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Turtle_Hammer's Wild*West*Follow Along Contest - Fortune Cookie (45)


07-13-2012 03:45 AM #1 turtle_hammer (Member)
Turtle_Hammer's Wild*West*Follow Along Contest - Fortune Cookie

Offer: iFortune
Country: Canada
Payout: $11.25 / Lead
Converts: When the user subscribes to the monthly service.
Restrictions: Rogers - no wifi. iPhone & Android only.



My Goal For This Campaign:

I want to have my first ever profitable-for-more-than-a-day campaign in affiliate marketing. I've been playing around for the past 2 years jumping from one gold rush to the next without really stopping, learning, thinking, and acting. Time to stop that shit! I want to make at least $100/day and have enough of a spend with JumpTap to have a rep blacklist pubs/sites for me. Future Campaigns should be easier after jumping that hurdle with JT



Why Did I Choose This Offer?

It has a universal appeal and therefore it must be scalable. Although I haven't come across an ad network that specializes in Canadian traffic, most of them have got to have at least some.

Traffic Sources I Will Be Using:

Jumptap banners and LeadBolt textads at first. Then, after testing banner creatives on JT, I will port them over to Mojiva and LeadBolt. Then... maybe others?

Bidding Strategy:

I will start at the lowest bid possible for each traffic source. After I gauge the traffic, I will slowly increase by a few cents at a time.

Budget:

I'm going to allocate $40 per day per campaign (Roughly 3-4x the offer payout).

How Will I Be Tracking This Offer?

I won't be using any 3rd party tracking platform in an attempt to lose as few clicks as possible - the simpler the path the better my tracking should be, right? Instead, I will adding a subid to the end of my aff link in the form of:

&subid=Affiliate Network~Traffic Source~Country~Campaign Name~Handset*Operator~Publisher~Site~Keyword~Times tamp~Ad

The idea is that no matter what mobile traffic source I use, the appended subid will be the same format. This way, I can plug it into a pivot table and see how the data connects across different networks (Thank you Tom for your pivot table tutorials) Some traffic sources, like LeadBolt and Mojiva don't have tokens for all of these, so I'll have to add those manually and split-test by creating multiple campaigns accordingly.

Sometimes the tokens don't work (cough….Airpush….cough) but fortunately, the information seems to naturally get to Neverblue's tracking system anyway.

Tokens For Each Network:

JumpTap



LeadBolt



Mojiva



TIP: I created a sheet in excel that will dynamically create my tracking URLs (for each ad network) for me which makes things a lot easier! Inversion has a video explaining how to make links quickly for facebook and I just used his method. Thanks man

Angles and Creatives:

My main focus is just to get the users' attention, so I am going with 3 angles that I think have a universal appeal: Shock value of bad luck, celebrities, and the opposite sex. As far as actually trying to convince someone that they need to sign up….that's where I'm stuck. Hopefully this thread will help me come up with a landing page idea







Text Ads for LeadBolt:

Daily Fortune

Want to See Your Daily Fortune?
Will you find love, money, or adventure? Click here now!

1 Trick to a Fortunate Day
Click here to see what your day has in store for you!

Warning: Spoiler Alert!
Want to know what will happen today? Click here now for your daily fortune!

Love

Will You Meet Your Next Lover Today?
Click here now to see your hot daily fortune!

Will Your Next Relationship Start Today?
Click here now and see your daily love fortune!

Warning: Love & Sex Spoiler Alert!
Want to know if romance is in the air today? Click here and see your daily fortune!

Curiosity

What if You Could See the Future?
Click here now and see what your day has in store for you!

Do You Want to Know What Will happen?
Click here now to find out what's going to happen today!

See the Future, Right Now!
Click Here Now!

