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Newbie Here! Can I Make It with Vortex and Voluum? (30)

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Yep, just another newbie here. I signed up a few days ago and read the forum - WOW! What a difference! I have been reading BHW for a while but I must say, it has nothing to do with STM!

So, I got Mobidea account and a few offers from my AM, applied for all Networks per Amy's advice and stuck at the Voluum payment - they can't process my card for a reason (contacted them and waiting for advice). I got a domain from NameCheap (I love them) and I am ready to set up the first campaign but first, while waiting for Voluum payment thing, I am going to pick up a few offers.

A few words about me - I am in affiliate business for a few years and I do mostly niche websites with mixed results. Yes, it is great when you rank a website and get almost passive income (no need to monitor it daily) but you never know when Google algo update will hit it badly. I decided to try paid traffic for two reasons - 1) you get results much faster and 2)diversify traffic, offers, income.

My biggest concern at the moment is the stress factor - how do you manage your campaigns? Do you monitor, optimize, fine tune them daily? How do you go on vacation when you have several active campaigns?

I guess it (always) starts with a negative ROI and this is okay - you pay to learn but what happens then? What I have read so far tells me that 50% ROI is considered good but what this means is if a problem occurs (they pause an offer, there is something wrong with tracking or aff link, google bans your domain etc etc - so many things can get wrong) you continue to pay for traffic and can burn all profit quickly.... How do you manage this? Isn't it even more stressful that getting a Google SERP bot slap (you lose traffic and money flow but you dont lose money as traffic is free)?

P.S. Voluum are quick and helpful - they contacted me at the time of writing this and everything is okay

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Hello peweeb2005!

It can be stressful for sure, but it's all about how you structure your workflow... pretty much everyone develops their specific approach after some time. The beginning can be tough, but it;s the same in pretty much any business when you are starting out.

As for campaign monitoring, most of us definitely monitor them daily, many times a day actually, the trackers make it much easier as you can see pretty much everything in the dashboard. Some campaigns require daily tweaks, some can run for weeks or months without any action taken, really depends on a particular campaign. When I go on vacation, I always take a notebook with me. These days, internet connection is available pretty much everywhere, so it's not that big problem to set aside an hour a day to quickly check your campaigns and do some small changes as needed. I don't start anything new when on vacation though and if I see some campaigns running poor, I simply pause them and get back to them once Im back home.

Yup, the initial loss is pretty much inevitable, but that's part of this business. You're paying for data and education, so that's absolutely normal.

50% ROI is very solid, many affiliates settle for less, so if you can achieve 50% your bankroll will grow very quickly. Many things can happen as you mentioned, that's why proper tracking and frequent monitoring is important. In this internet era, it's a question of a couple minutes to make sure all runs fine, internet connection is everywhere so there is no reason to not check your stats several times a day on your phone. And when something goes down when you sleep, well shit happens but it's not like this happens that often.

Glad that you could get Voluum sorted so quickly, time to start some campaigns for testing

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Got approved by Mobidea and Gotzha, didn't hear from ClickDealer.

Talked with my AMs and got Voluum postback url set into Gotzha. Picked up several offers to test and set up campaigns in Voluum. Two campaigns are running on Propellerads. Waitng for results / stat to go on.

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Thanks for the updates - keep us posted on your first results!

Stress can play a part here especially if you're consumed by your campaigns and monitoring / optimizing them many times a day. You need to find your process, one that works for you, to minimize the influence of a stress factor on your life. At the beginning it will be tough but don't be too hard on yourself - you're just starting out.

I'm glad to see your Voluum rep helped you fix the initial issue so quickly. I've subscribed to your follow along as well to see how you do and jump in if you have any questions.

Good luck and waiting for these first numbers!


Karolina

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Here is the stat (I am lost!)

Mobidea dashboard says:

Visits: 8 862
Singups: 10
Revenue: $ 1.62

Voluum dashboard says:

Visits: 12,262
Conversion: 8
Revenue: 1.50

There is something wrong in setup, see:





Looks like I got converdion from offers I do not promote - why is this and how to find out where conversions come from?

More info: This stat says 8 conversions from null as referer: (I guess it is from smart links - may be issue is at the trafic source setup e.g. Propellerads) Can I find out more info about these offers as they convert better than the offers I promote, LOL)

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This is the stat from Propellerads - it reports 8 conversion - there is a match with Voluum in terms of conversions:





You are tight when you say it is ALL about reading the DATA in this industry - I see why so many ppl can't success.

