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Our way from newbies to profit (48)

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Hi @nosotros as you’ve mentioned in your post the biggest differences between the two plans are in how much they offer in terms of features and how much events you can track in the particular price. If you’re running low volumes of traffic and are not afraid of its quality maybe indeed you could move for a period of time to Entry. But please don’t forget that on Basic, you also receive more custom domains with SSL (not available for Entry) and among other things, higher level of support. Please contact me on priv to discuss the details as each person runs their account differently and we try to help make Voluum a tailored made experience for you.

Karolina

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Hello, somehow I missed your thread last week, but found it now so let's take a look at what you wrote and let me drop some suggestions.

Anything "Gay" in adult is generally easier to convert, but the volume is much lower and competition is high too, so it's not like gay dating would be "better" to focus on. But focusing on it is ok, as long as it works for you.

Smartlinks can cause all kinds of trouble to be honest. You never know what they rotate in the mix, it might even get you banned at some networks.

Smartlink can not outperform a skilled media buyer, especially not in an impulse based vertical such as adult. They do work to some extent, but they are not more clever than a person who knows what they are doing. Smartlinks were originally meant to handle cheap traffic that people were getting in huge quantities, so they didn't have time to properly optimize it all as it was often a crazy mix that was hard to optimize in the first place. So running it through some automatic system that would distribute it to particular offers based on the likeliness of certain segments to perform well with specific offers, was a good idea that made lots of people a lot of money. But with smaller amounts of highly targeted traffic, it's not working that well, compared to a well optimized funnel.

There is no need to learn optimization with sweeps, you can do the same in adult with lower paying SOI offers. And yes, without LPs, you won't get anywhere. LPs are your secret weapon that can set you apart from the rest.

As mentioned above, if you want to do adult, then stay in adult... Banners work better for dating than pops, but pops can work too, just expect more frequent quality problems. There are also push sources that you can use to promote adult dating offers, just tone the creatives down and use non-nude tours.

Smartlinks have their place, but when buying traffic through banners on expensive sources, you need to create your own LPs to stay at least somewhat unique. As a new affiliate, you need to have full control over your funnel, the networks will not be forgiving since you have no history with them... if a smartlink rotates something against their rules, you can lose an account easily.

Estimates are quite inaccurate across several traffic sources, to see the real volumes, you need to run a test

It's not necessary, the entry level plan will do the job. And there are more trackers available than ever before ... binom, redtrack, adsbridge, funnelflux .. some are cheaper than the entry level plan on Voluum.

Wish you best of luck with your campaigns, and if you have more questions, just ask

Matej.

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Thank you @matuloo for your answers and suggestions! Good to know that networks can ban my account because of smartlink shows something against their rules. It's not even possible to go through all landings/offers they have in rotation for every country.

Well, next step will be choosing 1-2 GEOs and 1-2 vertical (dating or gay dating) to focus on. I will try to master my funnel (banners/landers/offers) with 1-2 geos and 1 vertical. That way, I should have enough focus to learn testing without spending too much budget and distracting myself.

To GEOs: I read article on your blog about dating offers with Cpamatica.com. Evgenyi wrote there that it's good to focus on smaller countries for newbies (which makes sense) and mentioned Czech Republic. As this country is my home and I can (obviously) write very well in my language, I think that it would be a good idea to start here. I would have advantage in well written copy and well explained angles, which most of ads that I see don't have. And traffic is not that expensive. Second geo that I like is Germany as it's big (good volume), they have enough money and they are good spenders i think. And it's not so competetive as US.

Thank you again and I will update when I have running campaigns. Now, I have to make banners, landers and pick offers. Back to the drawing board

PS: I will stay with Voluum as there are lots of guides with this tracker and I really like it's interface Will probably try Entry plan to have more budget for traffic than switch back.

Dominik

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Hello again nosotros

I would suggest to move to CPM bidding completely, that way you can test the ads better, because on CPC they will push the more clicked banners much more... and higher CTR doesnt necessarily mean better conversions.

One tip for Traffic Factory : there is usually a sweet spot for bidding that you need to reach for the best performance, you need to find it as it's not always the same. For me, the best is when I can be 2nd-5th highest bidder. Aiming for no.1 usually doesn't work out for me, and falling below 5 means a big drop in performance. These are just average so keep that in mind, your results can be different.

You already collected some data so the next step I would do, would be to find the best ones and run just those to see what happens. Chose the 2 best LPs and the 2 best offers and send some traffic to those. The next step would be to test more ads, finding the right banner can mean a lot. You are right that banners die faster than LPs or offers, but without a good banner, you will not get anywhere either.

As for banner CTRs, this varies a lot too. I had profitable banner with TF that had 0.1%, and also non-converting ones with 0.5% ... a healthy average would be something around 0.15%-0.20%

The LP ctr you have could also be higher, 20% with mobile traffic is doable.

You can also look for more offers, check imaxcash for example, they had some CZ offers. Advidi and Unitedgap are also good networks for dating offers. Not saying clickdealer isn't solid, but it's good to have more options.

I would also suggest to try more spots, not just the header. Sometimes it's possible to get better results with the footer for example. And don't forget about desktop traffic, the volumes are way lower there, but still worth a try.

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CPC and CPM works in a different way. With CPM, you bid for the position, who ever bids higher get's it. With CPC, you tell the algo how much you are willing to pay for the click, no matter what the position. The algo is coded to make THEM the most money. So the higher spots are usually going to the CPM bidders, unless you set a high CPC bid. It's a simple math thing.

You pay 3.5 cents per click. With the CPM campaign, you pay 10 cents per 1000 impressions. Now let's take a look at the CPC stats, you got 333.000 impressions and paid $16.95 for them which is a CPM of 5 cents. So on the CPC model, they are making half of the money from your campaigns than they do with CPM. Which means, you are being served the impressions from lower bidding positions, that none of the CPM bidders want. This should mean lower traffic quality and worse CVRs and that's why the CPC ctr is lower, the lower the position the lower the CTR usually.

Look at the ROI, ingore the amount of clicks. There is no point in getting more cheap traffic, if it doesnt convert.

The answer to this is in my first reply

True, higher CTR doesn't mean better ROI. What I wanted to say was that you can push the CTR up and still have great CVR. It's all about finding the balance. More questions presell better, but they lower the CTR. No questions will raise the CTR but lower conversions ... aim for the sweet spot

I hear ya, try to get some "bigger" LPs to suit the bigger screens better. These bigger ones also tend to work well with tablets sometimes.

I'm sure you understand the CPM model better now, and there is also this thread I wrote to give you even more understanding of the topic: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-method-to-use

Cheers,
Matej

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Thank you very much for explanation Matuloo, it makes much more sense now

I stopped CPC campaign and started another CPM campaign to another spot (footer) on TrafficFactory. Also after splitting target group to segments based on categories, I found that one is performing better than others. So I increased bid in that target and now I am getting 99% of traffic just from that target And I also get much more visits which is caused by higher bid and by turning on 1 reimpression on 25% discount. In my opinion.

