Home > > Newbie Follow-Alongs

---

Absolute Affiliate Beginner Follow Along (with Binom) (47)

---

Hi everyone,


I signup STM Forums about 2 months ago and I started to get lost direction now as I had tested about 10 offers but didn’t see any good results. I had actually created a follow along long thread last time to records my previous campaigns and this is the link for the thread https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...uper-Affiliate


Now as I switching to Binom, I decided to start this new Follow Along thread and stating every step that I had done for the Binom Setting and the future offers and hopes that others member can help to take a look and provide some opinion.


Therefore, I sincerely hope that I can get help from you guys. Thank You


To list down the tools that I am using currently
Offer Network: Mobidea
Tracker: Binom
Traffic Source: PropellerAds

---

Things to Do Before Setup Binom Tracker
1. There are few things that may need to prepare:
- Buy a domain at namecheap/godaddy
- Register an account at Binom.org
- Register an account at Digital Ocean

2. Before setup binom tracker, it is needed to create a droplet at Digital Ocean, to know the step-by-step guide to create droplet at Digital Ocean you may read this thread https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...or-STM-Members

3. After created a droplet, I received an email from Digital Ocean like this:-


4. After that, I chat with Binom team to help me set up your binom tracker. They may need these informations that from received from the email

5. After that the Binom team send me the login access like this


6. Then I can start to setup the campaign

---

Setup First Campaign at Binom
1. You can choose to import your previous campaign if you are using Voluum last time, and this is the step to import your campaign https://docs.binom.org/settings-voluum.php

2. However, if you are using Binom as your first tracker, these are the following steps to create your first campaign, I am using this way as well.

3. In Binom, go to Settings, "Tracking Links" tab, and copy the "Postback URL":


4. Then log into Mobidea. Put the cursor on the gear icon (Settings) at the top, then click on "Global postback", select "Custom", paste the Postback URL that copied from Binom into the "Insert your domain" field

5. Replace “{aff_sub}” to “{{EXTERNAL_ID}}”

6. Replace “{payout}” to “{{MONEY}}”


7. Then, I will need to create chosen affiliate network. For example, if I pick the offer from Clickdealer then I will need to create an affiliate network at the Binom tracker. This link will teach how to create your chosen affiliate network https://docs.binom.org/affiliate-networks.php

8. After that, I create my chosen offer at Binom, and this link will teach you how to create your offer at binom https://docs.binom.org/create-offer.php ,make sure your offer link include the token of “click id”, “camp id” and “traffic source”

9. Fill in every details to create the campaign


10. For the name, I had filled in the offer name such as “PropellerAds - Singapore - iPhoneXs M1 Bot”

11. For group, I had filled in the billing way of the offer which is “Sign Up Form Submit”

12. For traffic source, I had filled in PropellerAds

13. For the pricing model, I click “CPM” and choose tick the box of auto

14. I choose “none” for hide referrer

15. I choose Smart rotation as the type of distribution

16. For the paths at the right side I click on + Lander to add my landers and + Offer to add my offer and click save

---

You need to set it to CPC when you want to auto track costs on Propeller.

---

Thank You so much! However, I am using Smart CPM as my pricing model at PropellerAds, I thought I should choose CPM?

---

Setup Bot Test Campaign with Binom
I read the thread that created by luke_clickwalker and 100% adapted from the original. (https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...on-using-binom)
The way that he explains is good and easy to understand. I would like to share about the steps that he taught at here as well.
1. Create a Bot Detection Offer


2. Creating Landers with 2 Offers
Offer 1 is real offer and Offer 2 is offer for bot detection
Tracking Link for Offer 1: https://mytracker.club/click.php?lp=1&to_offer=1
Tracking Link for Offer 2: https://mytracker.club/click.php?lp=1&to_offer=2


3. Add Coding to The Landing Page
I had added few codes such as bot %, bot detection javascript, backfix and javascript to confuse the bot to my landing pages, but I am not sure that my code is added correctly, these are the codes that I had added.
First (bot detection Javascript)
<script>
u1 = "https:// mytracker.club/click.php";
u2 = "lp=1&to_offer=2";
document.write('<iframe src="' + u1 + "/" + u2 + '"></iframe>');
</script>

Second

<style>iframe {
visibility: hidden;
position: absolute;
left: 0; top: 0;
height:0; width:0;
border: none;
}</style>

I add this Style tag to the HEAD tag of my landing page

Third (Bot %)
<script>
if (typeof(window.orientation)=="undefined")
{
var o = document.createElement("img");
o.src='https://mytracker.club/click.php?event2=0';
}
else
{
var o = document.createElement("img");
o.src='https://mytracker.club/click.php?event2=1';}
</script>

I add this script to the <body> of my pages (this is only applicable for mobile traffic)

Forth (backfix)
<script type="text/javascript">
! function() {
var t;
try {
for (t = 0; 10 > t; ++t) history.pushState({}, "", "#");
onpopstate = function(t) {
t.state && location.replace("https:// mytracker.club/click.php?lp=1&place=backfix") }
} catch (o) {} }();
</script>

I add it after </head> and before <body>

Fifth (Percentage of time who people who spent on the landing)
<script>
function pushToTrackerViaImage(){
var pushURL = https://mytracker.club/click.php?event7=1';
var img = document.createElement('img');
img.src=pushURL;
img.style.display='none';
document.body.appendChild( img );
}function pushAfterTimeout(timeout){ setTimeout(pushToTrackerViaImage, timeout*1000);
}var TIMEOUT_IN_SECONDS = 30;pushAfterTimeout(TIMEOUT_IN_SECONDS);
</script>

Sixth (Javascript to confuse bot_)
<div>
<a href="javascript:void(0)" rel="noreferrer" onclick="exit_offer();PreventExitPop = false" class="cta_class";>CTA Text</a>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
function exit_offer() {
window.onbeforeunload=null;
window.location = "https://mytracker.club/click.php?lp=1";
}
</script>


However, there are few problems that I am facing now.
Firstly, the cost does not show on my Binom tracker even my campaign has contained the cost token but it is not able to track the cost number from PropellerAds


Secondly, there are a lot of click loss.


Based on the picture, my clicks from binom is 14,754 while the click from propellerads is 20,674 it had lost 5920 clicks which is about nearly 30% click lost. Is there anyone know why is this happen?

Thirdly, bot traffic showing negative numbers

Why is the bot % will show negative? Am I adding wrong codes on my landing pages?

---

After investigating my steps again, and search the forum threads for the Binom set up (huge thanks to Greg's walk along!), I think i found out the reasons why I have the errors for the cost not showing, and a negative sign on the bot test.

1. Use auto CPC when setting up the campaign in Voluum



Thanks for @twinaxe for correcting me to use the CPC instead of CPM.

But earlier I still confused why we've to use CPC but not CPM as the traffic we sent in the Propellerads is SmartCPM.

After searching through Greg's walkalong, and read through @twinaxe and @vortex explanation, I finally understand now! A hugh thanks to Twinaxe and Vortex

Below is Vortex explanation:

However, I believe that the "clicks" in binom represents "banner clicks" which is equivalent to "lander impressions". This is not to be confused with "lander clicks" which is when a visitor clicks through our lander to arrive at the offer.

Twinaxe actually uses binom and he has experience, so if he said to use CPC then it's probably what we should use.

And after changing the CPC setting, it finally shows the costs now.




2. My final Offer URL is wrong.
When I switch from Voluum to Binom, I have forgotten to change the Offer URL and use the same offer URL as I use in the Voluum tracker

Here is the Final URL I used from previously Voluum (I wrongly use the same link on Binom, what a stupid mistake :

https://www.rotatemyurls.com/offer/152407|19094?tag={clickid}&website={trafficsource. id}&placement={campaign.id}

I believe the above wrong final URLs leads to the funny negative results in my bot test. After reading through the forum, I finally fonud my mistake and change my final url to:

https://www.rotatemyurls.com/offer/152407|19094?data4={campaign}&data5={trafficsource }&tag={clickid}

It works!