I am not sure but this is the stat I see:

Offer1 ProplerAds Visits:14,925 Conversion:6
Offer2 ProplerAds Visits: 1,232 Conversion:2

Offer1 Voluum Visits:11,892 / Unique 11,107 Conversions:6
Offer2 Voluum Visits: 1,103 / Unique 958 Conversions:2



Plus Mobidea says:
Smartlink for Mainstream Visits 2296 Conversions: 7

I see, may be, Voluum try to filter bot traffic from ProplerAds but why Modiea's traffic is less that Voluum's?

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Hello again,

what you are experiencing is the so called clickloss and conversions from fallback offers.

To read more about what clickloss is and why it happens, check this thread: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...finitive-guide

These are conversions from fallback offers. Part of your traffic is redirected to them, because it doesn't match the targeting required by the offer you are promoting. More on that in this blog post of mine: http://matuloo.com/damn-fallback-red...es-fight-them/ As you will see in the blog post, I'm not a big fan of fallbacks, but in some cases it's inevitable and it can actually save some revenue, so it's not bad alltogether.

Cheers,
Matej.

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Okay, clickloss. I got it. I my case the big clickloss is between Voluum and Mobidea - I thought the numbers I got should be lower, or my be not? It would be great if Voluum and Mobidea commet it.

As for the fallback offers - it this normal? I thought I set up campaigns as they should be in terms of targeting the Country, Carriers, etc, or not?

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As per the screens and numbers you posted above :

Propeller: about 16000
Voluum: 12,262
Mobidea: 8 862

So you lost something on every step, that's the usual way. Some of the clicks get "lost". There is nothing you can do about it since you are directlinking, it's normal. Once you start using landers, make sure they load fast, to minimize the possible loss.

There is always certain % that won't match the targeting, even if you set the country/carrier and all the other parameters correctly at the traffic source. It's not possible to reach a 100% match, since each of the platforms might use a different GEO database for example. There is a lot of chaos in carrier detection too, there is not a definitive DB out there for this either. It's part of the game, unfortunately.

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The numbers will always vary because there are many things causing click loss in the first place. A part of it is natural, as for the rest, it could literally be anything, low quality traffic, network filtering, bots, matuloo's links cover the basics. You could request a free anti-fraud kit trial in Voluum (https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post370013) to see how many of these visits were marked as suspicious and how close this number is to the click loss. But, since you follow Amy's guide, you'll get there (it's day 28), I'd say it's not necessary to jump a couple of lessons now just to check, learn the process first.

Karolina

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Cost in Mobidea is always zero - is this normal? There is a cost in Voluum and I know it cant match the real cost at the traffic source, but why it does not pass to the affiliate network?

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Thanks for starting the follow along @peweb2005! You're in great hands - @matuloo and @Voluum have been taking great care of you!

And of course, going forward, I'll chime in as well from time to time.

Costs will not be passed to the affiliate network.

And even if it was possible, you wouldn't want to.

One of the reasons: Some networks will show fewer conversions than what you've made (called "shaving") and you really don't want to tell them how much money you're making or not making. I'm not referring to any specific network, and of course I don't have concrete proof of it happening, but I've heard from countless sources (some straight from the horses' mouths) that this is something that IS happening.

If you want accurate revenue and cost stats in the same place, you can pass conversions to the traffic source - but then some traffic networks have internal media buying teams that will rip and run your campaign if they see that you're turning a profit (or their employees will run campaigns on the side which the networks will have little control over). So that's not recommended either.



Amy

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Just to add to what Amy said, that's where having a tracker comes in handy - you track cost from your traffic source, and revenue from your aff network without putting yourself at risk of your data being used against you.


Karolina

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This is true!

However - there are several things worth pointing out regarding passing costs to a tracker:

1)Not every traffic source has a cost token for passing costs to the tracker.

2)Costs that ARE passed from the traffic source to the tracker, will be inaccurate. (I haven't seen any exceptions to this yet - except with Zeropark+Voluum, but that's only because they're under the same company and therefore have access to the same data).

3)Even if you were to manually update costs in the tracker, when you drill down into placements, the costs will not be accurate if you're using smart bidding - because the CPM cost would be different for each placement and there's no way the tracker will know this information. You can only find accurate costs per placement from traffic source data.


This is why I said what I did above:



Amy

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Hi, I am back on track and going to dive into PUSH.