I will post overall stats and stats from last 2 days after finding best target and increased bid for that one.

Day 20:

Overall campaigns stats until now:

CPC campaign: (stopped)

Costs:$79.67
Revenue: $30.56
Profit: $49.11
ROI: -61.64%

CPM campaign (header):

Costs: $81.23
Revenue: $76.34
Profit: $4.89
ROI: -6.02%

CPM campaign (footer):

Costs: $39.83
Revenue: $24.17
Profit: $15.66
ROI: -39.32%

Last 2 days campaigns stats:

CPM campaign (header):

Costs: $45.86
Revenue: $49.95
Profit: $4.09
ROI: 8.92%

CPM campaign (footer):

Costs: $39.26
Revenue: $24.17Profit: $15.66
ROI: -39.32%

I will try to let footer campaign one more day because I tried 2 reimpression there and I think it increased my costs. Will see what will happen with just 1 reimpression. BUT there is finally some green!

What I will do to improve ROI even higher? Now I use basic domain from Voluum. I will setup my custom domain with SSL which should help me a bit (I read that non SSL can cause some loss of traffic due to Chrome things about not having https). Then, I will finally put my landers to Amazon hosting and CDN so it should reduce loading time and I will be prepared for bigger volume. Well I think this alone could help me with increasing ROI a bit.

Tomorrow I should have finally 50 leads on my top offers so I will ask my AM if lead quality is good enough. And probably ask for some little payout bump (pssst)

And I hope this all will help me to get into XX% ROI so I can test more banners, offers and landers without worrying about going into red again.

Wish me a good luck please If all goes well, I will try to scale to other networks.

Dominik

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Yaaay, I see the GREEN!!! Congrats

You might need to experiement more with ADs in the footer, that spot is kinda different from the header. So don't give up on it too soon.

Don't expect much from this, speed with banners isn't that important and SSL didn't really have any effect when I was testing it. But yes, it helped some people so definitely give it a try and let us know how it went, I'm really curious about the results.

Do not rush it, 50 is not that much, wait for 150-200. It takes a few days for the leads to mature, so you don't want to rush it as it might actually backfire at you and you might lose the offer. Give it time

This is what you should be doing, test more banners, offers and landers thats the only way, really.

Yup, that's the next step. The same funnel can sometimes work on multiple sources, but still, they all have a bit different visitors, so changes are needed very often.

Now GO GO GO, you're very close, push it

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The red / green text colouring trick is working on me probably more than I should admit.

CONGRATS! Now make the profits higher

Got it.

*basic domain = Voluum's dedicated domain (for people who don't know). As its name is generated randomly, it'll be nice to see if switching to your custom domain makes any difference. There's potential there, but also it's VERY hard to predict, might help - might not.

Have you set up SSL for your dedicated domain before?

Using SSL is often a must. It's required by browser providers or even TSs. So by having it enabled, you might also lower the click loss you're exposed to without using secure connection, when web browsers start alerting users of potential threat.

Karolina

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I stopped it for now, but will try it again after creating new banners. Will try to do more flashy/bright color banners for this placements. My current banners didn't work there much so I will test my current vs. new bright banners in footer spot.

Okay, my expectations are not high now. It's probably better to expect nothing than expect high changes and be dissapointed after

Good advice, okay I will wait, no need to hurry

New banners are in making. I requested AM on imaxcash for some CZ adult dating offers, will see what he come up with. It's funny how many times my AMs on traffic or affiliate networks are also from CZ So small country with such an impact in adult industry

Would you recommend to start campaign on another traffic source with all offers and landers again? And cut faster based on previous experiences? Or start with most profitable landers/offers and if it doesn't looks right, add older offer that wasn't profitable on previous traffic source?

Running for it! Thank you for your help




Haha Thanks, I will do all I can to make this a profitable campaign. Even with $XX/day it will be nice milestone.

Well, I didn't knew I can setup SSL for dedicated domain So I requested SSL on my dedicated domain and will see how it will affect clickloss with SSL Voluum domain + SSL LP domain.


Day 21:

So, based on my previous post:

I decided to try SSL on Voluum's dedicated domain for now. I wanted to try change between http:// and https://, name of a domain is nothing to care about I think (and as others say above .

Also I noticed that I have SSL on my domain, but I inserted http:// urls to LPs on Voluum. So now I corrected this. Hope I will have SSL on both Voluum domain and my LP domain today.

After getting some data about changes with non-SSL and SSL, I will try that Amazon hosting. It's not as much important because I use hosting here in CZ which is okay for CZ traffic. And as Matuloo says it's not so important to catch ms (on banner traffic), and my landers are already under 1s. But I will need it in future for another geos, so will try to do it in close future.

Well, after Matuloo's advice, I didn't ask for any leads quality check. I will wait until I will reach something like 150 leads.

As it seems that most important and most campaign changing is testing more banners/landers/offers. So:

- new banners are in making.


- made 1 new LP (copy of my best LP) and I changed images - inserted girl from best performing banner (both CTR and CR). My hypothesis is that if this girl makes this banner best performing, when someone lands from this banner on LP where is exactly this same girl, it will perform like a beast! Maybe


- requested top offers from imaxcash and Crakrevenue


Oh and I stopped one of 2 offers that were running until now. "Offer 1" made over 2x revenue then "Offer 2", with same amounts of visits.


I will post stats later today or tomorrow as nothing changed rapidly.


Dominik

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Day 23:

So, first I will show my stats for last 3 days (4th, 5th and 6th April).

4.4.2019

Costs: $41.25
Revenue: $41.67
Profit: $0.42
ROI: 1.02%

5.4.2019

Costs: $26.05
Revenue: $16.75
Profit: $9.30
ROI: -35.70%

6.4.2019 (not finished yet)

Costs: $28.86
Revenue: $33.56
Profit: $4.70
ROI: 16.29%

Friday wasn't good at all. I added 1 LP (copy of best performing LP with different girl) and it wasn't converting well. It has worst CV than other landers (even that one I stopped before). I already added lander that I cut before, because it has quite good performace, just conversions was from low revenue offers. I decided to give it one more try.

Still waiting for new LPs and banners. Guess that will push me forward, but have to wait for them a little bit longer.

Imaxcash offered one PPL offer but test conversion didn't work so I must wait until they find out whats wrong with offer. BTW they offer whitelabel on dating with 70% revshare. Did anyone tried it?

I added 2 more offers from Crakrevenue. One of offers converts quite good... but still far worse than iMonetizeit offer. CR 12% vs. 20% and payout is approx $1.5 vs. more than $2 on Clickdealer. Will continue running them tonight and will see tomorrow how they perform.

I wanted to check if SSL on tracker and LP domain reduced click loss and discovered weird thing.