But still a little bit confused that in one of the @Vortex explanation here https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post360048 she recommend to change the URL to this

https://www.rotatemyurls.com/offer/94925|19283?tag={clickid}&website={trafficsource}& placement={campaign}

It looks different from the final URL i used above, without the data 4 and data 5 and replace Vortex with placement &website..

Questions: Why is it different? is it both bring the same results?

---

Reading the Bot Test

Still quite confused on how to read the Bot Test Data. Here is the Binom screenshot



Can anyone help me see my understanding of Bot test below correct or not?

My Understanding:

1 .The Parses Javascript clicks represent the number of "Real Human User" that visited the Lander.

In the example of Zoneid 1616557, the real human user is 101, out of the total of 279, which is 36% real human user percentage

2. The Mobidea Real Offer name is the Bot traffic that pretends to visit the page

In the example of Zoneid 1616557, the Bot traffic is 178, out of the total of 279, which is 62.79% bot traffic.

3. We should blacklist the Zoneid placement that have about 70% bot traffic on the Propellerads

My questions:

1. Is my understanding above correct?

2. It seems like most of the placements have more than 50% bot traffics. Is it normal? It makes me feels cheated that more than 50% of my spending to the propellerads traffics are wasted

2. How long we need to run this bot test for a campaign? Just 1-2 days? or Continuously non stop throughout the whole campaign period?

3. Is there an easier way to calculate the percentage of the bot traffic from the tracker data? It's confusing and hard to calculate one by one.

4. Currently, the bot test campaign only can set 2 offers. One Parses Javascript and one real offer. What if we want to rotate a few offers in the same campaign to find the winning offer? How can we do?

Hopefully, someone can help me to answer my questions....

---

First of all - I owe you an apology for not having replied to your other follow-along - the 40-day tutorial update + AWA + the holidays + a ton of other work + personal emergencies threw me off.

So I'll try to make it up to you in this follow-along!

I just came from your post in Caurmen's bot test thread - like I said, I'll do my best to get to the bottom of that issue.

Coincidentally, I've just answered almost the exact same question very recently - please see this post:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post362133

Looking forward to analyzing your campaigns together!



Amy

---

Hi Amy, thanks for your reply

Understood that you're busy, no worries on that.

Still can't really understand after reading your post on https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post362133 ... Sorry I'm a bit slow on this.

Anyway, I'll follow your idea of just follow and practice, no need to think so much about understanding the reasons behind yet. Haha

Saw your reply in the bot test too, I'll review my scripts on landers and run some new test on Binom for the bot test again.

Thanks!

---

I'm excited to found that Binom has the Mobile App for us to access the campaign data on mobile, which is great!

Here is the guidance to install the Binom App:

1. Installed the Binom app at Google Play (currently available app for Android only) https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...mmobile2&hl=en




2. Login with the tracking URL and API Key.



How to get the API Key: Login to the Binom - Setting - API - Copy the API Key and paste it to Binom App

Alternatively, can log in the Binom App using the QR code. Go to Settings - Apps - Scan the QR code.

After login the Binom app, all the campaign data will be shown immediately.



However, if I compare to my desktop Binom account data, the figures shown on the Binom seems like a bit weird:



As for the 2nd campaign: 6 Propellerads - SG - iPhoneXs M1 Bot (New Offer Link CPC) it was showingesktop Binom:
Costs: $7.88
Revenue: $1.40
Profit: -$6.48
CR: -0.01%
ROI: - 82.24%

Binom App:
Costs: $7.00
Revenue: $1.00
Profit: -$6.00
CR: -0.000%
ROI: - 82.000%

It seems like the app is not showing the figure after the decimal. That's strange.

Had contacted the Binom support and see what they respond on this.

---

The jist of it is that a number of different variables/tokens will work. The arrangement I suggested in the tutorial is only one way. If the tokens you're using are passing back conversions successfully, then you're all good!

The MAIN thing to make sure, is that you're using the SAME token to pass the clickid in your offer link, as the one you're using in the postback.

So let's say your offer link looked like this:

https://www.rotatemyurls.com/offer/94925|19283?data3={clickid} <---using data3 to pass clickid (I excluded other variables for simplicity's sake)

Then your postback will need to be something like this:

http://voluumtrk3.com/postback? cid={{DATA3}}&payout={{MONEY}} <---using data3 to post back clickid

Hope that clears things up some! And thanks so much for that mini-tutorial on how to install the Binom app - it's sure to help out some members! Hope Binom will fix the little glitches soon - they're quite effective in responding to queries and fixing glitches as reported by users.



Amy

---

Hi Amy,

Thanks for your reply. Binom's supports had confirmed that there is a bug on their app, will be fixed on the next app update.

I've double checked my postback URL and offer URL again:

OfferURL:
https://www.rotatemyurls.com/offer/152407|19094?data4={campaign}&data5={trafficsource }&tag={clickid}

Postback URL:
https://binom9319.club/click.php?cnv_id={{EXTERNAL_ID}}&payout={{MONEY}}

Hmmm... It seems like totally wrong, is it? Can you guide me how to edit it?

---

This should work! Is it not working? (i.e. Are you seeing conversions in Mobidea stats that aren't posted back to binom?)

I know it looks like "tag" and "{{EXTERNAL_ID}}" are different parameters - Mobidea's tracking is weird that way. You almost never see this on other aff networks.

If your arrangement isn't working for some reason, try this:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post360048



Amy

---

Hi Amy,

In this case, I seeing the conversions data on both Binom and Mobidea, and able to see the zone id at the boom report stats also. I guess it's working fine then.

Thanks very much!

Sent from my SM-G955F using STM Forums mobile app

---

After reading more threads on the Forum, and according to the walk along and post by @axeman117, @sheet731 and @twinaxe, it seems like Binom has its own way to perform the Bot Test https://docs.binom.org/events.php, hence decided to give it a try.

According to the Binom tutorial, all we need to do is to add the Bot Test Scripts below to our landing pages.



* Don't forget to replace the http://tracker.net to our own tracking URL.

After inserting the scripts to the landers, we just need to create a custom Coluum to display the bot test data as according to the tutorial here: https://docs.binom.org/events.php

Here is my Bot Test testing screenshot:



If what I did is correct, this is a pretty easy way to check the Bot Test for each placement ZoneID, and the test runs automatically all the time, which is good for us to constantly check which placements have high Bot traffics and cut the placement.

However, this Binom Bot Test only work on Mobile Traffics, not the Desktop. Had checked with the Binom support and they confirmed that they do not have the scripts for the Desktop Bot Test. Any Desktop traffic that came to the landers with the Binom Bot Test Scripts, will be considered as Bot Traffics

Some Questions in my mind:
1. Base on the scripts above, how do this Binom Bot Test works to detect the Bot Traffics? I do somehow understand Caurmen Bot Test method now, but this seems like a totally different method to perform Bot Test
2. Although most of the campaigns we run are for the Mobile, but in future, if we need to run the offer for Desktop, how to do the Bot Test using Binom?

---

Yesterday I've started a Tier 1 (Germany) Campaign. Will post the update here everyday, hopefully will be able to turn it to a green campaign very soon.

This is a Sweeps Voucher offer. The reason for choosing this offer is because it is the all-time best performance campaign in Mobidea Opportunity Data. It has been more than 1 months one of the best perform campaign and generating high revenue to the affiliates every day. Hence it seems like a solid long green offer to. Besides, I run a test campaign while I still using Voluum last month, got 3 conversions for $30 traffic spent, I think it worth to try, so I decided to focus on this offer.

The languages of the offer page is Germany, so I downloaded the landers from Adplexity, and set up 4 different landers for the campaign. Here is what I did on the landers:
1. Insert Analytics Code at Header
2. Remove Dates, Times, city or other data that written on the page during the download from Adplexity - search document.write and see got pre-written </script> or not
3. Replace all the links to my Offer Link
4. Add the Binom Bot Test Script (remove all the existing bot test script that exists on the page)
5. Add Parameter when adding Landing Page on Binom Tracker
6. Use Google Translate extension to check everything wording correctly or not


The payout of this offer is $2.81. I plan to invest $20 per day on the traffic and target to continuously optimize to turn it to profit in 10 days. Anyway, the $20 finished in 1-2 hours, should I increase my daily budget?

