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Hungry Newbie! My journey (18)

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Hey there, I think it's my turn to try a newbie follow-along !


First of all, I'm not english native so I want to apologize first if my english is not perfect, and it won't be


Then, I have to start with my background, for you to get the context:


I'm not a full newbie, since I tried popups 1 year / 1 year and a half ago.
I learnt a lot during this time: Voluum (even FunnelFlux for a while), I created and "stole" landers (I started as a coder in my professional life so tech is not a problem), I ran different campaigns...


But I had no success, that's why I quit AM actually, 1 year ago


But I'm really motivated to succeed this time, so let's try it again!


My Voluum is already set.


But to start, I have to make some decisions right now, and maybe you could help me.


First of all, I guess I should NOT start with direct linking campaigns, as I already know the "basics" of AM. Furthermore, I read a lot of topics and I saw that DL offers don't work that good now...


So, what should I start with ? Ask for best newbie offers to AMs (and should I say to them that I want to use landers? => what is the best way to get a list of offers working with landers?) ? In the meantime, should I try to spy/copy LP ? Can I do that without Adplexity ? (I'd like to save some money here, and use it in testing budget instead)
Also, should I already set up bot detection code? I guess it's the first step before launching campaign. I saw a lot of topics about bot detection, but what is the best script you would recommend to me ?

Should I register to several other offers networks? I'm already with Mobidea. Same for Popup networks, should I register to others?


Yeah I know I ask A LOT of questions and I did not even start yet, I'm sorry But I want to do it as perfect as possible!


I will end this first post with a huge THANK YOU for this great forum (I already read a lot of great threads <3) and everyone who's helping newbies like me

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Hey there!


So, I finally decided to start with some DL offers, for 2 reasons:


1) I want to come back into Affiliate Marketing smoothly, without rushing anything.
2) A friend of mine is really interesting in AM, but he's 100% a rookie, and we decided to do that together. So it's even a better idea to begin with the first steps.


Yesterday, I asked my AM is she had newbie-friendly offers she could recommend me, she gave me two in Argentina + Personal.


On top of that, I went on this topic ( https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking ) to get the last top-offers list.


I selected one offer from Argentina + Personal in this list, to have some "harmony" with the ones my AM recommend me.


And I wanted to setup also a campaign in another country, so I picked the two offers of the list from Guatemala.


I splitted in 2 campaigns:


Campaign 1) Argentina + Personal, no rule needed => 3 offers ($0.48 payout offer 1 +$0.48 payout offer 2 + $0.48 payout offer 3 = 1.44 * 5 = $7.2 testing budget)
Campaign 2) Guatemala + Claro, with a Voluum rule for one offer which has OS restrictions (I checked my stats, the rule is working fine) => 2 offers ($0.56 payout offer 1 +$0.48 payout offer 2 = 1.04 * 5 = $5.2 testing budget)


I already had a little problem: I applied, as you can see, the new first rule from Amy's update on the tutorial: 5* time payout spent, and if no conversion => cut (https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Major-Overhaul => I hope I understood this right!) but since payout offer is ~0.50 average, it's hard to find enough offers (same GEO + carriers) to group in one campaign and end up with minimum $10 asked by propellerads.


In Guatemala for example, we have two $4.8 test budget, which is < 10 (still assuming I understood correctly the update)


I guessed I had to cut campaigns manually when it comes to $4.8 spent, and same for other campaigns (I used throttling on propellerads)


Anyway, I still setup the campaigns and started it in propellers Ads: I chose my bid by finding the most efficient spot: best quantity / price bid according to their estimator graphic.


The bids:
Campaign 1, Argentina + Personal: 1.48
Campaign 2, Guatemala + Claro: 0.77


Ok so I started this campaign 12 hours ago, and I went to sleep during this time (so I could not manually campaign 1 ath the moment when it hit 5 times payout ), here are the stats:


Campaign 1:



Campaign 2:



I had to cut Campaign 1 in Argentina just 30 minutes slightly before the 7.2$ test budget. Why ? Because I had problem with namecheap, they "banned" me (not sure why) and therefore the link provided by Voluum for the campaign did not work anymore. I have to buy another domain and setup the CNAME again.

