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Zenion and the 40-Day Tutorial with Voluum + AdPlexity Mobile: The Infinite Learning (9)

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Networks: Mobidea
Traffic sources: PropellerAds, PopAds
Tracker: Voluum
Spy-tool: AdPlexity Mobile
Hosting: Amazon Web Services
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Intro

Hello I'm Alessio from Italy and I'm 35; if you are looking for my full background you can find my full presentation here.

I chose to start this follow along because I'm stuck with my progression (so I'm looking for help), but I also gathered enough knowledge and a I think that writing it could help a lot of people to start his own 40-Days and avoid many mistakes. So let's start!

Why Voluum as tracker?

I'm working on the web from a very long time and I have experience with self-hosting, shared-hosting, VPS (Virtual Private Server), dedicated server, managed server and SaaS (software as a service).

If you think that Voluum is expensive, just think about this:

• How much time is required to properly setup a dedicated server, manage it to let it work fine 24/7 and the time lost for every fix in case of need (assuming that dedicated servers aren't free).
• The same applies to VPS, adding the lower computational power than a dedicated server.
• What about a solution where all simply works so that the tracker isn't a time consuming element in my process of Affiliate Marketing learning?

That's why I chose Voluum, it simply works, doesn't cost much more then a dedicated and is a SaaS (they think of both software and hardware).

I'm a web developer, I should have no problem creating landing pages!!!

Ok, that's true, but what I learned during this tutorial, and going to action, is that time is crucial with Pop and I can't use 3-4 hours of my time to create a landing that I don't even know if is good or not. I'm not saying to copy/paste landing taken from AdPlexity, but using it I can view what can work for my offer and have a landing to use as a template, changing it accordingly to my offer.

From beginning to now

I started the tutorial about 1 month ago and in a brief summary I went from start to optimization process where I had to stop because I had not enough data and conversions to optimize.
I'm using Voluum as tracker, Mobidea as affiliate network and PropellerAds (PopAds sometimes) as traffic source. Clickdealer rejected my application, affiliate manager asked from results that I didn't had at the time and Gotzha didn't even respond to me.
I ripped some landing with AdPlexity mobile and hosted them into Amazon infrastructure (AWS); I also set up bot detection with caurmen's tutorial.

This is a summary of what I did since I started and I can't be more accurate than that. So I decided to start all over (without making double subscription or registration to AWS services, obviously) and document here every step, as a round 2 of my experience with this tutorial.

Let's start!


Day 1

My AM at Mobidea sent me some picked offers (it happens often and I'm glad of it), and between these offers there was one running in South Africa that I already chose one week ago and for which I have already a landing: I ripped this landing from AdPlexity Mobile, also if I think that is taken from the final offer page, and added some customization using traker's parameters. Here is a screenshot from original to customized:





As you can see I added OS on top ("Exclusive IOS games!"), model in the middle ("iPhone"), I removed "Vodacom Terms and Conditions" and added a countdown.
To use parameters coming from trackers and traffic source properly, be sure to don't overwrite them in the gathering phase; can find what was my problem and how i solved here: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post373626

What I didn't: create multiple landing. I would like to create some landing templates, after ripping successful models from AdPlexity, and changing images and text with PHP (for doing this I need to migrate my landing to a webserver with PHP support, that is a kind of optimization not to take now).
The template idea came from some sweeps offers I run days ago: only things to change was prize name and photos (ie. "Samsung Galaxy S10" to "iPhone XS"); some advice is welcome!

Inside landing page I added bot test taken from caurmen post (thank you man, your cotribution has been huge and still it is): https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...live-campaigns
After $5 traffic spent I applied whitelisting on websites with at least 65% CTR on bot testing: if you still don't know how it works, there is an iframe in the landing page with a redirect inside that can be triggered only by genuine browsers, so all missing clicks going down from 100% CTR are from bot; in my case, accepting only websites with at least 65% CTR implies I accept traffic with 35% bot (which includes also some errors on detecting them).
My question here: at my level, do I need bot testing? Or can I implement it sometime in the future? I'm not investing big budget on traffic, just 20-30$ a day (when I work on it consistently) and probably bot avoiding optimization is too much for now; some advice is welcome!

Final campaign setup on PropellerAds (after some optimization on OS, Browser and websites a.k.a. zoneid): all traffic excluding broker and anti-adblock from South Africa, running all day without distribution, targeting Mobile only, Android version 6/7/8/9, Google Chrome browser and zone limited to avoid bots. Bid at $3.030 basing on this:





Results:




Only 2 conversions with about -87% ROI.
I have to review all processes involved from start to running campaign; this is my actions from what I learned as far as now.

