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The 40-Day Newbie Challenge (16)

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CURRENT GOALS

1. [_] Do the 40-Day ChallengeComplete the 40-Day Challenge (Follow my progress here: https://goo.gl/zH3R9o)
2. [X] Launch my first campaign
3. [_] Make my first $1 revenue
4. [_] Make my first $1 profit

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BACKGROUND

What's up guys,

I FINALLY joined STM.

Been running an online business for the past four years and I'm honestly getting sick of it.

I have the business so systemized that there's no need for me to learn anything anymore, and frankly, I'm sick of having a business that deals with client work.

I was in Vegas last year, and I met this guy (now a friend of mine) who in my opinion had the *best* lifestyle out of our social circle.

We would stay out late and he would never be worrying about work, or business, or clients – completely *free* of that b.s.

He used to have a similar business model as to what I was doing, but he said he dropped it and was now doing "affiliate marketing."

I never really understood affiliate marketing before and never thought they made any serious coin.

But what he was telling me that it was the TRUE 4-Hour Workweek, passive/automated income, whatever you want to call it.

Find good offers, promote them, see what's successful, double-down, and watch the cash pour in.

Sounds good to me!

Although I found excuses and procrastinated since then, and 9 months later, enough is enough.

CPA or DIE!

Let's do this

I'm fully committed to making this work, no matter what it takes and no matter what I have to sacrifice (you can keep me accountable on that).

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Welcome here and good luck!

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Hello its_tim!
First of all, welcome to the STM!
And secondly, it's very good that you have such a spirit and I am sure your experience in online business will be a great help for your way in the affiliate marketing! Nevertheless, I would like to tell that affiliate marketing is a real business, and as in any business you need to invest money and time. It sounds very cool, but it is a hard job! You will need to learn a lot to achieve the top. But I am sure with the right attitude and will to work hard you can do it!
Good luck mate

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Thanks trafficbae! I'm excited and ready to take immediate, intelligent, consistent, and massive action.

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Understood. Thank you for the reminder, and I plan to take affiliate marketing as a real business. See you at the top

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– SHAMELESS BREAKDOWN –

Day 1 of 40: The Beginning
Wednesday 5/23/2018

#1 GOAL
Be consistent, stay on track, and DON'T miss a day in the 40-Day Newbie Challenge

CONTEXT
After a few months of procrastinating, I finally made the leap.
My plate is clear of projects and I have the funds.
I purchased my STM account
It's now a never. Commit yourself FULLY into affiliate marketing and get good at it. REALLY good at it. Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, and whatever you have to sacrifice.

3 POSITIVES: What did I do well?

• Made the financial investment in an STM account and community
• Navigated the forums and familiarized myself with the layout
• Found and dived into the 40-Day Newbie Challenge without hesitation
• Completed Day 1 with no problem and signed up for all the accounts they recommended

3 NEGATIVES: What did I not do well?

• I was a bit hesitant as some of my internet marketing friends were telling me to not get into A.M., but whatever. This is something I need to do and I am very excited about the marketing, scalability, and "constantly-learning" aspect of it. I'm sure I'll find more things I love as time goes on

3 LESSONS: What are the lessons?

• If you feel like you need to do something. DIVE INTO IT regardless of what everyone else says, especially if they're not experienced the specific area that you're diving into.
• Learn by doing, then figure out the why after. I really like this model of the 40-Day Newbie Tutorial.
• Don't let your enthusiasm get the best of you. It won't always be fun and exciting. Just like any business venture, there will be stress, frustration, but also tons and tons of growth.
• Also, I asked my new affiliate manager at Mobidea this: "1 Quick Question: In your time working with affiliates, what are the most common characteristics amongst the most successful people you have worked with?" His reply: Nice question! The main things that set them apart are: Hard workers, Attention to details, Know how to put themselves in the user's shoes, Good balance between creativity and analytical skills." Keep this in mind!

1 ACTION ITEM: What am I going to work on tomorrow?
This will be my SOLE FOCUS for tomorrow.

• Complete Day 2 without hesitation.

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– SHAMELESS BREAKDOWN –

Day 2 of 40: Getting Into The Meat Of The Tutorial
Saturday 5/26/2018

#1 GOAL
Be consistent, stay on track, and DON'T miss a day in the 40-Day Newbie Challenge

CONTEXT

Slowly starting to build momentum.