However, This problem happened when I was awake, 30 minutes ago, I could cut the campaign immediatly, so the stats have not been affected.

Let's talk about those stats now:


As you can see, these are not encouraging datas ^^ So as I spend approximatively 5* payout and got no conversion, I decided to cut the campaigns.


I'm still not sure what I should do next, keep going with DL offers or move to landers part.


(BTW, 3 days ago I randomly ran a $10 campaign with a random mobidea offer to test my voluum, and I got 2 conversions so the postback URL is setup correctly (still a -90% campaign, so I did not run it more)).

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Hey guys,

Still waiting to be approved by offers networks.

Therefore, I spent my time reading a lot of topics on the forum, including follow along.

And I have to say, I have a lot of doubts concerning pop+landers for newbies.

First, it looks like DL offers don't work anymore, ok it's not with landers, but still harder for a newbie.
Then, I looked a lot of follow along, and it looks like the average number of conversion for all newbies here is like 1 or 2 for 50$ spent, like it is a miracle to find a combo lander+offer working.

Is really the combo pop+landers worth ? According to the 2018 ultimate guide, pops are dying, and for a lot of people in the guide, are not worth anymore. Sure, the conclusion of the guide was "still good for newbies", but is it really ? Or is it only, like, "ok you will lose a lot of money but at least you will understand Voluum and all the networks blabla" ? (cause as I said in introduction, I already learnt that a year and a half ago)

And finally, on another follow along, I saw a commentary saying "good you're not using pops like other newbies, it might work better for you"

Overall, that's why I have a lot of doubts about pops + landers. I'm willing to invest XXXX$ but if only 1 on 50 newbies makes first profitable campaign after investing XXXX$, it's not worth.

Can someone light me on this? I am wrong? If yes, am I THAT wrong ?

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Hello frenchtouch, let me be the first to reply in your thread.

The situation with POPs is as I wrote in the 2018 report summary ... it's the best playground for newbies to start in, because of the cheap prices and easy availability. In order to learn tracking and basic optimization, you need SOME traffic quickly, without paying a lot for it ... and that's POPs. As a newbie, you'll make mistakes and break the rules, often without realizing it, and POP sources are generally quite lenient. I could go on, but I'm sure you understand why I say its good for newbies to learn basics with.

As long as making lots of money in POPs ... not gonna happen most likely. There are people who do make solid $$$ with POPs, but they are FAR from being noobs. So my recommendation ... learn basics with POPs, then move elsewhere.

Directlinking offers ... not gonna work most likely, you need to learn how to work with LPs, that's the only way pretty much. Or focus on HQ traffic sources such as FB or Adwords... good designed offers can do just well with that traffic.

One thing with the follow alongs and possible success that these people find ... there is a paradox that we are fighting with, people don't like to go publicly about their success. Usually its this way ... they start a follow along, get the advice they need, they keep on posting for as long as they need more help from us ... then they make it, thank us via a PM or in person at a conference, but they usually hesitate to make a success story thread. I completely understand this, everyone has their own tolerance level when it comes to preserving their privacy. All I can say here, I can assure you that WAY more people find success in AM with the help of STM community, than you'd think based on the follow alongs.

Cheers,
Matej.

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Hello matuloo, thanks for taking the time !

Ok that's more or less what I thought. Thanks for sharing your honest opinion.
But now, I'm not sure what I should do. As I said, I already learnt the basics 1 year ago. I made some campaigns, a lot of landing (ripped or from scratch), I don't think I would need to spend money to learn something I already know.

Maybe I should try banners, it looks like it's the "natural" way to progress in AM after pops.
I have a question though, should I work with the same offers networks than those I worked with using pops ?

