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My mobile POP/Redirect journey! (17)

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Hey guys, I just joined the forum a few days ago!

Firstly, let me just say how blown away I am with this forum!! I have learned more in CPA than my whole 3 years online!

The content, case studies and guides are worth WAY more than any overpriced coaching I've received, and the people here are so helpful.

Anyway.. My name is Tim and I am from Australia, and have been doing IM for about 3 years. I've done EVERYTHING you can think of..
SEO
Youtube Clickbank
Youtube game hacks
Amazon affiliate niche websites
Email marketing/affiliate marketing
Facebook CPA fake news sites
Solo ads
MLM
Crypto trading and investing

That's just off the top of my head. I have had some pretty big wins (and losses) here and there but the main thing I've learnt a hell of a lot of how this online advertising works. Stuff I would have been blind to if I didn't know any better lol.

The one thing that has always stuck with me has been CPA. I love how you don't need to sell anything to make money.

I did try mobile CPA a few months ago, I was all setup with Volume, Adplexity, and all the tools etc to succeed but after not seeing any results and it being WAY too much to take in, I gave up.

I am with a lot of different CPA networks and traffic networks that are recommended in this forum so that's a good thing.

I have been reading a lot and trying to take everything in. I have started reading Amy's 40 day tutorial...once again, WOW!!!!

I have already taken action, so I thought I'd do this thread to keep myself accountable and also to ask any questions I'm unsure of, or anything I am doing completely wrong.

OK, let's begin!!

Here are my tools/stats so far.

Tracker: Bemob
Traffic source: Tonic Redirect
CPA network: CPAGrip
Adplexity is to come
Direct linking to offer, but am now ready to move on to landers...eek!!!

First off I logged into CPAgrip, found a good offer from Greece that converted well according to the stats:



I might have stumbled on a winner, or it's just beginners luck but I have already had 5 conversions from direct linking!

Not sure how long it will be keep converting, but it was just a test anyway to get my feet wet. I know in this game things don't last forever because of competition, spy tools etc but least it gave me a confidence boost lol.

Here is the stats from my tracker. Everything looks like it's tracking ok, though I think I messed up my Tonic link because conversions aren't tracking there. I did add the &clickid=[clickid] to the end so hopefully that will fix it. I have zero experience in coding by the way lol. The hardest part is getting my head around all the tracking/tokens from networks. I have learnt a lot about tracking in this forum though so will get better in time



Most conversions were made within the first 1-2 days. The conversion rate did drop as I ran more traffic, maybe this is normal?

I have changed a couple of things already. 1 is, I have turned off IOS traffic because it was not converting whatsoever even after 2 x offer spend (the offer is $0.74).

And I have blacklisted 3 placements that didn't convert, though maybe I was a bit aggressive and should have left it. The placements only had about 40 visits with no conversions.

This is all just fun and a learning curve to optimize campaigns and track progress. Once I start adding landers I will have a proper process of optimizing (like taught in the 40 day tutorial).

So I think I might run a few more $, then I will pause it and start really searching other networks for offers.

Here is my plan now:

1. Stop campaign I'm running now if it's not profitable - though if I had money to throw away I could probably find a profitable offer to DL.
2. Either join Adplexity or find landers for mobile - On this topic...how do I search for mobile landers on my computer? I have a VM and can change the user agent on Firefox. I also have a VPN to change country, but I heard that most landers block VPN and WIFI traffic, is this right?
3. Read and then setup everything I need for to host landing pages - Day 21
4. Find 2 proven landers to start testing offers - still unsure of GEO - and not sure how to go about changing languages of LP - Google translate?
5. Once find offer that converts, start testing more landing pages to see if the offer converts better.
6. Go through the optimization process.

Does this sound like a good plan?

I read that it's best to test offers with proven lander instead of direct linking, THEN once you find an offer that converts, to start testing more LP's.

I won't be updating this every day unless I need to, but for now I will follow the plan!

