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Becoming A Native native [Follow Along] (36)

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Hey STM

I'm back and ready to give native a try.

I had some good success with push notification traffic in the past, and still am running some decent volume but I just got tired of trying to scale with push, it's hard to maintain 4 figs per day in spend, not to mention having to spend it across multiple traffic sources which is very annoying/time consuming to manage.

Thus I wanted to try native due to the large potential for scale, not to mention the overall higher quality of traffic since with push you can only get so far.

I'm starting this FA to hopefully get some feedback and share my lessons, I've had great success with my previous 2 FAs in the past.

Plan:

• TS: Taboola
• Vertical: eCom
• Geo: US + other T1's
• 7 day goal: Learn native best practices, the optimizer, etc
• 30 day goal: Get to $1k per day in revenue with native

I'm excited to give it a try and would be happy to connect with anyone who has some native experience, feel free to give me a DM

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Excited to see how this turns out!

Do you have a product in mind or niche?

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Yo AJ, I will follow the FA and I am confident that you will make it

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Will be following. Good luck buddy

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Good stuff bru excited for follow-along!

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Following
Good luck!

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I’m mentally preparing myself to hate you when you accomplish both of your goals within those time frames

I’m sure you’ll quickly crush it, as usual.

Good luck!

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Yep, going to focus on eCom. Currently looking at just super generic offers such as portable ACs, gadgets and stuff like that. I think that's the only type of eCom offer that seems to be working well on native but have no successes or data to back that up, just spying

From your lips to gods ears, I won't let you down @twinaxe

Thanks, appreciate it

Oh man, that GOAT himself - can't tell you how many time I've read your posts over the past year.

Thanks, appreciate it

Haha, they are lofty goals but you never really achieve more than you set out to...is it to late to change it to making 100K per day?

Day 0-2 Update:
Completed:

• Joined some great eCom networks such as Verve, Clickbooth, clickbank
• Signed up to Taboola, OB, RevC
• Signed up to Optimizer, watched some tuts but waiting on getting api-keys so I can plug them in
• Spied a bunch - seems like Verve offers are simply crushing it. I'm using Anstrex - anyone have another spytool recommendation?

Currently Doing:

• Setup my tracker (Binom), honestly not sure if it's the best tracker for native, seems that Taboola CPC's are encrypted in the URL token and idk how to figure it out, but I think TheOptimizer will be able to sum from everything and figure it out for me, so hopefully it should be ok. Makes me wonder why TheOptimizer don't offer a tracker themselves
• Got really stuck and started to over complicate shit so decided that getting a camp up asap to break procrastination is the way to go, nothing like losing money to kick your ass into action
• Launched a simple knife offer, you know the one lol, it's everywhere

Campaign is active for last 24 hours but only 13 impressions and 0 clicks delivered, lol!

Bid is 11c per click for Norway, idk how much to bid but I'm guessing mine is piss poor but man 13 impressions is hilariously bad (campaign and ads both show as active too)

Also not used to not having a rep to talk to, my questions have no where but the abyss to go, also I asked for the client id/secret for TheOptimizer setup like 24 hours ago, how long does Taboola take to respond?

Can someone put me in touch with a Taboola rep? Happy to drop $5-10k as a deposit if I can get one immediately, also would also be a good mental commitment

Next steps:

• Launch more campaigns, thinking about some portable AC offers and mosquito offers too which seem to be working well. Not sure how hard those are to crack in US but worth trying.
• Figure out if my setup in correct
• Get those damn API keys

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Can't wait to see your progress.

To gain access to Taboola's API and be able to see costs and use TheOptimizer, you'll need that secret ID and key. Apparently they don't give that out right away unless you hit enough spend or get a rep or someone on the inside to ok it for you.

I've definitely seen a lot of both on Taboola, portable AC and the mosquito repelling device. I haven't paid attention to the advertiser for it, so I can't say if it is a bunch of affiliates trying various offers, or a handful of people who are scaling them.

Edited: Sent you a DM about a rep.

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Anstrex works. Adplexity is better. Also asking your Aff Network AM what's working will usually get you a lander or two.

Binom is not exactly suited to Natives Everyone and their dog in Native is using Voluum (or Thrive for jack_l). Only idiots like me use Binom for Natives.