Learned a lot about offers, but I'm also learning that I have A LOT to learn

I didn't realize the breadth of Affiliate Media buying, but also I'm excited because I'm realizing it really is a skillset built over time and not just a "make money quick" scheme (which is great – a higher barrier to entry). I also see how these principles, strategies, tactics can be applied to any online business and advertising in the future.

“One man has enthusiasm for 30 minutes, another for 30 days, but it is the man who has it for 30 years who makes a success of his life.” - Edward B. Butler

I'm slowly but surely laying down the GROUNDWORK for my affiliate media buying career, but pushing to do it in a timely manner.

Anyway, going into Day 2, I was confident because of how Day 1 was (basically just signing up for accounts). Then I found Day 2 was slightly technical, and I hate to say this, but I started getting so frustrated 3 AM that I was actually wondering if I had made a mistake trying to get into the intimidating world of affiliate marketing lol. I thought about the bigger picture and pushed through. Basically, I was a bit confused because the Mobidea search filters had been updated compared to the directions and screenshots in the tutorial, but as a smart marketer/entrepreneur, you FIGURE IT OUT and get through it. Adapt!

Figured it out, applied for an offer, and messaged my Mobidea affiliate manager for recommendations (may have to wait until Monday to get approved).

Anyway, ON TO DAY 3!

3 POSITIVES: What did I do well?

• I pushed through and finished it
• I completed all the items
• I took my time with it to help contribute to a good foundation for my affiliate marketing career

3 NEGATIVES: What did I not do well?

• I'm currently 2 days behind at the moment, I have to STAY ON TRACK!
• When I was running into technical problems, I actually considered just stopping and quitting. On Day 2! I have to get out of the mindset that quitting is actually an option.
• I kind of took too long, started opening too many tabs to other threads, getting lost, and not staying on track with the 40-day challenge. Luckily I got through it, but with lots of wasted time that I could have spent taking ACTION.

3 LESSONS: What are the lessons?

• Some of the directions/screenshots in the tutorial may be a bit outdated. THAT SHOULDN'T MATTER! Figure it out.
• Don't expect for affiliate managers to be on Skype 24/7. If you want to talk to them, get their advice, recommendations, etc, make sure you do it before their off for the weekend or holiday (ask them if you have to).
• There's a math component to affiliate marketing that you must understand.
• Be PATIENT with yourself. You're only on Day 2, YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW EVERYTHING YET.
• Study the Affiliate Marketing Glossary/Dictionary: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...n-the-im-world
• Build your own "landers" (landing pages) with HTML for quicker load up time instead of LeadPages and ClickFunnels.
• You can get cheap traffic from "Tier 3" countries (developing nations).
• While learning, go for offers with lower payouts because getting data is MUCH cheaper, you can learn fast, and adjust your angles, campaigns, and landers to break even, become profitable, and optimize.
• Get recommendations for new offers to test from your affiliate manager. They can see the back-end and give you a good idea, although DON'T TAKE IT AS THE BE ALL, END ALL. Some Affiliate Managers have a good background with really good recommendations, some don't, but at the end, you have to use your own experience and due diligence to choose winning offers to test. "Your AMs can see all the stats in the backend of the affiliate network for all their affiliates - how much traffic is being sent to each offer and how well each offer is converting. So they're in a good position to suggest good offers for you to run... Your AM may know their offers well, but it's not their expertise to provide advice on how exactly you should be running these offers. (Although some AMs can be very knowledgeable on how to buy traffic and run campaigns as well, you won't always be lucky enough to get one who is.) Therefore, my advice would be to not promote JUST AM-recommended offers."
• As a beginner, go for cheap sources of traffic (tier 3 countries / developing nations), 1-Click Offers (Single-Optin) if possible, even though those tend to be lower payouts than 2-Click Offers (Double-Optin)
• Track your offers in a spreadsheet
• All affiliate networks work differently, approval profess, filtering system, organizations... do your research.
• The more experience, the easier it will be to get into affiliate networks.
• geos = geographic locations
• Games (CPA) and Videos (CPA) convert well for beginners because they have attractive graphics on the offer page.
• Traffic source representatives (PropellerAds) and Affiliate Managers (Mobidea) don't know EVERYTHING, but they can usually point you in the right direction.
• ***"But I would say that in general, if you're not receiving at least 5000 visitors/day for your geo+carrier+[whatever else], don't even bother."
• Use template HTML landers for your tests. Much easier and you don't really need to know HTML.
• "Landing pages don't need to be complicated. In fact, a well-designed, beautiful, complex landing page will often convert worse than a very simple page."
• Landing Page Template: Headline, Image, Text, CTA
• "But in actual fact, the size of an offer's payout makes very little difference to how profitable it can be. And there are other reasons why you might not want to run a higher-payout offer."
• "In fact, high-payout offers may have a high payout because they're for a difficult demographic to convert, or because they require a purchase or credit card number."
• Despite all the above being true, you shouldn't ALWAYS run lower-payout offers. "But if you've got a low budget, low-payout offers are a great place to start, whereas high-payout offers are likely to waste your money and not achieve statistical significance. Start small and work up!"