This is before I switched to SSL:

Traffic factory shows 653 clicks
Voluum shows 1372 visits (623 from desktop which is weird - no clicks at all)
Voluum shows 77 LP clicks to iMonetizeit offer
iMonetizeit shows 85 clicks

So, my clickloss is exactly opposite Sounds good, but there must be some mistake.

After SSL:

Traffic factory shows 532 clicks
Voluum shows 1172 visits (552 from desktop which is weird - no clicks at all)
Voluum shows 87 LP clicks to iMonetizeit offer
iMonetizeit shows 74 clicks

Seems LP -> offer clickloss is somehow right now. Traffic source to LP is still weird.


Question: Does anyone has (seen) some data about which days of the week perform best/worst with adult (dating) offers?
Edit: I found out that least popular day on Pornhub is Friday. Thats what I thought and I think this could be in general worst day for adult offers. Probably people are out, drinking or with family... (source: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review)


Regards,
Dominik

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Start with the best funnel you have.

Revshare can work, BUT you need to be sure you have a solid funnel and for revshare to show its full potential, you need to wait a few months. To actually see how well they rebill. So you're basically running with a loss at first, then hope for the best. Probably not the best approach when you are just starting out.

We are usually doing the best on weekends, it starts friday evening, then calms down on monday.

The difference are most likely some bots, try to check the IP reports, you should see multiple visits from certain IPs.

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Thank you for your answers I checked IP report and I have half of all visits are from 2 IPs. Voluum marked all visits from these IPs as clean, but its obviously unnatural. But as I haven't them counted in costs (costs on TrafficFactory shows half of clicks) it's okay I think.

Actually it seems that it means that my CTR, CV and EPV are twice as much. Which means my average CTR for today is not 9% but 18% (best lander 22% actually), CV is not 1.85% but 3.7% and EPV is not $0.037 but $0.074. Am I right?

And on top of that, I have a good news today, and thats my todays results.

Day 24:

Costs: $35.81
Revenue: $71.61
Profit: $35.80
ROI: 99.97%

Thats just... Yes! That looks pretty good I am so happy! And I haven't even tried new banners (are in approval process) and landers... I wish this ROI continue and just improve with new banners and landers! And another thing is that these are stats with 2 new offers in testing, which has half the EPC that my top offer. So it could be even more without testing those offers.

And on top of that, its not midnight yet and I have 2 another conversions (which doesn't count on Voluum to today, but tomorrow) - time zones

It will be sweet dreams tonight :P Thank you for all your advices and will let you know how it continues next days.


Cheers,
Dominik

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Ok, so as I thought, it's bots. The best would be to block these 2 IPs, since they are just messing your stats up, which still isn't the biggest problem. The problem is that these "visits" are also distributed through the funnel and it's totally screwing up the optimization as these bot clicks are showing up in the stats too. It's quite possible that certain combinations received higher % of these visits and since it was bots, they couldnt really convert. And based on the poor results, you might have killed a combo that actually was good. Know what I mean?

Excellent, I'm really happy for you!

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Then I'm glad I mentioned it! In general, a dedicated domain with SSL is available for every Voluum plan.

Remember to always double check if you use only one type of protocol to avoid mixing up the HTTP with HTTPS links.
Modern browsers see this as a conflict. Cookies saved for the HTTPS links cannot be accessed by the HTTP link. Also, the user sees the notification next to the HTTPS links in the web browser, but the notification next to HTTP links. This might discourage him to click further.

It might be that your traffic source (Traffic Factory) recognizes only unique clicks - ones that come from unique IPs. Voluum, on the other hand, automatically sums up all the visits. If many visits came from the same IP, it's most probably the cause of these discrepancies.

I've already let our AFK (Anti-Fraud Kit) team know about this case - they'll double check it and let me know but it might be that these particular IPs weren't flagged by our metrics. The best thing you can do now is block these 2 IPs using IP / UA filtering - you can check how to do it here.

Karolina

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Thats why its so important to test everything, because you simply never know until you test it out Some people think that the only way to make it in adult is to push the boundaries, use hardcore content and whatnot... When in reality, a clean soft picture of the "right" female will do wonders sometimes. A tip for you: try to use pics that look like they have been taken at home ... photo in the kitchen, in the laundry room etc, these can work very well.

The differences are quite small, falling in the "randomness of adult" tolerance, so to speak. I wouldnt cut any of them yet. Unless the data is like this after a LOT of leads, but still, the 2 weaker ones are very close to each other.

In this case it's quite clear, the imonetizeit offer wins by far.

Great going so far, looking forward to your next update

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Thanks for a tip Actually I am using these kind of pics (I mean cheap smartphone ones ) at home, but as I am thinking, there is no kitchen or laundry room or something like that on them, maybe it is worth a try to find some pics with these backgrounds. I was doing porn reupload focused (also) on dating offers, where I found out what types of videos works best with dating offers, its similar here. And I have same opinion on testing. One can never know until he tries. I think its possible to find gold with trying things other people say are bullshit. Simply because they didn't even bother to try it

Thats what I thought, I will let them run and test new landers against them

Already cut them and today I asked my AM on iMonetizeit about quality of my leads, finally. I have about 150 leads so I thought its a right time to ask to know if I should even bother to prepare campaigns on other networks for scaling.

She said that my traffic looks fine. I am happy that my traffic is okay, but also I would like to get some payout bump. I guess I will ask for payout bump after sending bigger volume. Actually, payout on this offer is pretty high on SOI offer, so I think its okay to operate with this payout for now.


Day 26:

Campaign stats for today:

Costs:$35.57
Revenue: $45.23
Profit: $9.66
ROI: 27.16%

Results for today are good, still over 20% ROI which is really nice Looks like I could even make enough money to pay for Voluum (), and maybe some $ will left for me Okay, not me, all earned money go to traffic source again, of course.

I already cut few of my new banners. Best performing ones are performing just a little better than my original set of banners - in terms of CTR. Those new banners are really simple image and text on white background, and original set of banners are pimped up with bright colors, country flag etc. So I guess I will pick best banners from new set (this will select best girls on banners as all are in the same layout) and use these well performing girls on new banners that will be as tuned as original set.

Can't wait to test more landers and try to increase ROI even further! Guess I will start few of them tomorrow or on thursday. And as I said above, I will make new tuned banners with best performing girls based on my new banner set.

Really looking forward to scale this! But I am afraid to do that before I try more landers. I want to be more sure about this is the right offer+lander combo to scale. First network I will scale on is Exoclick because there is huge volume and I can optimize campaign by many factors. Its not bad for start that on TrafficFactory its so simple, but I really miss the possibility of optimizing based on OSs, versions, browsers, placements.... That could make my ROI even better.

Thats all from me Thinking about posting less often, because I have a feeling that I am almost spamming with reports every day. Poor @matuloo has no free time due to my nonstop postings and questions

Cheers,
Dominik

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Hi Karolina (@voluum), I would like to ask a question about this. If I understand this well, than it is a problem when my tracker domain and LP domain are https, but offer domain is http, right?