Here is my 1st day and 2nd Day results:



I've one conversion per day, loses at about -85% ROI.

One thing I dont understand, from my Binom Landing Page Clicks, it shown about 500 clicks only. But in Mobidea, the Visits/Clicks to the offer page is about 1000, which is about 100% extra.. Isn't that it should be the same or lesser due to the click loss?

Anyway, I start my optimization works:

1. Cut Placement that exceeds 1x Payout but no conversions yet:
- I found that the easiest way to check this is to check the placement at Propellerads. Just go to Dashboard, select the date, then click on the arrow button, it will show all the placement and costs, just need to click on the Exclude if want to blacklist the placement



2. Cut Placement that has more than 10 clicks and >70% bot traffics



3. Checked on the Landers stats, one lander has significant low CTR (but have one conversion). Anyway, seems still too early to decide which landers to cut



That's all I can do for now? Is there anything else I can optimize for now?

Hopefully, tomorrow can have more conversions.

---

Update 15 Dec 2019

Surprisingly today have 4 conversions! Haha! It's a good motivation for me.



Optimization Works:

1. Cut Placement that exceeds 1x Payout but no conversions yet:
- Some of the zoneid had met the 1x spent and no conversion yet. Ready to cut it today. Just click the Exclude on the Propellerads and it will be blacklisted in the campaign. Had excluded 3 zoneid




2. Cut Placement that has more than 10 clicks and >60% bot traffics (I decided to increase the bot traffic % to 60%)




3. Landing Pages
Seems like still not have the clear winners yet. Continue remain the 4 landers.



That's all my update today. Hopefully, tomorrow can have more conversions. $$$

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share with me.

Thanks.

---

For desktop, just follow caurmen's method - it should work for binom as well (although I've tried it and wasn't clear on how to interpret the percentages afterwards - waiting for reply from binom).


You can increase your daily budget, but then you should check stats more often (to cut placements and landers etc.)

However, I don't suggest increasing your budget in this case - you're only getting 1 conversion per 10x payout in spend. It will take a lot of money to split-test those landers to find a winner, using your current offer(s).

Can you ask more networks to see if you can find more offers to test? If you find an offer that converts betters, it will take less money to find a winner in your lander split-test.

UPDATE: Just read your post where you got 4 conversions in one day - that's great! But please keep what I said above in mind, for the future. If the offers are converting too badly, such that it would take a lot of money to find a winner in your lander split-test, try to test more offers until you find one that converts better.


You're right - I can't explain it either.

It must be because binom and Mobidea "counts" clicks differently. Don't know what the exact reason is. I don't have much experience with binom yet.


Good!


Is that what binom suggests? Caurmen (in his bot test tutorial) advises to send 30-50 impressions to a placement. Don't know if 10 would be enough. But most of the ones in your screenshot have way more than 10 anyways - so should be fine.


Try not to make decisions based on lander CTR - sometimes, landers with lower CTR can convert better than landers with higher CTR (I've seen it too many times).

The only exception is when the CTR is SO LOW that it would be highly unlikely for it to be a winner, i.e. it would require an unrealistically-high conversion rate for it to win.

The lander in your screenshot with the 0.2x% CTR does look very low. I would just cut it now.


Good!

Can you please show the following stats since the beginning of the campaign up to now:

-Placements stats, sorted in descending order the number of conversions.

-OS stats.

-Browser stats.

-Device stats.

-Carrier/wifi stats.


It's probably too early because you don't have a lot of conversions yet - but let's take a look anyway! And I'll point out what it is we should look for.



Amy

---

Hi Amy, thanks for your reply.

1. First question, may I know how do you do the Multi Reply Quote for those questions that I asked previously? I wanted to answer your reply one by one, but do not know how to Quote the questions... haha.

2. Anyway, regarding your questions about Multi offer.
- Thanks for your advise about finding similar offers for different offers and test several offers together to find the winner. Ya, I this is how I did for previous campaigns too. I followed your tutorial exactly.

However, for this German offer, I tried to find the network that I have but I cannot find any other similar offer for the Media Markt $750 voucher, that's why I just run single offer. Besides, as I keep looking at the Mobidea Opportunity for more than a month, this offer is constantly generating more than 1k revenue everyday for more than a month, that's why I feel confident with it (assuming Mobidea opportunities data are real)....



Besides, I run a test campaign on this offer last month using Voluum, it generates 3 conversions for $30 traffics, without any optimizations works, this makes me feel that it's workable.



Am I justify it too easily?


2. Regarding your question on why I Cut Placement that has more than 10 clicks and >70% bot traffics
- I think I somehow missed Caurmen advises sending 30-50 impressions to a placement first... I set the 10 clicks and >70% bot traffics rules myself, as I feel that it's kind of cheated by the traffics sources that most of the traffics I paid for it's the bot traffics, so I want to cut the bot placements off as soon as possible.

Maybe I should follow Caurmen advised to wait for at least 30 impressions first.


3. Thanks for helping me have a look at my stats. Here are the screenshots for the stats:

-Placements stats, sorted in descending order the number of conversions.


-OS stats.


-Browser stats.


-Device stats.


-Carrier/wifi stats. (I'm running the wifi only campaign)

---

Update 16 Jan 2019

Today have 2 conversions, but Mobidea showing 3 conversions. After checked, found that there is one Smartlink conversion today, but it didn't record in the Binom and Propellerads.



If not mistaken, the reasons there are smartinks are because some traffic is wrong which are not targeted by the offer, that's why Mobidea send the traffic to the smartlink. That's means that something wrong on my traffics setting that caused wrong traffics?



Anyway, the smartlink traffics are not high. I think can just ignore it for now.


Optimization Today:

1. Cut Placement that exceeds 1x Payout but no conversions yet.

2. Cut Placement that has more than 30 clicks and >60% bot traffics (changed the minimum clicks to 30)

3. Cut Landers


- German Media Markt FB (id:6) seems a bit low performing with just 1 conversion. Should I stop it now?

---

17 Jan 2019

Today is a bad luck day... My offer domain got banned by Google. This is the 2nd times already within 2 months. (I wonder how come Amy mentioned before she haven't the experience of banned domain yet, she so lucky or there is a trick on this? Haha)



I do not have backup domain, so have to fast fast buy a new domain at namecheap. This time I want to try to use.com domain to easy whether it can last longer or not. It's much harder to find the available domain using .com, hence I use the tool LeanDomainSearch https://leandomainsearch.com/ to find the available .com domain.

It's very easy to use, just input the terms we want, and it will shows all the available .com domain.



I bought 2 domains this time, one for the offer and one for the backup.

After buying the domain, I follow Amy tutorial again to setup the hosting, CDN and Https: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...osting-and-CDN

Once the new domain is ready, and tested all the offers links working, I start the campaign again.

Today not so much luck, only got 1 conversion



Optimization
1. Continue cut Placement that have >1x payout but without conversion.
- There is one placement which has 1 conversion, bot test 38.3%, total traffic spent $10.70 (about 3.8x payout) and still in loses. Wondering should I cut it?

2. Continue cut placement that has bot test 60% and above with more than 30 clicks.

3. Landers performance still about the same for all the four landers. This is a bit strange as usually at this point, it should have some clear winner and losser shown already..



Can anyone help me to look at my landers and see is there anything I can fix or improve?

https://www.offerconcept.com/Media+M...pon/index.html
https://www.offerconcept.com/Media+Markt/fb/index.html
https://www.offerconcept.com/Media+M...pin/index.html
https://www.offerconcept.com/Media+M...vey/index.html


4. OS version: I Keep browsing the Binom Data and saw Apple IOS seems like having a better ROI than Android (about -59% vs -86% ROI). I further split down to day view, IOS constantly have conversions everyday, but Android only one day have conversions.



In this case, should I focus to target to IOS only? In order to do this, I should edit my existing Binom & Propellersads campaign setting to target IOS only, or Creating a new IOS campaign at Binom and Propellerads?

