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Wall Street to Online Marketing & Sales - A College Student's Journey in AM (19)

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TL;DR at bottom of page

Hey Guys,

Hope everyone's week is off to a stellar start. I had a groggy Monday following a sailing regatta on Sunday, but I'm pretty stoked for the rest of the week. To provide you guys with some color on my background, I'm a college student at a top university in The States, and although I have a private equity/venture capital job lined up for when I graduate, I'll be learning marketing, sales, and advertising in my spare time via STM.

Like many of you, I've been following along Vortex's newbie guide.

Monday, November 6th, 2017

Swiftly picked up a few offers from Mobidea, all gaming offers in tier 3 geos; decided to test out a Poland $1.09 payout offer (Because who doesn't love eastern Europe?) Needless to say, like a cook outside the kitchen I was NOT in my element.

I ran $10 worth of traffic with 0 conversions. Definitely need to season my meat a bit more before I throw it in the oven. Results below:



This offer was Direct billing, Single optin, and was supported by T-Mobile, Plus, Play, and Wifi. It also was supported by 14 (all) OS devices. How could I have specialized this camp to get at least a single convert? It's tough to cut zones when you don't have any converts to guide decision making.

Furthermore, Voluum shows that of my 3,344 visits, 2,842 were using an Android device; "P4 Sp. z o. o." was the most popular carrier at 1,594/3,344 visits; 1,917/3,344 visits were from "Chrome Mobile."

Does anyone have any insight into what I should have done with my first ever camp? Anyways, I decided to move onto a hopefully more profitable camp.

Tuesday, November 7th, 2017

I followed Amy's advice and got in touch with Mobidea. Inquiring like a wide-eyed newbie I asked what some well-converting offers in tier 3 geos would be. I was referred to 3 different Egyptian gaming offers, each with a payout of $0.53. Did Mobidea think I would consolidate and run all 3 of these at once? I was not sure...In addition, this offer was Android only but when running it on PropellerAds it seemed like the only phone options were Apple products?



Am I just going crazy?

I decided to run an Android OS only offer that was supported by Etisalat, Orange, Vodafone, and Wifi. It was a Direct Billing, Double Optin offer. Since it was Double Optin instead of single, should I have included a landing page? How do I do this? It's not in the tutorial but if somebody could point me in the right direction that would be great. I'm not looking to shell out $200 for AdPlexity just yet (broke college kid budget), but I'll try and get it ASAP.

Anyways, 3,142 visits with 0 converts, yet again! I felt a bit disappointed since I thought I'd get at least 1, given that Mobidea said the offer was converting very well. But oh well! Gotta' move on and learn as much as possible. Results below.





Couple of observations from Voluum: Vodafone users comprised 2,375/3,142 total visitors; 06:00-06:59 visitors made up 1,003/3,142 total visitors. This could be because I began running the camp at 11:30pm EST. Unlike Poland, where Chrome Mobile was the most popular browser, Android Webview was the leader, with 1,717/3,142 visitors. Samsung was also the leading brand (no surprise there since it was an Android only offer).

So my combined data from the past 2 days is:



What should my next steps be? I'm thinking about testing the other two Egyptian offers, but I don't know how much of the traffic is comprised of bots vs. real people. I also don't know how to add a lander, which may be important since the offer is double optin? Could my 0 conversions be due to the fact that there are so many newbies running these kinds of offers right now? Maybe it's outlandish to think that, but should I deviate away from single billing gaming offers? Should I keep running other offers and not optimize until I get a single convert? Really unsure of where to go now!

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated. I'll keep you guys updated on a day-to-day basis whenever I run a camp or learn something new. Furthermore, if anyone wants to chat, feel free to add me on skype: "Money.o.train@gmail.com".

Cheers,
Owen

TL;DR



What I should be doing to get my first convert? Should I get a lander? Keep testing Egyptian gaming ads until one of them converts, then optimize? Do more research on better offers? Find a new traffic source? Any help would be great! Thanks guys.