1 ACTION ITEM: What am I going to work on tomorrow?
This will be my SOLE FOCUS for tomorrow.

• Complete Day 3 NOW!

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– SHAMELESS BREAKDOWN –

Day 3 of 40: Setting Up The Tracker... More Technical Difficulty
Saturday 5/26/2018 - Thursday 5/31/2018

#1 GOAL
Be consistent, stay on track, and DON'T miss a day in the 40-Day Newbie Challenge

CONTEXT

Started Day 3 with confidence, but turns out that I can't move forward without my application for the Mobidea offer approved.

Will have to finish this once everything is approved.

...

Okay, just finished this five days later.

To be honest, I was slightly procrastinating as I found this day EXTREMELY technical (and to be honest, I'm not sure I understand it all).

I set up the trackers just fine, but UNDERSTANDING how all the kinds of trackers work together (https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Read-This-Now), I will have to review and study in the future.

It's going to be MASSIVELY important, but I don't think I need to 100% understand it right now.

I will most likely understand it as I take more action (I won't fully get it just reading forum posts all day. I need to take ACTION).

3 POSITIVES: What did I do well?

• I got approved for the recommended offers
• I set up my tracking links from Mobidea on Voluum
• The action stuff, I blew through
• I PUSHED through the technical part of trackers and I think I understood maybe 60% of it (again, I'll understand more as I take action).
• I'm moving onto Day 4!

3 NEGATIVES: What did I not do well?

• I procrastinated hardcore when it came to the technical stuff
• I fell behind (I should be on Day 9)

3 LESSONS: What are the lessons?

• Literally, while doing everything, I’m thinking, “HOW AM I GOING TO REMEMBER THIS?” or “HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS WITHOUT A GUIDE MOVING FORWARD?” The truth is, it's GOING to feel awkward and you're going to feel unsure of yourself because this is an entirely new world – definitely different from the service-based online business that you have.
• You REALLY have to make sure you do things in a timely manner. I’m still waiting for my offers to be approved by my AM along with offer recommendations.
• TAKE MORE ACTION. Don't worry about understanding everything now (you won't). Just keep moving forward. You don't have time to linger on one day for too long.
• There are technical parts of affiliate marketing you have to understand. If your WHY is big enough, you should be able to get through them no problem.
• You'll develop your own campaign-naming convention later no doubt. For now, just name it in the format: [2-letter country code] Main DL [Carrier] // The "Main" stands for "Mainstream", which means non-adult. The "DL" stands for direct-linking
• So why do we need to use a tracker? The main uses of a tracker are as follows:
• 1)Detect details about your visitors, and aggregate and display this data.
• 2)Control the flow of your traffic, i.e. where to send which visitor.
• Next, I would like to explain some of the steps we've taken to set up tracking.
  
  The gist of the setup is:
  
  
  -We grabbed the offer link from Mobidea and put that into Voluum.
  -We created a campaign in Voluum, and specified direct-linking to the offer.
  -We took the postback url from Voluum and put it into Mobidea.
  -In the next lesson we'll take the campaign url and paste it into PropellerAds.
  
  
  So this is what will happen:
  
  
  -PropellerAds will send visitors to the Voluum campaign url.
  -Voluum will then take over, and send visitors to the offer we specified in campaign settings.
  -If a visitor ends up subscribing to the offer, aka "converting", Mobidea will record this, and "tell" Voluum about the conversion, by triggering the postback url to send that conversion data to Voluum. Voluum will then display the conversion in its stats.
  
  {campaign.id}, {trafficsource.id}, and {clickid} are Voluum tokens. When Voluum triggers this link to send the visitor to the offer page, it will automatically replace these with actual values. And because this is a Mobidea offer link, Mobidea will read these values into its database and store them.
  
  {campaign.id} is a random string of characters created by Voluum to represent the new Voluum campaign you've just created.
  {trafficsource.id} is a random string of characters created by Voluum to represent the traffic sourceyou've specified for this campaign.
  {clickid} is a random string of characters created by Voluum to represent the visitor - it's almost like a name they assign to the visitor.
  