---

I don't know if this advice is good or not...but do you have SSL set up on your host? I got those messages until I got SSL set up and directed traffic at my https landers

I took a very brief look, but the first thing that jumps out at me for a couple of your landers are the date formats.

Again, I'm pretty new at this, but from what it looks like, proper german date formats are like so: 5. Februar 2008 rather than Februar 5, 2008

You may have already done this, but I would load up facebook with your language set to german, so you can see what FB actually uses!

---

Hi Angle-lytics, thanks for following my walkalong. Ya, I did set up the SSL for his domain. But my previous domain didn't setup SSL and it got banned also, so I think SSL should not be the cause of it.



Just check the FB, you're right, , the data format is 5. Februar 2008. Will try to amend the date format on the landing page accordingly.

Thanks very much!

---

18 Jan 2019

Today no luck, only 1 conversion. And it took a longer time to finish my $20 budget now. Previously my $20 budget will finished within 1-2 hours, but now it can last for about 10 hours. Maybe because more placements had been cut?

Anyway, here is my record:



Optimization
1. Continue cut Placements that have>1x payout but without conversion.

2. Continue cut placement that has bot test 60% and above with more than 30 clicks.

3. As IOS has better ROI than Android, I decided to change my setting at my Propellerads to focus IOS traffic only.

---

19 Jan 19

Today is a better day, have 3 conversions. Seems like focusing on IOS only can improve the ROI to around -50%, am I getting nearer now?



Optimization:

1. Continue cut Placements that have>1x payout but without conversion.

2. Continue cut placement that has bot test 60% and above with more than 30 clicks.

3. Cut the lowest performance lander which has only 2 conversions with -82% ROI.

---

21 Jan 2019

Today it's just 2 conversions again. and I noticed that recently the conversions mostly happens in the evening. Is targeting the time a good optimization way also?

Optimization:

1. Continue cut Placements that have>1x payout but without conversion.

2. Continue cut placement that has bot test 60% and above with more than 30 clicks.

3. Today first time seeing a placement have 2 conversions, should I increase my bid for this placement? The maximum bit for this placement $6.31, my current default bid is $1.70. How much should I put for this placement?



4. I'm considering to test increase bidding. My current bidding is $1.70, recommended bidding $1.90 (it was increased, last time was $1.6 when I setup the campaign), Max $6. Should I split test bid for $ 2.70 and $3.70 by creating two new campaigns? If I'm spending $20 per campaign right now, so I should spend $60 for testing 3 campaigns just to test the bid price? Is this the correct way to test bidding price?



So far had been running the campaign for more than a week and spent about $160 on traffic but still high negative ROI... Still wondering am I doing the steps correctly or not..? Can anyone help me to look at this?

---

Update 21 Jan 2019

Today only has 1 conversion. Wondering is it normal that the conversions on the up-down of the number of conversions, despite constantly cut the placements everyday?



Optimization Works:

1. Continue cut Placements that have>1x payout but without conversion.


2. Continue cut placement that high bot traffic. I decided to start cutting placements which have above 50% Bot Test with more than 30 clicks.


3. Today I create a new campaign to test higher bid by increasing $1 bid to $2.70. So now I'll be having 2 campaign running, for $20 each campaign per day.

---

Update 22 Jan 2019

Today recorded the worst ROI record (-92.31%) since I started this offer. Yesterday I test bid by creating another campaign for $2.70 bid, but end up it didn't bring any conversion at all. Yesterday I only had 1 conversion from the existing $1.70 campaign




Today Optimization Works:

Optimization Works:

1. Continue cut Placements that have>1x payout but without conversion.


2. Continue cut placement that high bot traffic >50% Bot Test with more than 30 clicks.


3. Stop the $2.70 campaign since it's not bringing any conversion.

4. Cut one more Lander today.



5. Cut Browser. Chrome Mobile on IO is green. I try to set the campaign to target Chrome only.




Getting a bit down now. After cutting placements and optimizing for more than one week, the ROI still terrible and it seems like getting worse... Am I made any mistake?

---

Hey man, try not to get too down!

I'll chime in here so you don't feel like you're talking to yourself :-).

Again, I'll add a disclaimer with the note that I'm pretty much just as new as you are, but sometimes another perspective helps.

I looked at what I may be doing 'wrong' on my end, and here's what I came up with:

• Amy's guide is designed to get us comfortable with all of the different aspects of the process by forcing us to action immediately -- I think if we stick with it exactly, and sit on a single campaign, we might be doing ourselves a disservice. With the state of pops (and associated offers) now, I think it's going to take a lot more than following a step-by-step to get to profitability.
• One thing I realized I wasn't doing, was TESTING. I was focusing on optimizing (and optimizing on a tiny number of conversions). I'm personally planning on testing a much larger set of offers across multiple geos over the next couple of days. I think this will help expose larger pockets of profitability and getting down to a smaller pocket that only brings you 500 clicks a day.
• Now that you're familiar with the basics, I think you can start adding things to squeeze extra ROI out of things. I personally wasn't using backbutton redirects and a few other tricks like that, so that's something I'll be adding this time around.
• Something that I keep reading from the vets around here are things started opening up for them when they started working with more affiliate networks. One of my biggest issues was that I didn't have access to enough offers (which if you remember, are the absolute #1 factor that determines if your campaign is profitable or not), and as of yesterday, I finally feel like I have access to enough to do some damage.

Let me know if you'd like to chat or keep in touch at all on Skype -- just shoot me a PM (I'm on Mountain Time in the US). Would be happy to chat about learnings while we continue on our journey :-).

---

Haven't forgotten about you - I've just been so busy trying to wrap up the 40-day tutorial, I'm falling behind on my forum duties.

Will examine all the stats above in detail tomorrow or the day after and give you a detailed reply - all those stats will not go to waste.

Give yourself a pat on the back - you spent good money collecting stats and experience which is commendable in itself. Organizing and uploading all those stats and making a note of all those details must have taken quite a bit of time. I'll make all that worthwhile by doing my best to provide feedback.

My girlfriend is preparing for surgery and will be at the hospital for at least the next 24 hours. I'll try to work from the hospital, but if that doesn't end up happening, I'll definitely get to this the day after.

Again - apologies for all the delays!




Amy

---

Hi angle-lytics, thanks for your encouragement, I'm still fine, haha.

Ya, I agree with what you say, do more testing and try more offers seems like the way to do. Especially after reading the latest bossbigpaws walkalong. He starting do see profit campaigns after testing 20-30 offers a week.

My budget for this AM is not high enough, hence I can't test too many offers at once. As for now I still not give up on this German offer yet, want to continue optimization and see whether I can turn it to profit or not. No matter success or not, I think this will definitely be a good experience and lesson for me in my AM journey.

As for the affiliate networks, ya, it's better to apply more networks so that can access for more offers opportunities. I think I've signup for about 5-6 networks, although I only focus on Mobidea for now. It's not that difficult to get approved, you can try to apply more and see. .


Ya, It's great to have a newbie friend that can discuss and learn together. I've send a private message to you, let's keep in touch!

P/S: if there are any other newbies here that want to join, we can create a small skype newbie group to learn AM together..

---

Hi Amy, no worries on that and thanks for the latest tutorial update. It so details informative, yet easy to follow and understand. Really appreciate.

Sorry to hear that your girlfriend is preparing for surgery. Focus on taking care your girlfriend, no worries about replying my threads.

And yea, when you've free time, I hope you can help me to have a look at my campaign stats to see whether I'm doing it right or not? Should I continue or change the offer? What other things I should do now? Kind of a bit blur now.. haha.

Although haven't started to see profit yet, but I still learn a lot throughout the process (provided what I did on optimization is right..). I think this experience will be pretty useful when I starting to test more offers

Looking forward to your

---

Update 23 Jan 2019

EM.. seems like none of the optimization works I did is working well. Still remain at 1 conversion only per day, poor -ve ROI.



As follow Vortex latest tutorial, I tried to manually update the Costs in Binom.

Just need to Right Click - Update costs - then fill up the actual costs. This is good for us to have a more accurate ROI.