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There are quite a few mods on the forum with solid pops expertise, so I will defer to them for advice.

But man, in terms of formatting your posts, well done!

If you are as meticulous and detail oriented in your AM or finance career as you are in formatting your posts, you have a bright future ahead of you.

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It's still very early days, $20 is not that much given that, in all honesty, pop traffic is filled with bots. Doesn't mean it cannot work but it means this sort of beginning is very normal. It's no reason to despair or take any extreme steps.

You should actually have all 3 offers in the same campaign and split test the 3 offers. Then you see if any get conversions and if you do, which one has the best shot at working. This can be your first ever split test, and usually should be. Leaving some room for error, the spend for such a test should be between $50-100, and you should keep a close eye to blacklist some of the big spending placements that don't convert, for example 1399206 in your EG campaign.

Just to double check - did you setup the postback? Did you check if you got any conversions on Mobidea that were not reported to Voluum?

Once you have the best offer, depending on what actual ROI it has, you will consider whether or not continuing to try and optimize is worth it. The first step then will be to add a lander. A lander will often increase your conversion rate but it won't guarantee you can get a conversion actually if the offer sucks so that's why this is really the very very first step.

If you continue as focused as you are now for 1-2 months, I am quite certain you will be one of the next success stories from this community.

Cheers,
Manu.

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Nice start of a follow-along! And thank you for posting all those stats! I have the following advice:


1)Don't spend too much money on testing each offer. When direct-linking it's not easy to find an offer that will give you profits, so you'd need to test lots and lots of offers. If you spend too much on any one offer you'll go broke. If an offer doesn't show promise right away you should ditch it. There are a million and a half of these types of offers around so there isn't a need to test any one to death. Basically if an offer doesn't show promise right away, move on.

Here's a step by step on how to run and when to ditch:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-ACTION-Part-2

Carrier traffic has little or no bot traffic, unlike wifi traffic. So there's not a ton of room for optimization in terms of cutting placements, as compared to wifi campaigns.

That, plus the fact that we're not using landing pages, means we really don't have a lot of room to optimize the camp - which is why the offer will need to do well at the very beginning in order for it to stand a chance of becoming profitable.


2)Verify that the traffic is indeed going to the offers you're promoting. Go into your aff network's stats to verify this. Also, keep an eye on these stats to watch for your first conversion. Once you see the conversion, make sure it's also being posted back to Voluum. There may be a delay in posting back so I would give the aff network up to a few hours, although usually it doesn't take nearly that long.

Once you see your first conversion in Voluum, then you can be sure your postback was set up correctly.

Double Optin simply means the user will need to tap/click twice in order to subscribe to the offer. It doesn't necessarily mean landers are needed. For carrier-billing gaming and video subscription offers, direct-linking will usually suffice in getting conversions. In fact, the same is true for most genres of 1/2-click (i.e. single/double-optin) offers.

So - test more offers and limit the budget you spend on each. I'm surprised you still haven't gotten your first conversion, but you will soon!




Amy

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Hey buddy hit me up on skype wellness84live@gmail.com

I am just getting started with pops as well, been doing that for a month and also facebook for a few weeks.

I actually have a finance background myself but it's not that impressive. Still it would be cool to talk to you and maybe we can trade some tips or start a mastermind.

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Hey Wellness - for sure, I just added you on Skype. Let's chat sometime this week for sure. I took a brief Hiatus (finals were hell these past few weeks) but now I'm back at it! Let me know how I can be of help.


To @manu_adefy and @vortex - Excuse my absence. Had an assortment of papers/exams these past few weeks, but now that I have 3 weeks off (winter break) I'll be able to make some substantial progress. The last camps I ran had a few conversions, so I'll break them down and see what analysis I can pull from them.

Lastly, is anybody else looking into this cryptocurrency phenomenon? Seems like the world is at its knees with the amount of speculation, but perhaps it's justified? Let me know what you guys think.

