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My 40-Day Tutorial (48)

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Lessons: 1-10
Actual days: 1-2

So I joined yesterday and jumped on the 40 day tutorial right away. I think it's exactly what I need, a step-by-step instructions.

I think I was able to follow the instructions and setup the first campaign. It's a mobile offer from Clickdealer and traffic source is Propeller Ads.

Instead of Voluum I used Bemob as a tracker. Price for the Voluum seems quite high for the newbie when you are still not making anything. If somebody more experienced has worked with Bemob I would like to have feedback whether it has worked for you. I think the settings are quite the same in Bemob and I think I was able to setup everything.

I put limit of 10 $ to campaign as suggested. My campaign is still in moderation so I hope that I can continue yesterday with some statistics. Hopefully I have made my first conversion, that's the goal I have for this first campaign

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Actually even though I think I got everything setup right, there is one thing I am missing / don't understand. I have worked in the digital marketing business and done some advertising in Facebook and Google. Just the traditional stuff like any regular business would do it without any tracking software.

One thing that seems to be missing in this process is the ad..so I don't understand that how people are send to the offer since I didn't design any ad or anything. So if someone know how PropellerAds actually send the people to the campaign link I provided them I would be interested to know this

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Lesson 11
Day: 3

Ok, I actually got 1 conversion! That was my goal.

But it seems that may be everything was not set correctly between the PropellerAds and Bemob. Although impressons and conversions were visible the costs from tracker were not. Seems that I am missing something from the traffic source setup although I used the PropellerAds template by Bemob. I'll look more into this and maybe run another test campaign.

Also seems that lesson 12 is quite long so I'll start to go over that as well.

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This is how my PropellerAds setup looks in Bemob. Do I need to put something in the Postback URL where is says REPLACE? And the customer variables, are those necessary? It seemed that Bemob was able to track for example devices without setting those.

Any help is a much appreciated.

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Lessons: 12-13
Day: 3

I learned a bit about the statistics. I think I got the essentials down. As in the point is to find the winning combination of all those different variables and then leave just those running.

I also created a campaign on PopAds as that was the next lesson. I think I'll start reading about the landing pages while I am waiting for the approval of the campaign.

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Hi @johntm! Great to see that you've started a follow-along!

To answer your question: With pop traffic, the offer IS the ad! (Not always - more on that below.)

If you go to a torrent site for example, and click around, you'll see full-page ads - those would be pop ads.

You can make the offer page pop - which is what we call "direct-linking". Or you can make a landing page pop - like a presell page - that contains a call-to-action that the visitor can click on to arrive on the offer page.

The reason why you would send visitors to the campaign link, is so that you can 1)allow the tracker to capture visitor information such as geo, device, carrier, model, etc. etc. etc., and 2)allow the tracker to control the flow of traffic. Let's say you're wanting to split-test multiple offers and landers, the tracker can send the visitor to different offer+lander combinations to do that for you.


Huzzah!! You rock! Here's to many, many more!

As for cost, I bet you're right about something being missing from the Propeller setup on Bemob - probably the "cost" token. I don't know if Bemob even allows cost-tracking - not every tracker does. I would suggest checking with their support.


That postback is different from the postback you put into the affiliate network.

The propeller postback is only required if you want the tracker to send conversions to Propeller, so that conversions would show up in the stats on the Propeller dashboard. You can set this up if you like, but it's not required.


Hope that's clear! Please feel free to ask further questions. You're making good progress!



Amy

EDIT: I took another look at the bemob tracking - please try this...

In your PropellerAds traffic source settings, in the "Cost:" section, put "cost" for Param (doesn't really matter what you put there), then for "Token" put "{cost}".

Should start tracking cost after that. Warning though: If you run Smart CPM (which is recommended), the costs sent back to your tracker won't really be accurate. I've covered that in the tutorial though.

Please let me know if this doesn't fix it, and I'll look into that some more.

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Thanks a lot Amy for your response! I really appreciate reading through my messages.

It seems that costs from PopAds was coming correctly so I think I'll do another simple test with PropellerAds. At this point my PopAds campaign has generated 6 conversions in a couple of days. The ROI is still heavily negative but I am really tempted to try to optimize that. Maybe I'll optimize a bit and also continue the tutorial.

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Oh and another thing. Seems that cost in PopAds is about 20 % more than costs in the tracker. Is this normal? Seems like not all the costs (so maybe not the visits either) are stored in the tracker.

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Lessons 12-18
Day: 6

I have been going through everything about the landing pages and purchased license to AdPlexity as well. I was able to setup landing pages in AWS and the CDN. Instructions were great and actually I don't think any of this technical stuff is going to limit me since I have a quite bit of technical background. I have never used AWS before and was a bit amazed that everything was free (except the domain of course).

Next days are about fixing up the landers so let's see how that goes.

