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Trying to Make This Campaign as Big as I Can (60)

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Touched on this a bit in my last post on this thread: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...luum-DSP/page2 but the short version is that I have taken a 12% positive ROI campaign from $100 daily spend, to $300, to $500, and now $1k

Upped the budget to $500 per day 12 days ago. Ran into a bit of a snag as I was split testing landers, yet somehow one of the landers got erased from my server (zero clue how that happened) and I did not catch it for three days. So with everything working properly, the numbers look like this:

Revenue: $3300
Spend: $2985
Offer payout: $100
Bid: .40
Native network: RevContent
Geo: United States
Platform: Desktop


-I have cut any widgets with 30 LP clicks and 0 offer clicks

-Made a change to the headline on the lander and that has helped conversions a bit

-Have had trouble getting good ad CTR on this campaign for months. Can never get it above .05.07% no matter what images I upload (and I have only gotten one of those ads profitable)

-At $100 budget, I was at about breakeven on Mac users, but since going bigger, it's -45%. Meanwhile, Windows is at 60% (and was the same before raising the budget)


Seeing this, I decided today to target Windows only, and I also raised my budget to $1000 (I need a home run campaign, I am tired of driving Uber Eats 40 hours a week LOL). Well I don't know if I broke the campaign, but the traffic has completely stalled out. I'm on pace to hit less than $200 spend for the day

As I see it, there are two options:

1. Copy the campaign and run it alongside this one at a similar bid

2. Raised the bid from .40 to .45 (and possibly even higher, as I have some wiggle room here considering my historical EPC on ad clicks to conversions for Windows users is .60)


****I should mention too that I am also running traffic for this offer internationally with a second affiliate network that pays out $120 instead of $100. This would REALLY help my ROI and scaling, but I want to see a couple of payments from them first before running it on my main campaign (currently it's stuck in pending status in Payoneer)

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An average creative CTR of 0.05% and 0.07% is great and about the best I can ever do. Their online docs saying CTR of 0.4-0.6% is insane. Unless they are talking about on individual widgets, then yeah, it's reasonable. Curious if @jack_l or @platinum have seen different numbers on revc for creative CTR.

As for getting more traffic, just duplicate the campaign and run it alongside. You'll usually see a boost of traffic from new widgets you haven't seen before.

Or, be brave and start a fresh campaign with no blacklisted placements on the camp or account level. That will definitely get you traffic Just make sure you sit in front of your computer for the first hour of launching so you can block all the shit bot widgets.

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That is hands down the best thing about TheOptimizer. Even though Voluum has the Automizer, it doesn't run near enough to be useful. I believe the smallest window is something like 4 hours. Meanwhile TheOptimizer can run every 10 minutes. If you have a Traffic Source that can send a lot of volume from one placement in a short period, it will pay for itself many times over.

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I always have trouble comparing ctr between campaigns because it seems to often be influenced by the top 1-2 sites... and if they're ones like Breitbart with tons of widgets then the ctr is lower, vs a site with like one three ad widget where its higher...

But yeah, I agree re: fresh blacklist campaign - great way to get lots of traffic - and gotta have TheOptimizer for sure to blacklist those bad widgets

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A question I have about sites and their widget ID's. Hopefully @jack_l or @platinum (or anyone else) can help:

Let's say xyz.com has widget ID's 123 and 789. Widget 123 does well but 789 spends whatever rule I normally have in place for blocking widgets. Yet the general content on the site is the same for both widgets. Should I look to pause the non-converting widget, or look at the numbers overall for the site? (instead of on the individual widget level)

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I'll turn the question around. 123 converts and 789 does not convert, why would you continue to buy traffic from 789? As long as you given it a real opportunity, why continue to buy traffic from it, just because?

While the networks want to sell all the traffic and make money, you're under no obligation to be the person that buys any particular piece of traffic.

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You should absolutely evaluate the widget separately even if they're on the same site.

I'll give you an example of why.

Routinejournal was(is?) a huge site on Revc... classic clickbait content-arb listicles... it had a bunch of widgets but the main two were a 3 ad widget above the navigation buttons and a 6 ad widget below them.

The 6 ad widget below the buttons was great - cpc's in mid-30's and almost always profitable... lp ctr maybe 35% on average...

The 3 ad widget above the buttons was HORRIBLE... lp ctr was usually 10% and epc was like 1/10th or 1/5th of the other widget...

