A Lurker Takes Action (30)
Hello everyone,
As I've explained in my introductory post, I've been reading these forums for a few years and struggling with making sweeps work.
My initial plan was to keep pursuing sweeps, but as I found Amy's Newbie's First Steps I decided to start going through it from scratch, including picking the vertical and GEOs.
Only a few lines in, I've already noticed a major difference between my approach and the guide's. People have been telling me to focus on one vertical, traffic source and GEO.
However, finding enough offers for only one specific T3 GEO has many times been quite hard. Especially when you're new, with few networks and no green campaigns under your belt.
Looking at the recommendation from Amy, I end up with offers from 12 different GEOs. In a way, it makes a lot of sense - test everything, people say. 
So, about my progress ...
Using Amy's method for finding offers, I've ended up with 56 of them to test.
I'm currently at Day 4: Setting Up a Campaign on PropellerAds. I'm about to create the first campaign.
However, I'm using ZeroPark instead of PA, simply because I already had an account there and I've started finding my way around the UI and functionality.
I will post more as I get some campaigns up and running.
Cheers!
Hey!
It's so nice that you decided to start your Follow Along here!
Yes, Amy's guide is DIAMOND! Looking forward to you to pass throw all these days.
Looking forward to your next steps
Originally Posted by mrbraun
But thanks for the recommendation!
Originally Posted by michaelthecoder
But thanks for the recommendation!
I see. Maybe I should deposit a few hundred there, after all. Thanks!
Hi Michael! Nice start of a follow-along! Thanks for giving the tutorial a shot!
One warning: If you're testing direct carrier billing offers (1/2-click), please don't test too many of those. I know I've advised differently in the past - but that was IN THE PAST. In fact, I'm in the process of giving the tutorial a major overhaul:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Major-Overhaul
The gist of it is: Only test a few 1/2-click offers via direct-linking just to get some practice on setting up campaigns, then progress directly to the landing page part of the tutorial and start using landing pages in your campaigns.
As for testing multiple geos - good for you! However, I would suggest asking your affiliate managers for the best geos to start with. You can also check Adplexity to see which geos and offers are doing the best and the most volume (running for at least a few days with good volume; multiple offers that fit these criteria would be a bonus). Doing so can really narrow down the amount of testing you need to do.
Have fun and I look forward to your next update!
Amy
Hey Amy!
Nice to see the author of the tutorial pop in. (pun intended) 😊
Thank you for your input about the DL campaigns.
I see that you nowadays recommend testing 20-30 DL 1/2 click offer campaigns and then moving on to landing pages section. Would that still be with 1/2 click offers, or some other offer type?
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on the matter 😊
Regards,
Michael
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Major-Overhaul
If you're wanting to run a few more 1/2-click offers for practice, please see these threads for recommended offers:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking
Or just ask your AM for the most recent offers lists.
But yes - moving onto landing pages would be wise! I wouldn't dwell on DL offers too much.
You got your value out of the direct-linked camps - you now know how to set up tracking, and you're familiar with setting up camps in
The only thing we're not sure at this point is whether you've set up the postback correctly - because there hasn't been a conversion yet.
Have you checked your stats in
Looking forward to seeing you have fun with landers soon!
Amy
Hey Amy (and everyone else reading this),
Yes, the postback is setup correctly. I managed to get a conversion on an offer with a prelander built-in. However, the offer wasn't good enough to DL on PropellerAds.
Anyway, last night I was really tired, but I got my s3/cloudfront up and running. Ripped some pages and cleaned them. Managed to get 98-99 / 100 on google insights, which I'm quite pleased with.
I started two campaigns for an offer that was recommended by my AM. One 3G and one WIFI, and with bot detection scripts on all my landers.
When I woke up this morning, I saw 0 conversions and 0 clicks.
It dawned on me pretty quickly that I shouldn't have started my campaigns while being too tired to be able to completely focus on the task.
Not only had I entered the wrong URL to all my landers in
Luckily, I'd only deposited a small amount of funds in my traffic source account, since I was just going to test it out to begin with.
The bad part is that I ran out of funds on my traffic source.
The good part is that I found out there's enough traffic to justify building a campaign for the GEO.
Next steps
Getting the tests running with correct URLs and budgets.
I will post more info about the campaigns once I've collected some data.
Have a nice weekend, everyone!