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Lesson 19-28
Day 7

Completed my first actual campaign with multiple variants. I tried to follow up everything by the letter. So I choose Antivirus offer from tier 3 country. I have one offer from Mobidea and one from Clickdealer. Then I have three landing pages and finally traffic is setup from both PropellerAds and PopupAds. I made separate campaigns of these.

So with the 2 traffic sources, 3 landing pages and 2 offers I think there are 12 different alternatives. Hopefully I can see some results from these quite quickly. In the day 27 lesson there was a quote

So maybe I'll wait for some conversion, hopefully that doesn't take my whole budget before going forward.

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Damn there aren't enough traffic from PopAds for my campaign. It's just about 20 clicks and less than a $1 spent. I increased the bit and see how that goes. And also PropellerAds rejected my campaign, they didn't like the landing pages. Maybe I'll work on those and try to get them accepted to the PropellerAds as well.

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Day 8
Since I am having problems with my anti-virus campaign not getting approved / enough traffic I made another one. This is iPhone Sweepstake in tier 3 country, 4 landing pages and both PopAds and PropellerAds as a traffic source. Hopefully I'll get some traffic and conversion so that I can dig in the optimazation work.

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Hello johntm, let me add some comments below:

It would be good to fully understand the nature of the traffic you are working with, so check this writeup on POPs, what it is and where it comes from : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...inition-1-POPS

This is another frequent newbie questions, the reason is called "clickloss" and I've just written an article that explains all the details about it, so we don't have to write it over and over again Check it here :

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...finitive-guide

Some networks have problems with antivirus offers, especially when promoted through aggressive landing pages. Sweeps are more easy going generally, but stick to low payout offers for now, do not start with CC sweeps.

Great job with the follow along so far, you seem to be a fast learner!

Cheers,
Matej.

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For the sake of following the tutorial and getting some practice, keeping the campaign running is justified. For future campaigns, you'll gradually learn to identify campaigns that are hopeless - for those, you would either give up on the campaign, or test more offers/landers before optimizing.


Yes! Did I forget to mention that in the tutorial?

Costs posted back from PopAds to the tracker can be VERY inaccurate. I remember when I first started running heavily on PopAds, I had some camps targeting Thailand, that looked like they were profitable in the tracker - I kept running that campaign for a few days before I found out that I was actually LOSING money, because actual costs were TWICE the amount shown in the tracker!!

But no complaints - because most traffic networks don't even send costs to the tracker.

I've described in detail how you can update costs, in one of the lessons. Basically you can either 1)do a manual cost update in the tracker, but numbers would be approximate because if you're running Smart CPM / Smart Bid, the tracker would not know what the CPM cost for each placement is; or 2)just export placement stats from the tracker (containing revenues) and placement stats from popads (containing placement costs) and combine them on a spreadsheet to compare revenue to costs, and make placement cutting decisions that way.

Let me know if you can't find that lesson - I'll look for it and let you know.


As I've described in one of the lessons, antivirus is tricky to run. Some affiliates that are running antivirus offers using aggressive landers, are cloaking.

You can gradually make the landers progressively less aggressive, and resubmit after every change, until they're approved. (Also, try to submit one lander at a time - much less confusing this way. Otherwise you wouldn't know which lander is "breaking the rules".) After they all get approved, you can load them all back up in the tracker to split-test.

Sweeps would be a lot easier to get landers approved for if you'd rather try those.

Alternatively: Stick with PopAds but try a larger geo that has more traffic.


Haha so you've implemented my suggestion before I made it - I was just answering your posts as I read them. Loving this!

I'm rewriting that lesson on optimization still - HAVE to get it posted this weekend sometime. Been too many delays - profuse apologies!



Amy

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Thank you alot Matuloo and Vortex for your comments, I really appreciate all the help!

I have been running sweepstakes and antivirus in a couple of geos to try to get the campaigns convert enough that I could actually make some optimization. This is the first time I really seem to get stuck.

It actually started quite well with the first campaigns. For my Iphone sweepstakes I got two offers and four landings. Then they got first 3 conversions quite quickly. So I stopped the other offer and pushed the traffic to the one with two conversion. Then I got a another conversion, so total 4. I started to wait for more conversions so I could figure out which landers would be the best. Actually with 4 conversions all the 4 landers convert once.

I run this from a couple of traffic sources (PopAds and PropellerAds). There aren't any conversions from PopAds, so I stop that (spent was $7.86). Then I let the traffic from PropellerAds run for a couple of days but there aren't conversions anymore. Total spent for the campaign is now $26.28. The four conversions are total $5.92 so total loss $20.36. So it was first going really well but now no conversions in 3 days and since cutting the first offer I have spent almost 10 times the amount of payout.

I also a have very similar situation with Antivirus in another geo. Five conversions, but all spread with 3 landers (conversions 2,2,1). I am a bit lost what to do.