That's true. I saw a lot of people leaving their thread after being so insistant for weeks And it's probably not a change in their personnality
(However, I don't think they're successful with pop - at least, not anymore)

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Some are successful, I mean, all the POP networks are not living off newbies who come to them to spend their 50 bucks, There are big players in POPs, and even some newbies find success there from time to time ... it's just pretty hard. That's why I tell people to just learn basics with POPs and then look for other options.

You can also use POPs to quickly test offers ... cause if they show some promise with crappy POP traffic, you can be sure that they would work better with higher quality traffic. It's also a great way to test LPs quickly. The cheap price of POPs is the biggest advantage, use it

You mean affiliate or traffic networks? In case of affiliate networks, yup, you can use the same.
In case of traffic networks, some offer several traffic types, so it might be a good starting point, since you already know their interface.

Native is also an option, though it's a pretty "high $$$ entry barrier" traffic type. Or look at adult traffic, that's still a very affiliate friendly ground.

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Thanks for all those valuable informations Matej.

And yeah I was asking about affiliate networks, but I still take your advices on traffic networks
But I wonder:

1) If an offer is promising with pops, it will be probably on a vertical (sweeps or AV probably) that may not fit on other traffic types. I mean it's harder to test all type of vertical on pops, right ?
2) What is a promising campaign on pops ? Positive, after cutting bad placements, OS, etc ?

Also, I did some afflow + pops last year and it was one of the rare campaigns I made which was positive. I had to stop because at this time I ran out of cash... But is it still something which might work today ? And is it still a good way to test offers, if you can find them on a network after testing them on afflow ?

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Of course, some offers are more suitable for POP, but I think what Matej meant is that pop traffic is just a good way to test any offers. But definitely, you need to take into account the general probability of conversion according to offers' vertical. For example, from the beggining sweeps are expected to have better results, than for mobile content in pop traffic. But if mobile content offers can convert there, with higher traffic quality it could show great outcomes.

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Ok thanks. No reason not to try them.

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True, some offers are generally not the best fit for POP traffic ... for example finance leads or other HQ leadgen. But for broad appeal freebies, impulse based leadgen (adult), antivirus etc ... POPs are usable for quick mass testing.

In the testing phase? Whatever makes multiple conversions straight of the bat at a reasonable cost. For example ... Spending $200 to get 10 $0.5 leads is not reasonable cost. Spending $20 and getting 5 $0.5 leads is reasonable for initial testing.

Just to clear any confusion ... this is not my PREFERRED way of testing offers, so don't take it as something you MUST do. But I've done this several times already and will do again.

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Ok Boss! Thanks for all those greats informations.

I finally decided to stick to pops + landers, I'll keep this updated. Still waiting for some other aff networks to approve me. Then I'll talk to AMs and I'll pick a vertical and geo, according to what the advice me.

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Hello! The Hungry Newbie is back with things to show and questions to ask! .

So I'll try to be as concise as possible in regards of what I did since my first tests:

I asked my AM for some offers in a Tier 3 spanish speaking country (since a budy is from Latin America and could translate the text) and I got Colombian Sweep offers. I found a smiliar offer in another Network and decided to go with two offers.

My setup:
- 2 offers, Payout 0,12 and 0,24
- 7 Landers I ripped from Adplexity.

Extra information:
- I redid all the texts from the landers in good Spanish as well as the social proof comments and some design.
- I added a Bot Trap described HERE
- Taught myself how to modify .png files with Photoshop to modify a Spin.

Experiment:
- I created two campaigns, one for wifi and one for 3G.
- I added my 7 landers and the bot trap to each campaign. (I know this was my first mistake, as Amy suggested I'll only add it to one lander in the future and I plan to use the Bot Trap from @platinum next time as described HERE)
- I launched my two campaigns in PropellerAds yesterday night with a CPM of 0.51 and a budget of 10 dollars per campaign.