I don't think any Native network sends cost tracking via url tokens. Most do cost stracking via API. Optimizer of course is smart enough to do that. Only recently, Voluum can kinda-sorta do it. Binom is doable, you'll just have to manually set the CPC when you setup the camp. And then update costs once or twice a day to keep it consistent with the TS costs.

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Hey all, just bringing this FA alive again, got side tracked with a push campaign that started pumping and then got frustrated with how slow Taboola is.

So I've switched to RevContent for now, will be launching some campaigns on Taboola alongside RevContent but I'm happy to keep both running.

Anyway I started running a few offers the past couple days and here are today's stats:

My Current strategy

• Launch RevContent campaign with $100 daily budget and if I get a conversion I increase the budget to $300 per day with CPC being the default of 35c for USA
• Getting the hang of the Optimizer, I've got it pausing placements/creatives which have $50 in spend with no conversions
• I've set the RevContent daily budget to $300 / $300 / $100 for the 3 campaigns above, but it seems to reach just short of that. I've got Pacing turned "On", not sure if I should keep it on, or turn it off
• I think the most I should spend is 5X CPA, if no conversions I kill the campaign
• Trying to launch 1 campaign per day with products that are in different niches so that I can get a wider exposure

I really have no idea what I'm doing, the traffic is expensive and coming in slow - big difference to what I'm used to but I'll get used to it I guess.

Next steps:

• Keep launching 1 new campaign per day in a different niche
• Keep current campaigns running
• Learn more about which Optimizer rules I should use, heard people cut based on lp ctr% per widget which I might try

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Brilliant stuff man! Great work!

Are you using your own presell advertorial? Or direct linking to a Verve (or similar) one?

If your own then I would definitely use TheOptimizer to block based on lp ctr too...

I just tried my first Revc camp in a few months this week, and got blown away by 0% lp ctr widgets... not sure if I had bad luck or what but yeah, looks like there's definitely some for TheOptimizer to take out

But yeah really eager to see the follow-along progress man! Great work!

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If possible, increase your daily budget.. but don't change it too fast otherwise the algo might go full retarded and you know what they say...

Also, I'd recommend learning the traffic source without the Optimizer first.. and then once you understand how things actually work then set up the Optimizer.

Also, I'd suggest trying higher paying offers. The higher the CPA the better.. the faster you get your money back. I'm not talking about crypto offers, but a nice SS would work well.

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Regarding pacing, I have not found it to be helpful (and sometimes, it has drained my budget in 10 hours)

There is a thread on it here: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ghlight=pacing

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I feel full retard right now, what is SS?

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The straight sale, kind sir.

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Todays stats:

• Still keeping all 3 offers running, plus just launched another one today but waiting for revcontent approval
• Budget is now $600 / $300 / $100 per day for the above 3 camps
• Planning on launching a Taboola offer today or tomorrow. Despite how annoying Taboola, the volume and quality there is undeniable.
• Stats WERE better for 1st camp but foxnews.com straight up sent me like $70 worth of traffic in 10 mins, and only 2 of the 200 or so clicks actually clicked to my offer page - total bot/junk traffic just raiding me like, native is a scary place. Luckily optimizer caught and neutralized that shit or else who knows - might've spent couple $100 more

Hey Jack, I'm hosting my own - want lp ctr% stats and the ability to start split-testing lps once more traffic starts coming in so they can be stat sig.

What rule would you create for the lp ctr%?

Not sure what params to give it since I've got some conversions from 10-15% Lp ctr placements

Hey diplomat, are you referring to my $100 daily test budget? I thought it would be good to spend $100 per day over a couple days but if it's not optimal due to algo reasons what would you recommend as a test budget?

Also, I'm increasing the budget from $100 to $300 once I see a conversion, and then by +$100 per day if I think I can make the campaign profitable. How quickly should I raise it?

Also re: Optimizer - totally agreed, I'm just using it as a bot/junk traffic failsafe with only a couple rules to put the brakes of shit that starts burning cash. I'm manually looking at stats, nothing beats it in terms of learning for sure.

Yep all the offers are straight sale, not interested in leadgen or arb offers at all. I'm here to sell some shit

Hey appreciate the link, are you saying having pacing turned ON is not helpful? or would you suggest leaving it turned ON?

Straight Sale, aka the most gangster form of conversion.

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Yes. With such a high CPA, a $100 per day budget can be a bit too tiny. When we are running trials ($32-55) then we set the daily budget to $250 at first. When we are testing ss then we use $250-500 to start with.