If anyone has any suggestions or qustions I'd really appreciate it

Cheers!

Edit: one more question. When people say to test 20-30 different offers, do we still use the 2x offer payout? So say for instance an offer payout is $1.. $1 x 20 offers x 2 = $40? Thanks!

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I've been trying to get my landing page working but having some trouble. If anyone can help that would be great

I wrote a thread to see if anyone knows what I'm doing wrong:

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I'm after some help with my landing page. I've done multiple google searches but there's no definitive answer..

I followed every step to a tea on this guide:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...osting-and-CDN

I uploaded landing page, hosted it on Amazon S3, used Amazon cloudfront CDN, and setup DNS at NSOne.

I also pointed the namecheap nameservers to NSOne.

This is the error I'm getting:
403 ERROR


The request could not be satisfied.

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Bad request.

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Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: rbGs4nvabqtNa22IV9-gtNA5hQPJJrlBhxTm7w05jWvM4xz3VI6zLQ==


And when I put a www in front of it I get:
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<Error><Code>AccessDenied</Code><Message>Access Denied</Message>.....yadayada

If someone can please help me with this, I've triple checked everything and already spent nearly 2 days straight trying to fix it and I'm about to lose my mind.

Thanks!
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I am kind of stuck now until I get that fixed. I'm still reading and learning what I can until I can get my landing pages running.

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The problem with your landing page is that S3 doesn't allow serving of your landing page. 403 means forbidden.

What you need to do is make the directory where your landing page is in, public. Just click on the directory and from the actions menu choose "Make public". Another thing you can do is set "Restrict Bucket Access: Yes" in your "Origin" settings for your CF distribution. That should help as well because it will create specific permissions for CF which allow serving data only from CF domain.

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Actually for my landers i had the same problem too except It was not "Error 404" it was "This site cannot be reached. Gamestube.net server IP could not be found" as Itdx79 I followed the instructions to a tee, or else i thought I did LOL.

At least after weeks of swearing at my laptop i figured out how to setup tracking! worst tech guy ever.... Also i did not buy my domain off my godaddy account i got it off of route 53 thinking it would be easier? Maybe thats the problem?

anyways i changed some things around but still have the same results. here are a few screenshots to hopefully answer some questions before they are asked!

Thank you all for this amazing Forum! And as always Hustle hard!

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Site cannot be reached usually means that your browser has no idea where it needs to go because your domain's nameservers did not respond with an IP address. That just means your domain does not have correct DNS configuration. What it can also mean is that you have a typo in your domain. I do use Route 53 and it's great. I especially love it's really fast updates, no need to wait 30+ min.. every update takes about 60 seconds.

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Hey all,

I FINALLY fixed my lander error. I ended up adding the non www version to Cloudfront Cnames, so now I have both www and non www version. Seems to have done the trick.

Thanks for your comments @diplomat and @jeremiahandor If I have problems with it I will try LP directory public in S3.

A quick update...

I can't seem to get a hold of my affiliate manager from Clickdealer AND Mobidea. I tried Skyping them asking for the top offers in my vertical but maybe I'm coming across as unprofessional and not asking the right questions? I even tried to email my AM at Peerfly but no response from her either. I'm not sure if Lauren Hostert even is working for them.

So I guess I am on my own until I can get some offers to convert and then they can see I am serious.

I have been playing around with 2 traffic sources still, Zeropark and Tonic, both in the POP traffic non redirect.

I also tried a dating offer on Mobidea with an inbuilt pre landing page. I tested it on the 2 traffic sources at $5 per day but got no conversions. The offer payout I think is about $2.20.

I have a couple of questions....

1. Just say I test the offer 2 x offer payout, what if 70% of traffic is coming from 1 placement. Can I cut it and let it run again if the volume is still there? I feel I would be testing the same offer a long time doing it this way and it would suck if it flat out won't convert anyway. Or should I be more ruthless and just test multiple offers at once and see what converts, if not then move on?