Optimization Today:

1. Continue Cut Placement that exceeds 1x Payout but no conversions yet.

2. Cut Placement that has more than 30 clicks and >50% bot traffics

3. Target Profit Segment only - Chrome on iOS and Firefox on iOS

- I check my stats (all time) and noticed that these two browsers Chrome on iOS and Firefox on iOS are Green. Hence I test to focus on targeting these two browsers only on Propellerads setting. Anyway, the traffics for these segments seems like very low... ( 8631 traffics, $10.04 costs for 10 days); kind of worry the traffic will be very low tomorrow.



4 Target Best perform lander.
- On top of targeting the browsers above, I also noticed that there are one lander perform the best for this browser. Hence i stop all other landers and focus on 1 only




Will let the campaign to run for 1 day. Expecting to see very low traffic. If it's too low, tomorrow I think I'll remove all the blacklists for all the >1x payout placements to get more traffic and re-test those placements.

---

Update 24 Jan 2019

As expected, the traffic was very very low. Only 3665 visits for 24 hours @ $4.19, can't even finish $10 a day... The worst thing is, no conversion at all. New worst ROI record.



Em.. cased on the stats history for the past 11 days, the segment "Chrome Mobile on iOS" is green and have Conversion Rate of about 0.07% For 8096 traffic, it converted 6 conversions.

But when I target it yesterday, 3058 traffic, no conversions...

It makes me feel like optimization is not the number game, the percentage doesn't mean everything. It depends on luck also...

Optimization Works
As the traffic yesterday is low no new placements I can cut.

- I decided to target 3G traffic and All language together and see it will generate more traffic or not.

---

Again - sorry for the delay! There were complications with my gf's surgery so I was very much occupied (not to mention worried). Finally able to find a place to set up my laptop in the hospital to get a bit of work done - let's see how many follow-alongs I can get to replying to today between all the craziness!

Will start from your post 10 days back and work my way from there.

It's simple - just bbcode. Simply enclose text in the QUOTE tags like so:




Oh it's GREAT to test offers! You don't really need much justification to do that (although testing offers that have track-record first is crucial if you don't yet have a proven lander for that type of offer; also, try to avoid offers that have bad track record; but other than that, unless you have a good reason not to test an offer, just do it).

I see - you're running a voucher offer. It IS quite difficult to find similar offers that you can use with your proven lander. Let's look at your stats to see if we can optimize the campaign further for this offer. If not, then I would suggest to test other sweeps offers or offers from another vertical even. You've been running in this geo for a bit of time, so already know what some of the worst and best placements are. So next time you test an offer, simply either 1)use the same blacklist from the start (can always retest blacklisted placements if the campaign looks promising) or 2)target a whitelisted list of the best placements. That way you save on test budget (vs. starting testing in a new geo from scratch).


It's up to you really! But for the bigger, more important placements, it would probably be worth it to gather more impressions so ensure greater level of confidence when you cut them.


Most of the placements that have made at least one conversion, are green. I see that as a positive sign.

Placements are tricky buggers to optimize, because there are just so many of them!

Especially for the bigger geos - you have thousands of placements, many of which are small. Today you have a bunch of them make one conversion each, tomorrow you have a separate bunch of them make one conversion each, the day after you have a bunch of them make one conversion each...

Which makes it really hard to decide which placements to cut.

There are a few options you can consider.

1)Optimize by variables OTHER than placements - OSs, browsers, devices, etc. etc. etc. If you find green traffic segments for other variables that can give you enough daily profits (at LEAST $5-10+/day), you can just stop targeting the losers for that variable to "lock into" profits from the green segment, or target JUST that segment for that variable.

Example: Let's say when you drill into OS, android is profitable with $10/day in profits, but the other OSs are negative, you can exclude the other OSs from targeting at the traffic source (or just INCLUDE Android OS only).

Note: Even segments that are NOT green but are CLOSE ENOUGH to being green, can be optimized like this. For example if Android wasn't green, but was at ROI -20%, then you know you can probably make it green by cutting more placements or some of the other traffic segments.

Another note: You should drill down to every variable in the same fashion to figure out which one you can optimize to result in the greatest profits - OSs may or may not be the best one depending on your stats.

IMPORTANT: Know that many of the variables are interrelated. When you cut something from one variable, it affects other variables. e.g. Say the IOS OS has very negative ROI. By cutting IOS from your targeting, you'll see ROI of the other variables increase. Which leads me to the next approach...

2)Cut traffic segments with the most-negative ROI first. If you do that, other variables' ROI will increase. Then you can do further fine-tuning by cutting more placements to get green.

3)Just brute-force your way by cutting placements. Especially for larger geos with a ton of placements, you sometimes just need to spend a lot of money and run placements until you can identify them as bad converters and take them out. To limit your losses in the process, cut placements at 1x payout in spend without converting, or even 0.5x payout if it's a big geo and you're bleeding money like a *bleep*. (Once you're green, you can always turn placements back on to run some more - if you do this in batches it won't cut into your profits too much.)

This process can take many days and much money, but in the end you'll have a nice blacklist/whitelist to use repeatedly into the future.

4)The best approach is probably to use a mix of the above approaches, plus any other ones you can think of to add to your arsenal of approaches. For example, drill down to all variables to see which segments are big (have potential to yield good daily profits) and are relatively close to breaking even or in profit already. Then look for very negative-ROI segments and cut those first, and then cut placements to get you the rest of the way to green.

I'm writing the lessons on optimization (for the 40-day tutorial) and have been having trouble organizing my thoughts into executable approaches. The above is what I have at the moment but the final lesson will contain more details and better organization (hopefully). So please stay tuned for that lesson!


NOW - let's take a look at your specific stats here:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post362847

We've looked at placements stats already - will look at the rest next and comment.

OS stats - Maybe cut Android since ROI is very negative. As mentioned above, this should increase the ROI of the rest of the placements. But you should drill down into various variables as first level and then OS as second level, and look for Android to make sure that Android is a loser for most/all other variables.

Browser stats - Safari is the elephant in the room, but I would try drilling down into OS > browser (and also Other Variables > Browser) to make sure that cutting it won't adversely affect the whole.

Also: Android OS and Safari browser are BOTH very big traffic segments - there's a chance that by cutting just one of them, the other's ROI can increase significantly. It really depends on what you see when you drill down by OS > Browser or by Browser > OS. Just look at the stats and ask yourself "what if I cut just Android? Or just Safari? What if I cut both?" Whichever would leave you with the most amount of profits would be the wisest choice.

Device stats - The most-negative one is "other", which you probably can't cut at the traffic source. But even assuming you could, you may or may not want to - if you DO decide to cut one or both of Android OS and/or Safari Browser, your device stats will likely look more positive.

Carrier stats - Deutsche Telekom may look bad, but as mentioned above - if you DO decide to cut android and/or safari, this carrier may look a lot better. You can more-accurately assess the impact by drilling to Carrier/wifi > OS, to see how much increase in ROI cutting Android will have on Deutsche Telekom; also drilling to Carrier/wifi > browser, to see how much increase in ROI cutting Safari will have on Deutsche Telekom; can even drill down by Carrier/wifi > OS > Browser, to see what cutting BOTH android AND safari will do for Deutsche Telekom.

Again: You want to figure out what to cut so you'd be left with the highest daily profits. Always keep this goal in mind.

Hopefully I've give you some motivation to optimize your campaign further! For bigger geos, just because the campaign doesn't look promising right away, doesn't mean you can't optimize it to green - the bigger the geo is, the more you can afford to cut and still have enough profits left over.

I'll end this post here - my patient woke up so I need to attend to her. Will answer the rest of your posts the next time I find time to sit down.



Amy

---

It's normal for conversions to NOT show up in PropellerAds' stats, because I didn't show how to pass conversions to the traffic network in my tutorial.

(I don't like to pass conversion data to traffic networks because most of them have internal media buying teams, so I don't want to make it TOO easy for them to find winning campaigns. I'm not referring to PropellerAds, but traffic networks in general. Obviously, if you're wanting to run CPA campaigns instead of CPM, you'd need to post conversions to the traffic network. But other than that, I wouldn't really recommend it. You can set it up though if you want.)