The reason... was that the top widget's ad would often get "fat finger clicks"... and that's why the lp ctr was so low... whereas the bottom widget never got those fat finger clicks (you could tell this was the issue from trying to navigate through the slides yourself, as it was "jumpy" and you'd often click the ads on the top widget when you meant to click the navigation buttons...

With all that being the case though, the top widget must have gotten blacklisted so much that you could often get US Desktop traffic on it for like 10-15 cents... whereas the other widget was usually 35 or so... so sometimes it would still be profitable anyway if you had a really good offer...

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This is quite common in adult, where I operate the most. Same ad spots on the same site would deliver TOTALLY different results. Quite often, traffic from footer spots would convert way better than the ones from the most exposed headers and NTV (next to video) zones. But, when it comes to the lead quality, the above the fold spots would usually win. So indeed, all the different spots/zones/widgets have to be treated separately.

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Great answers guys, thank you

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UPDATE

I am quite bloodied and bruised from fighting this campaign the past couple of weeks

May 7-10: Made two copies of the original campaign. Kept bids on both campaigns at my original of .40, then raised bids to .45. Result was $600 revenue, $800 spend (keep in mind the daily budget for both was $530, so I only hit about a quarter of that

Regarding the Mac OS issue, someone told me to check my tracker to see if that was actually the problem, or if it was Safari. Sure enough, the other browsers were about breakeven/slight profit. So I paused the copy campaigns, and run the original the same as before, just with Safari off. Revenue was $1700, spend was $2246

Seeing that I was getting nowhere, I just decided to start up the original campaign to its normal settings. Yes, Safari might hurt ROI, but how can I really complain considering the campaign was turning a nice profit? The result was 7 conversions for $760 revenue and $1047 spend. Three of those conversions were from a new network I am working with that has the offer at a higher payout, although I didn't have the postback set right on their end so they didn't track. But get this: the 4 conversions that DID track were all from Mac OS and Safari. I swear, this business, the more you think you know, the less you actually do know

The final straw was when I tried manually dayparting the campaign. Shut it down at midnight, but when I turned it back on, it refused to spend any money

At that point, I decided to just copy it and set the bid at .30, which actually brought me the most profit in April. Of course, I won't hit any home runs here, but I guess some campaigns just aren't meant to be scaled


****Racked my brain to think of any other way to get this offer going, considering it is my best converter. I ran it on mobile for a week last month and made a slight profit, but decided to pause because I wanted to focus on scaling on desktop. It's showing promise. Started it up two days ago at 7pm, which may have been a mistake since it blew through the $100 budget pretty quickly, but yesterday it did $300 revenue on $100 spend. In retrospect, I realize I may have given up on mobile for this offer a little too soon last month. I guess I had developed somewhat of a bias against mobile because virtually everything else I have run has been VSL's (this isn't) which certainly seem to convert better on desktop. But actually, this offer has done better internationally on mobile. Hopefully that trend continues for the U.S.

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Not sure if the offer would be compliant or not but have you thought about running retargeting on another platform like google or facebook or maybe adding a push allow button to help get more profit long term?

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Highly doubt Google and Facebook are options (although worth a try). I actually set up a retargeting campaign on Pinterest yesterday, but it won't get traction for a while because the pixel has to build data. And I tried it with push notifications on Propeller, but it didn't get any clicks

In terms of adding a push allow button, I would like to get this to consistent profit before adding that variable. I actually have this on my backbutton page but it hasn't done anything yet

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Been following your daily updates on mad society too. In fact, it's the only thing worth reading there right now So thanks for that!

I'm doing lead gen in the US (and bidding retarded high, like 0.65-0.80 on Desktop) so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but some things sound the same.

I've been having the same issue with Mac/Safari as well, and the best I've come up with is just running MacOS and all browsers as a separate camp from Windows. Some days it does amazing, then other days it totally flops. But. Zooming out, it's still in the green overall, so I'm just leaving it until it pisses me off.

Mobile, as you say, is easy to give up on really fast because you get flooded with shit traffic for days... but eventually, your CPC will be almost half of what your desktop is but LP views and LP CTR is roughly the same. Unfortunately, CR is worse so it ends up around the same costs, but there is much more room to scale and spend on mobile, so it may be worth toughing it out a little longer.