All the best to everyone,
$Train

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tl;dr @ bottom of post

Hey guys,

Hope everyone's settling into Winter nicely. It feels great to catch a breath (I have another 2.5 weeks off until I start classes again), but I need to grind harder on AM! Nonetheless, I'll be going into Boston this evening for dinner with a friend, but before I hop on the train I wanted to update you guys on my progress. I'll do my best to keep this short.

Anyways, I tested 3 Panama offers back on November 20th; results below:



The first Camp, "Hotcel Videos CW," managed to get a few converts, shoutout to @stacking_benjamins who suggested I try this offer to get my first convert; his respective follow along is here . Anyways, the traffic was extremely slow, and it took just about 10 days total to exhaust my $10 limit. I was bidding $1.85 CPM for this traffic.

I dug into the report a bit, and while this camp isn't worth pursuing (due to lack of traffic, AND the initial <-50% ROI losses), I did notice that some some zones [may?] have potential. See below. Is this normal? Or is 1 conversion somewhat negligible? i.e. should only pursue these low traffic zones if I get more data/more conversions to justify, then bid higher for the traffic?



So anyways, I decided not to pursue this panama offer.

However, the split-test I ran had interesting results. 1 offer got all 3 conversions, and the other offer not 0 conversions.



I looked into the "Multiclub" offer, and I saw it may have some potential:



I cut the 3 or 4 zones below 1406224 and also specified the traffic to flow solely to android devices on the android WebView, and am currently running this individual offer. However, I only have 1 conversion in the 920 visits . It's been about a day since I've run this (again, Panama seems to have slow traffic, even though I'm bidding $3.50 this time).

I'm likely going to cut this offer as well. It was great learning how to cut certain placements and optimize the campaign to be directed towards specific carriers/OS/devices, etc., but I'm getting the sense that pop-ads without a lander is not the most profitable way to run AM! Any suggestions?

I'm currently running 2 Thailand camps, both Dtac videos that I'm split-testing. Though Mobidea sent them to me and on their site mention that they are converting at 1/130 each, I've sent about 1,500 visits to these offers and have yet to get a conversion!

Wrapping up, I have a couple of questions if anybody can point me in the right direction.

-Should I avoid geos with slow/limited traffic? i.e. Panama?
-When should I be considering adding a lander? Would this make my camps significantly more profitable?
-Should I consider trying other traffic sources besides pop? My friend @Stacking_Benjamins has been doing pop camps for quite some time now, and has yet to make substantive progress. Perhaps learn how to build a lander, optimize camps further, etc., then move onto another traffic source?
-Thoughts on bidding more than 2.33 for traffic? I know there is a post on this in the tutorial, but what about for when you initially start a camp?

Many thanks again to those that are following and helping out - let me know if there is anything I can do for you all!

tl;dr
-Got a few conversions
-Panama traffic is extremely slow; camps still not profitable
-don't have lander yet, considering adding one
-Unclear if offer is the problem or if my approach is the problem
-moving onto "promising" Thailand offers, but still no luck
-Any tips greatly appreciated!

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Thanks for checking in before going on your trip!

First of all: If traffic is this slow, you should know not to continue running the campaign - at least not for this geo+carrier combination on this traffic source.

Even if you manage to make it profitable, you'd be making pennies every day - really won't be worth your time having to manage the campaign.

Other traffic sources MAY have more traffic for this geo+carrier though.

As for the placement stats: 1 conversion really isn't any indication on how well the placement can convert, as you won't know whether the next conversion would ever occur, and if so, when. Of course, statistically-speaking, the more conversions a placement has, the more you can be confident that the ROI is the "true" ROI of the placement. But I'd look for at LEAST 2 conversions with a positive ROI as a sign of a promising placement.

And really, when I suggest to cut an offer when it isn't likely to do -50% ROI, I take bad placements into consideration already - the bulk of the optimization that we can do to bring the camp from -50% ROI to +30% or above, will need to be achieved by cutting placements and other traffic segments. That's a LOT of placements to have to cut, which would make the cutting process expensive. In addition, there will be considerably less traffic left after all the cutting.