I already learned the most of the technical part of the business e.g. hosting on S3 + CF, landing pages, speed optimization and Voluum tracking etc.

Now I am looking for offers to start with but according to my research (in AdPlexity Push), I see a lot of dating campaigns (I guess big players run), VIRUS related campaigns (not newbie friendly because you have to be aggressive but below to red ban line) and I see there a few CASINO (get rich quick black hat stuff) campaigns as well.

Need to think more on the vertical to start with as this will make or break the journey.

I asked my AMs but seems they are not quite helpful when they see you are not a pro – maybe they are too busy, or fed up, and prefer to work with more experienced affiliates.

So I feel somehow lost.

Anyways, giving up is not an option here so I will just select few offers and try them. I guess when AMs see volume will become more helpful.

At this point I am more WH oriented (I can’t tell BH fake stories on how 17y old lady made 1M in a week with Forex just like I don’t believe anybody can make it with AM, LOL).

Sweeps sounds like a good vertical but are available in T1 in most.

A quick question – can you share a reliable list of T1 T2 T3 and T4 geos? Google can’t help much as there are many lists listing the same country as T2 and T4.

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I got a list of Tiers in one of my blog posts, not saying it's the most accurate in the world, but it will do the job

http://matuloo.com/why-newbies-shoul...e-tier-1-geos/

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Cambodia T2?

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Voluum documentation has information as well about tiers as well.

https://doc.Voluum.com/en/quick_guide_step1.html

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<3


Karolina

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How to setup a campain in Voluum?

I want to test 3 landers. Each lander is associated with an offer so they come in a pair - a lander with an offer.

I want to run a campaign to drive traffic from a traffic source - say ProplerAds and split test these 3 landers/offers at 1/3

How to do it?

When I pick up a pair of best performing lander / offer and will create variations of this lander. I know how to rotate several landers with one offer but I dont know how to rotate 3 pairs of lander / offer.

Please advice.

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Unfortunately that's the way most networks are.

Most AMs are taking care of more affiliates than they have time for, so of course they would focus on the bigger ones.

But every super-affiliate started as a new affiliate. You'll get there.


Yes that seems to be the trend (that there are fewer sweeps offers in T3/4 geos).

If you can't find anything in T3/4 geos, you can just start with a T1 geo. The optimization process is similar as for T3/4 geos, except you'll need to:

1)Test more offers and landers to make sure you have something good (otherwise the cutting will get really expensive), and

2)Invest more money into cutting stuff (placements etc.)

Running lower-payout offers first to cut out the worst traffic, and then running higher-payout offers, will help.

Cutting stuff aggressively will also help (e.g. if there's a ton of traffic, cut at 1x payout or 0.5x payout instead of 2x payout in loss).


Everyone classifies them a bit differently - don't get too caught up in the classification.

I just use these guidelines:

-T1+T2 geos are DEVELOPED countries, which usually means more expensive traffic, lower conversion rates (as visitors are better at turning a blind eye to ads since they're bombarded with them more), and higher payouts.

-T3+T4 geos are DEVELOPING countries, which usually means cheaper traffic, higher conversion rates, and lower payouts.


That's all in the 40-day tutorial:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...king-on-Voluum


Create 3 paths, each path with 1 lander and 1 offer.

In Voluum click on "Flows" at the top > "+ New flow".

Then click on "add default path" twice so you'd have 3 "New path" listed. Then click into each "New path" and specify your lander and offer on the right hand side:






Amy

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Today I stated a campaign - Nutra in T2 PUSH traffic.

I use a modified lander hosted on S3 and one offer only (can't find different offers for the same product). I am going to split test 2 or 3 more landers tomorrow.

I test 8 creatives in Propler and pass bannerid to tracker to see the stat per lander and creative.

I noticed a major difference between CPC and CPM - with CPM Proplers just splits the traffic between all creatives while with CPC there is an optimization in place so the better performing ads get the more traffic but this does not take into account CR so I run CPM to see what creatives will get more conversions, if any.

Now I am thinking of optimization - I see there are zones with ZERO clicks





Should I exclude these zones? Is this bot traffic? It would be great if we can do this at Proplers automatically - I guess they dont want these zones in their database so there sould be a way to auto cut them.