I know it feels like you're spinning wheels most of the time and randomly throwing darts some days, but also remember you've hit XXXX profit days too. I still think you can crack it, but getting those -XXX days for days/weeks in a row is fucking depressing.

Sometimes, it's best to stop fucking with it for a few days (bids, OS, creatives) and see what the ad server does with your best camp when you let it run.

Just don't stop. You're FA(s) are keeping me going too

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Creating retargeting campaigns on google and facebook really depends on the offer itself. Like how clean it is.

If you have the respective pixels already in your original campaign, and you have collected enough data in terms of audience size, you might want to give it a shot. Although you might want to use a slightly different funnel to be totally compliant with FB and Google policies.

Push notifications on landers are widely used by some marketers. But it’s not that it’s delivering wonders in terms of results. They do “okay” to some extent, but you have to be careful its not hurting your results while trying to collect subs.

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UPDATE

Well mobile ended up being a real bloodbath. So bad in fact, I don't even feel like looking up the numbers (but trust me, it was bad)

Started to feel discouraged, thinking there was no way I could get anywhere close to where I want to be without having to risk all my savings. But then I started hearing everyone talk about whitelists. So I decided to do a whitelist for my two best campaigns. Both are United States only


***Campaign A is only at $150 profit over 10 and a half days, although this month it's at $267 in the green. Still want to really blow this thing up at some point, but I have to be a bit more conservative about three straight months of only $1k profit

***Campaign B is at $426 profit. All but one of the conversions have come from one site. I was sitting in one of the two top spots the whole time, although today I am nowhere near to be found (even though I have raised my bid to $1.45)


The offer for Campaign A, I have been running internationally as well in one campaign targeting just about every geo out there. Went in and looked at where the conversions were coming from. There were multiple ones from Israel, so I decided to break out the campaign and just target that geo. The result was two conversions in three days with an ROI of 3043%. So I decided to start another one in Japan, which has also gotten conversions. Similar result. Now I'm thinking, I might be on to something here. So I have started campaigns for every geo that has converted. So far, six of them have gotten conversions

Happy to report for the first three and a half days of the month, I am at $1189 profit

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Nice! Beautiful stuff man Keep up the great work!

I like that your breaking out lots of new sub-campaigns too... in my experience that's where the real profits start accumulating where you have like 5+ sub-campaigns going in one niche, as the performance becomes much more stable and its easier to end up in the green overall each day, which also makes it easier to scale upward since the volatility is reduced so much.

Look forward to reading more updates man! Keep up the great work

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Sorry about mobile And the US

But!

Congrats dude! That's awesome that you got an international offer working and can scale out like that.

I did a intl scattershot with the Tinnitus offer in all the English speaking geos (the only ones allowed unfortunately) and got a conversion in NZ, got stoked and opened up a separate camp there... Which did nothing, so I gave up

Keep fucking going! Don't you dare stop now.

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UPDATE:

Since my last update 10 days ago, I am at $1669 profit on $4298 spend in that span

Three days ago, I decided to solely focus on getting conversions from small countries. I feel like it's a niche I have found that has been quite profitable, and I want to milk it for all I can. And since I did that, my profit is $1077


That means expanding to other traffic sources though (because RevC's intl inventory is somewhat limited) so I went to MGID and started campaigns for three geos that have done well for me on RC. I will say, I do find MGID's interface harder to use, and I do not like at all the fact that we can't see the actual sites where the ads are running. There are certain sites on RevC that I blacklist immediately because just by the layout and content of the site, I can tell it will be very difficult to get conversions

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I am going to finish just shy of having my first $10k profit month on native

This follow along by @jack_l helped me SO much: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ing+revcontent


I have probably read it 10 times. I will probably read it another 10

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Holy shit, congrats! Super happy for you

That thread is awesome. Especially the part we he shared his actual widgets.
@jack_l is legend.

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Lol aw shucks gents...





Edit: 10k profit! WOW... Wonderful work on the campaign @sd31677 - fantastic work man!

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For MGID, you may get much better results by setting up more of a “managed” campaign where your account manager sets up the campaign for you. The self serve dashboard is very limited but account managers give your campaign access to white lists and can even optimize the campaign for you if that’s of interest. MGID seems to be willing to manage anyone’s campaigns so you’ll have no issue getting in touch with them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Hey @bhal07 - not to hijack the thread... but have you had success with that with MGID? I got rekt last time I tried them but I did NOT have them manage the camps (they didn't offer either), so curious if you have firsthand experience with them doing so and whether you saw some consistent green as a result? They have so much INTL inventory relative to Revc so it seems like it could be a great resource with the right setup...