  3 kinds of trackers:
  
  1. Affiliate Network Tracker (e.g. Mobidea)
  2. Affiliate Tracker (e.g. Voluum)
  3. Traffic Source Tracker (e.g. Propeller Ads)
  
  
  The thing that makes affiliate tracking tricky is that there are at least three systems involved: traffic source, affiliate tracker, and affiliate network.
  
  Those systems have to pass information back and forward.
  
  These IDs are called different things on different systems.
  
  
  Nearly all affiliate trackers call them either a "subid" or a "clickid".
  
  
  
  

1 ACTION ITEM: What am I going to work on tomorrow?
This will be my SOLE FOCUS for tomorrow.

• DESTROYING day 4 and getting to day 5 as soon as possible. I'm still behind!

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Wow if this isn't the most-detailed follow-along ever written!

I've had a tab opened to this follow-along for days now - but kept replying to the "easier" threads first. Apologies!

Better late than never right?

I'll jot down some of my thoughts below...

1)Regarding the 40-day plan: There's no need to "stay on course" so to speak, because the lessons and number of days specified for each lesson are just my estimates (cause obviously, I myself has not gone through the course as a complete newbie!) With your determination I know you'll not waste time. So just proceed at your own pace. Otherwise you'll get really frustrated with yourself which isn't exactly conducive to success.

Right now, learning is just as important as taking action! As long as you're not procrastinating too much, you're good. No need to be so hard on yourself - you're doing well. You've made a TON of useful observations, THAT is progress too!

2)And yup - the tutorial IS a bit outdated. I've been trying to find time to give it the overhaul I promised back in March (*embarassed*). Will continue to strive to find the time to update it in the near future for the benefit of newbie members.

And kudos for not letting that deter you from figuring things out on your own and making progress!

3)Not understanding everything right now is OK - as you've pointed out! Basically, understanding just enough to take the next step is, well, enough for now! So yup - you're doing good!

4)Occasional procrastination is normal. No reason to fault yourself for it.

5)Most importantly: Have some FUN with all of this! Life doesn't need to be so hard. Being serious about your work doesn't mean it can't be fun too!

Have you launched your first direct-linked campaign yet? You can find recommended offers from Mobidea in the supplemental materials section here:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking

The other threads in the supplemental section are worth taking a look at also:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...ental-Material

Try to launch a few direct-linked campaigns, then move onto ripping and fixing up landing pages ASAP. Do NOT dwell on direct-linked campaigns too long or spend too much money on them. Those types of offers don't convert half as well as they used to (due to changes in regulations and other reasons).

Hang in there! Now that I've replied to your post I'm subscribed to it, and will be notified when you update the thread. No need to be hard on yourself, and certainly no need to be a perfectionist. Have fun and flow with things, and ask questions when you're not sure. Eventually you'll get somewhere!




Amy

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Hi Amy, thank you for your response! I was honestly very surprised to see a reply from you

I found your comment very encouraging, and I'm happy to know that I'm not just chatting with myself here lol. Learning this stuff can feel a bit funny as you can feel alone on the journey trying to learn this at times.

All of your advice is noted and I will keep moving forward and not quit. Thank you for reading!

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Thanks! I'm usually a LOT more on top of things. It's just that I've been busy with other projects (e.g. the "What's Working in Affiliate Marketing in 2018" report and associated promotion efforts; getting the forum GDPR-compliant; taking my first holiday since I started working with STM 3 years ago; etc. etc.). Right now I'm writing up a case study / interview with one of the most talented and experienced FB guys on the forum. Should be ready for posting tomorrow.

Will try harder to stay on top of things now that I'm back to work! Thanks for starting your follow-along!



Amy

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– SHAMELESS BREAKDOWN –

Day 4 of 40: Setting Up My First Campaign (Part 1 of 3)
Saturday 6/2/2018


#1 GOAL
Be consistent, stay on track, and DON'T miss a day in the 40-Day Newbie Challenge


CONTEXT


You've set up your very first campaign! Congratulations on reaching this milestone!

I should tell you right now that your campaign may not result in profits (although it could!) Focus on learning and not earning in the beginning, and one day soon you'll hit on your first profits.

Going to crush this out QUICK so I can move onto Day 5. Need to finish up to 7 before Friday afternoon.