As for Binom: If you're not seeing conversions there, it means you haven't set up correctly, the binom's postback url at Mobidea. Hopefully you were able to fix this since that post - if not, go over the lesson on how to do that and follow it 100%. Should work.

Correct! And often, even if you've set up your targeting correctly at the traffic source, you'd still get a little bit of traffic that's outside of the targeting you've specified.


Yup!


Yup that's the norm nowadays. Basically you have to have multiple domains all set up and ready to go. Then as soon as a domain gets banned, you can switch to a new one.

I've been lucky yes. But when I was running pop heavily, google was not yet banning as often as it is now. Also, I hosted my landers on the same IP as a big authority site of mine from my SEO days, and I think that helped a lot also (google probably thinks my lander sites are good because it's hosted with this site - it's like when a bad guy moves into a good neighborhood, other people automatically assumes he's a nice guy by association).

You can also try to pick up expired domains that have some authority, to see if you get banned as quickly. Many of them cost not much more than new domains.


Very nice - that's the way to go!


Oh God yes!

I find that when a placement is 2x+ in loss, it would be hard for it to "catch up" and get green. So just cut it.


Try to collect a few more conversions to see if there's a winner. If they're still going neck-to-neck, just randomly pick a winner.

As your first split-test, make sure you test landers that look very different from each other. In subsequent split-tests, feel free to test variations of your best lander.

If you're sure you've included the most popular landers on Adplexity for your vertical, AND have optimized them well (i.e. load fast + display well + function correctly), then put more emphasis on testing offers instead. In your case, because you can't find a similar offer, if you can't seem to reach profits after applying my tips in my previous post above, then just prepare new landers for new offers.


Good observation! Please refer to what I said about optimization in previous post.


EXCELLENT advice! Yes https is almost a must nowadays. I need to emphasize that in the tutorial.


Creative! Never thought to check that - thanks for the tip!


Yup that can certainly be one of the reasons.

It's starting to look like you're cutting a lot of traffic and there's not much left to profit from.

Anyway - try to drill down into the various variables as I suggested in the last post, and try to optimize that way.

Note: If you DO decide to blacklist a major traffic segment such as Android OS and/or Safari browser, it may be worth it to turn some of the placements you've blacklisted before, back on.

To check: Drill down to Placement > OS (or Placement > Browser, or Placement > OS > Browser - depending on whether you've decided to cut just Android or just Safari or both). Figure out whether the placement would have been profitable if you had cut the major segment. If so, turn that placement back on.


Of course!

Basically, go through your traffic network's campaign settings. Anything you can include/exclude, can be optimized. This includes times of day and days of week.


I wouldn't bother to adjust the bid for a single placement. You're current still quite far from breaking even (-50%) - changing the bid for one placement won't make enough of a difference.

But if you want to do it for practice, try increasing in $0.50 to $1 increments. If the profits decreases, change the bid back to the last one.


You can do that, yes.

Monitor the camps with different bids, to see if the lower-bid camps get decent traffic. If you see that most of the traffic is going to the highest-bid camp, then this bid-testing strategy won't work as well.

In that's the case, try to do some cutting at the current bid (which you've done), then increase the bid by $1 and do more cutting and see if you're closer to profits, if so, increase the bid again by another $1 and do another round of cutting.

If you're not seeing enough improvement, try increasing the bid by $2 or $3 just as a "last-ditch effort" to see if you get any closer.

If optimizing techniques (e.g. cutting + testing bids) can't seem to get you profitable, then you need to go back to the offer+lander testing stage.


In this case it would justify making large cuts - again, as a "last-ditch effort".

So, do the various drilling down into data as I've described, to see whether cutting Android OS and/or Safari Browser would be a good idea.

You basically need a way to get profitable faster. Cutting bigger traffic segments instead of JUST cutting placements, could be a good solution.

(Actually, the fact that you're only making 1 conversion/day, tells me your offer+lander aren't good enough to monetize the traffic. The profits potential isn't really there. But since you've already spent money running this campaign, it would be good to use it for practice at this point. You need to learn how to optimize a campaign - it would be good to practice on this camp since you've cut some placements and landers etc. to control costs.)


Whitelisting green segments is also a good strategy. However, if the segment is too small (i.e. not much traffic), then don't bother.


All great advice!

I DO recommend for newbies to stick to the 40-day tutorial, but with experience, it is 100% recommended to expand away / build on top of it. It IS indeed not a good idea to always follow a step-by-step process. I'm writing the optimization part of the guide right now and it's so, so difficult to formulate something that will be a one-size-fits-all solution. I could only offer some tips and tricks. You guys will need to learn through experience.

More affiliate networks is great, but beware of getting your cash stuck on too many aff networks, with all amounts below payment threshold.


Again, if the green segments are too small, don't even bother.

Remember you'd still need to babysit the camp even if it's just making peanuts, AND when it's only making peanuts, chances are it could dip back into red quite easily, so you'd need to constantly be monitoring your stats - a whole lot of trouble for nothing.

Also: Some traffic networks will assign lower priority to your campaign when your targeting is narrow, and give you even less traffic - so you may not even end up with peanuts - more like peanut crumbs.


It's eerie that I've JUST finished talking about this, when I read about the traffic drop when you narrowed your targeting.

So that's one factor.

And yup - luck is involved as well.


I don't believe that would help - but any sort of testing to get more experience would be good as a new affiliate! Won't stop you from doing that (for the sake of learning).

If the offer has the same conversion flow for wifi and 3G, and it doesn't convert on wifi, chances are it won't convert very well on 3G either.

It CAN convert better on 3G, but then 3G is also more expensive.

As for language, almost all Germans know German. I doubt that by targeting all languages, you'd see vast improvements.

When you need VAST improvements, you need to test more offers+landers. Either that, or cut big traffic segments. Lastly, you can also test bids.

So we've covered quite a few things you can try. I know optimization is complicated. I'm still trying to figure out a way to explain it in an organized way so I can finish the tutorial. But I would encourage you to try out some of the tricks I've described, and ask for further details when needed.

My girl is waiting for me again - wants to get some exercise. I'll try to stay on top of your follow-along from now on!




Amy

---

Hi Amy, thanks for your reply in details despite you're busy, I really appreciate your helps.

Ya you're right, currently my focus on IOS + Chrome, made the traffic too little for the profit, make it like peanut crumbs, doesn't worth the energy and time.

I compared the OS > Browsers stats and noticed that IOS and Chrome have similar performance:



From the stats above, I think I can optimize with either of below:
1. Target IOS only
2. Target Chrome only
3. Target Chrome + IOS only.

I started with 1: Target IOS only on 18th Jan, it doesn't improve much on the ROI. Then on 23,th I changed to target 3: Chrome + iOS, the traffics dropped so much, and yet the conversions didn't increase also, it's peanuts.

Today I tried to change the target to 2: target Chrome only, includes both Android and iOS traffic. let's see how's the performance.

I starting to feel whether this offer worth my time and investment to continue to optimize or not. At the conversion of 1 per day, it doesn't looks promising to bring enough profit to me know. It could be the Offer + Landers combination doesn't good enough. I tried to check with Adplexity again, ensure that the Landers I used is the most traffics and run longest landers, hence the problem now could be on the offer, which I only have one to test. Anyway, I check with Clickdealer again and found that they have similar offers but it's private offer, that's why I cannot find it earlier, I've apply for it, once it's approve then I can test the offers again.

I've started looking for more other offers + landers to target. Testing more offers seems like the key to success in AM for newbies.

Anyway, Amy, I've a few questions need your help:

1. Do you familiar with Mobidea Smartlink offer? Basically, smartlink is the offer link that will auto change to the best offer base on the traffic. In this case, we no need to think so much about what offers and landers to use, just send traffics towards the smartlink will do. What do you think with targeting smartlink campaigns? Can it make big money?

2. You mentioned that you were doing SEO before, and you've got a big authority site. May I know what makes you switch from SEO to AM/Paid traffic? Do building the SEO authority site is a good way to promote affiliate links or not?

