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Daiting on Popunder compaigns (18)

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Hey All,

I just joined STM, feeling that I really need help and support from other newbies, members and experts... I've started my affiliate life about 3 months ago and I’m asking myself why I didn’t join STM earlier, that could save lot of my time and money. I almost lost my self-confidence.

In a post I used to work as a networking engineer, so I was looking my new role related with IT/networking. Once my friend invited me to affiliate conference, after that I decided to try affiliate marketing.

I've had full time job, however it require quite a lot of time, so I decided to quit and keep focusing only on affiliate education. I took some on-line courses and my friend gave me good introduction, so 3 months ago I started my new life as an affiliate. As a newbie, I started with running dating offers using pop traffic. I was choosing between sweepstakes and dating. As for me, in sweepstakes landers are more complicated, so I choose dating.
I've made all set-up (bought dedicated server, run tracker, made accounts in affiliate network and Exoclick, put my first $500 on Exoclick account). I've stolen few simple LPs using Adplexity, slightly modified font size it and run my first campaign )))

My start was not so painful as it could be, for first week I've spent about $300 and my profit was about 0. After optimization, I've managed to make my campaign profitable for about $10-$15 per day. I was really exited how easy it was, so I decided to scale my "business". I registered in few other networks and run more offers. I was running offers for small European countries, I've bought translation on several European languages from One Hour Translation service. My business was growing up, I've managed to make $50-$60 profit daily. That was very emotional moment, I've proof myself that I can use knowledge which I got from many different sources (but not from STM)))

I get tired with permanent landing modifications (I'm quite bad in html and php), I asked friend of mine to create platform for multi-variation testing, where I can put some landings and we can choose the best one based on ROI% per each LPs. You would be surprised, but he has created such a nice tool, so my ability to run multiple campaigns was slightly improved. I started using this tool from middle in June and till now…

The rest of June and whole July everything was just perfect: I was running offers (only SOI flow) from different networks, doing split-tests, choosing best-converting networks, made optimizations and my overall income was growing. My best results were about $200 in profit and ROI more than 40% per day in July.
However, in August things get worse. My daily budget and profit are permanently decreasing. Now my revenue is less than $100 per day and profit is less than $20... I change nothing in my hand-made MVT-platform, just was adding more variations.

Now I’m working like this: I’m running new offer, it works very good from for first 3 days. (Of course, I've managed to create my black and white lists for each GEO, so it helps me to make profitable run from the very beginning). On 4^th day, still changing nothing I can see my ROI < - 50% and worse. Changing LPs is not bringing any difference. I tested a lot of offers (more than 100) from 7-8 networks and results are the same. For ALL offers, for ALL networks.

I cannot keep running campaigns for more than 3-4 days. After that I start loosing money or network is asking me to stop due to low sales rate. I'm running SOI or DOI offers, CPS or revshare I didn't tested yet. In ExoClick I’m using Smart CPM bid. In my tracker I can see that actual CPM per each click is constantly increasing till maximum I’ve set up. Feel like I cannot compete as far as my higher bids are still lower than competitor’s bids. Going further, I’m making my profit negative, so it doesn’t make any sense… Using another traffic sources like Traffic Stars doesn’t make any difference.

Do you have any ideas what am I doing wrong? I really don’t understand what to do… Shall I go for banner’s traffic? Any another formats? I don’t want to give up and get back to full time job...

Many thanks,
van graaf

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Hello van graaf!

This summer has been pretty rough for dating in general, I got this confirmed from a few affiliate managers too ... so no wonder you've been running into problems too. On a positive note, the info I'm getting now indicates a slight increase again, so things might be turning for the better.

POPs and dating are in a love/hate relationship too ... it can convert well, but the lead quality tends to be on the lower side. I always had better results with banners.

I'd suggest to take the following steps.

1. Test different GEOs, sometimes a region simply dies in terms of good offers ... there can be some new billing rule or regulation and party is over.

2. Test different traffic sources, I did great with exo for mobile carrier traffic, but regular desktop for dating was more complicated. Traffistars is extremely hard to work with now, they have the most stupid rules of all networks now, as they got scared by the google better ads policies ... networks like trafficjunky are a way better choice. Or try ero-advertising ... it's not so widely used and there are some good spots to be found in their inventory.