I honestly don’t know how I’m going to remember all of this or how I’m going to be able to navigate this on my own in the future lol. But either way, I’m going to trust the process and trust that over time, I’ll get it if I stay on track and stick to the tutorial.

I’m getting more comfortable going through some of the technical material ��. Still got a lot to learn though.

Like Vortex said in the newbie challengee: "If you didn't completely understand all the explanations above, don't worry too much about it - just continue to the next lesson. You can always refer back to this information later."


3 POSITIVES: What did I do well?

• I set up my first campaign! Woohoo!
• I checked my stats, and luckily, I was profitable See screenshot below
• There was some technical confusion with PropellerAds, but I worked through it and came out the other side
• I took the leap and funded my account $100. I am COMMITTED!
• "A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided." – Tony Robbins

3 NEGATIVES: What did I not do well?

• I kind of waited a long time to bust out this shameless breakdown. But better late than never! As long as I'm moving forward at a reasonable pace.
• I'm afraid I might be hoping that affiliate media buying takes off much earlier than I should expect when in reality, PATIENCE is the key. I shouldn't expect a full-time income too early on (however it is possible). Don't put all your eggs in this basket.
• I need to keep in mind that some of these platforms require feedback and approval for certain things (e.g. campaigns, offers, etc.). I can't just expect I can launch something immediately, some of these things require waiting times.

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– SHAMELESS BREAKDOWN –


Day 4 of 40: Setting Up My First Campaign (Part 2 of 3)
Saturday 6/2/2018

3 LESSONS: What are the lessons?

• #1 BIGGEST lesson: Don't expect to learn, understand, and memorize everything RIGHT NOW. As you take action and remain mindful of what you're doing, you WILL GET GOOD. There is no other way
• There are certain things about affiliate marketing that you have to wait on other people. Offer recommendations and offer approvals from affiliate managers (Mobidea), campaign approvals from the traffic sources (PropellerAds). You need to keep this in mind if you have a deadline you’re trying to hit.
• In PropellerAds, "Now we have connection type - Mobile (for 3G) and Other (for wifi connection)." There is no more such thing as "3G" as :Connection Type." For "OS Types" leave at the default "Mobile." Remember that the tutorial is not up-to-date quite yet and that you need to take it ON YOURSELF to work through it.
• This is an important concept by the way: Always be aiming to maximize profits, and not ROI. We'd rather be making 30% ROI by spending $1000/day to make $1300/day = $300/day in profits, than be making 1000% ROI by spending $1/day to make $11/day = $10/day in profits. I talked about that in this post, and matuloo later wrote a more-detailed post here.
• On Propeller Ads, you are an “ADVERTISER”
• You, the Affiliate, are the “ADVERTISER." The PLACEMENT SITE is the “publisher.”
• For an offer's restrictions, look for the “Restrictions” tab or section on the traffic source (e.g. Propeller Ads)
• When creating a campaign in Propeller Ads, just use the *same exact* campaign name that you used in Volume (based loosely on Mobidea offer name)
• To find the Campaign URL, click on Campaigns > Select the campaign, click “Edit campaign"
• 6)Set "Frequency" to 1 and "Capping" to 24. Leave "No capping" unchecked.
• 8)For the "CPM" field: Put 2.33. You may get a message that says "Warning: Your bid is too low, you may not receive any traffic at all. Please increase the bid" - ignore that. It's just a suggestion, which is often higher than what you actually need to bid.
• Most other pop networks have similar campaign settings to choose from, but each of them will still be different in their own way. Learning all the options on PropellerAds first though would be a good start.
• CPM stands for "Cost per Mille", or the cost per 1000 impressions of your pop ad. This is the price you pay to show your ad to visitors 1000 times. Note that the amount you'll actually be charged may sometimes be different for every "zone" (explained below). But you'll be paying the CPM you specified on average - and you'll be paying this no matter whether the visitors - also known as "traffic" - converts for you or not.
• (A zone is a website where our ads are displayed to that website's visitors. It's also referred to as a publisher site, or an ad placement or simply a placement. PropellerAds pays these placement sites for traffic, and in turn sell this traffic to us with a markup.)
• (A conversion is made when a visitor subscribes to our offer. When traffic converts, it means visitors are subscribing to our offer, thus making us money.)
• The CPA in SmartCPA stands for "Cost Per Action". In this case, it represents the cost you'd be willing to pay for every conversion you get. In order to run SmartCPA campaign on PropellerAds, you will need to set up your tracker to post conversion data to PropellerAds, so they would know how much to charge you.
  