2. I know direct linking isn't recommended anymore, but is there anyone who is still direct linking offers like gaming/video (other?) offers and making good profit? I understand when it comes to sweeps, AV and dating offers then a landing page IS definitely needed. I spose I just need someone to say NO do not direct link as I will end up wasting time and money. Also seeing 0 conversions all the time doesn't do well for a persons motivation.

I am just about to purchase Adplexity and see if I can find some converting offers. Then I will find 2 or 3 landers that I like, download them, clean them up the best I can, pick some offers and run traffic to them all and see what will convert.

Would sweeps or mobile content (1/2 click, MO flow..) be the best to start out? With a landing page of course.

I can be pretty creative when it comes to thinking up angles, it just takes a while but I guess that will get better with practice.

Wish me luck

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AWESOME! that's good man! Now all that needs to be done is the 100's of hours of testing LOL. you got this. I mean look at you, your already ahead of most of the crowd for taking action and asking questions!

Also thank you for the insightful response @diplomat. I did not know that was the problem. one step closer to success!! Which leads me to my next annoying question. How do I get a IP address? What i'm asking here is Do i need to do something with my nameservers? Just create a whole new bucket and try different DNS configuration options until I get it? Any advice helps. The hair on my head that I did not pull out because of all your help thanks you.

and as always... HUSTLE HARD

-Jeremiah

OUUU i almost forgot and about the Angles This thread started by @erikgyepes Is one hell of a thread and i really recommend going through it
- https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...g-empathy-maps
And have you read casvertising By Drew Eric Whitman? Amazing book and it mainly talks about the life force 8!

1. Survival, Enjoyment of life, Life extension
2. Enjoyment of food and beverages
3. Freedom from fear, pain and danger
4 Sexual companionship
5. Comfortable living conditions
6. Care and protection of loved ones
7. Social Approval
8. to be superior, winning, them having a edge nobody else knows about just yet. Very powerful if you add this with at least 1 other one off the list

Now i know that when we're marketing a $1.00 app were not gonna have a full landing page like a free trial look 10 years younger in 9 days pill off revcontent but you get the idea hahah.

Anyways hopes this helps!

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Tell me exactly what you want to do (you can pm me your domain as well, if you want to). Right now I really don't understand what are you trying to do. Ideally you should create a new topic because this is ltdx79 journey thread :P

Also good luck to OP!

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Thanks jeremiahandor, I actually have Cashvertising, awesome book!!

I'm still trying to contact Mobidea with no luck...must have really screwed up there, same with Clickdealer.

I just want to test some sweeps offers that are proven to convert but I think I'll just test them all and see what happens.

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Hello ltdx79!

Keep positively! In Mobidea we do not divide affiliates and try to help everyone! I am sure guys from Support just have an overload and they will be glad to help you as soon as they can! Where were you writing to email or skype?

Also, regarding your questions. Could you plese share some stats Anyway if you do not have any conversions it's quite soon to cut the placements.
When it comes to the direct linking offers, you can have a look at this thread https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...544#post343544
As Amy was suggesting to only launch a few direct-linked campaigns FOR PRACTICE

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Hey Mobi

I'm trying to keep the positive, I've come this far so not going to give up. I hope I didn't come off too sore. I understand you will probably have a massive que of new affiliates and support requests so all good

It was on Skype and also email that was I was writing.

As for my stats, I just ran a Kenya gaming offer from CPAgrip with my own LP that I created. It's only getting 7% CTR, and when I checked on CPAgrip it all my clicks were not going to that offer, but another south african offer. I quickly put together this landing page, let me know what you more experienced people think It actually shrinks down when it's on a mobile.

Attachment 18908

The headline I changed to "Gamers Are Calling This The Most ADDICTIVE Game Of 2018", but I can change things later once I picked the right landing page.

I've pretty much got it down pat how to create and add landers/offers/traffic sources to my tracker. I just need to put in some elbow grease and start testing offers/landers.