3. Deeply analyze your bidding strategies, quite often all it takes to lose the good campaigns is a strong competitor taking away the traffic you need. Try to figure out whether you lost some good spots, whether someone pushed you down in the bidding chain ...

4. Move to banners ... in the long term, it's better for dating or leadgen in general and there is more volume than in pops.

5. Better creatives ... banners, LPs ... there is always something to improve there.

Dating works, so it's only about optimizing the campaigns properly, there are no secret tricks and no magic required

You will get there again.

Cheers,
Matej.

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Hi Matej,

Thank you very much for such detailed answer. Definitely I need to review my strategy and start working with banners. I would really appreciate if you can advise me some good guide I can read? I'm afraid that I don't have required skills for that at this moment.
Wanted to clarify - what are ero-advertising sources you've just mentioned? (If this is not a big secret). I'm not aware about such sources...
I read information about available ad formats in ExoClick, do you think I can use not only banners but also some of these? https://www.exoclick.com/advertisers/ad-formats/ What would you recommend for newbie?

Thank you very much!

Best regards,
van graaf

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Hey,

I'd really recommend what matuloo already said - focus on display ( banners ) for now. It's not like banner is banner, there's different positions ( top / below player / footer / frontpage / videopage / interstitial / in-video and probably almost endless different variations ), different formats and different sources which all tend to convert and 'work' differently. Going into banner from running pop is more than enough of a challenge at your early affiliate career, you'll have to get used to completely different metrics, completely different CRs / CTRs and facing new issues you so far haven't experienced ( i.e. banner burnout ) while probably changing the way you used to work completely to make it.

In adult ( assuming you're running adult saying exo and dating in your posts ) banners is where the volume and quality is. Try to focus on 2 networks would be my recommendation ( for example exo versus TJ converts completely different ), stay away from the big guys geos ( think US / DE as an example ) and learn the ins and outs for running banners first. I'd avoid the highest volume geos for a beginning simply due to the fact you're running against a) experienced and fully optimized competitors and b) brands buying literally everything available ( currently happening a lot especially on some networks in DE ).

Make sure to separate as much as possible ( OS + Carrier campaigns rather than all in one ), try to experiment a bit ( for example try a low bidding campaign vs a high bidding campaign - results will most likely surprise you ) and reach breaking even as a first step and take it from there.

Your consistant quality problem is pretty likely to be connected to running pops only - most guys use pops as a 'supplement' for established, higher quality display campaigns rather than only run pops. It's extremely difficult to stay on an offer running only pops. Another thing is your landingpage, try to avoid wording suchs as completely free - this usually results in lower quality users since they're obviously interested in freebies and not prepared to pay.

All in all, I think the transition to display is more than enough of a challenge and brings enough new variables into your daily AM life to ignore other formats ( for now ). When you get banners right, it's by far the biggest chance to deliver quality which makes the advertiser happy and allows you to mix in some lower quality traffic for extra profits.

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Hello again,

ero-advertising is actually a smaller traffic source : http://ero-advertising.com

As for banner formats, fjk87 already explained it, there are many banner formats, you need to find those that will work the best for you ... the most classic ones are standard 300x250, 315x300 or similar ... those are usually displayed next to videos on large tubes. But there are many more, usually with lower volume but also lower competition.

If I had to chose the network to start with, I would say Trafficjunky ... good quality, lots o volumes ... competition is high, but it's still a solid source to start with.

If you are looking for a guide on how to work with adult, check this post of mine that is about a year old, but pretty much all info is till valid : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...here-you-start! ... just the carrier billing PINs are no longer that good option.

And for an easy to follow strategy, check this : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-of-my-methods

Cheers,
Matej.

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Dear All,

Thank you very much for such valuable inputs. I'm preparing to start banners. I'm going to created separate campaigns for RON, Premim, WiFi, Cellular, IOS, Android, Desktop. I decided to run each type of campaign for each domain separately as far as I don't know how to analyze such complicated statistics when I'm running banners. I need to test banner itself, placement (type of banner) and offer. I'm going to run offers which were working good on pops, so I believe they're gonna work on bunners as well... Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you very much!

van graaf

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Don't do RON at this point, focus on just the premium inventory, RON can contain a lot of crap.