Feel free to comment and ask for details if something isn't clear enough or missing.


Day 2

I'm working on day 2, trying to connect Mobipium to Voluum and track it's offers properly.

UPDATE: Mobipium - PopAds - Voluum configured and campaign started (no landing for now). Added other 3 offers working with same traffic source's parameters: so 4 offers ina single campaign with no landing (for now).
I'm planning to get a VPN that covers as many country as possible to test offer links, gather info about every specific offer and create a proper landing: as far as now I struglled with understanding offer by a simple screenshot.

Results



Spending about $10:



Earning $8.38:




ROI: -16.86%

Conversions was tracked also if I got some errors, I see no clicks on Voluum and this is error log:





I'm going to report all the settings from Mobipium to Voluum, maybe in the process I'll figure out what was wrong, creating a tutorial on how to set up all properly. Here they are...

Voluum + Mobipium + PopAds configuration

Now I'm explaining how I linked these three elements. I was inspired by @anitaway from her post and sorted out the following configuration.

First of all I added Mobipium as Affiliate Network into Voluum: from Voluum homepage, Affiliate networks and the green button New affiliate networks; adding it I found that there is a template now, so this part was very easy, ClickID and Payout parameters was already there:





Then I modified my PopAds configuration in Voluum as traffic source, where I added Traffic source postback URL in Voluum that was missing:





(Here I see no Available URL tokens was used in the link, only {tid} and {pay} from Mobipium parameters.)

That URL was taken from opening any campaign on PopAds, selecting Conversion Tracking and can be found on Postback section:






... changing impression and conversionValue with {tid} and {pay} respectively.

Then a parameter was missing in Advanced parameters on Voluum: External ID where i added [IMPRESSIONID] as token.




Last part was Pixel Implementation on Mobipium:



adding Voluum Postback URL from Voluum settings, Tracking URLs.

So I created a new offer (other 3 were added later) in Voluum, pasting link from Mobipium My Campaigns, prompted in the popup once black chain icon is clicked:



Then I created a new campaign in Voluum, adding this offer, and the corresponding link was used in PopAds to start a new campaign.


Day 3

During day 3 (that is today) I collected data from Voluum, trying to sort out an optimization strategy. Reporting soon...

I restricted my traffic segment leaving only the good converting offer (1 of 4), Android OS 5+, website quality 7+, Chrome Mobile only, leaving only South Africa region where most converting cities are in.
Here it is my last 3 days data:


It has a very low profit but I'm happy to have a green campaign running from 3+ days.

What I've learned is to start with a very broad campaign to narrow as soon as you have enough data to do it.
Focus on profit more then simple ROI and find a lot of traffic sources in case you need to scale up your campaign.

I still don't see clicks on Voluum!


Day 4-9: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post375844

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Day 1 added and Day 2 is in progress.

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Thank you Zenion for linking my post. Also I'm a woman... named Anita. (see what I did there?) jk

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Sorry Anita, I corrected my previous post I read your post very well and set up my configuration basing on it, thank you very much!
Today I changed parameters in my offer URLs, setting clickid={clickid} as suggested from Voluum itself; It was tracking conversions properly but not clicks and I had some error logs.
I'll update my original post as soon as all will work properly.

It's a very energy consuming process for my brain trying to figure out the whole configuration, optimization and even the starting strategy.
Now I have a positive ROI campaign:


I found out a good traffic segment but there is not enough traffic, so even if I have a positive ROI, profit is extremely low Probably I need to use additional traffic sources. I'm going to think about it.

Alessio

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Thanks, Alessio... I went back and looked at my Mobipium Push Smartlink campaign data (in Voluum) and I did not get click data either. I just figured it was because I set it up as a direct-linked campaign with no landing page.

I'll be interested in seeing if setting clickid={clickid} in the offer URL fixes the problem and allows click data.

You're actually doing better than I am. I have yet to get a campaign in the green.

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Actually it didn't fix the problem, still don't seeing clicks in Voluum.

It was in green but I stopped it now, isn't profitable enough, too much slow with that segmentation. I'm evaluating new offers now.

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Day 4-9

Since I spent time and traffic on South Africa, I decided to stick to it: I have traffic data from PopellerAds and PopAds and I also have a list of zoneid from PropellerAds with low bot traffic.