And yep, I'm over direct linking now lol. As much as it's easy, I don't see myself different from the 10,000 other affiliates direct linking the same offer to the same traffic source.

I've also noticed on Adplexity Mobile, that most of the landers designs look the same. I take it they are working otherwise people wouldn't use them, or maybe everyone's just copying each other?

When running campaigns, just say I test the offer 2 x offer payout, what if 70% of traffic is coming from 1 placement?

Can I cut it and let it run again if the volume is still there? I feel I would be testing the same offer a long time doing it this way and it would suck if it flat out won't convert anyway. Or should I be more ruthless and just test multiple offers at once and see what converts, if not then move on?

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Hello Ltdx79!

Sure, support is already on their way to help!

Meanwhile, I would still advise you to keep testing the offers, because you will not get too far only with one. Try to find the offer which will give you at least some conversions.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to open your attachment

I think you did right deciding to move to lenders. The fact, that prelanders are similar in Adplexity means that this type is converting well right now. Anyway, you can download them and adapt to your offer using your creativity and copywriting skills.

For the optimization. You can even spend 3x or 4x payout to test. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend to fo any kind of cutting without getting any conversions. If you have a volume there keep it going. If you see it's still not converting, move to another offer.

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ltdx79 - great follow-along! Sorry for the delay in joining this journey - I was on vacay and have been playing catch-up since I got back.

This is a great start! You've been testing different things. This game is all about being willing to test extensively - whether it be landers or offers or traffic sources or targeting or traffic source settings or whatever else there is to optimize in a campaign. And to do it in such a way that it won't break the bank. You're on the right track for sure.

And I'm happy that you're moving onto using landers after direct-linking to a few offers! That's the way to go nowadays. The good old days of being able to test a ton of DCB offers via direct-linking and scaling the winners to make easy profits are gone.

That lander you made for the addictive game - the attachment isn't available. Avoid uploading attachments to the forum - vbulletin's attachment upload sucks. Instead, upload images to imgur.com, copy the bbcode link and paste that directly into the post. That way it will show up every single time, AND in full size instead of as dinky thumbnails you get by uploading attachments.

Below I'll answer some of your questions...

Yup this is normal. CR is often the best initially and then starts declining (this is assuming you're doing nothing to optimize the campaign of course). This is also why, in many cases, if I KNOW I'm using a good lander and the traffic isn't shit, if the offer doesn't look promising right away I wouldn't bother to keep running, because things are not likely to all of a sudden start looking up.


Cutting placements when it doesn't convert after 2x payout may be a good idea, because individual placements usually only account for a small fraction of the total traffic.

But something like a major OS should be treated differently, because it can account for a big chunk of your traffic.

And don't forget that by optimizing one traffic segment, you can improve other segments as well! What I'm talking about is, for example, as you cut unprofitable placements, the ROI of IOS could very well go from negative to positive.

You can STILL cut IOS in the beginning to save money (by using the best-converting OSs and whatnot to test offers etc.), but once the campaign is profitable, you may want to reinstate it to see whether it will give you profits then.


The number of visits isn't the important metric because it's not directly related to ROI. Typically we set the cutting criterion based on spend as a factor of the payout - for example "cut the placement if it's in loss by 2x payout".

There are many placement-cutting approaches you can take.

1)Cutting more aggressively will allow you to achieve green faster, but will result in more "good" placements being cut by mistake. You'd want to take this approach for campaigns that are getting a ton of traffic from a ton of placements - cutting aggressively will save you much money and get you to green faster, and you'll still have plenty of traffic at the end. Example criteria: Cutting at 0.5-1x payout in loss.

2)Cutting less aggressively will allow you to achieve more green in the end, but will cost you more in the cutting process. You'd want to take this approach for campaigns that are not getting a lot of traffic to begin with - where you'd need to be cautious in cutting to avoid restricting your traffic volume further. Example criteria: Cutting at 2x payout or more in loss.

