible pre-built landing page that reminded me of some of the better ones i have seen on adplexity. At least i think it is worth a try-

One question i have about these - considering that android users tend to convert better - should an Iphone or Samsung sweepstakes work better for them? Maybe they are ready to move over to the light side?

One other angle-related thought - my offer that is on the fence in profitability is related to videos. I don't understand the angle behind these offers for mobile .... i mean can't these people just go on to youtube? are there phones so old that they cannot do that or something? how could these offers really be that enticing?

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Oh and one last thing - i noticed SmartCPM payment format showing up on propellerads - support said it works well for testing in order to prevent you from paying too much per bid - but then suggested to go to regular cpm when you are done testing -

Anyone have any thoughts regarding smartcpm - is just simply autobidding or something more

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If you're not getting enough profit, I would suggest not wasting your time further. If the green is still enough of a novelty for you, by all means keep it running. But your time would probably be best spent on testing new offers, or at least other traffic sources for that same geo. Small profits camps are a pain to keep having to monitor, because they tend to dip back into red easily.


That spreadsheet is somewhat of an overkill for cutting pop placements, as it takes quite a bit of data in order to trigger a verdict. Using that for big placements won't be half bad, but for the smaller placements, definitely use rules-of-thumb instead.


Anything would be worth a try! You can direct-link to these offers. Just keep in mind that because you don't have landers to test and optimize, you don't need to spend a lot of money before deciding whether the offer would be worth running further. For example if you don't get at least 2-3 conversions in the first 10 payout's worth of spend or so, I'd say don't bother. (This is assuming you're bidding average to ensure traffic quality.)


Good thinking! I haven't seen a definitely trend either way - but then I've never promoted sweeps heavily so can't say for sure.

Some people are only using samsung phones because they can't yet afford iphones. And then there are people like myself who are die-hard fans of samsung phones and would never switch.

Iphone sweeps offers would probably convert better for the former group, and not the latter. Would be best to just target all OSs and let the numbers tell you.


You know - I've always wondered about that too! But these offers DO convert, sometimes very well.

I think part of the reason is that these video sites are "niche", for example they contain funny or shocking videos, and there's definitely an audience for each niche market. You'd say "well doesn't youtube have a ton of funny/shocking videos already?" But it's like how there are big department stores that sell everything, and yet smaller stores that specialize in specific types of merchandise will still get business.

Plus, some of these offers make the charges so unnoticeable (sometimes it's written in very fine print at the bottom), I suspect a lot of people didn't even notice they were subscribing to a paid service. They see some video screenshots, think "hey that looks interesting", and click the "watch videos now" CTA button, all without a whole lot of thought. At least that would be my guess.

And then, there are countries where youtube is banned:

https://kotaku.com/10-countries-that...why-1547347768

So these video site offers can perhaps do better in these countries.


Feel free to test that for sure! Some members are having good experience with SmartCPM:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post329752





Amy

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It has been a little since I gave an update.

I just wanted to advise I am still afloat and did not give up - but have been on a whirlwind of thoughts at the moment with the whole venture.

That campaign that i was hoping to be promising ended up basically leveling at break even almost every day. So i might think about optimizing it further but i paused it. i really wanted to try getting involved with Facebook because I think it has the best chance to scale to something i can do full time - and i am afraid of missing the boat if the market changes due to competition.

I still dabble with pops but it is more if i get an idea in my head and i just test it. I have been reading a couple of great threads by Mr. Braun and I see the 40 day lessons are starting to pop up in great numbers. between those two i plan on implementing pops in the near future in order to diversify my strategy, and do some testing with a small budget.

Some of the thoughts I have been having are just apprehension to some of the ethics in how camps are ran. It does seems like you need to be a little cheeky with your camps no matter what you are running in order to be successful. I am constantly battling with how far do i want to take something and if it is worth it to me. I guess that is a question everyone must answer for themselves

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Hi welness84, newbie following the same guide as well. Glad to see your progresses and discussion here!

I'm 4th day in with $135.40 spent, with just too low income yet - keep it going buddy!!

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If I were you I would make a "last ditch effort" - basically just pause the major placements that aren't profitable yet, and maybe also some of the major traffic segments (the bigger OSs/browsers/etc.) that aren't profitable. But then you'll need to see how much traffic you still have left. If it's too little to make say at least >$5/day from, don't bother. (No matter how new you are, your time spent on checking on and optimizing the camp is probably worth more than $5/day.)


If you ask me, I think that would be a much better decision. The learning curve is considerably steeper for sure (compared with pop), but the profits potential are much greater, and nothing can compare in terms of long-term viability - I mean FB won't be going anywhere anytime soon. (Whereas for pop, who knows what will happen when google chrome comes out with that new ad blocker next year....)


Correct for the most part yes.

Pop is a competitive traffic type, plus it's interruption marketing. Therefore we do tend to see more shady tactics - people need to use every trick in the book to get a leg up on the competition, and to capture visitors' attention.

Many people are cloaking to hide their tracks when they're running against traffic source TOS. But you don't need to go that far. If you go the route of direct-linking, then you can make money without using misleading advertising - that would be a harder way to make profits though. Using landers would be easier, but 100% truthful landers will rarely convert very well (although there ARE exceptions for sure) - so it would be good to be prepared to be somewhat misleading, and try to push the boundaries a little bit so that you're maximizing your chances of success without going blatantly against the affiliate network / advertiser / traffic source's TOS.

I can testify that it's more than possible to turn a profit without cloaking. Mrbraun has also done case studies where he was able to run profitably without cloaking as well:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...eepstake-offer

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...urces-150k-rev

Thanks for checking in, and please continue to keep us posted on how you do!



Amy

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Hi all thanks for everything

I gave up on the business. I lost too much money. I think there is possibility in this space but I am not sure how you do this unless you are doing it full-time.

The only other avenue I am considering is a ecom site, simply because that has been a successful trend, and it is also something with more credibility that I can possibly use some of my real world contacts in one way or another. Most likely though I will stay out of it -

Thanks to everyone for there help. I hope some of the people I have chatted with over the last few months find some success.

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Thanks for checking in! Sorry to hear things didn't work out!

However, there are multiple paths you can take to reach success. It may not be pop, or it may not even be affiliate marketing. There are many ways to skin a cat.

If you're wanting to give ecommerce a try - here's a comprehensive tutorial by Caurmen:

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

I know people that were working 2 jobs plus had a family with kids that were STILL able to make a consistent income with affiliate marketing. I'm not being judgmental - of course everyone's situation is different and has different priorities - but do know that it IS possible to succeed at AM without doing it full-time.

Do keep in mind that any guides or tutorials you can find here or anywhere else, will only serve as a springboard for further testing, and that's the part that deters most people. No matter how you approach AM, there's no avoiding having to test lots of offers and angles, verticals, targeting, traffic types, traffic sources etc. You just have to have faith that if you stick with one thing for a bit before moving onto the next thing, that something will be BOUND to work out sometime. Stackman said something in one of his posts that really stuck with me - he said something along the lines of "you got to test so much that something has to work" - I'll pass that on to you also (will try to find the actual post where he said this and post it here when I do).

Setbacks are always temporary for as long as you don't give up for good. Best of luck with all your endeavors - no matter what you choose to pursue!



Amy

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