Because I appreciate any help I'll share the statistics in here. I'll just blur the geo and the offer name but they are both tier 3 geos.

Iphone Sweepstake, two campaigns since I have separated Pop and Propeller to different campaigns.



The PopAds I stopped so there is a more statistics of the PropellerCampaign.



So I am a bit lost what to do next. Should I just add budget to the campaign and wait for more traffic? Increase or lower the bid in the Propeller so I could either get more traffic or lose less money while testing? Probably too early to cut placements? I think the stats are ok, actually I am more concerned that that since the last conversion I have spent a lot more in the Propeller than before the conversions.

So any feedback whether I still should give more budget to this campaign or any advice is appreciated a lot.

I'll post the stats from antivirus as well.



Is this a numbers game and I should just start more campaigns? Since the first ones weren't getting enough traffic to make decisions earlier I also started two other campaigns (antivirus in two different geos). They don' seem to perform well (one has made one conversion, the other none). I could start new campaigns but I haven't gotten that much experience that I could make more accurate predictions what could work, new campaigns would be kind of like shooting in the dark still. Also I am worried that with multiple campaigns going simultaneously in the beginning I will get lost and lose focus.

One thing I do know what to do. Actually start with the campaign journal Seems that it's really easy to get lost what you are doing.

Again, all help appreciated a lot! Thank you in advance.

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I totally understand why you did this, maybe it was even the right nove, but usually it's better to wait for more conversions. With these low payout offers, conversion flow is usually simple/short so it's quite common to receive what I call "random conversions" ... so people just checking it out without any clear intent of purchasing anything. These random leads can skew the data a bit, that's why it's important to give all the elements of the funnel "enough" time to really prove themselves. Maybe if the other offer was still in rotation, it would be converting when the other one stopped to. To sum it up, give an offer 2-3x payout to really make sure it's worth it or not.

Whatever you blur out, it just makes it harder for us to help you. Maybe if we know the GEO, we have special insights, maybe we can spot an offer that we know it's dead ... or do you think anyone would steal a non-performing campaign from you? At this stage, it's really pointless to hide anything, trust me

So what next?

You got some conversions, which is good. You have one offer that CAN convert. Now you need to find more that will convert better.

As for the LPs, all converted similarly, which most likely means that all of them are just AVERAGE. So you need better ones.

This is what I would do :

1. Run the same offer and LPs, but try to spend more in a day ... at least $20. The goal is to find out whether all the LPs really work the same. And the "bigger" spending will eliminate the day to day fluctuation a bit... when spending 5-7 a day, it's nothing unusual to not have any conversion, it simply happens. The more you spend, the more stable the conversions look. In case the theory of "equally converting LPs" get's proven, you can chose just 1 or 2 of them and skip the others from further testing.

2. Take 1-2 LPs from the test in point 1. and run both original offers through them, plus at least 2 more new ones. The goal is to find at least 2 "winners".

3. Take the best LP and best 2 offers from test 2. and start testing new LPs. The goal is to find some LP that will beat the winner of test 2.

Next step would be to optimize the placements ... You can do some placements cutting during the first tests already, focus on placements that send a bigger amount of hits but the traffic doesn't click through the LP at all or on a very low %. The goal is to cut possible budget drainers that send bots or super poor traffic.

.
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.

This is one of the many options you have now. All of us have different methods and approaches, so don't take this as the ONLY way to move further.

Cheers,
Matej.

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Haha, I guess your right I am not sure why I hide these, I doubt it's a million dollar campaign. The first geo for the Sweepstakes is Malaysia, for the Antivirus is Costa Rica.

Thank you for this. I was following the Vortex's tutorial by the letter, there it said that after 2 conversions for one offer, pause the others. So that's what I did


Thank you a lot, this sounds like a solid advice. I will try this. But as you said everybody has their own way of optimizing and since I am still building my own it's good to have things I can try out.

Thank you again Matej, I really appreciate it.

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You didn't do anything wrong here, take this more as a suggestion for the future. Whenever you chose just 1 offer from the pool of several ones, you can basically end up with 2 scenarios ... it was the best one or it wasn't When the conversions stop, it's a good idea to take one step back and re-evaluate.

Exactly! There are 1000s of ways to skin a cat, so don't try to follow just one method to the dot, you need to give it your own twist.

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Just a short update for myself. Still focused on the two campaings to see if they will convert again. Added some traffic and created some new landing pages.

And I think I am starting to see how this works. It's not just about creating campaign and then cutting the "bad" placements but it's a constant improvement on all aspects. So actually the work starts after launching a campaign. I didn't taught so and last week when I was really hyped about progressing fast I launched multiple campaings (total 7). But what I should have done (I think) besides is that I should have focus on working on 1-2 campaigns (adding new landers, new offers etc..). Also I think my original budget should be a bit bigger, now I have set a limit for myself to use 10$ per campaign to see if there are conversions. Maybe I should use a bit more, maybe 20$, and try to spend it quite fast to get some preliminary data. Then if it looks good, really work on the campaign, if not then move on.