3)A combination of the 2 approaches above: Cutting aggressively in the beginning to achieve profits quickly, then re-test some of the blacklisted placements (especially the bigger ones).


Sounds like a plan!

To download landers from Adplexity, you don't need to worry about VMs/VPNs, as the landers are saved by Adplexity already - you just need to download the zip files.

It would be good to test more than 2 landers - I would suggest 5. That way you can be relatively sure that at least one of them is a decent performer. You need to have this type of confidence in order to test offers. Otherwise you'd get into a catch-22 situation where, when nothing is converting, you're left wondering whether it's the landers or offers that are bad.

As for geos, start with tier 3/4 geos (developing countries, not developed countries). When you have experience on campaign optimization you can try to tackle tier 1/2 geos.

As for lander language: Just download landers that are already in the desired language. You CAN use google translate if you like - they've become quite accurate over the years. Shorter and simpler sentences tend to translate better, so if you need to, rewrite all the text into short sentences before using google translate (and exclude figures of speech or slang - stuff that isn't easy to translate and could throw off google translate).

Alternatively you can buy Fiverr gigs (pick ones with lots of reviews and a star rating of 4.5+). They're cheap but will take some time. OneHourTranslation.com is quick but expensive.

The rest of your plan sounds great!


Where did you read about the 2x off payout "rule"?

Spending only 2x payout to test an offer is far from being enough. And when you're testing landers at the same time it makes it even worse.

In the beginning there's no need to test 20-30 offers at once. Choose around 3 offers that are recommended by AMs as being good converters, run them with 5+ landers, see which offer seems to convert decent without draining too much budget (the first offer to make 2 conversions would be a good one to pick), then use JUST that one offer to continue testing those landers, cut them down to a winning lander, then use that winning lander to mass-test offers.

If none of the initial 3 or so offers converts well enough to help you cut landers down without burning a hole in your pocket, either swap them out with another batch of offers, or target a different geo/vertical.


You can do either - either way you'd be taking a chance.


For the most part - do not direct link and end up wasting time and money.

There are always exceptions though - such as if you have access to exclusive offers or if you're running direct with the offer owner, and the offers convert extremely well and you somehow get cap. But for a new affiliate, that type of opportunities are rare.


It would be hard to find landers for mobile content but you can try, and of course you can come up with custom ones. But the easiest way would be to browse Adplexity to see what types of offers there are lots of landers available for, and just start with those.


Yup! At any point in time, there will always be a few major angles that are popular, that many people are using. And yes, they do work or else there wouldn't be so many people using them like you said. Once you find a lander that converts well, you can innovate by tweaking it to make it better. You can of course build completely new landers, but if you do, make sure you can find a way to keep them out of spy tools - or they would get ripped the same day you start running them.

Hope that helps! And eager to see your next update!




Amy

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Quick update time

Although there isn't much to update, I've just been ripping landers from Adplexity and learning how to add my links and clean up the code from any bad stuff.

My knowledge in html/js is very VERY limited! But if I get stuck I can ask my brother as he's a computer programmer.

Thanks for clarifying about the landers Mobidea, from now I will only be using landing pages. I've also created the 'bot trap' offer and the exact code ready to stick above the closed body tag of my next landing page. It took a bit to get my head around the whole concept of the bot trap but I think I get it now

Amy, thanks so much for the super detailed reply!! I really appreciate it. I've been taking in what you said.

With traffic sources, I have only been using 2 (Tonic and ZeroPark). I am a member of PopAds, PropellerAds and PopCash but haven't tested those yet.

Sorry about my attachment not working. This is the 2 landers I was using for some gaming offers in rotation. I didn't get any conversions because as you said, gaming offer and mobile content landers need to be REALLY good, and it's probably best to just direct link because they are already optimized to work without a lander. I did have a look on Adplexity but pretty much all of them look like the offer itself (ie a pin submit page).

It was mainly for experience and to get familiar with creating and adding landers to my campaigns.