So the -50% ROI is basically my bottom-line for an offer we're direct-linking to. If the starting ROI (before cutting) is even LESS than -50%, it would be even harder / less likely for the camp to become green, plus it would take more cutting, which will mean having less traffic to profit from in the end.


Based on overall stats, the offer may still have a chance of meeting the -50% ROI rule. And normally, I would suggest running it longer - seeing as none of the placements has even spent the equivalent of one payout yet.

However, because there's so little traffic to start with, it doesn't really give us the option to cut any further. So - I'm in support of your decision to pause.

As for whether or not it's possible to make money by direct-linking: Yes it is. But you'd need to test a ton of offers on a low budget, and scale the winners hard and fast. I'm starting everybody off on direct-linking because it's the easiest to set up, and the lowest-cost way to learn to analyze stats and optimize campaigns (like you've mentioned). Once you have some experience with that, feel free to move onto landers.


This is normal. You don't know what kind of traffic the other affiliate is running, you don't know how much they're bidding, you don't know what they're targeting - so, the results you get can be vastly different.


Answered above.


https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post333264


If you have the patience to beat the learning curve and have the budget for it, try Facebook, or Adwords/GDN, or native.

Those have more profits potential than pop.

Pop is just easy to learn, and easier to make your first profits from. When you're first starting out and don't yet have that faith to spend a lot of time and money to crack the code so to speak, pop can be the lowest barrier to entry. But that's just about all it's good for.


You can bid higher of course.

You'd probably get better-quality traffic - but then it would cost you more as well.

So - you have these 2 opposite trends going here, and the combined result may be better or worse. I really can't tell you either way. Plus, every geo/carrier/etc. has a different average bid, that will also vary over time. My take is that as long as you're not bidding so low that you can't be confident about the traffic quality, that it should be enough to test our your offers/landers. (If you're bidding so low that you're gett ing shitty traffic, then even the best offer+lander may do very badly. We need to avoid that during initial testing, when you're testing unproven offers and landers - you don't want the traffic quality to be in question to, or you'd be stabbing in the dark.)



Amy

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Most people are looking at it in one way or another. Most people I know own some coins, some are also trading, some mining.

My brief take on it:

a) has potential to solve many problems
b) nobody really gets it, and I mean nobody - it's just too new for anyone to be truly an expert at it from what I've see; too many talks go in the direction of "what we will do", not enough has already been done
c) many people will lose a lot of money - and some will make a lot; it's the most popular get-rich-quick-scheme right now.
d) there will be a lot of lawsuits left and right.

The fact that there will be many shady characters in the space, especially early on, doesn't mean there's no good application for the technology. That said, it's very new and it's sometimes too simple to sell the dream without any proof to support it. Both the optimistic side and the pessimistic one are cherry picking analogies that serve their purpose better. You should definitely follow the space and learn about it, and as much as possible do so from the least biased sources you can - read white papers, google the topics from the white papers, evaluate the claims, add some common sense and you will be well on your way to understanding blockchain, crypto and the likes.

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Hey Amy,

Love the earnest and encouraging feedback! Seems like the real battle can be just finding the right (profitable) offer, and then optimizing it better than the competition is. That being said, I'll be dropping the offers with low traffic, i.e. Panama, because as you pointed out, the offer/combination isn't quite worth my time.

I'll take a stab at picking up a lander and learning the fundamentals of optimizing the landing page and testing out various ones. I know that this is an extremely important step, one that I shouldn't overlook.

However, as of now (and Manu this is written with you in mind as well) I'll likely have to take a brief break (again, begrudgingly) from AM. My budget has run out, and as a college student with no income, I can't afford to keep paying $400+/month in fixed fees (STM, Voluum, AdPlexity) on top of paid traffic, offers, etc.