Don't know if this makes any sense, it's more notes to myself

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Yup, launching a campaign is just the beginning, then comes the tweaking part. As you gain more experience, you should be able to launch campaigns that are more successful from the get go, as you will figure out what creatives, LPs and offers have a higher chance of success. But still, it's pretty rare to hit the BEST setup straight away.

Just make sure you take it one step at a time, so don't try to add more ads, LPs and offers all at the same time. It's the best to always experiment with just one element. So when you add a few LPs into the mix, give them some time to prove themselves, then move on to the offers ...

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Day 17 (I can't believe I have been here so long, time goes so fast)

I have now focused just that one campaign. I added couple landing pages, the other seems to work better than the older ones but the other didn't convert at all. So I decided to cut it and another landing as well.

Yesterday was my best day so far with 5 conversions. It's still not that much although I know I am quite conservative with the traffic. At the moment the total ROI is about -66%, I have spent $60.83 and revenues are $20.69. I have cut placements, that has improved ROI, yesterday was about -48%. Still quite far from breaking even so I am not sure what to do next. I though that I would still focus on this for a couple of days just to a sake of learning and then move on to a next campaign.

I would at least like to test would I still be converting if I would lower my bid. I am now at about 3$ CPM which is what the traffic source recommends and I am thinking whether I should try to lower this to get more traffic with the same budget. I have daily limit $15 and usually it's spent (I have put it to be spread around the whole 24h).

One thing I think is quite valuable is blacklist of zoneIds that haven't converted or don't sends clicks barely at all. Regarding this I have question: How well these blacklists work for different GEOs? Of course there are differences with GEOs but can you use a blacklist from another GEO as a base when you move to a new GEO?

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You're in the early learning stage, so losing $ is totally normal. Just make sure you learn as much as possible from it.

Try it for sure, in many cases, newbies here on the forum reported better results with lower bid. So it's definitely worth a try.

Depends on why the particular spot didnt convert. There can be two main reason : a) the traffic demo wasn't a good match with your funnel b) the zone had to much BOT traffic.

In case of a) such blacklists are not very transferable but in case of b) there are high chances that a BOT poluted placement will behave the same in other GEOs too. When starting out, it makes sense to be more aggressive with cutting the zones, since you need to limit the budget and focus just on the best parts of the traffic. You can always come back and retest the blocked zone once you nailed down a strong funnel.

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This happens. I can speculate why, but won't say in public because it's speculation.

When this happens, pause the offer, and turn the other offers back on.

Basically at this point, you're not trying to find the best offer - just an offer that converts well enough to split-test landers without breaking the bank.


Again - that will happen also.

I would run more traffic to get several more conversions. By then, if it's looking like an winner may emerge soon, keep running more traffic. If the landers keep going "neck to neck" with almost the same number of conversions, just pick one of the ones that has made the most conversions and declare it a winner - then either start a new round of lander testing or offer testing and go from there.

Also: Running the same camp on both traffic sources is fantastic at this point because you're trying to get experience on both platforms, but once you get the hang of both networks, it won't be necessary to do testing on more than one network - that would just double your test budget unnecessarily. Thought I'd mention that just in case!


Did you notice that one of the offer+lander combinations is GREEN?

It doesn't mean it will continue to be green, because it only has a single conversion.

The main thing I want to point out is that there is a possibility that at least one offer+lander combo may become green. I would definitely have continued to run that campaign some more to see results.

Another thing to point out: Even if it does NOT look likely for ANY offer+lander combo to become green, keep in mind that further improvements will be possible:

1)Once you have a winning lander, you can use that to test more offers - at which point you may be able to find something profitable. And sometimes you'll just have to "suck up" the losses in the initial lander-testing stage.

2)Campaign optimization via whitelisting/blacklisting will further increase the campaign ROI.


I wouldn't even test bids at this stage - you don't have a proven winning lander OR offer, and decreasing your bid may lower traffic quality.

Bidding average would be good for now. Lock down a good lander and offer, and THEN play with traffic quality (i.e. bid etc.) You don't want to get into a catch-22 situation where you're not getting conversions and don't know whether it's because your lander sucks, your offer is a dud, or traffic quality is low because you're bidding too low.

You can cut placements even while testing landers/offers - as long as you keep in mind that you can retest them AFTER finding a good lander+offer combo (because a losing placement may be profitable then). For larger geos with lots of traffic, this would be a great way to curb losses. But if you're operating in a small geo, then you may not want to cut placements too early (unless you see a really bad one that's obviously a budget-suck), as you need traffic and conversions to test offer+landers and won't want to limit the traffic.