Campaign Creation Guide:

JumpTap

Devices to Target: Android phones (no tablets)
Location: Canada
Carrier: Rogers
Starting Bid: $.10
Websites v Apps: Web only (I've read that this traffic converts better. Would like to split-test at some point)
Categories: All categories, no RON, no keywords





Mojiva:

I'm going to wait and see some JumpTap results before I put ads up on Mojiva. I feel like if I can see which ads are successful on JT, I can just port those over to Mojiva. (Their interface is clunky and it will be expensive to test all of those ads on both networks) So I'll update this section as I post some ads.

Also, I will be testing Web traffic, as they have much more web volume than app.

Mobile Web v mobile applications:*82:18 (August 2010).

LeadBolt:

For banner ads, I'm going to wait on some JT results, but I will put up those text ads for now.









In JumpTap, I'm testing Web traffic only. However, LeadBolt appears to have much more App traffic, so I'm leaving that one on.

Mobile Web v mobile applications: 5:95
http://www.mobithinking.com/mobile-a...blind#leadbolt


What I Don't know and Will Hopefully Learn:

-When bidding CPC, what exactly is the benefit of having a high CTR? Do higher performing ads get prioritized?
-How to optimize and organize campaigns properly
-Whether or not these tracking tokens will work.
-How high I will have to bid on these networks to get decent traffic
-Most importantly, why the hell would anyone actually pay $9.99 / mo to get a daily fortune?

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!


07-13-2012 03:47 AM #2 turtle_hammer (Member)

Day 1

Traffic Source: LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/12/12
Spent: $3.80
Revenue: $11.25
P/L: $7.45
ROI: 96%

It's interesting to note that I sent hundreds of clicks to AirPush running similar ads (text / push) and the same offer and received no conversions.

Things to note about LeadBolt, straight from the mouth of my rep:

"Targeting devices can result in a more refined allocation of impressions based on the list of devices we have available. It restricts your campaign to only receive impressions from devices selected on the list and not from unidentified devices, comprising a significant percentage of the overall traffic. I encourage you to select All when it comes to device targeting to because we have very little iPad and iPod traffic."

This tells me that with my iPhone campaign, I should not specifically restrict it to iPhones. There could be tons of iPhones I'm missing out on along with a negligible amount of iPad and iPod traffic. Worth a split-test.

Also worth noting, regarding Androids:

"Text ads are served as default banners and push notifications, more so the latter, only when targeting android."

This tells me not to expect as high of a CTR as I would get with AirPush (~50 - 60% CTR).

JT ads have not been approved at this point yet...


07-13-2012 03:58 AM #3 Mr Green (Administrator)

This offer is a nice one. It actually looks a lot nicer when you view from a phone. Why do the hell do people pay $9.99, I don't have a clue? But there is a reason why these products exist as well as real fortune tellers!

Once you find which set of ads work, I would recommend testing lander that will bridge the gap from your creatives to the offer page.

Good luck sir!


07-13-2012 04:34 AM #4 turtle_hammer (Member)

Thanks for the advice! Do you think that Beyond Hosting's Hybrid with CPVlab is good enough to host mobile landers?


07-13-2012 04:49 AM #5 Hannah (Member)

This is awesome man, I'm really looking forward to seeing your results. I don't know much about mobile so I can't offer any advice, but so far what you've got looks really solid, I hope it pays off for you.


07-13-2012 07:44 AM #6 andy_d (Veteran Member)

Was going to test this out myself, I've tried Direct Linking it in the past on AirPush without much luck.

I hope you see better results mate!

Looking forward to it.


07-13-2012 10:24 AM #7 maynzie (Moderator)

Wowwww phat write up bro, very detailed and boom looking forward to this one, As Lorenzo said this office works mate so best of luck!


07-13-2012 10:47 AM #8 kokofai ()

Argh man I'm doing this on my 2nd follow along lol... Already done 60% of work! Shit should I still focus on this offer since someone is already doing it?

But I know this offer converts man!


07-13-2012 11:01 AM #9 maynzie (Moderator)

Argh man I'm doing this on my 2nd follow along lol... Already done 60% of work! Shit should I still focus on this offer since someone is already doing it?
Get on it Koko!