  • If you, like what I once thought when I was a newbie, that "hey this sounds like a good deal - I could just set the cost to be lower than my payout and make money", let me tell you now that it's not as simple as that.
  
  
• Every traffic source aims to maximize profits, and PropellerAds is no different. If your campaign's conversion rate is too low, PropellerAds won't make much money from your camp - as a result they'll send that traffic to another bidder - one that has a better conversion rate and/or has set a higher CPA than you did , and only send you what's left over.
• (Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors that subscribe to the offer.)
• I would suggest leaving the "Activate TrafficBoost to expand your reach" option unchecked in the beginning. This is traffic that PropellerAds is brokering from other pop networks. Generally speaking, this traffic may not convert as well, although it's cheaper. In the beginning when you're split-testing offers and landers, you need to be confident in the traffic quality (i.e. that the traffic is good enough to give you conversions) - otherwise you'd have too many unknowns, i.e. when you don't get good results you won't know whether to blame traffic quality or the offers/landers.
• (Traffic Quality determines how well the traffic can convert. The higher the traffic quality, the better it can convert.)
• Once your campaign is making money, you can select this option and compare results before and after, then decide whether to revert back to unchecking this option, or to leave it checked and cut the bad placements. You could even leave your original campaign alone, duplicate it and checkmark this option for the new camp, but set your bid lower to counterbalance the lower traffic quality. This is somewhat advanced stuff, so if it sounds confusing don't worry about it. You can always come back to review this information when you have more experience.
• Frequency Capping is the maximum number of times you want any particular visitor to see your ad over a specified timeframe. For example, if you put "1" for "Frequency" and "24h" for "Capping", that means you only want any one visitor to see your ad once over a 24-hour period.
• The higher the frequency cap, the more traffic you'll get, but the lower the overall campaign ROI will be.
• The lower the frequency cap, the less traffic you'll get, but the higher the overall campaign ROI will be.
• When you set your frequency cap to 1/24 (once per 24 hours), say you're buying 1000 impressions - or 1000 chances to display your ad in front of visitors - your ad will be shown once to each of 1000 visitors.
• When you increase the frequency cap, say to 4/24, and say you're buying the same 1000 impressions - then your ad will be shown to less than 1000 visitors. The ad will be shown to some of the same visitors a second, or third, or fourth time etc., over the course of 24 hours.
• Generally speaking (although not always true), when you show your ad once to each of 1000 visitors, you will get more conversions vs. when you show your ad 1000 times to a smaller group of visitors by showing each person your ad multiple times.
• Since you'll be paying roughly the same amount of money for each display/impression of your ad, you'll get the most bang for your buck (i.e. the highest ROI) by setting the frequency cap to the lowest setting possible - which on many traffic sources is 1/24.
• However, ROI is not the only thing we're looking for. If we increase the frequency cap, we'll get more impressions or traffic volume, which means that in spite of the lower ROI, we may STILL end up making more profits.
• This is not always the case, but you wouldn't know unless you test. It's synonymous to how wholesalers will sell products at cheaper prices so retailers would buy in bulk, to result in higher profits overall.
• This is an important concept by the way: Always be aiming to maximize profits, and not ROI. We'd rather be making 30% ROI by spending $1000/day to make $1300/day = $300/day in profits, than be making 1000% ROI by spending $1/day to make $11/day = $10/day in profits. I talked about that in this post, and matuloo later wrote a more-detailed post here.
• But I digress. The approach I would suggest for Frequency Cap, would be to start at 1/24 (once per 24 hours; which was what we had frequency set to in the "ACTION" part of this lesson), optimize until the camp is green first, and THEN test higher frequencies. There would be little point in decreasing your ROI if you're still in the red. I talked about this in the "Play with Frequency" section in this post.
• I've talked about this briefly above. This would be the amount you want to pay for every 1000 impressions, or the chance to display your ad to visitors 1000 times. Remember I mentioned above that it's important for us to be confident in traffic quality in the beginning when split-testing offers and landers? Well the same applies to our bid - let me explain below.
• First, you need to understand that the conversion rate for each zone will be different. This is mainly due to 2 reasons:
  
  • 1)Because each zone has a different audience, or a different group of people visiting it, the traffic from each zone will react differently to our ad and type of offer.
  • 2)This is the much bigger reason: Some zones will send fake visitors generated by software, in order to make more money. This is commonly known as Bot Traffic, which does not convert. And different zones or placement sites will send different amounts of bot traffic.
  