Because I setup tracker and LP domain as https, but I noticed that offer page is on http :/

Can this be a big problem? I see conversions and campaign is green, but is there a possibility that some conversions are not tracked?

Thank you,
Dominik

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In this case, it shouldn't mess your tracking (it's not possible that some conversions are not tracked because of it), it's more of a user experience issue - it varies from browser to browser but since a user is directed from a secure LP to nonsecure offer page, he might get some kind of warning about it - that's it.

If you were tracking conversions using a conversion tracking pixel, then the URL would need to be HTTPS for the tracking to work. But afaik, you use postback URL for that, right?

Karolina

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Thank you for fast response! I am using postback tracking so everything should be okay

Dominik

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No need to push this too much, but let me tell you one thing, the network you are working with has certain margin and they can sacrifice part of it and they will happily do so, in case you provide the volume. So don't focus on getting some cent bumps, give them volume and then ask for it, they will give it to you It's all about the numbers.

Cool, even the best banner will die, so it's good to work on new ones in the meantime and test them, so they are ready when needed.

Don't let the landers hold you back too much, in case the ones you have are working well, use those to scale and try to come up with new ones in the meantime. Campaigns don't last forever, so milk them why they do work

Be careful with exo, they have huge volumes, but also huge amounts of rotten pubs in the mix. Trafficjunky or trafficstars might be better... they have less sites, and pretty much all legit, so it's safer to scale there. There is good stuff in exo too, but well hidden in many cases. I totally love the options exo offers and their interfaces is probably the best too... but the overall quality is not. Your call of course, just keep this in mind

Don't worry about this at all, I can handle way more Keep the reports and questions coming

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Okay I will start scaling tomorrow Will start with my current offer+landers combo. First network I will try is TrafficJunky with smaller budget to test it first. Thanks for tips Matuloo

Todays report will be short.

Day 27:

Campaign stats for today:

Costs: $36.74
Revenue: $40.53
Profit: $3.79
ROI: 10.32%

Still green so it's okay, but need to increase the ROI. I finally added new lander and another one is prepared, just have to change images.


Dominik

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Time for next update

Day 30:

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $36.81
Revenue: $47.84
Profit: $11.03
ROI: 29.96%

Exoclick CPM
Costs: $9.44
Revenue: $15.94
Profit: $6.50
ROI: 68.86%


Day 31:

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $40.67
Revenue: $56.95
Profit: $16.28
ROI: 40.03%

Exoclick CPM
Costs: $9.40
Revenue: $13.66
Profit: $4.26
ROI: 45.32%

Pretty good weekend again! I need to increase my bid on Exoclick to receive more traffic because it looks very promising. I didn't cut anything yet. I started to increasing bid every day, will see how far can I get and stay at least break-even (because after cutting, I can turn it green and have big volume).

BTW about bidding on Exoclick - support recommended me to increase my bid by 10% until finding good balance. Thats quite slow, so I increased my bid by 100% and next day another 20%. Will continue with 20% a day I guess.

Not sure if I should scale to another traffic network - TrafficJunky - or wait until I will optimize campaign on Exoclick (as I did on TrafficFactory). But will probably scale on TrafficJunky soon because I want to milk this campaign till it works.

I have one question: How long banner campaign on adult dating can last? (2 weeks, 2 months?) And if it dies, what are the most common reasons? (offer disabled, people used to see banners and LPs, target group reached for small countries especially using niches?)

I ask because I am thinking what is better - putting all effort into scaling and optimizing current campaign OR start creating and testing new campaigns/geos along with optimizing my current campaign


Dominik

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Hello

Yes and no You need to consider one variable and that is the banner CTR that directly affects the price you pay per click/visit. In some cases you can have better ROI with a lower EPV ad, because it's CTR is very high.

Exo has a volume estimate tool that also shows max bid for the particular targeting, play with it a bit ... the numbers will change with different OS, device or browser type etc ...

Since it looks like you understand what you are doing, scale to the other sources now

It can vary a lot. I have some that keep on working for months, but usually it's shorter, couple weeks usually... and some die within days, but those most likely weren't that good in the first place. But we have to realize one thing here, when I say the campaign dies, it doesn't mean that it's all over! I probably shouldn't use the word "dying" here at all. Usually it's the ads that need to get swapped, or the LP needs to be refreshed etc ... When an offer is pulled, then yes it's over for that one, but you can still re-use the same funnel with a new offer, usually.

Generally speaking, I'm usually keeping campaigns alive for months and they only die completely when a solid offer gets pulled (or I get kicked from it due to quality) and I can't find a replacement for it. The rest of the funnel can be replaced most of the times. I didn't face many problems due to a smaller market saturation, new adults come to adult sites pretty much daily, even in the smallest countries

If I was in your shoes, I would focus on scaling this one. You are making small profits now so it's easier to think clearly and keep the peace of mind that's needed for proper optimization. You can learn a lot from this and at the same time, you will learn how to work with multiple traffic sources.

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But thats for cutting banners right? I was talking about cutting landers so I shouldn't count banners performance in cutting landers, because on landers it doesn't matter from which banner traffic comes. Did I get it right?

I tried to find it but what I found is Traffic estimation in campaign creation in right sidebar:


Or "View RON Top Smart" in bidding setup. It says it shows Top CPM, but my bid is much higher and I am not getting more than 12 % of the available volume.

I got this message from Exoclick about it: "The bidding only shows that if your price is competitive on the platform with the other advertisers. ... Therefore, the key of this bidding it to allow you bid for the best price possible."

Not very clear answer to my question why "Top CPM" doesn't show first position. But I guess its something like on TrafficFactory, where bid for "position 1+" is actually lowest bid possible. It doesn't make sense to me



Okay, I also think I should learn how to scale fast Hope money from iMonetizeit will come in next days as they said that I should receive payment on 15th this month. Would be helpful to use this money on buying traffic and not causing my wallet bleed

Got it, and it actually sounds optimistic I read that popup campaigns lasts pretty short time. So it's good to know that there is possibility to milk banner campaigns for a longer period. It makes sense, popup traffic is not quality traffic mostly, so bad lead quality can take offer off, or you as affiliate off that offer. But with banner traffic, quality of leads should be better (when not misleading users) and you can always change banners and landers. Or switch to similar performing offer.

Okay I will focus on scaling this one on at least next 1-2 traffic sources and optimize current sources. I guess there is a possibility of making something like $50 a day with this campaign.


Now about stats. I noticed that I was doing wrong stats on Exoclick because their platform is in EST timezone, while my tracker is UTC+2. So I changed timezone on my tracker to see stats that are matching by day. It's just about counting right costs to right days but overall campaigns performance remains the same - good. But I see that today and yesterday (after increasing bid 2x) I am in little red. But previous day 29 (EST time) was green with 165% ROI and $15.5 profit. I am a bit confused now how to report stats I have to figure it out, because switching timezones, updating costs in right timezone and than switch back is quite annoying.