07-13-2012 11:01 AM #10 maynzie (Moderator)

Argh man I'm doing this on my 2nd follow along lol... Already done 60% of work! Shit should I still focus on this offer since someone is already doing it?
Get on it Koko!


07-13-2012 05:17 PM #11 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by Hannah View Post
This is awesome man, I'm really looking forward to seeing your results. I don't know much about mobile so I can't offer any advice, but so far what you've got looks really solid, I hope it pays off for you.
Thanks Hannah, I'm watching yours also. I don't know anything about sitescout so you're my first lesson good luck

Quote Originally Posted by andy_d View Post
Was going to test this out myself, I've tried Direct Linking it in the past on AirPush without much luck.

I hope you see better results mate!

Looking forward to it.
Thanks man. I was doing the same thing on airpush and probably got 500 clicks or so with no conversions. Then I plug the same text ads into LeadBolt, and BAM, one quick conversion. Strange

Quote Originally Posted by maynzie View Post
Wowwww phat write up bro, very detailed and boom looking forward to this one, As Lorenzo said this office works mate so best of luck!
Thanks man, I hope I can crack it with everyone's help

Quote Originally Posted by kokofai View Post
Argh man I'm doing this on my 2nd follow along lol... Already done 60% of work! Shit should I still focus on this offer since someone is already doing it?

But I know this offer converts man!
Haha, I was working on Partner Locator also right before I saw your follow-along! Get out of my head! We can both do it and learn from eachother.


07-13-2012 11:52 PM #12 turtle_hammer (Member)

Is there anyone here with LeadBolt experience that knows how to track publishers or sites properly? I was using [SECRET_KEY] but just found out that it's not a unique pub ID like I thought. I know that when you're sending push notifications, it might not even work like that.. (Is there a way to control push placements in a similar way that you can with sites and pubs?)


07-13-2012 11:56 PM #13 abcd (AMC Alumnus)

Quote Originally Posted by turtle_hammer View Post
Is there anyone here with LeadBolt experience that knows how to track publishers or sites properly? I was using [SECRET_KEY] but just found out that it's not a unique pub ID like I thought. I know that when you're sending push notifications, it might not even work like that.. (Is there a way to control push placements in a similar way that you can with sites and pubs?)
According to my rep you can't track/block publishers/sites at Leadbolt.


07-14-2012 08:23 AM #14 kokofai ()

Yes that is not possible on Leadbolt. Too bad man.


07-14-2012 05:31 PM #15 turtle_hammer (Member)

Day 2

Traffic Source: LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/13/12
Spent: $42.60
Revenue: $56.25
P/L: $13.65
ROI: 32%

Traffic Source: JumpTap
Stats Date: 7/13/12
Spent: $.05
Revenue: $0.0
P/L: $.05
ROI: 100%



So... it looks like I need to increase my JT bidding. iPhone is at .05 while Android is at .16. I'll give them a .05 bump and see what happens.



On the bright side, I'm profiting with my LeadBolt text ads. However, I don't have enough data yet to start culling bad ads and to optimize (although I have noticed a very small trend. too soon to know though). Can't track pubs or sites, so it looks like all I can do, after some more conversions, is drop the bad ads while keeping the good, and start experimenting with different adcopy.

Note also, that $.25 is not enough of a bid to get iPhone text ad traffic (Which are all banners since iPhones don't have push notifications). This seems kind of high for me, but I do want to spend at least a little to see how it converts, so I'm going to go higher.

I haven't seen any traffic yet for banners on JT, but I do plan on making some based on these text ads, at least for leadbolt. I also need to learn how to make a basic mobile lander with DreamWeaver.

Anyone have any advice when it comes to mobile landers? Particularly, what I want to learn is:

1) What are the main differences between making a mobile vs desktop lander?
2) How can I make it auto-resize?
3) What is the best way to host and track them without using a 3rd party tracker? I have CPVlab & Beyond Hosting's Hybrid VPS, and I know that would be very easy to set one up, but I might also experience some click-loss.

