Just starting out - im facing the information "avalanche" phase (11)

Hey all! This is my first post here - I'd say im (almost) a virgin in affiliate marketing - I say almost cause I had past experiences back in december 2019 but dropped it as I failed miserably (lol) as I didn't really understand anything to be honest

I want to make a small intro even though I know this is not the correct section...


The only previous experience i've got is promoting bh stuff like game hacks using youtube traffic (organic) and cpa. Can't say I failed but im not rich either. I did learn to edit videos, make animations, do keyword research (on youtube) - got really handy with css and website design, pretty much everything that involves deceiving little kids and teens. And at some point in time I had 40-50$ per day which for me was huge considering we're talking about a zero cost thing, but youtube "screwed" me over, and probably the fact that I use blogger to host my websites, all that aside, from doing this I have like 1300-1200$ that im planning to use in IM. Which is pennies but hey all I had to do was edit videos and make it believeable.

I also tried live streaming + cpa. There I learned how to setup my pc as a streaming server - which I knew was risky giving out my IP but well, considering it took me days to figure it out I didn't care at all, I do like networking though even if it's a pain in the ass. I tried to make it also a zero cost thing but yeah I didn't make it work, even after repeated attempts, conversion rate would have been something like zero point something, paid traffic was banned on that network so dropped it.

Now I want to jump ship to affiliate marketing, but as it always happens to me - there's too much information everywhere so making my mind up is a really tough job. Im not lying when I say I haven't had a fixed idea for more than 5 minutes.

Don't know what to try, which vertical, which offers, on which platform (social medias, apps or whatever) and so on. There's only one thing that draws my attention though, and it is that I want to continue promoting these kind of iphone giveaway offers and in game currencies probably cause they're the only thing I've had success with.

To be honest I also don't know what kind of useful information/metrics can I request from the affiliate manager (which, previously didn't matter that much to me as there was no investment involved, but in this case there is so that's gonna change)

One idea that stuck the most was snap ads + sweepstakes and target the younger demographics. Im not sold on direct linking just yet neither the geos and probably a bunch of other stuff, just wanna hear out opinions of this.

PS: I've read the 1$ Guide by vortex, im gonna do it if im approved. But you know, can't be following guides I gotta make stuff on my own hehe

Hey! Welcome to STM.
If you already had success with some type of offers, i would start with these, as you know how they work and *just* have to understand how to make them work with paid traffic.

After the $1 guide, you can try the 40-day guide, also by @vortex :-)

Thanks guys for mentioning the $1 guide and the 40-day tutorial!

(Welcome to the forum @v12power by the way!)

If you're liking the direct-linking model in the $1 guide, check out this post by @twinaxe:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking

There's also this sweeps guide if you want to know which aff networks specialize in sweeps offers:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...weepstakes-101

That should be enough to get you started! Have fun and do let us know how you fare!



Amy

Alright so this is what I've done

On one side I've followed the 1$ guide and I didn't expect it to work at all, but I got 2.7$ so thats almost all the budget spent (3$) - Using the geos that my manager gave to me

On the other side, since I do like to "be my own" I decided to go to propellerads, run Pop ads + direct link to offers (I have read that direct linking is dead so I knew my chances of getting a conversion were quite low already)

I picked propellerads because im still a bit butthurt for failing miserably last year, so for some reason I don't want to move away until I get something back. My "manager" at propeller ads gave me 2 geos and the verticals to try out.

The cpa network I used to test is adludum, and I only tested 2 offers in the sweepstakes vertical, one offer/one campaign. Im gonna be honest though, im not using any tracker and im unsure if this plays a role in getting the conversions to record correctly on the CPA network's end or not, even though I believe there shouldnt be a problem, aside from the fact that there's no data no analyze

My campaign settings are very basic initially:

Pricing model: SmartCPM
Target url: offer url
Frequency: 1/24h
Traffic: PropellerAds + Broker + Anti Ad Block traffic enable
Bid: 1$ // just to clarify, the recommended bid is 12$ and that's the highest bid possible so im kinda confused if it's a glitch or not
Devices: Android // Recommened by propeller ads staff
Traffic: all (4g+wifi)
Daily budget: 10$

The rest is all default, except for browser language where I included only the languages spoken in the country, which are like 10 languages. So this is for one offer, the second offer is all the same except of course the target url


After 6 hours, i've got around 25000 clicks on the CPA network and 0 conversions. I've paused both campaigns now, here are the results as of now:

Offer 1:
Impressions (Propellerads) = 27178
Clicks (Adludum) = 14128
Conversions = 0

Offer 2:
Impressions (Propellerads) = 17554
Clicks (Adludum) = 11365
Conversions = 0

I already have questions
1) regarding the discrepancy of impressions vs clicks, shouldn't they be the same?
2) is the bid too low that the traffic is just bad?
3) should I get a tracker and stop kidding around?