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Yeah so I didn't exactly see consistent green BUT I had better results than unmanaged campaigns. With managed, I tried a few campaigns that they were able to approve for their premium inventory, which was around $0.40 CPC. When I tried unmanaged campaigns, I found it impossible to access this premium inventory, maybe because campaigns would get endlessly flooded with cheaper inventory, or possibly even because the campaign may have needed a few tweaks to get approved for their premium inventory. But yeah I haven't had any big wins there yet but I've only tried a few campaigns. I think your right though, it could potentially be a great resource especially for @sd31677 if they can get their campaign approved for that premium inventory.

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Right on... appreciate the info man!

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Hey guys! Please feel free to pm us with all the questions you have about MGID. We'll be happy to guide you through all the process of managed/self managed campaigns. You can also add me on Skype for a faster communication (my id: alla.chernukha)
Regards, MGID

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UPDATE



Profit for July ended at $6276. That's about a $3k drop from June. This can be attributed to having my most profitable June campaigns only make $2k in July, as opposed to $9k the month prior

Did stumble upon a new offer that is really crushing, sort of by accident. An affiliate manager read a post of mine on a Facebook native group, reached out to me, and recommended this offer

For most of July, my profits would peak at 5pm eastern (and often times, around 2pm). In some cases, they would drop by $300 or so after that time. So after doing a deep dive into the numbers at the beginning of this week, I figured it was best to just shut everything off once I hit a good profit number for the day (say $300). Well of course, this week, they have peaked around 10-11pm (and really taken off after 8pm)

Because of that, I am averaging $700 per day in profit this week (although the months always seem to start super strong for me then taper off week 2)

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Day parting can work really well, especially with certain offer types. Just make sure you are making this decision on a solid data sample and the trends are really strong.

I've had such campaigns many times, even though I always try to run 24/7. But in some cases it's not possible to stay profitable all the time... in my case it was mostly due to some strong competitors launching their campaigns just during specific hours, with very high bids that I wasn't able to compete against. In such cases, I simply targeted the hours when their campaigns were paused and collected at least partial profits... so yes, it's a viable strategy in specific situations. Congrats on the profits, $700 per day is not shabby at all! Let's hope it sticks.

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MONTHLY UPDATE

Hit the five figure mark!!!! $10,936 to be exact

After a crazy strong first week (where I made $4k in profit the first 8 days) the rollercoaster went to ludicrous speed. Most days were either at break even or loss, but the days that were profitable... oh were they ever profitable (the best day was $1300 profit, on Friday the 13th no less)


Feeling a bit stuck though, as 90% of these profits came from two offers, on campaigns where it seems I have maxed out the scale. The other offers I have tested have made a small profit, but are a lot harder to convert

(Should probably give leadgen a try, although I am addicted to the $90+ payouts on straight sale)

Can't complain too much though, especially considering where I was last year at this time: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post402550

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Dude! You're killing it! Congrats man!!!

That is so extremely cool...

And if that's only with ecom only that's doubly impressive man... super excited to see how you do with lead-gen!

What would you say was the big things that pushed you up into serious green this month? You start doing anything different or just the compounding of all the hard work leading up to it?

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I had not got any sales or leads in revcontent in past so i left them.

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WEEKEND UPDATE:

Sat Mar 5


Revenue: $1420
Spend: $1103
Profit: $317



Sun Mar 6


Revenue: $1470
Spend: $1339
Profit: $131




After dropping the CPC campaign budget down to $100, I essentially broke even both days. Profit was $24


Crazy thing is, since starting the duplicate campaign at a 10-15 cent lower bid, this campaign is at $263 with 148% ROI and .38% CVR (LP clicks to offer conversion). This duplicate campaign does not have dayparting set up. Does the algorithm give preferential treatment to campaigns that run 24/7?