Results:
1) One of my campaigns was stopped by Propeller. I asked the support what is the cause and they replied "Copyright Infringement". I have 2 Landers with the Google Logo, one with Movistar and one with Amazon Logo. I guess that's the reason?
2) I got conversions! Please disregard the CTR here because it's influenced by the Bot Trap (Basically if the traffic is non bot, the Bot Trap offer is visited, therefore the more CTR I have, the less bots I have).

Here's the result for the campaign that did not get banned by Propeller:


And here's the LP results for that campaign:


My Thoughts:
1) First of all I'm happy because the one with 4 conversions (Amazon Spins) is the one I redid by Photoshop. It's also responsible for the 2 conversions in the 3G. I'd therefore dare to say it's my winner lander. It's also worth noting that I got my 4 conversions in the same SiteId.
2) I notice that I have a high CTR for my "LP6" but only 2 conversions (in the other campaign), so in my next run I would try to rework that lander see if I can get it to convert more!
3) PropellerAds traffic looks good, my bot trap didn't detect many horrible placements.
4) The site ID where I got my 4 conversions with the Amazon LP also gave me 7 in total:



What next - Questions - Advice welcomed :
1) First of all I have to address the issue of the Copyright. Is Propeller banning me because of the Google & Amazon logos I'm using? Is it worth trying again to run those campaigns? Do I risk a ban or do they just stop the campaigns when they get Copyright Infringement complaints? Should I switch to another traffic source?
- I checked in Adplexity the Amazon lander and no traffic was ran on Propeller so I could probably use the main source of traffic found in Adplexity and I bet they aren't so picky about Copyright.
2) What do I cut what do I leave? My instinct tells me to run a campaign only for the site ID where I got 7 conversions (and maybe a couple others where I got nice CTR and a couple of conversions) and try to lower the CPM down from 0.51 + only run the 3 laders where I got conversions (with a couple of variations for the LP6 which has a high CTR).
3) Wasn't 0.51 CPM too expensive? I notice there are some site ID's where I barely get traffic so I wonder if they have low visitors or my CPM is just too low. To get this number I just looked at propeller estimated impressions and positioned myself just before the decline.

4) And the big question: Should I try propeller again or start over on a different traffic source that will not stop my campaigns because of Copyright issues?

Any extra advice on what you see or maybe a different path to take is of course welcomed! Oh and if someone knows how I can filter the bot trap out of the results in Voluum I'm interested, I'm currently downloading on CSV and editing on Excel

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Awesome journey mate! I'm doing a similar one myself

Good luck with it all, sounds like you're on the right track!

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

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Thanks! Hope I am can't wait to launch the second run!

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The logos were the problem most likely, yes. Running them again won't help you, since it will get rejected again and I guess that after a few times of doing this, they would ban you. Try to use something else, trust badges that suggest the page has been verified and are secure. Logos of companies of products that are used as a prize... that could fly. You can also try another source, but most will still reject google or FB logo.

You dont have enough conversions yet to do proper decisions here. Focusing on one site ID isnt a good idea either, because whats the profit potential here then?

If you really want to cut something then try to drop just the worst ones ... so the one offer seems to work way better, drop the other one. Some LPs have conversions, some don't do drop the ones without conversions ... problem is that the best LP is probably the one that got rejected.

$0.51 doesn't seem a lot to me per 1000 POPs, could be actually low for some placements as you suggested. It would make sense to run a staggered bid test, to see whether there are some levels where the volume goes up sharply or vice versa.

I think propeller is still quite a lenient sources with not so strict rules and they are the biggest POP network as far as I know, so I'd suggest staying there and just try to learn how to work with their rules. You can obviously test other sources too, there is no need to stick just with one sources, as soon as you feel you got the basics straight.

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Hi Matuloo,

Thanks for the knowledge sharing!

I'd like to pick your brain a it more here, how many conversions are enough to get proper decisions? Should I have let the campaign run a bit longer under the same setup? When do I know I need to stop?

THanks and Regards!

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I'm mostly facing 2 situations :

1. none of the options I'm split testing is showing promise, so I pause it all after 5-10x spend ... depends on the offer payout and how bad the results really are.