This gives some room and allows you to get some traffic and since your payout is reasonably big, it lets you to recover yourself fairly quickly if something doesn't convert in the beginning.

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Thanks, that makes a ton of sense

Do you keep running at $250-$500 per day for a week and then asses or do you cut based on some KPI (i.e. no sales first day, cut campaign)?

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We don’t kill campaigns within one day.. it’s just not enough time because it depends on many things. For example when the campaign was launched, which day of the week it is (some week days work better than others) and how much traffic it gets from different sources and so on. We usually run it for few days. If the spend is too big and no conversions then we kill the campaign but that’s why we have the $250 daily budget. I think it’s crucial to let it run a bit otherwise you just don’t have enough traffic.

The daily budget depends on the cpa but it’s not less than $250. For me.. this amount is quite reasonable to run through the day and gather a bunch of data. The more conversions and clicks there are the better.

Sometimes it won’t even spend the daily budget so you just need to give it some time and see how it goes.

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Yeah I get you, thanks - makes a ton of sense.

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Daily Stats:

• First campaign ($750 budget) is still doing decently, but trying to get spend up - I think I know a couple tweaks I could make to try and squeeze more out of it, basically playing around images for more traffic and the prelander for a higher lp CTR
• Middle 2 campaigns still losing money ($300 and $100 daily budgets respectively), it seems like RevC doesn't even want to run them much. I'll keep them running but it's a shame their budget isn't even being spent
• Last one, I launched using @diplomat 's budget range of $250, so far it's on track to spend that much which is pretty awesome. Also got 3 conversions so maybe RevC likes it when you start with a bit higher budget? Not going to read too much into it since not stat sig

Also, this marks around a week (give or take) since I started natives overall, so here's a day-by-day summary:


2k spent, 2k earnt so about breakeven.

Next steps:

• Just trying to get that spend up on the first campaign, barely spending like $300 with a $750 budget so I'll need to play around with it.
• Let middle 2 camps run 1 more day, else I'll just cut them
• Bump last camp from $250 to $400 daily budget
• Launch a 3 Taboola campaigns over the weekend

Have a nice weekend

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Great work man! Hoping you have a very green July

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Daily Stats:

• Top camp still pull conversions, oldest running campaign
• Middle 2 have been cut, no conversions but more importantly the algo wasn't giving them much or any spend - no point leaking $30 bucks a day since only hope would be a lottery conversion now and again
• Last campaign, spend has gone down, despite jacking up budget to $400 and again no conversions

Interesting trend I noticed:

• Launch campaign
• Get 2-3 conversions in the first couple hrs, campaign spends entire daily budget ($100 or $250) that day for instant green
• I increase budgets from $100 to $300
• Next day it only spends like $70-$90 with on conversions
• Sub-sequent days it pisses a measly $30-$40 in spend with no conversions and continues to do so for up to a week (at which point I cut it)

Only campaign that has been an exception to the rule has been my first campaign, which has followed the same launch structure but again only spends like $100-$150 per day now, despite setting a $800 budget.

I've done it 3 times in a row now, just not sure what mistake I'm making, both to get more spend the 2nd day, and for no additional conversions.


Thanks bud, but very little chance of that haha. No where near enough experience or spend on native to have figured out what I'm doing just yet.

After $2.5k spend on push I got a basic idea of how it worked, after like $25k spend I got some level of competence.

After $2.5k spend on native, still no real clue. Estimating at least $25K in spend to get a basic idea of how it works and probably $250k to get some level of competence.

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Instead of increasing the budget to $400 you should have run it at $250 for few days to get more conversions. It’s like with scaling.. you can’t scale something that you don’t know converts well. The more data you have the better. Remember you want to be in green not red.

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Ya'll are both high-rollers compared to me, I try to stay below $100/day unless I'm in the green lol. But then again I mostly do low payout stuff so its a little easier to test cheaply in such cases.

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Dude that makes a ton of sense, guess native you gotta take things slow and steady. I'll follow that from now on.

Haha, honestly you're not the first person to tell me I'm being to reckless in native. I know a few people who follow that strategy who are quite successful, I think Malan came up with it in his letters.