And don't setup campaigns for all the targeting options straight of the bat, you would just end up with a mix of data across too many targeting setups ... pick one segment and test that first.

What network did you decide to test on actually?

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I think I'm going to try Ero-Advertising first. TJ will test in 2-3 days from now, need to finish some technical issues with my servers. Will try to run working offers for Android (or better on IOS or Desktop?) On pop traffic these offers were good for TR, ES, CO, MX. Also I have had good results for PT and RO. Right now on popunders my traffic is not very good, ROI and daily revenue are constantly decreasing... Shall I focus only on one GEO for the time being? Many thanks!

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Ok, with ERO you will have to target many sites at once, they don't have many big publishers. If you find a good one, you can also buy it on a flat deal.

Ah, I forgot you already got a selection of offers that used to work well, so you also have the LPs for them, right? In such case, you could focus on more than one GEO... just make sure you have localized banners.

Android will have more volume for sure, try to start with that and if the volume isnt enough for you, target the rest too. Just keep in mind that many offers have separate variations for mobile VS desktop, so don't mix that.

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Hey All,

I'd like to share with you really impressive news I've just got. ExoClick appointed Personal Manager for me based on my monthly spent. As far as I'm preparing myself to run banners would you recommend me to ask my manager for some Members Area placements? I just put some small money to Eroadvertising, to start banners from there. Simply speaking, can I test ExoClick and Eroadvertising simultaneously?

Many thanks,
van graaf

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Yes of course you can man, just make sure you got the appropriate parameters in your tracking to seperate them and get scaling out the combinations you've found profitable on Exoclick. Eventually you may find yourself running 5+ traffic sources to get enough volume for your campaigns, this is common practice for affiliates, never feel like you have to stick with one source haha, scaling campaigns is just a mindset shift spend more - make more (of course depends on demographic size).

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Yup, as Maynzie mentioned, running at several sources at once is fine, and you will have to do it at some point anyways. Just don't take to much on your shoulders, give it time and only scale once you are comfortable with what you are doing. Oh and make sure you're not sending traffic from separate sources to the same campaign in your tracking ... I'm sure you are aware of this, just mentioning it to make sure.

Personal manager can help a bit, though most of them will just want to sell you more traffic and large part of them basically knows nothing about affiliate campaigns ... but they can help you identify spots with lower competition, tell you what verticals are being promoted the most, what are the bids for a specific segment, tell you how much volume is available or strike a flat deal ... so yes, it's good to have a manager.

Members area traffic tends to be very expensive, so it's not really the best choice for the starters ... on the other hand, it converts well

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Hey,

I'm starting banners campaigns. I downloaded banners from Adplexity, modified it (mostly I replaced pictures itself and corrected translations) and started on minimal bid. This is my stat for yesterday and today:


As you can see I started with Exoclick first as far as it's more or less clear for me. Can I share the country and zones I'm running? I guess I will need some more advices with my next steps, as far as I'm having a lot of ideas in my head, probably it's not what I should start with...

Just now I increased my bid by twice, waiting for conversions)

Cheers,
van graaf

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Share anything you want, the more the better actually, people are always overprotective and make helping them complicated ... that's why I wrote this sometime ago : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ping+campaigns

BTW, the CTRs you are getting are very high, what kind of ad type are you using?

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I'm using interstitial banners 300x250. I downloaded banners from Adplexity, than slightly changed it and run.