/Michael
Hi Guys
I've started Amy's tutorial too this month. The main problem I'm hitting is not getting enough conversions to even start blacklisting zones and fully optimizing.
Here's my
Vists - 32K+
Signups - 13
CR - 0.04%
EPC - 0.0279
Rev - $9.00
Spent - around $200 (just on pop traffic)
The main conversions came from an AU test, tired and somehow missed the 'set total budget' section in Propellerads - woke up to $65 on one campaign. Yay least I got a conversion, but at a -95% ROI lol
Not sure where to go next, skip optimizing and go to creating landers to get more conversions so I can get to grips with optimizing?
That combined with setting a campaign budget (which you'll remember to do in the future no doubt!) will limit your losses and let you sleep better at night.
Forget about direct-linking. It's so much more difficult than it was even a few months ago. You've got practice with them - learned how to set up tracking, verified your postback when you got that first conversion - the exercise has served its purpose.
Time to move onto landers!
Amy
Hello again,
I started two new campaigns since the last update. They both run the same offer, but I split up 3G and WIFI traffic into their own separate campaigns.
The offer is a Tier 3 sweepstake offer.
Campaign 1
Landers: 3
Offers: 1
Cost: $11.08
Revenue: $3.15
ROI: -71.5%
This is the 3G campaign. The offer is definitely converting. After the intial test, one lander is cut. I need to gather more data on the other two, but one is showing more potential than the other. I will be running more traffic to zone in on the best lander.
Campaign 2
Landers: 3
Offers: 1
Cost: $11.01
Revenue: $1.05
ROI: -90.5%
This is the WIFI campaign. While it's not performing as well as the 3G campaign, I will not give up on it just yet. I've implemented a bot script on all my landers, and I've got quite a lot of placements to black list. Too early to tell which lander is the winner.
Next steps
My main goal is to find a winning lander for both campaigns. However, WIFI traffic seems to be full of bots and I'm going to have to start building a blacklist I can use for this (and future) campaigns. So these are the two things I'll be focusing mostly on in the nearest future.
Take care!
/Michael
1)The ROI is quite low. I wouldn't advise that you continue to optimize.
Chances are, by the time you're able to turn the campaign green (and that's IF), you'll have spent a lot of money on cutting placements, plus there wouldn't be much profits left from the little bit of traffic left from the remaining placements.
2)It's not necessary to use 2 campaigns to test landers - that would be a waste of money. Next time just use one campaign to cut down to a winner. Also, 5+ landers may be better to start with.
3)Starting with one offer can be an expensive way to test landers. If you start with several good offers (recommended by your AMs), run them a bit to see which one(s) is/are converting, and just use the offer that's seemingly converting the best to cut landers down to a winner, you can potentially save a lot on cost.
Whereas if you're just using a single offer, if it doesn't convert well - for example that campaign you're running at -90% ROI - you'd need to keep losing at that low ROI in order to collect enough conversions to identify the best lander.
What I would suggest: Keep the 3G campaign going and pause the WIFI campaign for now. Identify the best lander. Then collect more offers that accept wifi traffic for the same geo, and set up a wifi campaign with those offers PLUS the original offer, using just the best lander, and see if any of the offers have high enough ROI to be worth optimizing the campaign further.
Amy
Hey,
Thanks for your input. I agree on you on most points. However, I think the stats are a bit skewed since the bot offer is included in the campaigns.
Excluding the bot offer, the campaign is a -49% ROI. Offer + best lander is at -0.39% ROI and offer + best lander + best OS = +19.84% ��
I'll pursue this campaign but leave the wifi one alone.
Regards,
Michael
Hey Michael!
First of all, its a pleasure to see that you are following the goal you've set up!
So, did you keep the campaign live so far? How is it going?
When it comes to the optimization process, I would agree with Amy, that it's better to concentrate on the 3G offers in the beginning to gain more information wasting less traffic. Because, as you have said, there is more incoming traffic (including bot one) from wifi, thus it could be a bit expensive to go for it at the beginning. However it is just a suggestion, I am sure with right strategy and trying you will succeed in both 3G and wifi traffic Moreover, do not forget to check the TOP offers with your AM, because maybe they have a money-bomb offer exactly for wifi
Excluding the bot offer, the campaign is a -49% ROI. Offer + best lander is at -0.39% ROI and offer + best lander + best OS = +19.84%
But yeah, if you're seeing a green segment that is getting enough traffic, then I would definitely run that further - next time I'll ask more questions before suggesting giving up. Apologies for the oversight!