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Last three days' results:

Revenue: $4172
Spend: $3802
Profit: $370/123 per day


Decided to take the offer I have referred to and try it on push traffic. I actually ran this on there last May and got a conversion at -80 profit

Current results? -$44. Not a big deal on an offer that pays out $110, but two problems. #1 , Propeller Ads rejected the campaign, as they say it violates their rules (I guess something changed in the last 10 months with their policies, as this was the same lander I ran back then) and #2 ... the landing page CTR is atrocious. 1.5%. On Revcontent, it's about 35% (yes, I know there are gurus who say LP CTR means nothing, which makes absolutely zero sense to me)

Are high payout offers ($100 plus) just a no-go on push these days?

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Did Propellerads actually tell you which policy was violated? Maybe a small tweak is all that's required.

LP CTR does not mean nothing - it only means nothing without context provided by other data such as offer CR.

I've seen lots of landers with low CTR outperform ones with high CTR - just because they presell and filter the "right" audiences so that when they reach the offer page, most of them would go on to convert.

On the opposite end of that, there are landers that aim to maximize clicks to the offer page without doing a proper job of preselling - which would result in pathetic CR for the offer.

But yeah if you've been running in the same vertical+platform+geo for a while, you'd have a good idea what a "normal" CTR should look like. But even then, if you decide to innovate and test a significantly different lander, it may still surprise you.


Amy


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums

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Thu Mar 10

Revenue: $1526
Spend: $1228
Profit: $298


All of this profit came from scattershot campaigns targeting Tier 3 countries and getting clicks for less than a penny. In fact, that accounts for my profit for the entire month. Don't get too excited, it's only $532. At this rate, I will be able to pay my mortgage and HOA for the month (barely)

I may regret sharing this tidbit when I wake up tomorrow morning and am no longer the only affiliate running ads in Suriname

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@sd31677

I am running a lot of sweeps on Propeller at the moment (rather unsuccessfully if I say so myself) and I can give some advice about their rejected campaigns process. My experience is limited compared to many others here but here is a few things I have noticed in the data patterns and rejected creatives. Very quickly I have a become an expert in both rejected campaigns and GSB bans, and Propellers answers to me were interesting to say the least.

Launched campaign A and was rejected. Launched campaign B with the same exact campaign setup next to it with same lander and it was approved. For real. When I reached out about this they said...they have grey areas or lines that you cannot cross but those lines can sometimes be interpreted a little differently based on who approved/disapproved it. That's not word for word but it was along those lines. They claimed like buttons that looked "too much" like FB like buttons. What? Person A thought so, but not person B. I would love to submit all my stuff to person B but can't control that unfortunately.

I killed that campaign, relaunched LITERALLY THE SAME CAMPAIGN WITH SAME LINK IN TRACKER again and it was approved and ran just fine. Also about lander CTR, a weird thing I noticed was if the PPC prices are higher than normal at a certain window or time of day, my pages CTRs are weirdly lower too. This could be the case. I can't really tell why exactly, maybe it was a freak accident for me, but in lower cost days my CTRs improved without doing anything special. Just my 2 cents, take it or leave it. Hope any of this helps you.

Good work on your successes. Stay at it.

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Thanks for pointing that out!

That's basically the case with most traffic platforms where manual campaign approval is involved.

Even the same reviewer may approve/reject the exactly same campaign depending on their mood, let alone different reviewers.

Just be careful not to resubmit the exact same rejected campaign too many times - doing so can get your account banned. But resubmitting once or twice should be fine (but best to wait a few hours at least, before resubmitting, so the same reviewer doesn't see it again right away and make the connection). You may just get lucky if it's a borderline case. (Those can end up performing the best!)

But if the same campaign gets rejected more than once, then you'll REALLY need to take a good look at everything and compare with the platform's TOS to see if you've violated a rule.



Amy

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Friday Mar 11


Revenue: $947
Spend: $1312
Profit: -365

Fired up a lead gen campaign in the mortgage vertical on a $40 offer, ran it for two days. Spent $98 with zero conversions. Tough to tell if the offer actually works because the landing page CTR is awful (only 5%). Writing this one off at this point

Ran these campaigns at a budget of $100 per day for four days. The mobile campaign got conversions three of the four days at a total loss of $70. Similar conversion performance on the desktop campaign, but a $64 profit. So I raised the budget to $150, then the three proceeded to tank.