  
• Now, because every advertiser (i.e. your competitors) on the traffic source can choose which placements/zones they want to target, and which ones they want to cut, and also how much they want to bid, they will bid higher for the better-converting zones, and cut the ones that don't convert."
  
  • 'Whoever can spend the most to acquire a customer wins." – Dan Kennedy
  
  
• The result? Market needs will drive up bid prices for zones that convert better.
• What this means to us is this: If we bid low, we may not even see traffic from the best placements.As we increase our bid, we'll often get better and better converting traffic. (We'll also likely be overpaying for traffic from the not-as-good placements as well - thus the need to cut them.)
• Bid at least around average or slightly higher while still split-testing offers/landers in the beginning, to be confident about traffic quality. Once we find an offer+lander combination that converts reasonably well, we can test higher-than-average and lower-than-average bids.
• So the question would be, how do you know what's the average bid? On PopAds.net (another pop network), the traffic estimator will tell you what the average bid is for the targeting options you specify. PropellerAds doesn't provide such an average, but it provides a traffic distribution graph:
• What I would suggest, is to avoid bidding below the first bend as I've indicated with the arrow - basically don't be one of the lowest bidders and get stuck with bad traffic (traffic from bot-infested placements) that nobody wants. As for how much you should bid, my experience is that on PropellerAds, $1.33-2.33 for wifi traffic, or for carrier-traffic in tier 3/4 geos, is enough to get decent-quality traffic. This is why I advised to bid $2.33 in the first campaign. (Although as more and more of you are going through this tutorial, it may be necessary to bid higher just to avoid all the competition...)
• Pretty self-explanatory. Daily campaign budget is the maximum the camp will spend in a day, starting from and ending with midnight EST. Total campaign budget is the total spend since the start of your campaign.
• Traffic will stop if it reaches either one of these budgets. The minimum you can set these values to is $10, and this is what I've asked you to set your budgets to in the first campaign, just to guard against potentially wasting money on an offer that doesn't convert.
• Campaign Schedule: Here, you can specify which hours and days of week you want for your campaign to run.
• Often, after you've been running a campaign for a while, when you drill down into "Day" and "Hour" stats in Voluum, you'll see that certain hours of day and days of the week are converting better than others.
• Cutting the worst-performing time segments is one way to increase your campaign ROI - this is referred to as Dayparting.However, it would also limit the amount of traffic you'll get. Because we're running carrier traffic, for which traffic volume can be an issue, I would suggest that you not daypart in the beginning unless you already know (e.g. based on stats) that certain hours tend not to convert well, and unless you have lots of traffic at your disposal.

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– SHAMELESS BREAKDOWN –

Day 4 of 40: Setting Up My First Campaign (Part 3 of 3)
Saturday 6/2/2018

• Ad delivery method: The options are "Standard" and "Distributed". The explanations beside those options are pretty clear. Basically choosing "Standard" means you'll get the full amount of traffic you're able to get at your bid level, and when your spend hits one of the campaign budgets, traffic will stop. Whereas "Distributed" means that if the budget you specify is lower than what you'd be spending if you had chosen "Standard", traffic would be throttled so that you wouldn't spend more than the budget you specified, while getting traffic spread out consistently throughout the day.
• If you want to limit the amount of daily spend, BUT want the data to represent average performance instead of being skewed because traffic keeps starting at midnight EST and stopping around the same hour every day when your spend reaches daily budget, then choosing "Distributed" would be a good idea.
• If again, you want to limit the amount of daily spend, but you want the traffic to run out ASAP and don't really care about it not being a good representation of average performance throughout the entire day, then you can go with "Standard" delivery. For example, when you're wanting to quickly test an offer to get a rough idea on whether it would convert, then this may be a good option.
• If you've set a high-enough "Daily spend" so that your actual daily spend will not reach it, then it wouldn't matter which delivery setting you choose.
• Targeting: Simple vs. Advanced - Self-explanatory - you can toggle between the two to see what extra options are available when you choose the "Advanced" setting.
  
  • I personally always go with "Advanced", and would suggest the same for you, at least when you're running mobile. "Simple" mode will target Wi-Fi and Carrier/3G traffic at the same time, which is often not the wisest thing to do, in part because carrier traffic is significantly more expensive than wifi traffic. So if you target them both in the same campaign using the same bid, you'd be either paying to much for wifi traffic, or paying too little for carrier traffic.
  