Its midnight here in CZ, so I will show stats at least for TrafficFactory campaign:

Day 32:

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $15.26
Revenue: $22.78
Profit: $7.52
ROI: 49.28%

Forgot to increase max budget so my campaign stopped during the day and thats reason why my spending and revenue are low. My bad, but will check these settings more often. Lesson learned

Dominik

---

Well, this is more important when cutting banners indeed, you're right. But even with LPs, you need to double check by digging deeper into the data and checking performance for particular banner+LP combinations. Trackers rotate LPs evenly (unless you change it) and distribute the clicks as they come in, but they don't consider what banner the click comes from. So it's possible that certain banners will send more traffic to certain LPs and in that case, the actual price of the click can skew the data. Know what I mean? The higher the volumes, the less of a problem this is as it all balances out eventually. The thing is, some banners work better with certain LPs, so when isolating such funnels, you need to make sure you are working witht he correct data, including the final CPC you are paying.

This was what I meant. Looks like their top bid tool is not working properly again. It's not 100% reliable, but usually it shows at least some data. I just checked myself and indeed, I got the same results for CZ as you did.

It's hard to have really accurate stats, the timezones are different everywhere and not every source allows you to change them. I always try to assess the most accurate average CPC and use that. Not perfect, but works in most cases
And check this for exo: https://exoclick.kayako.com/en-gb/ar...tat-s-timezone

Cheers,
Matej.

---

Thank you for your detailed answers again Matuloo!

I will dig more into how to work with data accurately. Until now, it was quite easy as campaign is green in most days, but I get that it is crucial to understand data to make better decisions. I will brainstorm with guys and will use your advices to make some process of how to work with data effectively and fast.

OH, and thank you for mention in STM newsletter! It really made my day! Definitely save this screenshot and will look at it after a year :P

Now to stats:

Day 32:

TrafficFactory CPM (already published but want to add it again to compare with Exoclick)

Costs: $15.26
Revenue: $22.78
Profit: $7.52
ROI: 49.28%

Exoclick CPM

Costs: $16.32
Revenue: $13.67
Profit: $2.65
ROI: -16.24%

Note: I accidentally setup bid on Exoclick to $0.85 instead of $0.085 which made my costs bit higher than I wanted Lesson learned (check)

Day 33:

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $36.10
Revenue: $20.50
Profit: $15.60
ROI: -43.21%

Exoclick CPM

Costs: $10.16
Revenue: $9.11
Profit: $1.05
ROI: -10.33%

TrafficJunky CPM

Costs: $4.54
Revenue: $4.56
Profit: $0.02
ROI: 0.44%

Note: That was a bad day, I guess it can be caused by nice weather here in CZ Btw this is advantage of using geo where you live You can try to guess causes of performance fluctation.

Day 34: (today - not finished)

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $31.37
Revenue: $20.50
Profit: $10.87
ROI: -34.65%

Exoclick CPM

Costs: $5.51
Revenue: $4.56
Profit: $0.95
ROI: -17.24%

Exoclick whitelist CPM

Costs:$0.23
Revenue: $2.28
Profit: $2.05
ROI: 891.30%

TrafficJunky CPM

Costs: $7.90
Revenue: $13.67
Profit: $5.77
ROI: 73.04%

Soo, I started a campaign on TrafficJunky, just one placement to test, I will try other placements soon. I made whitelist campaign on Exoclick (just 2 sites). I am buying banner placements on some of those sites on my other adult business, so maybe I will try buying spots directly if they perform well.

Stats from last 2 days doesn't look great. On TrafficFactory especially. Maybe it was a bad two days, or maybe I should update banners/landers. I will dig more into the data tomorrow to find out if there is something interesting to optimize. Maybe dayparting on TrafficFactory and browser cutting on Exoclick. There is not enough info on TrafficJunky yet, so I will wait a few days.

On TrafficFactory, someone started bidding above me, so I had to raise my bids a bit and that made my traffic a little more expensive, but thats not reason for red numbers. I noticed now, that one of target groups started to perform really bad so I will cut this target group tomorrow. Looks like this is the reason of red numbers as its second biggest target group. Will add it after few days to see if it wasn't just temporary decrease in performance. I will loose a portion of volume if I cut it forever.

I am happy that TrafficJunky looks good from first day Exoclick is break-even now, was green few days before so I guess it needs a little more optimization to make it green in longer term. I trust that TrafficFactory will be green again after some improvements. Looking forward to add more spots on TrafficJunky to increase volume.

Wish costs tracking would work properly on all networks It doesn't work on any of those I use. TrafficFactory don't offer it. Exoclick is also not tracking costs (or maybe I have a bad setup?) and TrafficJunky looks quite good, but its also inaccurate - shows more costs in tracker than in report on their site. But I have to deal with this somehow.

Wish a successful week to all of you

Dominik

---

Little update here

I found out that while updating costs in Voluum, I can select timezone. Didn't notice this before, so now it is not that bad to update costs manually as I don't have to change timezone of whole Voluum, just choose timezone when updating costs

Day 34: (complete)

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $36.18
Revenue: $29.61
Profit: $6.57
ROI: -18.16%

Exoclick CPM

Costs: $9.24
Revenue: $4.56
Profit: $4.68
ROI: -50.65%
Exoclick whitelist CPM

Costs: $0.15
Revenue: $2.28
Profit: $2.13
ROI: 1,420.00%
TrafficJunky CPM

Costs: $11.09
Revenue: $13.67
Profit: $2.58
ROI: 23.26%


Day 35:

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $21.48
Revenue: $9.11
Profit: $12.37
ROI: -57.59%

Exoclick CPM

Costs: $6.59
Revenue: $10.85
Profit: $4.26
ROI: 64.64%
Exoclick whitelist CPM

Costs: $0.41
Revenue: $0.00
Profit: $0.41
ROI: -100.00%
TrafficJunky CPM

Costs: $19.99
Revenue: $25.06
Profit: $5.07
ROI: 25.36%


Day 36:

TrafficFactory CPM

Costs: $14.80
Revenue: $2.28
Profit: $12.52
ROI: -84.59%

Exoclick CPM

Costs: $2.01
Revenue: $0.00
Profit: $2.01
ROI: -100.00%
Exoclick whitelist CPM

Costs: $0.09
Revenue: $0.00
Profit: $0.09
ROI: -100.00%
TrafficJunky CPM

Costs: $17.73
Revenue: $4.56
Profit: $13.17
ROI: -74.28%

Day 36 was a disaster :/ I thought it could be because it was holiday here in CZ. And also friday, so many people went outside the town to enjoy some free time. But, when people click on my banner, it means they are on phone watching porn and not somewhere outside. So it doesn't make sense that it would be caused by holiday. It could mean less impressions/clicks, but not worse performance. Also LP CTR is same as other days, so landers are okay too. Last part is what could be a problem. I didn't check offer page so it's my fault :/ I tried to check that offer now and there are some mistakes, but don't know if these mistakes were there before. The most important button, that confirm registration process, is not in Czech! It's italian or spanish or something like this. Not cool. Also, when I insert bad year of birth (like 1904) it shows message "Your email" and redirect to beggining of registration process. So not only people don't know what is wrong (there is not "wrong email" but just "your email") but also it shows email error while the error is in birth date... And on top of that, this should be SOI offer but after end of registration, it wants email confirmation. And I don't see conversion in my stats. Will wait a while and after that, I will try to click confirmation link to see if conversion will appear.