I applied to an additional Affiliate Network, but offers have high payout; they are very good and from known products, but I'm not ready for them, tried some and no conversion. I will stick to Mobipium now, since I have conversions with them and nice offers for specific countries+carriers.

I have a new problem now: Voluum is tracking my Mobipium conversion with PopAds traffic, but not with PropellerAds traffic; so I can use only some data from Mobipium to optimize, that isn't enough.

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Alessio - apologies for the extreme delay in replying! I was out of commission due to AWE and then having been sick for close to 2 weeks plus playing catch up. Work schedule back to normal now.

Some feedback below...

Bot testing isn't mandatory. You could also just cut placements that are in loss.

The first method can save you money but is less accurate. The second method is of course more expensive but is more accurate (because you're actually cutting based on profit/loss).

Then of course you could use a combination of the 2 methods, e.g. do bot testing to eliminate some sites, then after the campaign is in profit, retest the placements originally eliminated in the bot testing, and cut the ones in excessive loss.


Posting conversions from Voluum to PopAds is not mandatory.

But if you're wanting to set this up in Voluum's traffic source settings for PopAds, the variables need to be VOLUUM variables and not MOBIPIUM variables - because voluum is the one sending conversions to PopAds now, not mobipium (as in the $1 guide).

So, instead of:

id={tid}&value={pay}

Try this:

id={externalid}&value={payout}

Also: You'll need to add the impressionsid to the same settings like so:



Then, re-copy the Voluum campaign url and replace the one you're running on PopAds - because the new campaign url will now contain the IMPRESSIONID token. This will allow PopAds to generate random values for this token and pass them to Voluum. Then, when a visit results in a conversion, Mobipium will post back to Voluum, and Voluum will in turn post back to PopAds (i.e. Voluum will tell PopAds "hey there IMPRESSIONID=1234567 has converted!")

I've never tried to pass conversions from Voluum to PopAds so please let me know if this doesn't work, and I'll take another look and do an actual test.


Very nice! Profits are negligible but the motivation will propel you to test more to achieve higher and higher profits.


Absolutely!


Since you're just direct-linking, clicks will show zero.

Clicks will only register if you've using landing pages, in which case clicks will be recorded as visitors click on an outgoing link on your lander.


Sounds like a plan!


Traffic volume is an important consideration.

If there isn't enough traffic, there would be no point to continue, because 1)there'd be no room to optimize the campaign via cutting unprofitable segments, and 2)even if you could get it green, profits would not be significant enough to justify your efforts in maintaining the campaign.

When considering volume, try to see if there's more traffic on another network. If you know there's a lot of traffic for that same geo on another network, you can still conduct testing on your current network (e.g. popads) to find a good offer/lander, and then scale to the other networks. But if you can't find a lot of volume on any of the networks you know, and not planning on testing more networks at the present, then there'd be no point in trying to get a tiny campaign profitable.

How are things going now?


Amy

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It's been a while since my last update!
I ran some campaigns with Mobipium, Gotzha and Big Bang Ads (after the Sweeptakes 101 Guide I signed up to BBA and they are really amazing) over PopAds and ZeroPark; I used both pop and push traffic, upgrading to HTTPS to run on ZeroPark (it required also an upgrade on Voluum to profit plan to use https domains).

At the moment my campaigns are pretty far from beeing profitable and I need to freeze everything for a while, since I'm out of budget. I spent about 2k$ since June cosidering tools and other subscriptions, so about 360$ a month; all this was mandatory to do a proper job and I have to consider the same expense if I want to start again. Then more money are required to buy traffic.
About that, I watched a video from @dr_ngo days ago and he suggests at least 700$ a month for AM with paid traffic, and it all adds up: I am at 360$ with tools and the remaining 340$ is required to buy traffic and collect enough data to pick-up a profitable offer (this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjDRUZkn4E).

Since I started with AM (my registration date to this forum ) I learned a lot, now I feel comfortable with the entire tracking process (even if it required some headaches in the beginning), with the pre-landers fixing process along with hosting (my web developer skills help a lot), let's say that the stritcly tech part of AM (at least for a newbie) is covered; what I think I lack in is creativity in pre-landers tuning, finding different angles to use too and I need to understand how to use AdPlexity Mobile properly: it's like I'm not able to find the right landing to use between all of them.
And since I tried push traffic, maybe also AdPlexity Push should be added to the tools list

Tonight my subscription will expire and I think I'll renew next year, I'm going to save some money in the while to focus then in a month of activity.

See you soon!

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