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Basic Queries for my first step (7)

03-26-2018 06:22 AM #1 r4raaj (Member)
Basic Queries for my first step

Hi Friends,

I feel like an Infant in this beautiful world of Affiliate Marketing. I think I am around 15-20 days old in this world. But now, I am living with a dream. I want to be part of this beautiful world. But I will do my best and definitely achieve it. This field is very fascinating as well as very challenging. Lot of queries are coming in my mind.

In last few days I have learnt below points in detail:


  1. the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand' or advertiser)
  2. the affiliate network ((e.g. Mobidea) that contains offers for the affiliate (publishers) and also takes care of the payments)
  3. the publisher (affiliate)
  4. the customer (Visitor)
  5. Traffic Network (PropellerAds($100))
  6. Tracker (Voluum.com ($99))
  7. Domain/Hosting
  8. Spying (Adplexity)
  9. Compress the image size https://kraken.io/
  10. Calculator spreadsheet to continue or kill the campaign


I have given my self a target to start my first campaign on 30th March, 2018. Now lot of queries are coming in my mind. Please help me to find answers of my queries. If possible, please provide answers in minimum words so that I can easily digest them and further do my research in detail.

1. What is carrier?


2. What is Cloaking?


3. Difference between Good offer and a good funnel?


4. Cutting placements: Find the best bidding point then you should start cutting placements. What are cutting placements.


5. Pops work great with big brand name campaigns (cookie dropping), pay per pall, desktop download programs and gambling.
Pops doesnt work well for sweeps IMO.

Why and how?


6. Wifi Traffic /Carrier Traffic. What is the difference between these two?


7. Setting Up Hosting and CDN: We need to set up all the infrastructure we'll be needing to run landing pages. Get a domain, set up hosting to store the pages online, set up a CDN to serve those pages fast, and use a DNS service to direct the visitors from the domain name to the place where we host the files.

Here, I have no idea about CDN and DNS.



8. What are Sweep type offers?


9. What is Black List?


10. Bot detection script? What are bots?


11. What is SOI offer?


12. What is split-test?


13. Who is Affiliate Manager? What is his role in this process?


14. Smartlink also send traffic to "off-market" offers that aren't accessible to affiliates unless/until their AM opens up the offer. What are Smartlinks?


Thanks in advance friends

03-26-2018 09:22 AM #2 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Hello rajivwalia, welcome to the forum!

Let me answer your questions :

1. What is carrier?
Mobile carrier, such as Orange, Vodafone ... so the company that connects users to MOBILE internet.

2. What is Cloaking?
It's a method of showing one thing to certain party and something else to the other one. For example, showing a clean compliant landing page to the reviewers of a traffic network, while sending the real users to aggressive in-compliant landing page that breaks all rules, but converts well. This is a blackhat tactic that can get you banned. There are special tools for this, using known IP ranges, referral data etc ... in order to identify the parties that you want to cloak (reviewers...).

3. Difference between Good offer and a good funnel?
Offer is the final product you are promoting, the Funnel is the way you're promoting it (banner+LP+final offer url).

4. Cutting placements: Find the best bidding point then you should start cutting placements. What are cutting placements.
Every traffic network has MANY placements ... this can be websites, specific zones on a website etc ... that your ads are displayed on. Some will convert well, some will not (due to poor traffic quality for example). Part of the optimization process is identifying these poor placements and excluding them from your campaigns i.e. blocking those placements.

5. Pops work great with big brand name campaigns (cookie dropping), pay per pall, desktop download programs and gambling.
Pops doesnt work well for sweeps IMO.

Why and how?
POPs can work with way more than just cookie dropping, actually I wouldn't recommend doing that at all ... it will just get you banned sooner or later. Sweeps are one of the best verticals for POPs actually.