EDIT: Im also very interested for critics on my approach

Congrats for the mini-success with the $1 guide!

In addition to @twinaxe's very on-point advice:

-Are you using a spy tool? If so, you can easily verify which verticals are the "hottest" or most popular, in a given country. Just sort campaigns by amount of traffic received / number of times seen and look at the top 20-50 results to see how many are for which vertical.

-Direct-linking is actually not dead - see this post: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking

-As for the high maximum bid: Some people can afford to bid that high because they may be brand-building, or advertisers running their own exclusive offers. You're wise in not following suit. Starting at a bid like that without an extensive blacklist would be suicide. Anything above $1-2 would be more than good enough to start. You can always test bids later, after blacklisting the worst placements.

-If your offer accepts both carrier and wifi traffic, I would only target one of them to start. If the offer has different conversion flows for carrier vs. wifi (e.g. 1-click flow for carrier, lead gen form for wifi), then I would test carrier traffic first, because if the simpler conversion flow doesn't even convert well, then the wifi flow would be even crappier. On the other hand, if the offer has the same conversion flow for both carrier and wifi, then I'd test wifi traffic first because it's cheaper, and because it has the same conversion flow as for carrier, carrier traffic will not likely convert much better.

-As for language: If there's enough traffic, I would use the most widely-spoken language on the lander, then only target that language at the traffic source. This will give you the best chances of success. If the offer shows promise, then it would be worth targeting other languages to see if they'd convert as well.

Hope that helps!



Amy

Originally Posted by vortex

Congrats for the mini-success with the $1 guide!

In addition to @twinaxe's very on-point advice:

-Are you using a spy tool? If so, you can easily verify which verticals are the "hottest" or most popular, in a given country. Just sort campaigns by amount of traffic received / number of times seen and look at the top 20-50 results to see how many are for which vertical.

-Direct-linking is actually not dead - see this post: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Direct-Linking

-As for the high maximum bid: Some people can afford to bid that high because they may be brand-building, or advertisers running their own exclusive offers. You're wise in not following suit. Starting at a bid like that without an extensive blacklist would be suicide. Anything above $1-2 would be more than good enough to start. You can always test bids later, after blacklisting the worst placements.

-If your offer accepts both carrier and wifi traffic, I would only target one of them to start. If the offer has different conversion flows for carrier vs. wifi (e.g. 1-click flow for carrier, lead gen form for wifi), then I would test carrier traffic first, because if the simpler conversion flow doesn't even convert well, then the wifi flow would be even crappier. On the other hand, if the offer has the same conversion flow for both carrier and wifi, then I'd test wifi traffic first because it's cheaper, and because it has the same conversion flow as for carrier, carrier traffic will not likely convert much better.

-As for language: If there's enough traffic, I would use the most widely-spoken language on the lander, then only target that language at the traffic source. This will give you the best chances of success. If the offer shows promise, then it would be worth targeting other languages to see if they'd convert as well.

Hope that helps!



Amy

Originally Posted by twinaxe

You don´t need to find specific landing pages for each product you are promoting.

You just need to find few different landing page styles for your vertical and then you can just edit them for your offer.

When the LP you downloaded is for a Huawei P30 but you are running for example Amazon gift card offers just change the text and the images that they match to your offer.

sorry for double post. I need someone to verify if im getting the tracking right for another affiliate network (Which does not appear in Voluum's default list) since I can't test this without a live campaign (im worried about placement ids)

So on the network's website this is what I have:



I know it's all set up as if one should use sid=##sid## in the postback url as seen in their example. But what is sub id exactly? And I ask this because in Voluum we only get the following:




there is only one space there. If I need to track conversions + the placement from where that user came from, which parameter should I request? What really matters to me is the placement ofc. The offer link would be like this initially

https://www.wauwfy.com/go.php?oid=of...er&sid=##sid##

But i cant be sure of what to use and what not since I have no clue what sub id is

Hey,

You can verify with Voluum, but i would do the following setup in Voluum based on the URL in your first screen:

 
- AN Parameter / ClickID : sid
- AN tokens / ClickID : ##sid##
- AN tokens / Payout : ##payout##