Thanks


07-14-2012 05:36 PM #16 turtle_hammer (Member)

Also, when creating a LeadBolt text ad:



What is the different between "Ad Subtitle" and "Ad Description"? The bottom animated preview, which doesn't update as you type, is a little confusing.


07-14-2012 06:24 PM #17 wyffgoal (Member)

^ ^ ^ I've just started cracking on Leadbolt, would like to know this too. Thanks.

Hope to see you end this with awesome results! Good work buddy!


07-14-2012 06:58 PM #18 fakeid (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by turtle_hammer View Post
Also, when creating a LeadBolt text ad:



What is the different between "Ad Subtitle" and "Ad Description"? The bottom animated preview, which doesn't update as you type, is a little confusing.
Not totally sure about this, but maybe subtitle is shown when the ad loads and description is shown when you tap the ad, then you have to tap again to go to the LP. Like them iAd units I have been seeing on iPhone apps.


07-15-2012 03:36 AM #19 andy_d (Veteran Member)

For mobile landers, lightest weight possible is best. Also, I base all my landers off this now: http://html5boilerplate.com/mobile

You can strip some of that stuff out and use the skeleton to get yourself started.

Just be aware of widths and what not. Try testing on http://mobilewebviewer.interactivetribe.com/ for appearance and http://pingdom.com for speed.

Lastly, always test on a phone and make sure your tracking links work.


07-16-2012 06:18 AM #20 agent_black (Member)

Cheers mate!!! Am running the same offer with airpush alone right now. Hope this will turn in to profitable one for you !!!


07-16-2012 06:04 PM #21 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by agent_black View Post
Cheers mate!!! Am running the same offer with airpush alone right now. Hope this will turn in to profitable one for you !!!
Thanks! I hope you have better luck than I did on AirPush. I was direct linking, sent hundreds of clicks with no conversions. Also, for the first 2 days, CTR was up to 60%, then it went down to around 5% for the next few days. The only reason I can think of was that my demo had already seen the ads. Anyway, good luck


07-16-2012 06:45 PM #22 turtle_hammer (Member)

Day 3

Traffic Source: LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/14/12
Spent: $38.60
Revenue: $11.25
P/L: $27.35
ROI: 71%

Traffic Source: JumpTap
Stats Date: 7/14/12
Spent: $.22
Revenue: $0
P/L: $.22
ROI: 0%

Day 4

Traffic Source: LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/15/12
Spent: $17.10
Revenue: $0
P/L: $17.10
ROI: 0%

Traffic Source: JumpTap
Stats Date: 7/15/12
Spent: $.48
Revenue: $0
P/L: $.48
ROI: 0%

So, the last 2 days have gone from profit to nothing This has all been just the LeadBolt text ads so far. My CTR has gone up for the most part, but impressions and CV have gone down. Maybe it's the days of the week?

I feel like I've been waiting too long for JT impressions to come in to test these banners. I've been slowly raising the bids and I'm still barely getting impressions. The Android campaign is at .31 and the iPhone campaign is at .16, and iPhone is getting twice the impressions. It's getting kind of pricey so I think I'm going to throw these up on a different traffic source.

Campaign Creation: Adfonic

All of my targeting is the same so I won't talk too much about that. However, I did learn that Adfonic has gender and age targeting, which will be great for dating campaigns.



What I've Learned Today:

I have way too many ads to split test. I should have started with the advertiser's banners as on angle, then two more angles with 2 or 3 banners per angle. (For Adfonic, I'm cutting back the ads I'm testing)


07-16-2012 10:54 PM #23 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by andy_d View Post
For mobile landers, lightest weight possible is best. Also, I base all my landers off this now: http://html5boilerplate.com/mobile

You can strip some of that stuff out and use the skeleton to get yourself started.