6. Wifi Traffic /Carrier Traffic. What is the difference between these two?
Wifi in this context means users connected via their home or public wifi connections or fiber optics ... so the standard solid connections we have at home or in the office ... Carrier Traffic is users connected via the mobile internet of some mobile operator (carrier). So for example, when I'm using my smartphone at home and I;m connected to my home internet ... I'm wifi traffic ... as soon as I leave the house, my smartphone switches to my O2 mobile internet ... now I'm carrier traffic

7. Setting Up Hosting and CDN: We need to set up all the infrastructure we'll be needing to run landing pages. Get a domain, set up hosting to store the pages online, set up a CDN to serve those pages fast, and use a DNS service to direct the visitors from the domain name to the place where we host the files.

Here, I have no idea about CDN and DNS.
CDN is a content delivery network - so a global cache that mirrors "copies" of your sites on several datacenters across the globe, in order to serve your pages to the visitors as soon as possible, by routing them directly to the closest datacenter. Here is a CDN tutorial for you :https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...tcost-way-ever

Some DNS service "is part" of every hosting provider, but you can also use dedicated DNS services, to speed up the lookup process ... dnsmadeeasy.com for example. The speed gain is rather small though.

8. What are Sweep type offers?
Sweeps are SweepStakes ... so like a lottery ... win an iphone, win some tablet ... or shopping vouchers. The principle is simple, users enter their email in exchange for the chance to win something.

9. What is Black List?
This is related to the "placement blocking" feature at traffic networks ... by blocking placements, you are actually placing them on a blacklist. You can also do the opposite, to create a whitelist, which means targeting just the placements you want.

10. Bot detection script? What are bots?
BOTs are scripts/programs that emulate real users activity. Some of these BOTs serve legitimate purposes, such as indexing websites, checking for online status etc ... some BOTs are simply designed to defraud advertisers, by making them pay for fake/fraudulent ad impressions/clicks. Bot detections scripts help you identify BOTs, thus giving you the chance to block the most BOT-poluted placements.

11. What is SOI offer?
SOI is a conversion point ... Single Opt In ... this means that only one action is required in order for a conversion to happen. For example filling out a simple signup form. Then there are DOI (double opt in) flows, that require one more step. For example filling out a simple signup form, then having to wait for a welcome email and clicking on a confirmation there for the Second time.

12. What is split-test?
Testing two (or more) elements of the campaign at the same time. For example running multiple offers in the same campaign. In order to run a proper split test, you should only test one type of element at a time and assure even distribution of traffic to all offers. For example, when split testing offers, do not change banners at the same time.

13. Who is Affiliate Manager? What is his role in this process?
AMs are like customer support, they handle the communication between the affiliates and network (affiliate or traffic). You reach out to them in order to get info on new or good performing offers, or to help you with traffic issues. Having good relationship with AMs can help your business a lot ... access to new offers quickly, better initial payouts etc ...

14. Smartlink also send traffic to "off-market" offers that aren't accessible to affiliates unless/until their AM opens up the offer. What are Smartlinks?
Smartlinks are solutions that analyze the traffic you send and break it up into segments based on the data ... then they send the traffic to offers that are most likely to convert such traffic. So for example, if they have a super performing offer for Orange carrier traffic in UK, for users who are on iPhones ... they send such traffic to that offer etc ... Some of these great performing offers have limited budgets or it's just advertisers who look for temporary traffic boost, so these offers will not be available to everyone ... thats for the off-market remark.

That's all for now, hope that I helped you

03-26-2018 05:29 PM #3 r4raaj (Member)

Thank You so much Matuloo

All the Points are clear to me except the below one. It would be nice if you provide any example to understand it:

Smartlinks are solutions that analyze the traffic you send and break it up into segments based on the data ... then they send the traffic to offers that are most likely to convert such traffic. So for example, if they have a super performing offer for Orange carrier traffic in UK, for users who are on iPhones ... they send such traffic to that offer etc ... Some of these great performing offers have limited budgets or it's just advertisers who look for temporary traffic boost, so these offers will not be available to everyone ... thats for the off-market remark.
In addition, I would like to share below points (as per my understanding) which covers end to end scenario of campaign creation:

1. Create an account on Affiliate Network to get offers. e.g Mobidea
Query: Is it free to create an account on Affiliate Network?