Too early to tell, but stats from not hopeless!


To succeed in pop, yes - this IS a number's game.

Testing a ton of offers and landers and picking the best to optimize and scale would be the general approach.

I wouldn't recommend staying with pop exclusively. It has gotten competitive (because it's so easy to learn!) and is volatile and profits are short-lived. But If you stick with it for a couple months until you make some profits, and THEN expand to other traffic types, you won't need to waste nearly as much money on learning - because of your experience with pop.

Starting new camps IS like shooting in the dark. That's why it's called "testing". The uncertainly needs to make you EXCITED, and feel like OPPORTUNITY - that's the perspective you need to take if you want to survive in this business (online marketing in general). There is never any guarantee that what you're testing will work out, but if you test a ton, learn to stop the unpromising stuff early, and identify promising stuff early and scale that, then you can minimize spending and maximize profits.

Also: Once you get the hang of things by practicing in small geos, try to challenge the bigger geos where the profits will actually make a difference in your life (not the pennies/dimes/dollars from small geos). The testing and optimization process is pretty much the same, except you'll need to test more landers and offers, and then do more cutting/optimization.

And once you've invested into optimizing your first campaign in a big geo, you can run there again and again with the same bad placements excluded, to capitalize on the investment repeatedly so you're not starting from scratch every time. That will alleviate the "shooting in the dark" issue a bit.


Haha for sure! Especially when you have 10+, 50+ or even 100+ camps running at the same time - things will get confusing real fast!


Sounds like a plan! If you're coming to this type of realizations, then your ad spend hasn't been in vain.

And yup - the $10 initial budget is only to dip your toe in the water so to speak. If the campaign looks hopeful/undecided, by all means run more traffic. Even the $10 suggestion is just - a suggestion. The idea is to run a bit of traffic, take a look and evaluate, and run more traffic if it's hopeful. If you're running offers in the $0.5-0.10 range for example, even $10 would be too much - but you get the idea that once you have experience, you won't need to rely on these "rules of thumb".


Learning should be top priority at this stage. You've learned so much with the $40 - most people spend that much on dinner for 2 people. That's the beauty of pop - you can learn for cheap. Well done!

Feel free to post screenshots of all kinds of stats so we could take a look (sort by descending profits, and also by descending traffic, for each variable). You can post 10-20+ screenshots if you feel up to it. I'm almost done that last lesson on optimization - I know I've been saying that since 2 weeks ago but it's so close to being done. I'm going to forget about all other work and focus on getting that posted this weekend.

But in the meantime, please feel free to post the stats and we'll take a look together.

Apologies for the delays in replying! Once the tutorial is done, I should have more time to devote to the forums.




Amy

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Thank you both for your amazing replies! I have been busy with my 9-to-5 job but from today I can focus on this again.

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Oh damn, PropellerAds sent me invoice for "Online advertising services for February 2019" - $69.99. We'll it's not the end of the world but didn't know that there is a service fee on top of traffic costs. Can't say though that I would have read their terms & conditions

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It's not an extra cost, they simply send an invoice at the end of the month that matches your actual spend over the month. Thats the way they have it setup ... you get receipts for the deposits and one invoice at the end of the month

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I don't understand...should I pay that invoice or not? I have made two deposits ot 100 $. Both of those have already been deducted from my credit card at the day when I made the deposits.

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Something's not right!

Can you get in touch with PropellerAds' support?

Click on the live chat icon after logging into your PropellerAds account:



Please do not make additional deposits - and if you can't get a reply, please let me know and I'll personally find someone to resolve this for you.



Amy

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Thank you Amy for your quick response. I'll try to sort this out through the chat. I am really glad I asked about this in here.

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Ok, got a confirmation from PropellerAds that this invoice is actually a receipt. I don't need to pay it. I have to say it fooled me since it was called invoice, there was the amount of money and also their banking information. But I guess it's ok now.

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No need to pay anything, it's just a "summary invoice" that they send out at the end of the month. You only pay the deposits.

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I don't remember ever having received such invoices - either because I never check email, or they went to spam, or I have a bad memory. Glad it's been resolved!



Amy

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Ok, I have been running this one campaign for almost two weeks. I want to share the statistics since I am not sure whether I should keep trying to optimize it or not. So what I have done so far is that I have added landers, cut the ones that didn't work well and also I have got the placements without conversion that has spent more than the offer value. There are two offers, other is 1.58$and the other is 1.20$. Although it seems that the offer 1.58$ which is from Mobidea seems to direct to some low payout (0.44$) offer recently, maybe their daily cap is met, I don't know. This has only happened in the last couple of days, I paused the offer now because of this.

Here are overall stats.



And here from the last 3 days.



So the landing pages 4 and 2 were performing best, so I made another versions of them. Then I added a couple more (7 and 8) to test totally new landers.