2. some options work better than others, so I start to pause the worst ones when they clearly start to fall behind. I don't have some set values here though, I rely on my experience so to speak ... for example in your case, you had a bunch of LPs, they did 0-4 conversions each ... it's still a bit to early, but those with 0 conversions are clearly not working with the offers you have. SO I would cut those pretty early and focus on those that made at least some conversions. It's still a bit early though, as I said. Basically, I'm trying to reach a phase when 1-2 random conversions wouldn't have any impact on my decisions. So the range you have now ... 0 - 4 ... is not enough, because 1 or 2 conversions will affect the ratios a LOT. I would like to see something like 2-10 more, so I know the one with 10 is a CLEAR winner. With higher payout offers, this is not possible anymore, 0-4 would be a clear signal.

Many people rely on significance tools, might be a good option for you to check out too and go by that, until you developed your own style.

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Sorry for arriving so late! Matuloo is providing excellent guidance already. But I'll contribute where I can.

Regarding the future of pop - some facts:

-It HAS gotten competitive.

-It HAS gotten harder to profit.

-It STILL is the easiest and cheapest way to learn affiliate marketing.

-It STILL is NOT difficult for a newbie to make up to low 3-figures a day in profits after a couple of months. If you go through some of the recent follow-alongs, you'll find proof of this. Another post I replied to earlier is a good example - they're at $400/day in profits now:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...g-on-2x-ing-it


Once you have more capital and a larger budget, and more confidence and knowledge and experience, I would suggest trying either Native or FB. Or even Google Adwords.

Native is a natural progression from pop, but it's much better to make all your mistakes and do most of your learning with pop to keep costs low before diving into native, because native camps require a lot more budget to cut placements etc. so you definitely want to have the experience that is required to optimize campaigns efficiently.

FB and Google are the biggest sources of traffic, but the learning curve is considerably steeper, so the less-persistent affiliate may get frustrated and give up. If that isn't a problem for you, though, then by all means dive right into these sources and learn as you go.


Regarding your recent campaigns:

1)When cutting landers to identify the winner, use a stats tool - it's VERY important to use stats in decision-making, in order to eliminate some of the guess work. There are already enough volatility in pop camps without having us introduce further anarchy by choosing split-test winners haphazardly.

This is how you compare landers:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Banners-Part-1

2)In order to gather conversions necessary to cut landers, it would be preferably to use a single offer. What I would suggest is to use the first offer to have made 2 conversions (out of all the offers you've been running), and pause all the other offers, and continuing to run JUST that one offer until you can cut landers down to the winner. After that, you can reinstate the other offers and even add new offers to start a new split-test, this time using the winning lander to mass-test offers.

You can try using conversions from ALL offers when comparing lander stats to decide which landers to cut, but I feel that it would be more accurate to use conversions from a single offer.

3)Your thought of using the best placement to test landers and offers is smart - doing so can save you money, assuming it's giving you enough traffic to complete the testing in a reasonable amount of time. One thing though: Pop camps usually perform better when you take the blacklisting approach as opposed to the whitelisting approach. Often, when you whitelist some placements, the amount of traffic would decline drastically - it's as though the traffic source assigned less importance to your campaign because it has narrower targeting.

Feel free to try blacklisting vs. whitelisting and see what results you get.

4)Regarding logos - propeller does not allow the use of trademarks and logos. Unless you decide to cloak, you'd need to remove the logos and try again. This can also mean you'll need to split-test your modifed landers again to find a winner, then use that winner to mass-test offers.

5)As for whether to leave propeller: This is one of the best-quality and largest-volume pop sources around, so you may want to try to make it work. PopAds, PopCash and Zeropark are less-strict on landers but you'll need to find out for yourself what they each allow or don't allow.

I would suggest trying to make propellerads work first. Right now you're still learning how to optimize a campaign effectively. No need to distract yourself by trying to learn multiple networks yet.


You're doing great there! Keep on and I'll be monitoring this thread for further progress.



Amy

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