First Campaign Ever - Native - The Way To Riches (22)
The title pretty sums it up.
I am going to launch my first ever campaign.
Traffic type: Native
Will update tomorrow, so keep an eye on the thread. 
Gotta go sleep now.
Added the creatives. Now I just need to wait for the approval.
Can you tell us a little bit more about how you're approaching this? Good luck!
Hey @sam, sure.
I researched 3 angles, got the creatives, made the headlines and sent the ad sets to the traffic source (I am using MGID by the way) and I was waiting for the approval.
I was? Yes, I have launched my first ads. What I did? Since I had the urge to start, I contacted my rep and got added some pre-approved adsets. The ones I've researched myself are still under approval.
I've launched the campaign 15 minutes ago. I'm running now 3 pre-approved ads. Different angles. I'm targeting both desktop and mobile
Hey Matt-
Good luck man! Great work starting your first campaign!
My first was on MGID too. I picked out a horrible product for it (good product, bad match with MGID's traffic) and direct linked, and spent way too much without a single conversion- so basically I made mistakes all around!
Don't get discouraged if it isn't looking good right away because on MGID you have to block tons of bad widgets.
If you aren't using an optimizer tool like Drive or TheOptimizer.io, I'd encourage you to set aside five ten minute blocks throughout the day to go in and block any widget that has 5-10 clicks without any follow-on lp clicks. (any experts here feel free to disagree if you think that's too soon but that's what I've done on MGID since there's so many widgets)
There's definitely good widgets on MGID that will convert, but the bad ones an suck up your spend really quickly if they get going.
Any other info you want to share on vertical/geo/offer type/etc?
Hope it does great and excited to see your thread!
Good luck! You wont share even niche you are in?
Hey Jack, I've been dreamin' about starting a campaign for too long now, couldn't hold it no more 
Well said, it might be a fantastical product, but if there's no traffic good for that offer, then you're screwed.
What I think is that if I can get the right offer to the right traffic, then I'm already ahead of the competition.
I have a pyramid scheme on my documents that I use once in a while as a reminder.
Let me find it and I'll post it here...
Here it is:
Attachment 20099
(Got this from another forum, will not mention it since I don't know if I am allowed to)
-No I will not get discouraged, I already know that there is a high probability that this campaign is going to be negative, but I also know there's enough room to improve and make some juicy ROI 
This are my stats now.
-357 Clicks LP CTR: 7,84%
The LP CTR is the percentage of people that click on a link on my lp? What do you think about this ctr? Too low? By the way most of these clicks came from android while pc and ios have both about 15 clicks, so I decided to stop android and let the other 2 run.
For what I got told MGID works good with dating and make money online offers, hence I'm running a crypto offer (Not the 3 digit commission ones, but one with mid xx commission).
If anyone has any suggestion, please let me know
Hey @larry90 I just did, read my post
Nice- I think that's a good geo/offer combination in that you should be able to get a lot of data cheap so that's good, plus its in English so if that's your native language that's one less variable you have to worry about (not that doing a translated offer would be bad either).
With your 7.14% lp ctr, do you have a bunch of widgets with that ctr? Or do you have a few widgets at 50% and a ton at 0%? As far as judging your lp I would judge by looking only at the widgets with 1 or more lp clicks, since the one's with 0's could be bot traffic or other stuff like that.
I'd say just keep being ruthless with widgets and then judge your lp based on the widgets I mentioned above so you get a true picture, and then judge your offer based on how many clicks are sent to it, not the overall campaign including the bad widgets.
If you need 1/100 offer visitors to convert and you get to 200 with 0 conversions, then maybe cancel offer (or sooner).
But if your main problem is bad widgets with 0% lp ctr's, then you just gotta get more and more ruthless I guess... hopefully you'll get a few good widgets with lots of clicks though so you can judge the lp and offer more accurately.
-spent $105
-revenue $0
The attachment isn't working for me, but I'm assuming you're running a EN geo that's not US?
7.14% LP ctr is a good starting point if it's mobile, but you'll only really know what's a good LP CTR for a geo after testing a few campaigns on it. I like to shoot for 15% on mobile for advertorials in the US for example, but it should be higher in less competitive geos.
To speed up the optimization process in the beginning, I like to see how much it's effectively costing me for a landing page click to the offer (eCPC).
You'll need to have the accurate costs per placement, not just the average from your tracker. MGID provides those placement stats in their interface as I recall, while others like Revcontent don't, but you can use an API tool like TheOptimizer.io to get around that.
You should have some rough idea of the expected EPC (earnings per click) to the offer and how it's doing for others from talking to your affiliate network AM, and you should ask them what their top pubs on native are seeing for their EPC.
Let's say that figure is $3 EPC. Knowing that, you can safely cut placements far above that figure, say $6+ as there is a low chance of those suddenly turning around and becoming profitable.
Another thing I would recommend is that you talk to your traffic rep and see if they at least can offer a blacklist to start, so you're not wasting money testing something most others have found not to work.
New update:
I chose another offer with lower payout than the previous one in order to spend less on testing (hopefully).
Today total spent: 125$ (for now, will let it run until 160- 180$)
total revenue: 45$
this is a different offer. i think it's still soon to cut placements since the conversions are just 3 for now.
i think is not a bad start and hope to get it positive as I have only 1.7k left for now for the campaign.
wdy think?
Realize that the money you have is for education purposes only.
If this is the offer you're going to test STICK WITH IT.
Starting from scratch on a new offer/vertical only means you'll run out of budget faster and starting from scratch.
Focus your time and money on this one and try to increase the performance of the campaign - cut out bad placements, focus on your converting ads, etc.