What I am actually worrying a bit is that I have to pay quite a lot for traffic to get enough of it. At the moment I bid $4.0 CPM to PropellerAds to get traffic. Yesterday I paid $3.5 CPM and was only able to use about 7$ which got me about 4000 impressions (since I use smartCPM the actual CPM is less than my bid). Should I just increase that.

Any suggestions I am happy to take.

And if somebody can explain the difference between clicks and unique clicks it would be great.

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Three days since the last post and quite interesting things have happened. I dropped the two worst offers and only left lp4, lp4-1 and lp 8. The traffic is distributed so that lp4 gets 80% of the traffic and 4-1 and 8 both 10 %.

My campaign has improved quite a lot and now the ROI for the last three days is only about -10%. Here are the stats.



Since that I have also dropped LP4-1 so 80 % of the traffic goes to LP4 and 80 % to LP8. I'll work on LP4 and see if I can improve it. The good thing is that now I am actually getting conversions so it's also easier to test. I am not really sure what happened. Maybe PropellerAds just started to give me better zones after running the campaign for quite a long time.

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Nice testing!

Several suggestions:

1)Please make sure you're cutting landers and offers correctly, according to stats calculators:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Banners-Part-1

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...211#post289211

It's also important not to add more landers/offers in the middle of a split-test, before a winner emerges. Doing so will render results inconclusive. Because of the day by day and hour by hour volatility in performance, we can't really compare the stats of one lander from yesterday to those of a new lander from today. We'd be comparing apples to oranges.

But since you may have already done that, let's just apply the stats calculator anyway on the overall stats collected up to this point - results would be less accurate than if you had done things the recommended way, but it would still be better than not using a stats tool at all.

The stats are looking promising though!

2)Regarding traffic volume and bid: What's the geo please? And are you targeting the entire geo or a specific carrier and/or OS etc.? For more volume, try Zeropark (with your best offer+lander).

3)Once you've cut down to your last winning offer+lander, test more offers with the winning lander to see if you can find a better one, and then just focus on cutting unprofitable traffic until you get green.


You're making very nice progress!



Amy

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Hi Amy!

Thank you for your reply!

1) Yeah, I have not been fully congruent with this since I have tested different stuff along the way I have struggled the past week to get the campaign green. I have had a couple of good days, but in most days ROI is about -20 % negative.

Actually most of the traffic and conversions come only from two zones so I tried to optimize and set separate bids for those zones (made separate campaigns). I haven't been able to get them green constantly although there have been some green days. If I set the bid below the optimal which Propeller suggests I usually run out of traffic.

2) Geo is Malayisia. I am only targeting operator Maxis (the offers are for it) and at the moment only Android since there wasn't any conversions from iPhone.

3) I'll try this, although I have used pretty much every optimization tactic Propeller let's me do. I cut the Android traffic and have been cutting unprofitable zones. Last week ROI was -25%. I could lower the bid but then I run out of traffic. Or I could set separate bids for different zones. I think I might do that just for the sake of learning it. I am worried that I will run out of traffic, but let's see.

Any suggestions what I should focus next, from the point of learning. Should I:
1) Run different campaigns in Propeller? I have read suggestions that as a beginner you should learn a one traffic source well before jumping to a next one. Should I do that?

2) Should I try this campaign in different traffic sources with the winning lander and the offer?

3) Still try to optimize this campaign.

4) I have also read from the forums that push traffic might be a bit easier. I am temped to try that since I could use the same landers I have already made. But on the other hand I want to avoid jumping from one thing to another.

I know there isn't an absolute right answer for this but I would appreciate any advice or suggestions

Thanks again for your help Amy!

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Try to drill down to all variables and see whether there are green or close-to-green segments you can whitelist, and/or segments with very negative ROI that you can blacklist.

If there isn't much traffic, I wouldn't suggest keeping the camp running.


According to my records, MY Maxis should have plenty of traffic on Propeller - it's like the 20th highest-volume carrier worldwide (in terms of traffic volume on Propeller).

How much daily traffic are you getting?


If that's the case, stop beating a dead horse - either stop the campaign, or find more offers to test on this carrier/geo.

And if you do test more offers, try to do the testing on those couple of placements you've whitelisted. This will allow you to test for cheap. If it's profitable, open it up to the rest of the targeting (all at once or in batches).


If you're not finding success on PropellerAds, I won't suggest not to test it anywhere else - because PropellerAds already has some of the highest-quality pop traffic anywhere.

It doesn't mean if a campaign doesn't work on Propeller, it won't work anywhere else. But probability-wise, it won't more often than it will. And pop is all about testing efficiently.

If you've optimized it to the point where the largest changes have been made and it's not profitable, I wouldn't bother tweaking the small stuff. You can always keep a campaign running and keep cutting the really small placements to inch towards green - but more often than not, it won't be worth your trouble.