I have some ideas on how to hopefully salvage these (lower bids/whitelist only) but those will have to wait until Monday. I want to try and enjoy my weekend and at least attempt to get my mind off of this for a couple days

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Last six days results. Other than last weekend (the first two days), it seems to be one good day, one bad one:




Since March 12, I have been copying my two most successful campaigns each day, essentially to trick the algorithm into thinking it's a new campaign. Did that help on days where I did really well, or was it just random happenstance that people actually decided to buy that day?

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@sd31677 All your stats images seem really small for some reason. What screenshot software are you using? It seems that a whole lot of white space is included, which makes the stats look small.

I haven't tried this on Native, but I've done this for other traffic types (pop, banner, social) with success. And I know others that have the same experience.

A lot of traffic source algos would give a burst of initial good traffic to "give the new campaign a chance". So by cloning campaigns daily, you'd be benefitting from many bursts of this high-quality traffic, which can be worth the effort.

Someone I know was making a killing by automating this process - until he overdid it and caught the attention of the traffic platform and got his account shut down.

I don't know if this is the case on the platform you're running - but if something's working that's always good news right?



Amy

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I have now been copying these campaigns for 12 days. Here are the results:


Campaign A

$124 profit per day
(Previous 10 days: $75 per day)

Campaign B

$46 per day
(Previous 10 days: $6 per day)

****I am dropping my bid on the widget that is taking up about 60% of the traffic for this campaign (and also accounts for about 50% of the revenue)


Currently facing the challenge of trying new campaigns without cutting too far into my profits. A mentor once suggested that (unless you have a lot of money to burn) to limit your testing budget to 10% of profits. Problem is, when I'm only profiting $150 per day, under this guideline I am only left with $15 per day to test, and that amount will probably get eaten up in 30 minutes. (Keep in mind this is my only source of income)

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Over the last five days, my numbers have dipped yet again. My profit during that span is -123

Part of an overall pattern for 2022. No matter what I do (raise bids, lower bids, duplicate my campaigns, change landers, you name it) I'll have one real solid/very good week, then two to three losing/breakeven ones

Spent the day yesterday writing out my frustrations and fears over this. It actually made me feel a bit better when I woke up this morning

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Interesting - but WHY 10% of profits? What's the justification?

Personally I would do what makes sense for MY particular situation (in this case, yours), instead of just following a number suggested by someone - unless their justification makes sense for your situation.


Try to analyze your stats to look for patterns - compare a typical "good" day to a typical "bad" day - how far into the day do you need to wait before you can tell whether it will be a good or bad day?

For example: Say by 10am local time, a typical good day would normally have a CTR/CR of above x, then going forward just check your campaign at 10am each day and pause the campaign out if the stats don't meet the criteria. Then resume/duplicate the campaign the next day to give it another run. See how that works for you.

In addition: It may be good to test something new. Doing some spying in the wild, talking with other affiliates and AMs - can all provide inspiration.


It's important to let out your emotions instead of burying them (because then they would turn into emotional trauma - which can cause mega problems later on).

You can try to go one step further: Once you're feeling better (after venting), think in a more positive direction, by continuously reaching for better and better-feeling thoughts.

This can do wonders for your energy vibration - to help you attract better circumstances (i.e. law of attraction).



Amy

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MARCH NUMBERS:

Profit: $5168


40% of this profit came during a very strong four day stretch at the end of the month. And this month is off to a good start too


It's a good thing too, because the only "work" I have done over the past week and a half was checking stats and making sure nothing went bonkers in terms of losses (and continue to create duplicates of campaigns on a daily basis, which only takes about 2 minutes). That is because I got word my dad had Stage 4 pancreatic and liver cancer. Made the 400 mile drive north to be with him and help my mom. I am back home now, but there are so many things that still need to be done to assist her

If this had to happen, at least it came at a time when I have income that is (at least at times) hands off. Can't imagine the added stress if I had a performance based job where I had to get time off and lose out on income because I'm not at my desk making calls or whatever

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Sorry to hear about your dad Hopefully there is something the doctors can do!

The numbers are starting to look good, let's hope it stay that way for some time.

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I should have mentioned that he died last Thursday, two days after I got up there to see him one last time. I'm handling it well now, just have a ton of stuff to do to help my mom (who has a lot of troubles of her own)

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I'm so sorry to hear about your dad. If there is anything I can help with please let me know. It is fortunate that your campaigns are at the stage where they're pretty much hands off.