The other thing I noticed is the CPM price vary a lot - the max price was 0.23 a few hours ago and it is 0.58 now - I guess the more affiliates promote the higher the price is, but how to manage this? If I set up it in the morning I could get some good traffic from good zones, but a few hours later the recommended price could increase so I will start to receive traffic from the zones nobody wants. Should I edit the campaign evey couple of hours to ensure I am bidding appropriately?

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This is my stat and math.

Propler:



My best CTR is 0.73. Propler says CTR depends on other user's campaigns and average is usually 1-2%

In Propler PUSH BG Mobile Android Medium User Activity suggested CPM is 0.20 now.

According to Voluum the CTR on my landers is 10% on average. No idea if this is good or bad result.

AM says the offer I promote CR is 0.3 for PUSH.

So if I get paid $20 per sale having numbers above in mund I have no chance to make a profit.

This is my math.

If buy traffic for $20 at CPM 0.20 = 100 000 at 1% = 1000 visitors on my lander. At 10% conversion rate this will generate 100 offer visits - not enought for a sale at 0.3 CR

What is wrong here?

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Yes, this is happening when your run CPC.

But if you think about it from the traffic source side, it makes sense as they are still sending the pushes, but if no one is clicking them, they would just keep spamming their user base with stuff that is not interesting for subscribers.

On CPM on the other side, you take the risk on your side -> you pay for each push being sent, but the rotation is even and then you also have full control over your creative optimization.

The key in both cases anyway is to have good and appealing creatives that people will be clicking ie. high CTR.

If there are no clicks, or the CTR is radically lower, I would personally cut them. Why to keep them if people are not interested and it just decreases your overall CTR.

I usually monitor campaigns at least one time per day and check if the bids are in place. Don't stress yourself with looking at it too much. Make a habit to check it every once every morning or evening. But yes, it changes due to affiliates coming in and coming out. Imagine there are campaigns running, then their budgets are over so they stop, bids then may reset as well. It's a very dynamic marketplace

Your math seems okay.

But what you illustrated here is based on your AM's prediction.
The reality might be many time very different, I would wait for couple of conversions first to see your real CR.
Anyway what you can do here to improve your numbers is to come up with lander with higher CTR, so more users get to the offer.
Also in the first place you should aim for higher CTR.
Did you try HIGH user activity targeting on propeller? With this your CTR can raise radically (2 to even 10% is possible with right creatives)

Hope my answers helped at least a bit.

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Over the last few days, I focused on reading and learning. This is stuff is more complicated that I thought and it changes rapidly.

My biggest challenge with paid traffic is to find source + geo + vertical combo that is promising. The thing is that, with so many options, it is easier to bankrupt before I find what works. The solution is spy tools. If you ask 10 people with get 30+ answers. So don’t ask but spy and see what is runnng where.


Now I have a bunch of landers (thanks to @eurosen) to start with Sweeps / Vouchers and Antivirus but I cannot find good SOI offers. I see many dating too, but should I try them?


How do you find offers?


I found several on OfferVault but networks that run the good ones do not accept newbies without introduction. Can somebody help me get approved by ClickDealer? Contacted Henry but no response yet. I see some networks ask for a website when you apply – this is strange – why do I need a website if I buy traffic and send it to offers? What website they want me show?


The other issue I have is with Mobidea and HideMyAss – looks like they block proxy traffic so I am not able to see the offer page if it is not in my GEO.


What does it mean when AdPlexity can not recognize the affiliate network? Does it mean it is cloaked or a brand advertisement? What is the sure way to spot on the brand offers?


The other thing I can understand is why some ads look like this








You see – this ad Is running for 12 days but each lander is run for 1 day only – what does this mean? Do they change the lander every day? The URL is https://push.adplexity.com/ad/104413

Not much progress in terms of action but there is a progress in terms of learning. It would be great if you help me with offers - where are good SOI offers we need for POP / PUSH and hot to get approved by these networks (I guess they make it difficult because it is hard to find good SOI these days and if everybody runs the same offers they will burn quite fast).

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Most of the time I rely on the advice from my AMs, they see the numbers and in case you have a good and honest one, they can show you exactly whats worth promoting. And then there is spying of course, if you see several people pushing something, it's most likely working for them.

I think in many cases it's just a default field in the form that the networks leave there. Because you're right, paid traffic affiliates really don't need to run websites. I have a small "agency-like" website setup for cases like this, it just lists my company details and some general text about performance marketing etc ... I'm sure you can find a template like this out there for free. Or you can try submitting some LPs, the people doing approvals know the affiliate landscape so they should understand. You can always leave a note for them, mentioning that you buy traffic and use LPs, hence no need for a website.