Actually I am wondering how this offer could convert so well With these mistakes. But maybe there weren't these mistakes before. Will ask my AM if they could repair it and if other affiliates also noticed dip in performance in last days.

BTW I paused all campaigns by 13:00 on day 36 to avoid loosing more money. Will start them again after I figure out why performance was so bad and when I found out if iMonetizeit can repair their offer. I bet it would convert much better with final button in Czech And with proper explanation of what is wrong in registration process. Year of birth is sorted ascending, so first years are 1900, 1901 etc so many people can misclick thinking they chose 1994 instead of 1904. Like I did in fast testing.

Hope this will be sorted out and I can milk this campaign again

And last thing: I read through some parts of Whats working in AM 2019 and it looks like Push traffic is pretty hot right now. Also it seems to be quite easy. I am thinking about starting with Push while its not so saturated and regulated yet. I am just starting so I don't think its a bad idea to switch to Push to find out if I can make better ROI there. I will also continue with banner traffic as banners will be there for a long time. But I just think i shouldn't miss opportunity to try Push while its still hot What do you think, is that mindset okay? If so, which Push networks would you recommend? And does (adult) dating works good there? Or should I try another vertical for Push?


Thank you and have a nice day!
Dominik

---

Actually, the easter holiday can play a role here. People would still browse, so the clicks would come in, but they are in a different mood, meeting with families ... not the best few days for adult dating. The major christian holiday do have a negative impact on the signups for sure.

For sure, push offers a lot of opportunity now, so it would be a good idea to test it. It works well with dating, even adult/casual, but the lead quality often is a problem. Only certain offers can monetize these leads well. If you can find such offers, it can work very nice Another great vertical to try would be sweeps, even CC sweeps.

---

I just got message from iMonetizeit and they said that advertiser had postback issue, so we won't find out if performance was actually bad or not during holidays :/ But they were very generous and gave me compensation for 28 conversions which is great.

And now to the biggest change I really didn't expect All time I run this campaign, I was getting $2 per lead, but actual payout is $0.4. So all that time, I got 5 times bigger payout. That means, that my campaign wouldn't be profitable at all without this bug. They were generous again and let us all earnings since it was mistake on their side.

So it's great that I learned to scale a bit, optimize, playing with TrafficFactory, Exoclick and a little bit of TrafficJunky. For no costs, because this whole campaign is in profit (when I don't count Voluum costs). BUT I can't continue with this campaign because I wasn't in that much profit and second best offer I tried has half the revenue. So I am stopping this whole campaign and moving to another opportunity.

And that new opportunity will be dating on DE traffic and/or push notifications.

Thanks for tips. I will try push with dating and CC sweeps. Any good Push traffic source to recommend? I heard about Megapu.sh

BTW I tried to signup on Megapu.sh and their rules are quite strict. No adult images, texts or offers. So it is allowed only to use mainstream dating? Does anyone have experiences with Megapu.sh?



Dominik

---

Ah, that's quite a big mistake on their behalf ... but as you said, you just learned a lot for free

Megapush was the first push network I tested with dating, it worked pretty well, but then they had the rather big problem with overspending ... not sure if this was solved in the meantime or not. So if you want to test there, set like a ridiculously low daily budget of $5 or even less, to see what happens.

Other networks to try: zeropark, richpush, propeller or admaven ... most of them will give you some top up bonus, since you're on STM. Like here for example: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-first-deposit!

Pretty much all push networks do NOT allow adult stuff, like straight to the face adult stuff. You need to tone it down, so not directly explicit language and no nudity (both on the ads and LPs). You can still use standard adult/casual offers with some, with the rest a softcore offer url should work. You need to test who allows what, just submit a campaign for approval. Do not try anything hardcore though, that will get rejected everywhere. Move in the "suggestive" zone so to speak

---

Last time I checked you were doing great with banners, now not only have I read through the most ridiculous couple of events you had with your offer and affiliate network, you're into push. Crazy crazy!

I hope you don't stop with this follow along anytime soon cause now that I had to go through a couple of posts at once, I kind of got hooked on it!

Also, congrats on the newsletter share. You already have some good visibility and I think it'll only get better as you're engaging and consistent with your FA updates.

The post where you first mentioned some timezone issues was where I finished off, must've read it in a hurry as I missed the most important part of it (at least from my point of view) - the actual issue! Sorry for that. But glad you found the way and yeah, that's basically how to do it. For future reference, just mention me and I'll jump in with some Voluum inside knowledge

Have you thought about Zeropark? Voluum + Zeropark are fully integrated so the optimization comfort is on next level.

Karolina

---

Hi nostros

Just noticed your follow-along and that's great stuff! Really glad that to see some greenery there in those stats. Hope you'll keep it up!

I see that you've already tried a few traffic sources like Exoclick or TrafficFactory, but if you're considering to test new ones, be sure to try out Zeropark. There're plenty of pop traffic for adult dating offers and those have proved to be working quite well.

See for yourself if the volumes suit your needs here - https://zeropark.com/volume/

And if you need to be accepted quickly - just let me know here via PM.

Good luck!

Sasha - Zeropark

---

Thanks for tips, I will try Megapu.sh and Zeropark And will try to make some LPs with less aggressive content with no nudity for Push.

Thank you! I will definitely keep updating, I like to see my progress and its great that other members help me with campaigns And hopefully, some members can also benefit from this journey and mistakes I have made. Zeropark looks like a good option, will definitely try them

Thank you Sasha, I was thinking about Zeropark before, but I read that you don't accept newbies. So I am happy that I can try Zeropark now! Going to make an account and let you know in PM when its ready for approval.


Dominik

---

Yup, it's funny because many adult affiliates would swear you need to use hardcore creatives to convert the leads, basically the more shocking the better. But my personal experience says something different. In MANY cases, I did better with a simple static softcore image of the RIGHT female, especially when targeting the mainstream adult users. It's a bit different story when you enter the fetish realms, thats where you have to target better and use the more shocking imagery.

---

Just to keep this thread alive, I would like to tell you whats going on.

Last couple of days I was finishing my thesis on SEO topic. And I also had to complete few exams, so there was no time for paid traffic. Tomorrow, I should have finished texts translation for banners into DE language. After that, I will probably buy Adplexity for a month to download some landers in DE, because I have no knowledge in this language Will start banner campaign on DE traffic and maybe will try to start Push along with this new campaign.