The passing of a loved one is probably the most difficult life events to go through. I'm leaving you my skype via PM - if you feel like chatting please reach out. I'm not a qualified professional, but I have gone through the passing of both parents, so can provide an ear.

Hang in there...


Amy


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums

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So I copied campaigns for 22 consecutive days. After a strong initial surge, the numbers ended up basically the same as the previous 22 days where I wasn't copying, so I am no longer doing that. 22 days should be enough time to make a determination. One issue: it is a logistical nightmare trying to add up the numbers for 22 different campaigns (actually, it was 44, since I did this for two different offers)

^^This has reared its ugly head yet again. After a very good nine day stretch, I am now at breakeven over the last 11. I have cut some widgets that performed well last year but have been dogshit this year, but other than that, just letting things ride at the moment. I hear people say when they take their hands off a campaign, it performs better. Hoping that will be true in my case

I need to put a substantial $$$$ investment into this and try some new campaigns, but honestly the added stress over potentially losing a bunch of money is too much to take at the moment with everything going on with my mom after my dad's passing two weeks ago. Not to mention I won't be able to monitor stuff closely next week when I go back up north 400 miles for his funeral. Hopefully once I return, things will have calmed down a bit on that front

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MONTHLY UPDATE:


Profit: $8637




For the third straight month, a very strong final week (actually, this month, the last two were very good)


Family obligations due to my dad's death have calmed down somewhat in the last week (although plenty more 400 mile trips north are in my future). This has allowed me to actually do some work and not just check campaign stats. Here is what I have done:

-After about $14k in spend and -9% ROI, I decided to make this a whitelist campaign. So far, ROI is 86%. Starting budget was $100, but it's now $200. If this continues to profit, I will raise budget in $100 increments. May also look at turning pacing off


-When I started this campaign, iOS performed much better than Android, so I shut off Android after about $4k spend. This week, I started a campaign for this offer only targeting Droid, and only targeting widgets that converted on that OS. ROI is 55%, so I am adding widgets from the iOS campaign that have two or more conversions


-Also started a CPC campaign for a wrinkle cream product that I have run since July on CPM bidding. Targeting iPhone only right now. So far, it is essentially breakeven

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Congrats! What was the revenue?

If this upwards trend continues, there's a good chance for May to be a 5-figure profit month.

Do you think you could find some time to make a post in either this section:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...nue-Milestones

Or this one?

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...uccess-Stories

I know most people are too humble to report success - but doing so can be SO motivating for other affiliates who are still figuring things out and trying to "make it".

Thanks so much for all your updates! I'm happy for you that the family obligations situation is better now...



Amy

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Revenue was $33,602

And I would be happy to write about my successes in those other sections to motivate other affiliates. I try to be very open about both my successes and failures with other people in this online marketing community

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w00t. Been waiting for this. Congrats on bouncing back.

You deserve it more than anyone for your persistence alone

Now that you have iOS and Android working separately with decent WL have you tried combining them into one camp?

I find that volume seems to be a bit higher when they’re combined for some reason. Also happily revC doesn’t dilute the camps with tons of shitty Android push traffic like Taboola and Outbrain do, so less chance of Android fucking up your iOS traffic.

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Right now, volume is not an issue, plus iPhone still converts better right now (at least on these CPC campaigns)

I've also found that different bids by operating system can be necessary in terms of volume and earnings per click (or per view if bidding CPM.) For instance, there is one giant widget on a campaign I have been running for nearly a year where I can only bid 1.04-1.11 CPM on iOS. Otherwise, it just won't be profitable. However, I have to bid at least 1.30 on Android, or else I won't get any traffic

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MAY 2022 UPDATE

Revenue: $42363
Spend: $38110
Profit: $4253

The nice surge I had in April sadly did not carry over to May

The hourly windows where people actually buy seems to keep getting smaller. Typically, conversions peak around 6-7pm EST, but this month, they peaked at 4pm

So do I go off historical data, or the present (in terms of dayparting)? Very difficult to decide when profits fluctuate so much from week to week and month to month


As for what I focused on in May (other than the neverending guessing game of what to bid to keep steady amounts of traffic coming in but not lose my shirt):

-Started an ecom campaign in the middle of the month. Profit so far is $1197 and 23% ROI. Right now, it's a CPM campaign, since those are the only ones I have been able to get profitable in Tier 1 countries. Problem is, the inventory is so limited, there is no scale

I would move it to CPC, but I am still trying to get another CPC campaign profitable first. I have been running it since early February and seem to be spinning my wheels....