2. Create an account on Traffic Network. e.g PropellerAds
Query: It will cost minimum $100 to open the account. Please correct me if I am wrong.

3. Create an account on tracker. e.g Voluum.com
Query: It will cost $99. Please correct me if I am wrong.

4. Steps to create campaign:
a. Grab the offer link from Mobidea and put that into Voluum.
b. Create a campaign in Voluum, and specify direct-linking to the offer (To keep it simple, I am not including LP here).
c. Get the postbackurl from Voluum and put it into Mobidea.
d. Take the Voluum campaign url and paste it into PropellerAds.

Query: In above point, we have created campaign on Voluum. However, I have read somewhere that we have to create campaign on Traffic network (e.g PropellerAds). This is confusing. Are we creating two campaigns, one on Voluum and other on PropellerAds?

5. How much minimum money I would required per month in this whole process?
Voluum ($99) + PropellerAds ($100) + Mobidea (Free) + Domain/Hosting (No Idea)

Query: Can you please correct me on above point. It will help me to prepare in advance

03-27-2018 10:02 AM #4 Mobidea (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by rajivwalia View Post
In addition, I would like to share below points (as per my understanding) which covers end to end scenario of campaign creation:

1. Create an account on Affiliate Network to get offers. e.g Mobidea
Query: Is it free to create an account on Affiliate Network?
Yes, it's free, but for some networks you need to have experience to enter. Mobidea is open for everyone, so you just need to register

Quote Originally Posted by rajivwalia View Post
2. Create an account on Traffic Network. e.g PropellerAds
Query: It will cost minimum $100 to open the account. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Around this amount I believe, plus you need money for tests.

Quote Originally Posted by rajivwalia View Post
3. Create an account on tracker. e.g Voluum.com
Query: It will cost $99. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, it's $99, but if you are really short on budget you can use Mobidea tracker, which is free and is already inside of your platform (the stats tab)

Quote Originally Posted by rajivwalia View Post
4. Steps to create campaign:
a. Grab the offer link from Mobidea and put that into Voluum.
b. Create a campaign in Voluum, and specify direct-linking to the offer (To keep it simple, I am not including LP here).
c. Get the postbackurl from Voluum and put it into Mobidea.
d. Take the Voluum campaign url and paste it into PropellerAds.

Query: In above point, we have created campaign on Voluum. However, I have read somewhere that we have to create campaign on Traffic network (e.g PropellerAds). This is confusing. Are we creating two campaigns, one on Voluum and other on PropellerAds?
Check Amy's tutorial, it's amazing as she explains everything step by step and it's really easy to get what to do and follow. Starting here - https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...lerads+mobidea

Quote Originally Posted by rajivwalia View Post
5. How much minimum money I would required per month in this whole process?
Voluum ($99) + PropellerAds ($100) + Mobidea (Free) + Domain/Hosting [B](No Idea)
You need to have a decent budget to make tests, so I'd say overall 1000-1500 per month is fine to start. Although it really depends on your traffic, what will you promote, where in terms of GEO, and extra tools you will need...

Hope it helps! Good luck

03-27-2018 10:04 AM #5 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Thanks Mobidea for the answers

rajivwalia : basically all questions that you asked, we have tutorials for. Try to use the search function a bit, then ask more specific questions. It's kinda hard to explain it everything step by step in on thread

03-27-2018 05:34 PM #6 r4raaj (Member)

Thanks Mobidea, I will definitely go through Amy's tutorial

03-27-2018 05:37 PM #7 r4raaj (Member)

rajivwalia : basically all questions that you asked, we have tutorials for. Try to use the search function a bit, then ask more specific questions. It's kinda hard to explain it everything step by step in on thread
I will definitely follow your advice

Thanks,
Rajiv

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