THis is often the case and quite often it's simply not possible to see the offer page. In that case, you can just throw some traffic at it to see whether it works or not. Or ask the AM to provide a screenshot of the offer, they usually have it.

Networks change tracking domains quite often, so then its up to adplexity to update these. I'm not 100% sure how they identify networks though, so just making a guess here. It can be due to the cloaking too of course, because if their crawlers can't get to the offer, they won't know what network the offers is from.

Yup, this would be several rotating landers. You have to realize that the crawler simply cannot grab ALL the links out there every single day, so the data is not 100% accurate, it's not possible.

It takes a while to get into soem networks, they simply can't work with everyone, due to the limits in manpower. Would it be possible for you to attend an affiliate conference? AWE for example? It's way easier to get accepted once you meat them face to face and get a contact from someone at the booth. Works like magic

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All the networks and advertisers constantly add new redirect domains. So this is the major reason why AdPlexity sometimes can't recognize the network/advertiser.

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Here is the start from the last campaign:

Traffic Source: ProplerAds, Push, CPM, All Traffic (no broker), User Activity Hight & Medium:







2.75% CTR on Ads - Is this good? I uploaded only icons, should I upload images? When these images are shouwn in push notifications? I cant see them anywhere.

Here is the Voluum stat:



As I see Propler says my ads got 959 Clicks, Voluum detected 921 Visits - this is quite low click loos, right?

The lander got 557 Clicks (60% CTR) - is this good or it doesn't matter much as when visitors come on a lander they have only two options - click on the CTA or hit the Back button. In this campaign I did not manipulate the back button.

This is the Mobidea stat for the offer link



I got 2 sales.

And this is for the smartlink



The Smartlink got 4 sales. Why it that? I think I send only the right traffic, and the smartlink coverts better than the offer link. Can you help me amalize and optimize this?

My assumption is that the offer does not convert well when many affiliates drove traffic to it for a long time from different traffic sources. This is SOI so I guess they pay for unique leads only and this is getting harder when a lot of people alredy participated in the offer. So to make profit you should either 1) work on new/fresh offers or 2) work on a big geo with a traffic source that has new push subscribers. As a newbies I guess we dont have access to new/fresh offers as they are somehow reseved for pro affiliates who can send good volume, so we need to target big geos with new subscribers - what traffic sources have this option?

Today I will run a bot test (I forgot to copy the script, it was there, but I edited the lander just before campaign start and.... looks like I uploaded the wrong file). Do you think the 17 % click loss from tracker to offer is okay? I meassure it in this way - voluum says 557 Clicks and Mobidea says 382 Clicks on the offer and 80 Clicks on the Smartlink and since I do not manipulate the back button I assume that these are visitors Mobidea detected as wrong one and drove them to the smartlink instead of the offer link, but this is not a clickloss, right?

Do you think it worth to work on this campaign or it is better to select a different one? I am thinking of targeting EU T2 country instead of LATAM or ASIA, what do you think?

My biggest challenge till now was offers, but I got approved by clickdealer and will try to find 2 or 3 similar offers in one geo to split test them.

P.S. One more question - how to track different traffic sources?

Traffic Source 1 & Traffic Source go to Voluum Campaign with 3 landers and 2 offers split test. Voluum can group by Aff network but how to see data per traffic source?

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You can group by affiliate networks because you can have offers from different affiliate networks in one campaign. When it comes to traffic sources, it's different: 1 campaign = 1 traffic source.

If you want to use the same campaign with different traffic sources you need to duplicate the campaign and change the traffic source in the settings of the duplicated one.

Then, to check stats for different traffic sources, go to 'Traffic sources' tab and then group by campaigns.


Karolina

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So you mix high and medium in the same campaign? In that case it's hard to determine if the CTR is good or no. With only HIGH activity you can get 5-10% with really good creatives, but usually 4-5% is the average I would say. With everything else the CTR will go lower and lower

These are mainly used on desktop or in the detail of the notification when it's "unrolled".

That's like 4% click loss, it's not that bad, it can happen.

They probably find better offer for the traffic segment that you sent to them.
I haven't worked with Mobidea for some time -> but if it's possible to find out in the reports or through your AM which offers converted good through smartlink, you could go and run them directly.
But 2 and 4 sales, it's nothing significant, you need more data.

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