Hope that worked...

I understand what you mean about cutting whole OS's, as it would count for a large part of my traffic. Next time I will run both (or separate campaign) and cut bad performing placements instead of whole OS.

I now have a big list of sweeps offers from my ClickDealer AM. I will then start picking about 3-5 offers from a certain t3/4 geo, get some landers ready, and start driving some traffic! I will try the Google translate trick if I can't find any landers in my language. But from what I see in Adplexity it won't be a problem finding them.

With regards to spending 2x the offer payout. I read on this forum that we when testing we need to test 2 times the offer payout to see if it's converting. That's why it's good to test offers that are less than $1. If landers come in play it will be more because each actual path (lander 1/offer 1 etc) will need it's own budget if that makes sense? Or did I read it wrong lol? If so what would be a good budget for testing low payout offers when we are using multiple LP's and offers?

My final question, how can I keep my landing pages from getting ripped on Adplexity or other spy tools? I'd hate to create a fresh winning landing page just to have it pillaged.

Thanks again! Hopefully have some results next update.

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It sure did! And you're definitely on the right track with these landers!

You can choose to test more of these if you wish. The bad thing about making landers for 1/2-click offers we've already talked about. The good thing is that once you have landers that work to increase ROI, you can have a leg up on affiliates that are just direct-linking - assuming you can find out how to keep those custom landers out of the spy tools.


I'm pretty sure you must have misinterpreted. I think you're referring to rules of thumb for cutting placements - I HAVE suggested to cut placements that are in loss by 2x the offer payout.

As for a good budget for testing offers - it's hard to say because that will depend on so many factors.

However, I've provided some guidelines on how to avoid wasting too much on dud landers/offers in this lessons:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...to-Find-Winner


I wished I could tell you, but I'm not really at liberty of teaching people how to keep landers out of spy tools - conflict of interest with spy tool owners. With STM being friends with everyone, we try not to hurt anyone's business.

Small hint though: Do your own research starting with google.




Amy

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Hey, I'm back with another update

I landed 3 conversions on a T3 sweeps offer! I was using a landing page I ripped and cleaned from Adplexity. I know I should have split tested more landing pages but I just wanted to get it running. I did manage to download a whole bunch of them that had high volume so I can use in my arsenal.

I'm not happy about the landing page CTR though. Zeropark is reading WAY higher than Tonic. If I can get my Tonic campaign CTR to be higher I can probably break even or even into the green if I optimize. I'm thinking maybe bots? But why is one really high and one really low? I can add the bot trap and see. Will the bot trap detect if it's bots clicking through to the offer as well? Or just ones that just leave without clicking?

I haven't done any cutting yet on either source, I'm just letting it run for another day or 2 to gather some numbers.

Here is a quick screenshot of my stats anyway:



Thanks for clearing that up Amy. I must have misread the part about placements being 2x the offer before cutting. Also I will try googling the Adplexity thing

Now I'm just about to upload a few AV and sweeps landers where I can really split test. I'll also test more offers.

I'm still in the phase of learning the process - creating campaigns, cleaning and adding landing pages (and other domains) to S3 and NS1, reading data, learning traffic sources, etc.

If anyone can help me with the landing page CTR issue that would be awesome! I did test it myself on my computer and phone and it worked fine.

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The bot trap and the "human trap" are different metrics. Try to read that whole bot thread by caurmen again, where I've explained many times how that bot script works. I don't think I can explain that any better.

And try not to fixate on lander CTR. As long as you're sure the lander is functioning correctly and is displayed adequately on all common devices and in all common browsers, and loads fairly quickly, give it a test against other landers. It's CR that will make you money, not CTR.

Exception of course is when the CTR is so low that it would be impossible for the lander to end up profitable - that's the only time when you can pause the lander without using a stats calculator to tell you that it's significantly inferior to another lander.

I have a question: Your screenshot from the previous post - what do the 2 rows represent?



Amy

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