I guess that in Thursday I will make another update hopefully with everything set up

Dominik

---

That's a good plan for sure, you don't need to have a lifetime access to a spytool at all costs. Many people signup for a month or two, download a ton of creatives, then cancel and rejoin after a few months... that can work too.

Keep us posted on your progress!

---

Hey everyone! Its almost two weeks from my previous post... it seems like a month for me. But I have a good news, I finally started a whole new campaign.

Campaign info:

Vetical: Adult dating
Traffic source: TrafficFactory
Offers: Clickdealer (10 offers for start)
GEO: DE
Tracker: Voluum (now with Entry plan)

So what I did: I wrote down popular texts from banners like CTA, headlines etc and hired a translator who translated all these texts for me. Then I used Adplexity to download popular banners and landers. I made my own banners with some styles inspired by banners I found in Adplexity. After that I fixed landers I downloaded. I used 3 landers with different styles. Let texts as they are cause I don't know german and increased the speed by optimizing images.

So with set of 3 landers, 10 offers and 12 banners, I started a campaign with not so high bid (approx 12 average position) and only $20 daily budget to run a small test.

And here are results:

Day 55 (I guess)

TrafficFactory CPM - DE

Costs: $19.97
Revenue: $4.65
Profit: $15.32
ROI: -76.72%


Day 56

TrafficFactory CPM - DE

Costs: $19.97
Revenue: $6.00
Profit: $13.97
ROI: -69.95%

Day 57 (yesterday)

TrafficFactory CPM - DE

Costs: $19.93
Revenue: $9.00
Profit: $10.93
ROI: -54.84%

Even thou it doesn't look like so good, I have a very good feeling with this campaign. -50% ROI without any optimization and with 10 offers is not bad at all. Today I cut worst offers (4) so I have 6 offers running now. One of them looks promising



Another reason why I believe in this campaign is that those results are with ripped landers which have pretty bad CTR. I will add one lander from my previous campaign (CZ) and translate it into german language so I can see if those ripped landers are really bad. My CZ landers had around 15% CTR and these ripped landers for DE have 5-10% CTR which makes costs for clicks too high. I guess I can somehow increase that CTR which should result with cheaper clicks.




Tomorrow I am going to cut offers again, I want to end up with 2-3 offers from Clickdealer. After that, I will add more offers from other affiliate networks. Don't want to underestimate choosing right offers so I am prepared to be in red for a few days until I am sure I have TOP offers for my funnel.

So thats it, this is a start of my second banner campaign and I hope I will optimize this for a green, because with DE geo there is huge potential for scaling (in comparison to CZ which I run before). And I can even scale to another countries speaking their language.

Wish me a good luck Hope you're all doing well and if you have any question or recommendation, I am here waiting

Dominik

---

OK so another GEO I didn't have much success in DE myself, but there are people who are absolutely killing it in DE, look for some posts from "codeflame" this guys knows how to run in this market He even posted some quite motivating screens here on STM in some threads...

Yup, that CTR certainly doesn't look very good, you should definitely be able to improve that significantly. Try to replace the females, people in different countries often have different preferences too. Blonde vs brunettes, slim vs chubby ...

TFactory is quite sensitive when it comes to bidding position and the traffic quality, you need to push it a bit higher.

Keep us posted on your progress!

---

I read through codeflames posts, he is focusing on Push as I can see. I tried to reach him though PM if he would be so kind to give me a tip on some DE specific things. Thank you for tip

Will try to change girls for some more performing ones And will translate lander from CZ campaign, but need to wait for a translator.

Okay, I will raise the bid right now so I will have all Day 60 with a new higher bid.

Here are the results from last 2 days:

Day 58

TrafficFactory CPM - DE

Costs: $20.00
Revenue: $6.25
Profit: $13.75
ROI: -68.77%

Day 59

TrafficFactory CPM - DE

Costs: $19.98
Revenue: $13.30
Profit: $6.68
ROI: -33.43%

Day 59 is with 4 worst offers cut and 6 worst performing banners disabled. ROI increased to -33% which is nice but this is mostly because one offer with high payout made a conversion (but not first).

Now, along with raising bid by 50%, I cut another 3 offers, so just 3 offers left.



This could help to get this campaign close to break-even.

Will see how higher bids affect campaign performance (and costs).

Dominik

---

One thing came to my mind -

Since you've cut some offers, you can archive them in Voluum so they aren't listed in the campaign report (by default Voluum shows you only active entities). Archiving doesn't delete them, you can restore them back if you want later. This way the campaign view (so the view from your screenshot) will be clearer as you'll only see the offers you currently use and send traffic to and the summed up stats (dark blue row) will reflect only your active offers' stats. You can play a bit and switch between "Active" and "All" views - see which one you like more.

Quick instructions:

To archive:

- Select the checkboxes next to the offers you want to archive.



- click the "Archive" button



Then, if you'd like to restore them:

- change the view from "Active" to "Archived



- and "Restore"




On another note, try uploading screenshots as links and not attachments so they're bigger - this way they will be readable in the post and more eye-catching. I think Amy explained in one of her threads how to do it (using imgur).

Overall, very engaging follow along. Good luck with making this campaign green! You're on the right path so keep going!


Karolina

---

Codeflame buys EVERYTHING I assume he's a very busy guy, but certainly knows the DE market in and out.

Just a tip for you, traffic coming from a higher bid can perform completely different, so it might sense to retest some of the paused offers too. But it's not a must, just something to keep in mind. Also make sure to test offers from some other network.

---

Thank you for a tip Karolina, its a lot better now

I tried to raise a bid and also turned on all offers again to see if there will convert some of offers I cut better. I hope for more quality traffic and more conversions, but all I got was less clicks with little to no conversions Guess somebody is bidding higher and higher? I raiser bid from 0.1 to 0.15 and next day on 0.2 and I am still on the same position while traffic dropped.

Here is screenshot from TFactory statistics:


And here are stats from last days:

Day 60

TrafficFactory CPM - DE (bid $0.15)

Costs: $19.98
Revenue: $0
Profit: $19.98
ROI: -100%

Day 61

TrafficFactory CPM - DE (bid $0.2)

Costs: $20.05
Revenue: $6.95
Profit: $13.10
ROI: -65.34%

To be honest, I am quite disappointed :/ It started with some conversions so it looked pretty good. Now I pay more for less clicks and have less conversions :/ Don't know if I should lower the bid again on $0.1 where I had some results or try to bid even higher.

BTW what is bid for 1-2nd position? On CZ I was on 1-2 position with bid $0.15. Here in DE it looks like I need $1 for those top positions, is it possible? Thats really tons of money for thousand impressions :O

What I did in last 2 days: I prepared landers from older (CZ) campaign. Changed texts and images (women) to match new geo and niche. But still wait for translation, hope it will be before weekend. Also I tried to copy this campaign to another position - Footer 300x100 - with a lower budget of $10 a day. Will see if it makes something.