If you want to try push traffic you have my blessings! It's really hot right now. Doing some testing on pop first to find promising lander+offer combos to scale to push would be a great approach based on what I've heard (I don't run push myself). Knock yourself out!



Amy

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Thanks again Amy!

I got about 5000 imperssions per day, but I had to pay quite a lot to get that much, on average smart bid was about 3$. That was SmartCPM, on the tracker I can see that the CPV was $0.0027. The problem seems to be that if I but the bid lower than suggested bit I run almost out of all traffic. Since I am not losing that much money in it, I think I'll try once different offers and then dump it.

This is my stats from the last week so you can see that most of the traffic comes from a two zones. I think I would need to make those profitable to turn the campaign green. If you can tell anything from the stats that could make it better I would really love the feedback and advice.



I have started other campaigns as well and maybe I'll look into push as well.

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Also it seems that in the tracker I have quite a lot of these visit data was missing when handling the click. Is this something that I should be worried about? It is a bit weird since I have setup the SSL and I use https://www.domain.com/click as a redirect but they always so just http://www.domain.com/click (so without the s).

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It REALLY looks like you're bidding too high - as you've pointed out, most of the traffic are from a couple of big placements, so to make the campaign work, you'd need to make those placements profitable.

There are only 2 ways I could think of to make them green:

1)Lower your bid. I know you've mention the decrease in traffic when you do so, but maybe test smaller decreases. e.g. If you've decreased the bid by $2 in the past, try decreasing by $1 or $0.50 and just see what will happen.

2)Drill down into other stats and blacklist segments that have low ROI, in order to increase the ROI of all placements.

Another thing you can try: Start a higher-bid camp - say $5-$10 Smart CPM (REMEMBER TO SET A BUDGET!!) and blacklist all the major placements you're currently getting traffic from. This way you can potentially find real gems that are converting very well, that everybody's bidding high just to get a piece of, that you aren't currently getting much traffic from with your current bid.

3)Test more offers if possible. This is always the default solution.


Weird! Have you asked Voluum support about this?



Amy

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Thanks Amy again for your feedback.

Last couple of days have been really exciting since I have been able to turn the campaigns green. It's still really low-scale and small but it is so great to make $10 profit in one day when you have been losing money for the last month

Here are my stats from last three days.



As said it is still small but I like the green a lot more than I liked red.

I am still struggling with traffic and I am not totally able to scale the campaigns as I would like. Thank you Amy for strategy suggestions. I have tried your suggestions and although even it looks like from the screenshot that it's multiple campaigns it's actually just two offers in multiple campaigns with different bids and strategies. I try to tackle the traffic challenge in this way. And two in the bottom are campaigns I started today.

These have been by far the best days so far, overall last week I was still losing money because I was trying new campaigns etc. And overall it has been ups and downs but at the moment it's looking better. I really hope it is going to go forward like this. I am really happy about the current situation and even a bit worried am I able to keep this momentum going. I have now a kind of system I am trying to implement and if it works I should be able to extent the success but if for some reason it doesn't work I am not sure what to do next then.

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I think John is using Bemob as his tracker, but yeah, I would check this with their support.

Seems like some click IDs can't be associated to a campaign - it might indicate some problem with your click URL (if you're using a LP) or your campaign URL (in case of direct linking).

Karolina

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Oh man, hit to an unexpected setback. My main offer was gone so I need to find someting which I can replace it with. It was performing nicely so I was focusing on other things and not split testing any offers for this traffic at the moment. It's a bit frustrating, every time it feels that something starts to work there is yet another roadblock to go through. /rant ends

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HUZZAH!!

Nicely done!!

This is just the start - next, set up more campaigns, test more offers, test more traffic sources - what's called SCALING.

Also: Everyone is running push traffic right now. If you're interested, you can take your best offer+lander over there and just focus on testing ads. People are having success with this simple strategy. Even some of the offers+landers that aren't profitable on pop, can be made profitable on push.


I am still struggling with traffic and I am not totally able to scale the campaigns as I would like. Thank you Amy for strategy suggestions. I have tried your suggestions and although even it looks like from the screenshot that it's multiple campaigns it's actually just two offers in multiple campaigns with different bids and strategies. I try to tackle the traffic challenge in this way. And two in the bottom are campaigns I started today.

These have been by far the best days so far, overall last week I was still losing money because I was trying new campaigns etc. And overall it has been ups and downs but at the moment it's looking better. I really hope it is going to go forward like this. I am really happy about the current situation and even a bit worried am I able to keep this momentum going. I have now a kind of system I am trying to implement and if it works I should be able to extent the success but if for some reason it doesn't work I am not sure what to do next then.


All pop camps will die - some in days, some in weeks if you're lucky, some in months if you're VERY lucky.