So far, I am at -2% ROI after $25k spend. I am optimizing this thing like crazy. Some examples:

-The usual: adding/split testing new creatives and landers. Splitting landers 50/50% did help some, but the original ad creatives still got the best CTR and ROI. As an aside, what's the point of obsessing over new ads on CPC campaigns anyway? Ad CTR's seem to all be the same from niche to niche (for instance, health=high, leadgen=garbage, at least in my experience) and click prices stay the same

-Targeting iOS only (Android just does not convert well enough on CPC for this campaign). Actually did this back in late February

-As I mentioned in my previous post, I made this campaign a whitelist only, which started out great (86% ROI). Then, I hit a stretch where I didn't get a conversion for a week

-A week ago, I cut states that are -200 in profit, but took the widgets that did perform well in those states and made them their own whitelist campaign

-Stopping traffic on the 12 or so hours each day that just seem to be a graveyard on native, but also, looking at hours where negative ROI was not too bad, then running those as separate campaigns excluding the states that did not perform well during those hours

Since making these adjustments, my numbers are basically in the same place. Hard to quit a breakeven campaign that I have so much data on (with an offer and funnel that has performed well on other campaigns). But how many more optimizations can I really do?

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It's super-annoying when that happens. Gotta ask the obvious: Have you tested all suitable offers you can find or is that the only offer of its kind?


Amy

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I only see one similar offer. Have run it before but it does not perform as well. Doesn't look like anyone else is running that one either

I have done over $350k in revenue on this offer since April of last year so it definitely converts

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OK - thought that would be the case. Wanted to make sure since that would have been the biggest lever to potentially effect the largest improvement.

Was the decline in performance gradual, over weeks/months? If so then it would most likely be either ad fatigue or offer saturation, or both.

Ad fatigue - the solution should be obvious.

Offer saturation - if this is the cause, then continuing to optimize JUST your current traffic could work against you. Perhaps there is traffic that was previously cut from your targeting due to lower performance, that you can target using a lower bid? Perhaps there are native sources you haven't scaled to yet?

It may also be worth it to try decreasing the cost of the traffic you're currently targeting, again e.g. by lowering your bid - especially for traffic segments that have reached saturation.



Amy

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I usually update these on a monthly basis now. but I have noticed whenever I do, things swing the other way for me. Both good and bad. And since the last two days have been wretched, I figured doing an update might help me get back to profitability

Yesterday was the worst day I have ever had. Lost $747. Then today, I lost another $468. Before that, I was averaging $350 per day in profit this month


Optimizing stuff like crazy. Some of it is working, mainly taking widgets that perform poorly in one particular state and moving them to their own campaign (just excluding the poor performing states(s)

I have all these ideas on how I could get really granular and run separate campaigns for particular hours of the day, states, etc based on how they have performed, but my goodness... I would end up with like 50 different campaigns. For one offer. That is insane

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Two new milestones to report (sadly, neither are positive):

Yesterday, I posted my biggest loss ever in a day: $880

Then today, I woke up to a $600 loss

I did a deep dive, and found the days where I am at a $200 loss in the morning... the performance will just not recover. So when that happens, I guess it's time to start killing everything and just write that day off as a failure

Easier said than done. This will be a nightmare to deal with, considering all the dayparting automation rules I will have to kill and then resume. But such is life of a solo entrepreneur I guess

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Recently on the forum, I read this thread carefully and I see myself a lot in what you write.

The mistake I made was to test many campaigns with the profits derived from my most profitable campaign.

Then when the profitable campaign stopped working, I found myself losing a lot of money with little savings aside.

The temptation to test is crazy

I mainly promote e-comm in Italy and have had great months from November 2021 until March 2022, Taboola + Mgid.

Now everything has dropped, and I am trying a seasonal product with poor results for now.

I also duplicate and optimize madly!! I even have a campaign active only from 10am to noon, with only 15-20 active widgets on MGID.

The desktop is best, but as you said a few posts ago, to seriously scale you need the mobile.

One thing I notice is that when profitable campaigns start to drop, blacklisting en masse can initially lead to an excellent ROI but at some point everything crashes, as if the network algorithm were to play against.

Native networks don't like over-optimized campaigns, that's now very clear.

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