Please do keep us posted on progress. Is that segment still green after you ran more traffic to it?
Amy
Hi Amy,
I let the offer run for a few more days and it ended up diving beyond saving, lol.
Currently I'm testing another campaign right now.
7 landers and 5 offers. I've managed to find an offer that's converted twice in a 10x payout period. (Actually, it reached 2 conversions in a 5x payout)
I'm using that to find the best lander, which I'll use to find the best offer later.
Cheers ��
The offer ended up not converting at all. Besides, looking closer at the 2 conversions, they were both from another GEO and with 0 visits to the LP. I think I may have to redo the offer test.
Originally Posted by michaelthecoder
Did you actually have 2 conversions based on stats at your aff network?
If so, then it would be worth looking into how you got them. What did you mean they were from another geo? And how did the visitors bypass the LP?
If you have direct-linked by accident, perhaps by using the LPs you'd get better conversion rates?
I would look into this further.
Amy
Hello Amy,
Thanks for the reply.
No, there was no accidental direct link. My tracker displayed 0 visits to the LP and 1 conversion on both placements which converted. (click loss?) They were both from a GEO I hadn't targeted in my TS.
Apart from those two, my tracker displayed visits, clicks and conversions fine.
Anyway, I ran the test again with all the offers and LPs included, but the GEO didn't seem to convert very well on that specific traffic source.
Moving on to another GEO. Actually, testing several of them as we speak. I'm hoping this will give me an idea of which GEOs convert well in this vertical + traffic source combination.
Keeping you posted.
Originally Posted by michaelthecoder
Thanks for the reply.
No, there was no accidental direct link. My tracker displayed 0 visits to the LP and 1 conversion on both placements which converted. (click loss?) They were both from a GEO I hadn't targeted in my TS.
Apart from those two, my tracker displayed visits, clicks and conversions fine.
Anyway, I ran the test again with all the offers and LPs included, but the GEO didn't seem to convert very well on that specific traffic source.
Moving on to another GEO. Actually, testing several of them as we speak. I'm hoping this will give me an idea of which GEOs convert well in this vertical + traffic source combination.
Keeping you posted.
Was
If so, what's preventing you from targeting the geo on the traffic source to get more traffic from that geo? Since it converted so well...
Unless - the offer does not accept traffic from that particular geo.
Amy
Hi Amy,
Yes, the tracker identified the GEO and I couldn't target it since the offer didn't accept that traffic.
I'm pretty bad at keeping you guys updated on my progress (I'm sorry).
As of now, I've got two profitable campaigns running. Both are offers with prelanders built into them. However, since the GEOs are fairly small on my current traffic source, the campaigns aren't making me much money.
Once I get more cash, I'll look into other traffic sources which have more volume in those two particular GEOs.
I'll also keep launching more campaigns to find more gems.
However, even if my two green campaigns aren't making me much money, I'm finally seeing examples of what (really) converting offers look like.
This is worth a lot, in my opinion.
This is worth a lot, in my opinion.
And I can't agree with you more.
No need to apologize for the lack of progress - just know we'll always be here if you need us (BTW it's MY turn to apologize for the late reply - I was on vacation - 1st time in 3 years
).Amy
Hey,
Thank you. �� I'm currently working on another campaign and will post the results from the initial test shortly.
Unless this too ends up bombing, which will make me move onto the next. ��
You had a well deserved vacation, from what I can tell ��
Did you go somewhere or just relax at home?
Regards,
Michael
Originally Posted by michaelthecoder
We (my gf and I) attended a 5-day workshop on past-life regression therapy by Dr. Brian Weiss, one of my favorite authors of all time. We've had life-transforming experiences - a topic for another time and place. Thanks for asking Michael!
Amy
This is worth a lot, in my opinion.
Kudos to action, Can't stress how huge the difference is between seeing it work before your very own eyes and your own campaign vs seeing stats from someone else on a forum!Eagerly awaiting for your new results.. lets get scaling mate!
Hey guys,
I was hoping to show you some stats, but the campaign completely bombed from the looks of it. With 10 landers, 5 landers and a budget of $100 I managed to get 1 conversion.