I would love to run up a bit of credit card debt to fund the fixed costs and eventually turn profitable, but as of now it may be difficult to get a $3,000+ line of credit with reasonable terms.

Nonetheless, I will be back!! I'll have a large chunk of capital coming my way in the spring, which I can put to work once again with AM.

In the meantime, between classes, what do you recommend doing to best prepare myself for when I DO have capital to start AM/eCommerce biz? I should have a decent amount of free time, during which I can spend how I please. Was there ever a time when you were in my shoes? Where you lacked capital but still found ways to improve your business? Let me know, and thanks again for all your help!

In the meantime, please feel free (and anybody else reading this) to email me at money.o.train@gmail.com with any comments, questions, or general inquiries. My membership here will likely expire soon, but I hope to renew it and get back to AM as soon as I start working at my investment fund and have money to get my business off the ground!

-$Train

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Love this - you're dead on when you say that most people know NOTHING about the space - its still so novel and most of the coins people are investing in have little value-add compared to the main ones (bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, etc.).

On the other hand, regardless of crypto's investing use (which is undoubtedly legitimate and likely very practical), backward and forward linkages will without a shadow of doubt emerge from this space. What does this mean for AM? Crypto offers of course, crypto information signup offers, etc. Furthermore, plenty of opportunity for businesses (eCommerce in particular).

As WSPs said earlier - "Just so we are clear you don't have to own a single coin to make money in this space. Just sell the shovels in a gold rush."

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It will take a few years for crypto to become mainstream - even without some people knowing there's blockchain and cryptocurrencies being used in the services.

That said, many people have heard of it. I'm in Romania for the holidays to spend some time with my family and everyone asked me about cryptocurrencies/Bitcoin, even my grandpa.

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I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to make AM work by racking up credit card debt. I did that with IM many years back - that's a story for another time, but long story short: Not, fun. So the fact that you're having trouble getting a line of credit may be a blessing in disguise.

As for what you can do before you get enough capital to enter AM again - I would suggest educating yourself as much as possible. For example:


1)Read some of the best industry blogs. Some recommendations:

https://www.malandarras.com/archive

https://charlesngo.com/blog/

http://zacjohnson.com/

http://iamattila.com/

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/...-blogs/135739/


2)Do lots of spying.

You can spy on websites that have ads, and click on them all the way from banner/pop ad -> landing page -> offer, to see what kinds of stuff people are running and using which angles. Doing so may not tell you which angles or offers are working well (because you won't have access to any stats), but you'd still get a lot of ideas and see a lot of possibilities (different verticals, different traffic types, different angles...)

To see pop ads, browse to torrent sites. Also, here's a list of sites I just grabbed from ZP that have pop ads:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6hdgq90prw...00-zp.txt?dl=0

To see native ads, browse to viral content type sites. Here's a list I put together from publishers of native networks, that I've found on Adplexity Native:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/82766gaw56...exity.txt?dl=0

To see mobile display ads, download a bunch of the most popular mobile apps, open them, and click around. Also, here's a file I exported from Go2Mobi, that has a list of mobile sites and apps you'll find ads on (look in the column "placement_domains" for apps and sites):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pv6qgt43wr...ites.xlsx?dl=0

To see facebook ads - this is a bit tricky if you're trying to spy from your own account, because you'll mostly see ads that target the demographic you're in. If you know which niche you're wanting to spy on, you may be able to see some relevant ads show up in your feed by liking (or otherwise interacting) with FB pages that are relevant to that niche. But for the most part, spying on facebook ads will require subscribing to a paid spy tool - and even those are getting fewer by the day as more and more are getting shut down.


3)Keep your STM subscription...

...and set aside some time each day to read new and old threads. There are over 36k threads and 320k posts on this forum, a good portion of which is relevant and applicable to today's AM landscape. Read older but still relevant threads to build a solid foundation of AM concepts, and also new threads to find out what's working in recent months.


4)Read books on Affiliate Marketing and Advertising in general.