Hope this helps.
Originally Posted by beerandon11
Thank you for the suggestion, that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll stick with this offer till I get this profitable.
Btw any testing method you may recommend? Or bidding method?
I think about creating 2 campaigns.
(BTW I am running only on desktop as I have read that is the best one for converting “BUY THIS PRODUCT” offers, what do you guys think about this?)
1st campaign where I am testing placements.
1 campaign where I’ll move the placements with a conversion from the previous camp to this one.
To be able to find the sweet bidding spot what kind of test/strategy you use?
Any one that wants to chime in?
Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app
Hey buddy-
Not bad at all! 45$ revenue on 125$ spend is quite good early on on MGID in my opinion. (you're still using MGID right?)
You mentioned up above about 'too soon to cut placements with only a few conversions', however I would encourage you to definitely cut placements based on landing page ctr while you wait to get enough conversion data to cut them on that as well.
If you're doing a vsl type offer where the LP ctr is usually 30-50%, then you could cut any widget that has 10 lp clicks and 0% ctr (some people such as myself would be even more aggressive than that, others less, it depends on the traffic source and a bunch of factors distinct to you).
If its a vertical where the LP ctr is typically 10% then maybe cut any widget where there's 30 lp clicks and 0% ctr.
You can also look at your ads correlated to lp ctr, and if you have an ad that is getting a really low lp ctr you could cut it.
Also on MGID you can change the coefficient per widget. So hypothetically you could raise the coefficient on the converting widgets and bid a bit more on them (if you wanted- not saying you should or shouldn't).
And then I would be careful if you are creating a whitelist of converting widgets to make sure not to cut any widgets out of the RON/exploratory campaign until they are definitely getting traffic and converting in your whitelist. Sometimes its hard to get the ad server to send traffic to your whitelist. You can leave them running in both for awhile, or even just slowly turn your blacklist into a whitelist by blocking all but the best widgets.
And finally I agree re: desktop - it has worked much better for me and all the smartest native guys I follow like Malan Darras and James Van Elswyck all seem to primarily start with desktop on most new offers.
Good luck man! Very cool stuff!
Jack, hey! =)
If you're doing a vsl type offer where the LP ctr is usually 30-50%, then you could cut any widget that has 10 lp clicks and 0% ctr (some people such as myself would be even more aggressive than that, others less, it depends on the traffic source and a bunch of factors distinct to you).
If its a vertical where the LP ctr is typically 10% then maybe cut any widget where there's 30 lp clicks and 0% ctr.
As Malan said, this quarter is the most profitable one (usually), people are more propense in buying stuff for themselves, their kid, family etc... new year resolutions... so gifts/health offer should do better at this time.
About the coefficient per widget I already pumped up the cpc of the 3 widgets I got a sale on yesterday (upping the 4th one at this very moment)
As always I appreciate the advices Jack.
-Matt
Nice! Great work man!
But yeah, I am not even remotely an expert on MGID and my long term performance on it these last few months is less than your ROI from yesterday lol, ,but the one thing I do on it is be extremely aggressive cutting bad widgets. The traffic is just spread over so many that its the only way I can cut through them to get to the decent ones.
But yeah that's awesome man! Very cool to see physical products getting sales on MGID too that's great to hear! I have another campaign on there I'm gonna start in a couple days, and I'll be eager to hear how this campaign of yours progresses
I've been trying to do a gadgety-type listical on Revcontent on and off for the last 2-3 weeks, and I've had a few profitable days but just haven't been able to crack it. My physical product offers don't get quite a high enough conversion rate yet, and then I seem to boomerang between really low ad ctr where its hard to get clicks, vs really high ad ctr but too many 'tire kicker' clicks where perhaps they only click out of curiosity.
Its tough too because everywhere you go online right now you see WeeklyPenny.com seemingly raking in millions lol, and it gives you that listical bug!
But yeah good luck brother keep up the great work!
Yesterday got 2 leads on hold, both on trash, so $0 profit. I spent $60 (4 times cpa).
Right now here is almost 1 pm and out of $12 spent I got 2 conversions($30), a bit lucky...
By the way, I am MAX Bidding on EVERY single placement.
Today, $201 spent, $60 made back. Got 2 leads on hold so if they both convert I get to $90.
I spend 100$ on only the widgets that brought me conversion, and 100$ on testing. the whitelisted widgets gave me 2 conversions for now, the testing widgets gave me 2 conversions too.
Don't know if it's worth continuing. I am testing one landing page (premade from offer) and 6 creatives.
the ''best'' one wh a ctr% of: 1.005 while the others go from 0.2 to 0.7
Hey Matt-
That's tough... its almost nicer to be making nothing on a campaign than a moderate negative, so that you can drop it without feeling conflicted... this one does seem promising though..., and anything that converts on MGID is probably worth exploring pretty deeply since their traffic is very distinct/unique.
What did you mean when you said "I am MAX bidding on EVERY single placement" up above?
If you're getting to the 'do or die' moment on the campaign where you are trying to either make it work or squash it, you could always just really aggressively block every single widget that hasn't converted, or maybe every single one that hasn't converted or doesn't have a really good landing page ctr.
Have you looked at your stats by operating system? browser? Etc? Probably not enough data yet to look state by state I guess...
Just thinking out loud about any further optimizations you could do.
-Jack
Hey Matt!
I like the approach you're having at your first shot on Native Campaigns. I think our Account Managers can help you a lot because advertisers like you who focus on optimization this closely are easy to help increase performance for. We have a promo right now for $200 for $500 for new joiners so you can give yourself a headstart.
You can also use whatever widget white-lists you've been building in MGID in
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