The CTRs on the landers are around 25-30% and the clicks are getting through to the networks. I know $100 is a bit low for 10 landers, but with an avg of ~$2 payout I've spent about 10x payout for each offer.
The converting offer+lander combo is currently at -18% ROI.
I'm a bit unsure whether I should continue testing or kill this campaign. My instinct tells me to kill it and test other GEOs, but I'd like to hear your opinion before I do so.
TIA
Regards,
Michael
For 10 landers and 5 offers, there are 50 combinations. By spending $100 you've only spent the equivalent of 1x payout on each combination (average payout being $2).
Whether or not to keep testing - I would look at the following:
-How confident are you about the offers? Were they randomly selected, or recommended by AMs because they have converted well for at least a few other affiliates? Or did you pick them based on good stats on Adplexity or other spy tools?
-How confident are you about the landers? Were they ripped from a spy tool based on good stats and trends (e.g. received lots of traffic over many days, if had uptrending graph even better)? Or did you rip as many different styles as you could find in order to test broad? Did you optimize them for fast-loading? Did you ensure they displayed well on various devices (i.e. checked using browserstack)? Did you click through each to make sure everything functioned properly?
The more confident you are about the offers and landers, the more I would suggest to write off this campaign as a loss and move onto another geo.
If you're not confident you had good offers or landers, then consider doing the following:
1)Ask AMs for proven offers that other affiliates have experienced good conversion rates with. 2-3 offers should be enough.
2)Do more research on Adplexity to find out which 5 landers (of your current 10) are the most promising, and tweak them further if possible to ensure they load fast, display well and function correctly.
3)Re-run your test.
This time you'll be spending less money on testing because you'll have narrowed down your choices of offers and landers, and because you'll already be confident about your offers and landers, if they don't convert then chances are that geo+vertical may be more difficult to crack.
Finally - one more thing to consider: Traffic volume and number of placements. If you're operating in a big geo with a ton of placements, then you'll need to be prepared to lose considerable amounts of money in the beginning on cutting bad placements. If this is the case, then even if you're quite confident in your landers and offers, you'd need to spend more budget in the beginning before deciding whether that geo+vertical has promise or not. Good thing is, once you ARE able to find a good offer+lander, you'll have room to cut a lot of traffic and still have more than enough to profit from.
Hope that helps!
Amy
Kickass answers, as usual. Thank you
It seems I need a bigger budget for that GEO, because yes, it is quite an extensive one. However, it seems to do well on two of my networks, which is why I decided to give it a try.
While I was waiting for an answer in this thread, I ran some more tests in other, smaller GEOs.
I asked two of my affiliate managers for their top converting sweepstakes offers and picked one offer from two different GEOs. I also decided to test an additional similar offer for each GEO (so 2 GEOs with 2 offers each).
After that I ripped 4 landers from adplexity (sorted based on most volume the last 2 weeks). Then I optimized them for speed.
Set up 4 different campaigns - 2 GEOs on 2 different traffic sources.
Ran $10 to each. One of the offers showed promise and converted twice. Currently running that one to split test landers.
On the promising campaign, I cut placements with 70%+ bots and 0 conversions.
It is currently running at 80-100% ROI at low volume (spend gets spread over the entire day), which is more or less free data for the lander split test.
I'm starting to realize that testing many campaigns at once is key when it comes finding some golden nuggets to run further. Time to apply to some more offers.
Thanks again for all the help so far. I can't begin to describe how much I appreciate you guys taking the time to pop in and drop a line!
Regards,
Michael
I'm starting to realize that testing many campaigns at once is key when it comes finding some golden nuggets to run further. Time to apply to some more offers.
Thanks again for all the help so far. I can't begin to describe how much I appreciate you guys taking the time to pop in and drop a line!
You're absolutely right that testing multiple campaigns at once is key! Start doing that and you'll see a lot more green.
Also, now that you have a profitable campaign, why not invest into testing as many pop sources as you can? You can't really do that when you don't have a good campaign going (because you need a proven performer to test unproven traffic). The more good sources you find, the bigger and faster you'll be able to scale all your future campaigns.
Likewise, your effort in maintaining this follow-along is highly appreciated! Hundreds of members have read this thread (I can see from the stats) and although not every one has given "Thanks", I bet a lot of them have learned from your experience. So a big thank you to you as well.
Onwards and upwards! Looking forward to seeing you reach more success!
Amy
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