Pop is definitely a numbers game. Testing extensively and scaling the winners as big and as quickly as you can, while you can, is the way to do it.

You can always look for more offers to test for that same vertical and geo, so you can re-use the same good placements and winning lander.

Alternatively: I think you may be at a point where you've learned enough from pop to expand into other traffic types. Pop is great for learning because it's easy and cheap, but to make big money it's definitely harder than it was a couple years ago. I would suggest push or native. Or, if you're bold, try facebook or adwords.

The journey has JUST begun and you're doing very well - don't give up now!



Amy

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Thanks Amy again for your couraging words. It's definitely steep ups and downs. Every other day I think that I am going to be a millionaire soon and wonder whether I should quit my day job, and every other day I think that it's just a pain in the a** and why I bother because I just lose money

I have a specific question about PropellerAds though. If somebody knows how exactly their system works I would appreciate the help. So when I run campaigns on Propeller I always use SmartCPM and set the bid a little bit higher than the recommended to get some traffic. Now I have a couple of great zones, like this one:



I read from somewhere that you can get more traffic with static CPM since traffic source knows what they are getting, so they prefer it over SmartCPM. As in SmartCPM is "I am willing to pay this much, but most likely a little bit less" and CPM "I will pay this much". So I have taken these green zones and tried to create campaigns just for them, set CPM a little over than recommended. But I don't get any traffic, literally zero. I contacted Propeller support about this that if there is something wrong with my campaign, but they just said that nothing wrong with the campaign technically, but other people are bidding for the traffic as well etc.. (which I understand).

It is weird that with the same bid with SmartCPM I get some traffic, but with CPM I don't get any since I would actually pay more with the CPM.

If anybody has any insights, I would appreciate that a lot.

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We've all been there.

Depending on your situation, some of the points I've made in this post may apply to you:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post368170

The single-most biggest piece of advice I can give you, is that you need to embrace your day job.

I know how strange this must sound, but the way energy works is that the more you hate something, the more it will stay in your life - because you're giving it more and more focus, energy, and power.

There must be reasons why you haven't quit, and my wild guess ( ) is that it's because your job is providing you with money for daily living expenses, and is also funding your learning in affiliate marketing.

Let me give you some homework: Take a piece of paper (don't type - the energy and focus isn't the same - writing is better), and make a list of reasons to appreciate your day job, starting with the 2 reasons above.

Read that list daily, and see if you could add to it.

If you do this consistently, you'll start to attract better and better circumstances. It may not start happening in a day, or a week, but keep this up and you WILL see change. Trust me on this.

And even before changes in reality starts to happen, the way you feel about your job will change immediately. You'll feel better while at work. And what can be bad about that, right? Right!



In your original smart CPM camp, were you targeting all zones?

And then in your fixed CPM camp, were you JUST targeting those couple of good zones?

If so then it all makes sense. On many pop sources, the narrower you target, the less importance the algorithm assigns to your camp, and the less traffic it will get. So your situation is common. Try starting a fixed CPM camp and exclude the same placements that have been excluded in the original smart CPM camp to see if you get better results.

If this is NOT the case, let me know and I'll give it more thought.



Amy

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Thank you again Amy!

I am very fortunate that I actually like my day job But nevertheless I think your advice is a very solid one. I am a bit familiar with this law of attraction kind of concepts and have use them successfully before.

Targeting in the campaigns is exactly like you described so most likely your advice about that applies as well. I think I will play around a bit with different setups to see how it goes.

I think that at this point I have learned the basics from the Pop traffic + low payout CPA offers. I have a couple of almost break even campaigns now which I think I still try to optimize but I think I will take a couple of days and think about what kind of traffic, offers and overall business I would like to be running in the longer term. Pop is a very aggressive game and I have to say that I am not 100 % comfortable with the "Get the new iPhone" or "Your phone is infected with X viruses" type of landers. Yet those are the ones that give the best results.

But this has been a great learning experience. In a month and a half I have learned so much and I have really enjoyed it. Here are my stats, ~$1400 spent and ~$1000 revenue. I think $400 is a reasonable price for the things I have learned.

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Ah!! Apologies! I just re-read your previous post - I think the "pain in the a**" comment threw me off - I thought you were referring to your day job (now I know you weren't).

Then you'd be in no hurry to quit your day job. Try to have fun with both and life will surprise you with more and more positive changes (which, since you're also a student of LOA, you'd already know).


COMPLETELY hear you, agree with you and support your decision to expand away from / leave pop traffic. You learned the basics for VERY cheap - $400 is a feat - so pop has served its purpose.

The "What's Working in Affiliate Marketing" report is coming out on Monday morning (North America time) - check your inbox for the link. There's so much info in there that can bring inspiration to help you decide on your next steps. Perfect timing there!



Amy

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