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...rnet-Marketing


5)Learn Coding.

You'll find some recommended resources in the "ACTION" portion of this lesson:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Landing-Pages


Best of luck and I look forward to seeing you give AM another try in the very near future! Please reply below if you need anything else.



Amy

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Hi Amy,

How do you know that carrier traffic has little to no bot traffic? What do you think about the quality of traffic from go2mobi?

Thanks.

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All you need to do to verify that, is use caurmen's bot testing script:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...live-campaigns

Mind you, I haven't done this type of testing in a while. Caurmen was just telling me a few days back that the level of bot traffic has started to increase for carrier traffic as well. So it wouldn't be a bad idea to run a bot test even if you're targeting carrier traffic. (In fact, I just wrote that suggestion into the newbie guide yesterday in the most-recent lesson.)

It's definitely harder to create bot traffic that simulates carrier traffic compared to creating bot traffic to simulate wifi traffic. To simulate wifi traffic, a webmaster only has to install a software that will automatically navigate to his website to trigger pop ads (perhaps use a VPN to make the visit look like it came from a certain geo). But to simulate carrier traffic would involve more complicated setups, as normally a SIM card + data plan from the specific mobile carrier would be required. I don't have the slightest idea how that could even be done (tech really isn't my forte).

At any rate - Caurmen's bot testing tool should stand us in good stead, whether we're targeting wifi or carrier traffic.



Amy

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Hey Amy - Thanks for the tips. I spoke with Manu Adeffy, one of my mentors, and he also said I should get back on STM ASAP. I'm really excited to be back on! I'll be reading posts, writing content for people my age, and generally getting my head around eCommerce/AM/online sales in the meantime.

To the broad audience - What have I been up to in the meantime? I was able to land a gig at a local content-based advertising agency. I work on copywriting, content-based posts, and general ad-hoc advertising work. Doing this will hone my copywriting skills and make me better set to optimize and conquer the world of long-copy landing pages. I may even be able to help out some seasoned affiliated who need help with their copywriting. I've read "Ca$hvertising" and am currenting going through "How to Write a Good Advertisement." Great reads for anyone looking to learn the basics.

In the meantime, I'll read more blogs and spy on more ads in general. But, I'd still like to launch something of my own as well before I start at my VC/PE fund in July, even if it's a failure! I'm thinking a high-margin info product like Neil Patel or Servando Silva. I don't want to be "the face" at the risk of my reputation (just yet!). But I have somebody willing to partner with me. We're thinking of launching a product in the dating/looksmaxing niche specifically for asian-americans. What do you think?

Also, where should I go on the forum to talk with copywriters/people who specialize in that landers / part of the AM chain? Currently researching and writing a post on crafting Advertising Headlines that generate clicks without being too "clickbaity" so to speak. After I finish it I can post it for the STM community to read.

Cheers to a great 2018 everybody,
$Train

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Hey $Train! I've been wondering about you! Really stoked to see that you've come back!

Developing your own infoproduct sounds awesome! That's something you can continually improve on and milk profits from for a long time to come. And then you can sell other related products to your customers as well. Not every product will turn out to be a winner, but when you DO find a winner, that may be all you need to make a good living. In comparison, CPA offers will come and go, and when they do, so does your "income".

As for where to talk about copywriting etc. - here's the forum section:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...amp-Psychology

Very much looking forward to that post!

Also: Have you seen how they craft titles on the big viral sites? Upworthy.com for example have their writers write 30 headlines for each article and pick the best. They also have a ton of data (CTR etc.) on what works and what doesn't, so their titles are getting better and better over time. A fantastic way to learn how to write great titles.


Again - welcome back and I'll see you around? Do let us know how you get on!




Amy

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Welcome back moneytrain!

If you post some of your copywriting drafts, I’m more than happy to look over them.

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Thanks Mr. Green, that would be great! I'll be writing a draft this evening/tomorrow, and then I'll post it for you (and others) to critique.

Much appreciated!

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