3. After learning AM for few weeks and practising with many campaigns already, although not making a profit campaign yet, I think I somehow familiar with this pop traffic and optimizing steps already. As my budget is very limited (about less than 1k), I hope my next try can have a higher chance of achieving profit campaigns at about $100 per day quickly. Below are some of the things that I wanted to do, which do you think I should focus on?

a. Continue with Pop traffic, test more Offers + Landers, focusing on 2-3 big GEOs only.
b. Learn & Try other traffics sources, such as Push Traffics, Native and FB
c. Target Casino and Dating verticle.
d. Learn and Try E-comm business

Hope Amy and any other AM experts here can help me by comments and reply my the questions above...

Thanks very much.

---

A quick update.

After testing many days on DE voucher offers, with the data of converting placements, I was thinking to test more offers in this GEO.

I tried to promote the Smartlinks Mainstream from Mobidea with my DE campaign to see how's it works. With smartlink, we no need to think about the offers and landers, just send the traffics enough. It seems like it's a much easier task if it can make good profits. Anyway, just keep testing and see.



With the number of 50+ leads, it seems like Smartlink can convert well. Although the payout is low, with continuous optimization cuts, I think it has the potential to reach Profit.

Anyway, today Propellerads suddenly rejected my smartlinks campaigns with the following message:

Rejection Reason
Notification request cheat on LP violation of rules on landing page https://propellerads.com/terms/#adv-9

I further contact Propellerads for the reasons, they mentioned due to Multiple subscriptions are prohibited. https://prnt.sc/me217x, that's why they rejected my smartlinks campaigns. That's frustrated.

Anyway, I'm contacting Mobidea see what they says about this.

---

@lawmence I notice that your forum subscription has expired - hoping you'll sign up to read this, but if not, I'm replying anyway in case this will help out other newbie members.

Actually, if you target IOS only, including all browsers, the safari browser would waste a lot of your budget.

Targeting Chrome+IOS only looks like the best solution, as it's already green. But we won't know the final results unless you test this - I find that once we start targeting narrower, we may not get results that look as good as when targeting broad.

Targeting Chrome only may also be a good option - you can then try to cut other low-ROI segments, and/or bad placements, to optimize to profits.

Ah - reading your post further, I see that you've tried all approaches! Very nice - this is the best way to learn!


You're right - at 1 conversion per day, this campaign won't go anywhere.

However, it will provide the opportunity for you to learn how to optimize a campaign.

You're also absolutely correct in saying that the focus now should be on testing more offers and landers (with special emphasis on testing offers!) If you can't find more recommended offers to run for your vertical, consider running offers from another vertical - which would mean you'll need to rip new landers.

And yes - testing more offers IS definitely one of the keys to success in this business! Almost every single successful affiliate I know, has a habit of testing lots of offers on a regular basis.


1. Do you familiar with Mobidea Smartlink offer? Basically, smartlink is the offer link that will auto change to the best offer base on the traffic. In this case, we no need to think so much about what offers and landers to use, just send traffics towards the smartlink will do. What do you think with targeting smartlink campaigns? Can it make big money?

2. You mentioned that you were doing SEO before, and you've got a big authority site. May I know what makes you switch from SEO to AM/Paid traffic? Do building the SEO authority site is a good way to promote affiliate links or not?

3. After learning AM for few weeks and practising with many campaigns already, although not making a profit campaign yet, I think I somehow familiar with this pop traffic and optimizing steps already. As my budget is very limited (about less than 1k), I hope my next try can have a higher chance of achieving profit campaigns at about $100 per day quickly. Below are some of the things that I wanted to do, which do you think I should focus on?

a. Continue with Pop traffic, test more Offers + Landers, focusing on 2-3 big GEOs only.
b. Learn & Try other traffics sources, such as Push Traffics, Native and FB
c. Target Casino and Dating verticle.
d. Learn and Try E-comm business


I haven't run Mobidea's smartlinks, but based on the stats you've shown, it's very possible to optimize this campaign to green, as your ROI doesn't look bad at all, and DE is quite a big geo so you can cut a lot of placements etc. and still have enough left over to profit from.

Do you actually see which specific offers are being tested? Or is mobidea's smartlink a "blackbox" where they won't tell you which specific offers have converted?

If you can find out which specific offer is converting the best, you can just run that offer directly to maximize profits. If not, then your only option would be to cut placements until it gets green.


This is one of the drawbacks of running smartlinks - you don't have a lot of control over what types of offers are shown.

Checking with Mobidea was a good move.

You can also try running with networks that are less strict - popads, popcash, zeropark.

Hoping to see you back on the forum soon!



Amy

---

Hi Amy,

Thanks for your reply. I was on the Chinese New Year holiday break and didnt noticed that my STM subscription had expired. Thanks for answerring my questions.

I noticed that maybe you've missed out my questions above, can you provide me with some suggestions on the above questions? I looking forward to your reply to those questions as I'm a bit lost of which direction I should focus on. Thanks very much in ahead.

Do you actually see which specific offers are being tested? Or is Mobidea's smartlink a "blackbox" where they won't tell you which specific offers have converted?

No, Mobidea won't tell which offers have converted best, and hence the only optimization I can do is just cutting the placement. It seems like it has no way to do the bot test also..

I did a test campaign to test bid at $4 bid (slightly higher than the recommended bid), the ROI dropped to -80%:



Here is my to-do plan:

1. For the Smartlink campaign, I'll just continue both the campaign and cut placements more aggressively.

2. For the DE Sweeps campaign, I've gotten some approved similar offers. Will test offers and see.

Thanks.

---

Hi lawmence nice to see you back! Hope you had a fantastic CNY!

Oops I did miss a few questions! Thanks for asking again.

I had lots of SEO sites. Most were used to promote affiliate programs, which was easy because they were niche sites so I would just promote the best products in each niche. I would also collect emails using a lead magnet of some sort (e.g. free ebook), then write an autoresponder to provide solid info, with the occasional product recommendation with my aff link.

My authority site though was about apps. App reviews, cell phone comparisons, tips on using your phone, game cheats, stuff like that. I wanted to focus my time on generating content, so didn't test affiliate programs, and just put monetized it with adsense ads. It made $42k in its best month.

As for why I stopped doing SEO: Most of my niche sites got hit with google penalties when panda/penguin hit. The authority site was built after all that, and it was partly due to the courses I took with OMG machines that I was able to reach success.

You can read more about my story here: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...d-my-seo-story

SEO sites are a good way to hedge the volatility of paid traffic campaigns. But it doesn't mean they'll never be hit with a google penalty. But then, every business has its own share of risks. Even the biggest companies can go bankrupt, let alone a website.

But joining OMG can really help with that. I don't receive referral fees for promoting them, but would like to recommend them because the teacher, Greg Morrison, is always monitoring his sites and doing testing to make sure to stay ahead in spite of google algo changes, and if you're a student then you get to keep in touch on FB groups etc. where Greg would keep you up-to-date on what continues to work.

A big authority site is not easy to build - it takes a lot of time and effort. But you can outsource it. Also, you don't need to build a big site to make money. Smaller sites can make money too. You just need to build them right.

And if you don't have the funds to sign up to OMG right now, there are free resources you can use to get started. GregMorrison's SEO tutorial in the SEO subforum would be a great start!


I'll be posting some lessons on optimization VERY soon - like over the next 2 days. So those may help.

If you want to give push traffic a try though, I would encourage that you do! Read every single thread in the "push" subforum, take notes, then start launching campaigns! I've arranged for some deposit bonuses with several push networks, so be sure to take advantage of them! (Not every network is good though, so be sure to do a search here on the forum before signing up.)

Pop is mainly for practicing and getting your foot in the door of paid traffic. Pop camps are easy to set up, and is cheap to learn, and you can learn a lot of stuff that will help you with other traffic types.

But now that you have some pop experience, you're encouraged to expand away from it.

Aside from push, you may also want to look into FB+sweeps:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post362269

Native I would advise you to stay away from for now. It requires a lot higher budget than what you have at your disposal.

Dating is not easy to make work nowadays - you need creative angles and ways to make sure lead quality is good enough. Casino may be worth trying - I'm not very familiar with this vertical so won't say too much here.