I'll stick being slower and more deliberate, no point trying to speed run $25k spend @ any roi%

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Weekly Update:

• True ROI is a bit lower due to refunds, can take away like $100 or so revenue from the top campaign.
• Bidding higher but getting half as many clicks and a lower ROI, I think may have screwed up this campaign - considering restarting it again
• Testing a bunch of offers, getting 1 conversion and then losing money for the next 3-4 days is a recurring theme it seems for all offers other than my initial

Rough week, but largely due to my own inexperience with native

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If losing $500 last week wasn't enough

Here is my losing $500 before waking up



Good morning all

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Eck... I hear ya man... nothing worse than waking up and seeing red everywhere :/

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This is the reason why you stick with reasonable daily budgets until you know exactly how your offer performs. Sometimes it can take more time.. sometimes less. The goal is to stay in green and not worry about the revenue that much.

Also, it's very unfortunate, but such days happen. Ideally, you want to have as small number of campaigns as possible to prevent very crazy losses. For example.. a few months ago, we were running like ~18+ camps at a time.. each of them minimum $250 a day and I think the largest campaigns had $1000 daily budget.. and then we had "that" day. You can imagine how quickly I woke up when I first got behind my PC in the morning.

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I agree on being conservative with the budget 100%. Re: number of campaigns, I actually like running lots of different ones at lower volumes vs a few big ones at high volumes, as it averages the performance out more since there's so many of them.

Although I think you were talking about new, unproven campaigns so yeah, agreed - I prefer not to test too much stuff out at once either as it opens you up to some crazy big losses if everything goes south all at once. Have had the exact same experience you mentioned too

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Absolutely! When testing, it makes sense to be a bit more conservative because if, for some reason, you experience a "bad" day for most of the campaigns then it can get very ugly especially if you are not able to react on time.

About proven offers, we run a fair number of them as well and it's totally fine, as you said, losses and wins "usually" cancel each other out and since they are proven camps, they probably end up in green anyway.

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I did end up getting 40+ conversions prior to this, so around 2K worth of data - perhaps not enough. I'm just not sure what kind of metrics I should be optimizing/scaling around. The OP is around $50, with up to $100 in upsells so I set budgets to 10X PO ($500)

That's an interesting strategy, I heard it was better to group lots one campaigns into one as traffic sources like it when you're bulk buying traffic (rewarded with a lower effective bid required).

But perhaps not for RevContent

How long do you test for, how much data do you wait for until you try to scale up budgets?

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Actually Revcontent is maybe the one network I wouldn't do this with, as it doesn't use infinite scroll widgets so your campaigns will compete with one another. Plus they don't have that much volume so hard to really break it up into multiple camps anyway.

But if you're targeting CA Life Insurance on Taboola as a total hypothetical, you could do CA Desktop, CA Mobile, CA Tablet, CA All Devices High Bid, Canada All Devices Low bid, Canada All Devices aggressive ads, Canada All Devices non-aggressive ads, etc. That would be once your profitable though for the sake of scaling, not in the testing phase.

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Hmm.. that's a quite fair amount of data and you should be able to make some decisions based on it. It's difficult to answer this because it depends on how green your camps were and how many sales you get per day etc. Such red days can happen from time to time and it doesn't mean that your campaign is bad or offer is bad.. sometimes you just get tons of trash traffic and then it bounces back the next day. Without seeing actual data, it's quite difficult to answer this.


Like with my previous answer.. the answer is "it depends". I try to run at least 3-4 days and then start making decisions if there is enough traffic and conversions (this depends on the CPA). 3-4 days because then we can see if we were just lucky and or the network was generous or the offer actually converts well. Ideally, you want to run the whole week to see what's up because people behave differently during the weekend. There's no rush to increase budgets. If I can see that there's a specific domain that converts really well then I'd increase its bid after few days.

Sometimes we start scaling a campaign that's not even green yet.. but then we will do some really heavy placement blocking. That can happen when we don't have a proper whitelist yet or the red is 1-2 conversions.

With more experience.. you will start getting that "gut feeling" that will tell you what to do. Start slow and test a bit.. change your domain bids a bit or increase your budget by $100 or so.. don't go from $250 to $500 because it can confuse the algo (I guess it depends on the platform). The more you test the better. Native can be a bit expensive, but at the end it's worth it just because of the scale.



That's what I had to spend before I was able to even understand what the hell I am doing (I chose rough estimates).

So all I can suggest you is to try out things and don't be too afraid. Don't go crazy.. try things out responsibly because at the end of the day you want to be in green. Yes, larger revenue looks real nice.. but if you are not making any profit then it's not worth it.

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