I'm running only one dating offer for Hungary, getting Premium traffic from ExoClick. This is my day-by-day stats:



I'm using Smart CPM model. First day I started at Smart CPM=$0,25, day after I increased my bid till $0,51, yesterday morning I set my bid=$0,95. Frequency capping = 5.
This is my variation's statistics as for right now:



How would you recommend me to go on further? I have an idea to increase my Smart CPM bid till...$2 and see how it will work) To be honest I don't really know what I am supposed to do)))

Important note. When I was running pops campaigns I was using MagicChecker as far as I've had alert on my pops. I'm having suspicion that that tool is really react on my traffic. So, I've run split test (50%/50% from traffic's standpoint): created one LP with magicchecker, and another one without. (Anyway I don't really need cloacking when I'm running banners, right?). As for yesterday, I've seen only 1 lead which I got from LP "protected" by MagicChecker, and 11 leads from LP which is not "protected". So, last night I decided to switch off MagicChecker, and now I've got positive ROI.

Talking about pops campaigns, do you guys using alerts (entry java message) on your pop ads? If not - are you able to get positive ROI? If yes, what type of cloacking service you're using?

Really appreciated for any advice.

Many thanks!
van graaf

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Ok, this explains the high CTR, regular banner spots have way lower ones. The reason is a lot of unintentional clicks that happen, when people miss the "x" button. As a result, the resulting CVR will be also lower than on regular banner spots. This is perfectly fine though, it's all about the final ROI.

Raising the bid only makes sense when it results in more traffic and more conversions. Based on your screenshots, your average CPM is below $0.3 so there really isn't much sense in raising it further. You're most likely the highest bidder already anyways... on top of that, usully it's better to stay a bid behind the highest bidder ... positions 2-3 often work better for me than the top #1.

Depends on what you are running and whether it breaks the rules of the network in some way ... but for standard banner campaigns, cloaking isn't necessary.

Ok, so if I understand it right, you are profitable .. after you disabled the cloaker, right? This means you have a solid funnel and now you need to do 2 things :

1. find more traffic for it ... open up the targeting or use more sources
2. try to make changes to the banners and LPs to see if you can improve the performance further. You can always test more offers, in case you have any available.

Cheers,
Matej.

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I'm starting banners with no great success due to my own performance issues:

1. I'm not a photoshop expert, so new banners preparation is quite slow;
2. Avoiding big GEOs, I found that on a small GEO only 1-2 publishers really brings leads. In order to understand it, I've spent my budget almost for nothing. For the first start I'm choosing 1 most higher CTR banner for run, then choosing ALL zones just to find if there are good spots to work with.
3. At the end I'm creating quite a lot separate campaigns for Wi-Fi, for Cellular, for Android, for IOS, for Mac and Windows Desktops, etc...
4. At the end I'm having just very few leads from few campaigns, which brings me less than $10 daily. Feel myself really exhausted.
5. Still got no understanding how to increase traffic volume, trying other traffic sources with no big success.

Looks like I have to run hundreds campaigns to get $100 per day. As I said my performance is low, I hardly can run more than 20 campaigns per day... How you guys can work with such a big number of campaigns simultaneously?)))

In order to keep $xx figures per day I'm still running pop campaigns. Working with popunders is much more easier, however traffic quality is sucks even from premium. Lot of offers were stopped by advertisers, some advertisers asked to stop most profitable of my zones, so running further doesn't have any sense. I'm running the same offer from other networks, using another sources.

Nevertheless I still full of optimism, will keep going)

Please advise how to improve my AM life)

Thanks
van graaf

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This will take some time but you will learn it, dont worry. Keep one thing in mind, its not needed to use highly advanced graphics, simple stuff often works better.

Small GEOs are a bit tricky to work with, but that makes them attractive in a way ... many people wont bother with them, so the competition can be lower. Its one of the advantages you can use. Keep in mind there are several big sources, so you can get the volume by using all of them.

It's ok to be granular to some extent, but this is an overkill ... start by separating just devices ... then check the data to see if its worth it to separate campaigns further.

There is a lot of volume to get, you just need to develop some system ...

Higher bid, more placements, more sources, higher impressions cap, more campaigns, more GEOs ... there is a lot of traffic in adult, you won't have any problems getting it, just start small and scale up as you become more comfortable about running campaigns.

I have several campaigns in dating, spending hundreds of $ per day each... you can also run tons of small campaigns ... depends what you like more.

Pops are often coming with a lot of quality problems, banners are definitely better when it comes to this ... stick to it and you will get there

Cheers,
Matej

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