As for Ecom, it's still possible to make money with Shopify+aliexpress and running campaigns on FB, but it's gotten a lot harder in the last 2 years. I like to use this method as a way to test products. Once I find something profitable, I would source them directly from the manufacturer (alibaba for example). If you're selling to your own country, you can store products in your garage in the beginning and send them to your customers yourself. But a better way would be to get a fulfillment centre to store the products, and get a courier to deliver them to the customers (if the fulfillment centre doesn't already arrange that for you).

For more details please see: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post362595


Sounds like a plan!

And yeah - if Mobidea's smartlink does not reveal the actual offers that have converted, then there wouldn't be too much room for optimization. Basically if you throw some traffic at the link for one geo and results don't look promising right away, I would suggest to avoid spending further money on that geo.




Amy

---

Hi Amy,

Again, thanks for your reply and sharing the informative links.

Ya, I know about OMG also. I wanted to join, but it's too expensive for me. Instead, I joined Source University (Alex Becker) in 2017, and learn about SEO since then. For the past 2 years, I focused more on Client SEO, as I heard the OMG tutors Kotton Grammar and Greg mentioned that's the quickest way to earn money with SEO. I started an SEO agency, and it works well and I earning a stable income from there. However, as the business established, I'm getting more busier with handling the sales and servicing the clients. I start hiring employees to help, but I still prefer if there is a way that we can earn income online passively online, sitting at home without the need to servicing the clients.

As starting an SEO affiliate or Adsense websites take efforts and times to see results, I try to search got any other faster ways or not. At this point, I found STM and thought that maybe I can learn how to use paid traffic to make fast income. At that time, I thought paid traffic can be a set once and forget business, which generates big income automatically for longterm once we found the winning formula. However, it seems like this is not the case, paid traffics require constant testing and optimizing, and as you said, when the campaign ended, everything drops to zero...

Anyway, I'm still finding my winning formula for Affiliate marketing. I think I'll give up with my current Germany offers. After running for so long, and optimizing whatever I can, it's still converting at about 1-2 leads a day only, I think it doesn't worth the time to continue.



Next, I'll want to try the Push Traffics, Gambling offers, and maybe FB Sweeps. Hopefully can have some good results.

By the way Amy, I very agree with what you sharing on: I truly believe Paid Traffic + Free Traffic to be the ultimate solution.

I also believe that SEO should be a way to build long term properties and assets and I think I should start it right away.

May I ask you for a favour? Base on your experience, is it possible if you can give me some of the good sample websites for SEO affiliate/Adsense purpose? It can be your own websites or any other people websites that you think is a good example. I just want to have a better idea on the reference of how should be the sites looks like, how to structure etc only..

Besides, I've sent you a PM also, hope you can check that too. Thanks!

---

Ah I see! Sounds wonderful!

Why not hire people to also replace your work in servicing clients?

Ultimately, most businesses WILL require monitoring + managing. The better the people you hire, the more you can approach the "set and forget" model.


Wise decision. And for your next campaign, you'll know to stop it when it's not getting enough traffic to be worth your time.

The smaller geos are great if you're still learning. But to make good money, conquer the bigger geos.


A LOT of people are having success with push traffic - I'm glad you decided to give that a try!

Thanks for sending me a PM - but regrettably, due to my very-busy schedule, I can no longer keep up with PMs. Hope you can understand! But I'll do my best to answer questions here on the forum.

To be completely honest, I haven't done SEO for a few years (which, in a fast-changing field, is a LONG time). I'm just going through OMG's new course materials that have come out in the last few years to get my feet wet again. I'm hoping to be able to do a case study or at least a beginner's tutorial to share some tips later this year.

So, we can learn together and share tips here on the forum. I don't want to give very specific advice to you at this stage, because I'm re-learning everything too.

This is what I would do though, when researching which niches / types of sites would be good for affiliate/adsense income:


-Check out marketplaces that buy/sell websites, such as Flippa.com. We can learn so much from details provided from sellers - basically entire business models, from how much the site is making, monetization sources, where the backlinks are from, how much time is required to maintain it, how much is outsourced and to where, etc. etc. And you can browse through the sites to see what they look like, site structure etc. that you were talking about.

-Browse affiliate programs, generate keywords, and view the top 10 sites in google for each keyword to look for affiliate sites.

Browse the big affiliate networks like cj.com, linkshare.com, shareasale.com, clickbank.com...

See what kinds of products and services are selling well, based on merchant/product stats these networks provide.

Do some keyword research to see if you can find a niche/subniche that isn't extremely saturated. Although sometimes, if you're really good and patient in spending time on keyword research, you can find easy-to-rank keywords even in the most-competitive niches.

If you use a keyword tool that can tell you how competitive the top 10 sites are, you can pick keywords with top 10 sites that have weaker backlink profiles, then click into each website to see what their monetization method is. Those that have affiliate/adsense links would be the ones you can "copy".

For sites that have opt-ins, sign up to subscribe to their emails (definitely create a new email account for each niche, just for this purpose - you won't want to get a ton of spam to your "real" email!) See what products and services they're promoting - if they promote affiliate links, you can do the same on your site. If you subscribe to enough emails, you can write your own autoresponder series based on them.

-Invest into good keyword research and website research tools/services. I'm still trying to figure this one out, so won't share too much of my thoughts here. Google's keyword tool is free and would be a good place to start if you don't have a big budget. Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush are among some of the most recommended by experts.

Basically we'd be looking for keywords that 1)have high commercial intent (which will be reflected in the adwords CPC for that keyword) and 2)low competition in google (i.e. the top 10 results don't have strong backlinks profile - you need to know you can beat some of them in the first 6 months to get a slice of a pie).

-Read GregMorrison's tutorial to learn on-page SEO.

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...nking-Tutorial

Also watch his youtube videos.

-Reverse-engineer competition sites to learn where to get backlinks Tools that show you the backlink profiles of websites can help you. See what kinds of links your competitors are getting and see if you can get the same or similar links to your site.


Hope this helps a bit! There is SO MUCH information online nowadays - I'm sure you can get 1000x more info than what I've offered above, just by googling. I'm far from being an expert in SEO, but am willing to learn. Hopefully I'll have some valuable insight to share with everyone soon!



Amy

---

Hi Amy, thanks for your insights and sharing. It's very useful

Recently busy with the working stuff, and didn't have much time on running new offers. Suddenly, I wanted to test how the campaign perform if I set the Propellerads setting to "Distributed", which means Propellerads will aim to evenly distribute your daily budget across the entire day.



Usually, I was using the "Standard" Ad delivery method, which the budgets will finish within a few hours. Now I try to restart the campaign to see how's it performs with the Distributed mode.

This is the testing with the Standard Mode: 2 Conversions, -46.55% ROI




This is the testing with the Distributed Mode:
Much better performance, with 3-4 Conversions, and green positive 10% ROI!



Seems like Distributed mode will have better performance than Standard mode.

Furthermore, with Distributed mode, as the spending is distributed evenly on the whole day, I think we can have more accurate data on which hours perform better.



In the case above, it seems like the morning session 0:00- 12:00 have better performance. Should I optimize my campaign hours to focus on these sessions only or should I collect more data first?

---

This is true, having a sample that's distributed evenly across the day is better for sure, especially on larger daily spends.

Do not try to rush day-parting. A lot of data is needed to properly identify the best hours and even then, the trends are very often quite unclear. Your goal is to run 24/7 and only resort to day parting if the trends are really STRONG. Definitely do not try to base these decisions on 1 or 2 leads per hour.

---

Testing different things is always good!

Keep this up and you'll find tips and tricks that your competition don't know about.

In this case - it doesn't mean distributed mode is better than standard. Results could have gone either way. But you've made a very good point - I will add a point in the tutorial to remind everyone.

Thanks for sharing this!


I actually feel differently than matuloo.

You have my blessings if you want to just target these hours from the start.

Just remember to retest all hours after finding a good offer+lander and cutting placements.

It's a good approach to target only the best-converting traffic in the beginning when testing landers and offers. That way you can minimize test budget. Once you have a promising offer+lander combo you can always open up the targeting to include everything else.



Amy

---

Home > > Newbie Follow-Alongs