Overall stats of this campaign:

Costs: $139.88
Revenue: $46.15
Profit: $93.73
ROI: -67.01%

Doesn't looks so good. But I need to make this campaign work. I believe that it is possible.

One more thing:

I tried using Adplexity to spy on positions I am bidding for to see if there are dating offers or if there is any direct advertiser with super high bids.

I filtered like this:By publisher: xvideos.com
Date filter: 04/16/2019 - 05/16/2019
Days running: 7-endless
Size: 300x100
Language: German (as there was no choice for german in countries)

What I got? Nearly nothing as seen on screenshot.


Is Adplexity worth something? I am sure there is tons of campaigns on Xvid 300x100 mobile position on DE traffic. Just by browsing through VPN and keeping in mind that huge bids, there must be competition and many campaigns.

Also I tried to find our previous campaign on CZ traffic. It didn't found our campaign and I had over 6 million impressions just on TFactory. And I used also TrafficJunky and Exoclick....

Not a good mood today. Hope it will turn in better numbers soon.

Dominik

---

Really not looking the best, I know how you feel now

Any idea how deep in the bidding chain you were with the current bid? Try to check via a VPN, you need to sit above the 5th spot to start getting the most converting clicks.

Not running anything in DE now, so don't know what the bids look like in that GEO, but $1 looks a bit too high, should be lower. Unless of course someone is running a highly targeted campaign there.

Adplexity is great but obviously, it's not able to crawl all the ads and quite often, they are not attributed correctly to the right sources. I personally use the syptools just to find the new ads, no matter where they run. We use it as inspiration, we're not trying to rip the full funnel. I'd suggest you do the same, find something that looks good and runs for a few days, then modify it a bit.

And I don't want to repeat myself again, but test more offers, more ads, more LPs ... that's all it is about DE is tricky, it's not that easy to crack it

---

So Im here again Its been quite a long time waiting for translations :/

I started campaign again few days ago and today I read again your post and tried VPN on my iPhone to check where we are. With same bid as before, TFactory shows positions between 6-9, which is much better than 12-14 that was before with same bid. So I tried that VPN and refreshed some video on Xvideos few times. On second time I saw my banner so I was happy that I was on second position. But it turned out someone stole my banners Well nothing I can do about it... I refreshed and refreshed and didn't saw any of my banners (with my link). After approx 5-6 refreshing there was just LegalPorno banners bought on flat rate I guess. So don't really know whats going on here but maybe a bad category of video.

Here are stats from last two days:

Day ... I don't know, lets say 72

TrafficFactory CPM - DE (bid $0.2)

Costs: $20.00
Revenue: $2.12
Profit: $17.88
ROI: -89.40%

Day 73

TrafficFactory CPM - DE (bid $0.2) (today = not finished yet)

Costs: $18.53
Revenue: $8.36
Profit: $10.17
ROI: -54.88%

What I did:

- joined 2 new affil networks: Admolly and Cpamatica
- added 3 new offers from aff networks mentioned above
- added 3 new landers - landers from CZ campaign edited to suit DE market

How it affected campaign:

- one of new landers has much better CTR - 23.17% compared to something like 10-14% from old ones + it has best CR and CV
- 3 out of 4 conversions today made 1 offer from Cpamatica

What I will probably do:

- leave only the best lander and will see if that good offer from Cpamatica continue converting
- if yes, i will leave just that offer


So it doesn't look impossible but I wonder what is needed to make some really big improvement?

What comes to my mind:
- try to get bigger payout for good converting offer (but that means manyyyy $$$ spent to get something like 100-200 conversions
- try to bid even higher (but that means I will get really low amount of visits for my daily budget ($20))
- make own "out of the box" lander (but it doesn't look much like competitive advantage as anyone can copy it as they did with my banners)
- make own great banners (but as said above, I will still get copied quickly)

I want to succeed in DE market because there is so much volume that scaling a successful campaign there would mean very big profits. But maybe I am not experienced enough or I am scared to pay too much to make this work? Is $20 daily budget low for testing until I find something reasonably performing (like -10 to -20% ROI)? Or is there some GEO that is also big enough that it would be BIG campaign when scaled, but has lower prices so I can test more easily?

I would be very grateful for advices. I (and boys from my office) already spent like $4.000 on tools and traffic and its quite demotivating to not seeing profit. And of course, we also earned something, I guess like $1.200 but its still deep in loss and it doesn't looks like it should turn green. Something to motivate me a bit? How long have you been playing with paid traffic and how much in loss you have been until you make this all work @matuloo?

Thank you for all your feedback and advices, I can't imagine still trying without all the help I got here on STM.

Regards,
Dominik

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Could have been a category for sure, but also other targeting options that caused this... did you also emulate the device you are targeting?

I was quite lucky and scored my first profitable campaign rather quickly, so that motivated me a lot. That campaign also died very quickly though, then it took me a few months to get into constant profit. I didn't lose much, don't remember the exact number... but since I was able to operate with rather low % loss, I lost maybe 2k, not more.

What helped me, was to admit I won't make it in the first GEO I targeted! It was US and the volume was very tempting, I guess you feel something similar now. In the end, I switched to NL which was a tiny country compared to US and that's where I made my first $XXX campaign and managed to keep running there for a few months. I was able to reach $X.XXX profits in NL alone, so don't think a smaller GEO is not worth it.

I would recommend to move away from DE, that GEO is very tough. You need to filter the traffic properly and fight for the high payouts. It's quite hard.

Are you with advidi and unitegap? They have good dating offers in many GEOs. Nordic countries can work pretty well. The payouts are large, so it might not be the best choice for low budgets, but the quality is usually good there.

There really isn't any other way, you just have to find the good offers and the right traffic sources and then come up with good ads and LPs... don't worry about being copied, we all are, just make sure to refresh your creatives and change the pictures often.

If you can't increase the budget, focus on some smaller source/placement. It's better to run 24/7 on a smaller spot than to blow the budget in 3 hours on a big one. Check out tube8 on TJ for example, or something from trafficforce... or limit the targeting to a smaller group, for example desktop users in certain region of a GEO...

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Thank you for all your help @matuloo. I need to cancel my subscription and pause all campaigns as we need to focus on websites to get into more profit. As soon as we will be stable, I will get back and will continue in this follow-along.

Thank you and all others who helped me again and I am looking forward to see you soon again and get back to work on paid Wish you all good luck and hope you won't be mad that I paused this journey. It is just needed to make our business more healthy now.

Regrads,
Dominik

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No worries, a healthy cashflow is important so I totally understand your motives. Once you decide to come back, we will be here and ready to help!

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@nosotros this was an awesome post. Made it to day 30 wow! This just goes to show how much work it takes to really make a campaign work. I always love watching the journey of going from complete red to green! Good job and I hope that your scaling goes great!

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