  
• Connection Type - Options are 3G, Wi-Fi, or both ("All"). As was mentioned, I would generally suggest to target carrier/3g and wifi-fi traffic in separate camps.
• OS Types - Choices are "Mobile", "Desktop" and "Others". Mostly you'll be targeting either just "Mobile" or just "Desktop". Just as for Carrier vs. Wi-fi traffic, Mobile and Desktop prices are different, so it would be good to target each in its separate camp.
• OS's - Click on the text field and you'll see the options. If you leave it empty you'd be targeting all OS's by default. You'd want to target all the OSs that are accepted by one or more of the offers you're rotating in your Voluum campaign settings for that campaign. (As I'll explain in a later lesson, if the different offers accept different OSs, you can set up Voluum rules to make sure that traffic from the right OSs will go to the right offers.)
  
  • The main OSs are Android, IOS, and maybe Windows Phones. Once you have collected some conversions for your camp, you could drill into OS stats in Voluum, and either "Include" the best-performing and profitable OS, or "Exclude" the worst-performing and unprofitable OS.
  • But if you're targeting tier 3/4 geos, Android would be where you'll get most of your traffic.
  
  
• OS Versions - I mostly leave this blank in the beginning. But later, if you drill into Voluum stats and see that some OS Versions are wasting money but not converting, you can specify them here and toggle to "Exclude". Unless you're getting a ton of traffic though, excluding a couple of OS Versions probably won't make any significant difference to your overall campaign ROI.
• Device Types - If you're running mobile offers, then you'll want to choose "Phone" and "Tablet" here, unless your offer explicitly says "no tablet traffic”.
• Devices - What I said for "OS Verions" above also applies here. But really, unless you're running in a geo that has significant amounts of IOS traffic, you probably won't need to do anything here.
• Mobile ISP - If you selected to target "3G" in the "Connection Type" above, this section would be available for you to specify the carrier(s) you want to target. Worth noting here is that some mobile carriers have multiple names, because mobile companies are merging and unmerging all the time. The result is that some traffic sources will still refer to some carriers by their older name. So if you can't find a particular mobile carrier on a traffic network, do a search in google to find out what other names they've had before, and see if they're referred to at the traffic network by those names.
• Proxy - Leave it at "Not proxy" for now, or forever. I haven't done much testing on proxy traffic, but based on my limited experience on a couple of other sources, proxy traffic doesn't convert. But please feel free to test it once you have a green campaign.
• Browsers - Again, you can decide to cut certain browsers based on stats. But if you're targeting tier 3/4 geos, most of the traffic will be from Chrome Mobile.
• Browser Language - Again, this is another stat you can drill down into in Voluum, and you can "Exclude" languages that seem not to convert well.
  
  • Or - you could think one step further, by identifying the main languages that are spoken by your audience, then serve to them offers and landers that are in their language. For example, say you've been promoting an offer to Belgium, where the offer page and landers are all in Dutch. Then you drill down into browser language and notice that a lot of visitors have their browser language set to French. In this case, you could translate your landers into French, and set up Voluum rules to direct visitors to either set of landers based on browser language. You could even try to look for offers with offer pages in the French language, that accept Belgium traffic, and split-test those against the original offer.
  
  
• Zone limitation - This is where you can specify a list of profitable placements/zones you want to receive traffic from, and toggle to "Add" - which is referred to as "whitelisting"; or specify a list of unprofitable placements/zones you want to cut, and toggle to "Exclude" - also referred to as "blacklisting”.
  
  • I've had better experience with the blacklisting approach rather than whitelisting when it comes to pop, and many other people have reported the same, but whitelisting could work out in some cases. Feel free to experiment with this, but often when you only whitelist profitable placements, the traffic would somehow dry up. This is why I always recommend going the blacklisting route to start.
  
  
• Anti-AdBlock zones
  
  • So should you leave "I want to get traffic from Anti-AdBlock zones" checked or unchecked? Frankly, because there not a lot of this type of traffic, it wouldn't matter much either way. But here's further explanation for your reference, from a recent Q&A I did with PropellerAds

1 ACTION ITEM: What am I going to work on tomorrow?
This will be my SOLE FOCUS for tomorrow.

• CRUSH Day 5 and have it, Day 6, and Day 7 completed TODAY!

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Holy cow you've practically summarized all my lessons lol!

And DO remember to start using landing pages ASAP - direct-linking may be easy to set up, but won't likely make you profits nowadays.



Amy

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Oh god!!!! It is such an amazing and useful follow along!!!! Thank you for doing it so proper!!!

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