Just be aware of widths and what not. Try testing on http://mobilewebviewer.interactivetribe.com/ for appearance and http://pingdom.com for speed.

Lastly, always test on a phone and make sure your tracking links work.
Thanks, BoilerPlate is already awesome. It's pretty much already done for you

Here's a site that I found that helps explain a little more about what to think about when creating a mobile lander.


07-17-2012 06:46 PM #24 turtle_hammer (Member)

Day 5

Traffic Source: LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/16/12
Spent: $15.50
Revenue: $0
P/L: $15.50
ROI: 0%

Day 6

Traffic Source: JumpTap
Stats Date: 7/16/12
Spent: $4.47
Revenue: $11.25
P/L: $6.78
ROI: 52%

What I've learned so far and today's plans:

The offer converts and I have a vague idea as to why. I have a very small amount of data that tells me what kind of copy works best and because of that I've got some good ideas for new angles. This is all based on text adcopy, which I can convert to banners.

The banners I made above haven't performed great on JT. The highest I saw was .4% CTR. I think the "bad luck" and "celebrity" themes could work, but they need to be more shocking! Some pics of VERY bad luck and more current popular celebrities.

As far as banners go, I am going to concentrate more on creatives that are more relevant to what the offer is selling. There's too much of a disconnect right now and they aren't mentally preparing the user for what the offer page is asking for at the end. So... next step:

Add a couple of ad networks to the mix along with a new batch of creatives and a couple of LPs to help transition mentally from ad to selling point. For a mobile offer, the payout is pretty high, so I know that even raising the conversion rate JUST A LITTLE could turn this into a monster and allow me to bid as high as needed on any network

Will update later tonight


07-17-2012 08:03 PM #25 inversion (Member)

I tried this offer on AirPush, but never got it approved. (Lame stated reason - "The T&C page is hard to read on a mobile phone." Yeah, right.)

I ran some Tapit tests, but nothing that stuck.

Hope you nail it!!


07-17-2012 08:04 PM #26 dario (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by turtle_hammer View Post
Here's a site that I found that helps explain a little more about what to think about when creating a mobile lander.

Probably just a false positive from avast
anyway this is what i get loading that URL


07-17-2012 11:01 PM #27 turtle_hammer (Member)

@Dario Yeah weird, it doesn't seem like a malicious site at all. But who knows?


07-18-2012 01:00 AM #28 inversion (Member)

Just noticed in your LeadBolt setup, you combined both App and Web traffic. There can be advantages to splitting those out into two campaigns, even when just testing. I follow that practice pretty much for any traffic source.

(I'm not suggesting you change it now, though.)


07-18-2012 02:50 AM #29 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by inversion View Post
Just noticed in your LeadBolt setup, you combined both App and Web traffic. There can be advantages to splitting those out into two campaigns, even when just testing. I follow that practice pretty much for any traffic source.

(I'm not suggesting you change it now, though.)
Good eye! I actually did that on purpose because I found a >>> website with pretty recent information on LeadBolt (April 2012) <<< which states that they have 5% mobile web traffic and 95% app traffic. I just figured that it might not make a difference. Now that I think about it though, that's overall... the ratio might be different for just Canada and just Rogers. I should test that.

Thanks!


07-18-2012 06:22 PM #30 kokofai ()

turtle that's some really useful info over there!


07-18-2012 08:13 PM #31 inversion (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by kokofai View Post
turtle that's some really useful info over there!
Whoa, totally. Thanks for prompting me to click through the link!


07-18-2012 11:48 PM #32 stackman (Administrator)

Look great! and this is a sweet offer, i see it always on my phone here in Canada

From lots of testing with mobile offers, it doesn't seem like the image plays too much of a role. So i would cut down all your ads from 15 to 6 (2 of each concept).
Keeping the fortune cookie on the ad is a good idea (matches lander)

Enough info yet to tell if android or iphone converts better?

I would recommend testing what your leadbolt rep said for most traffic sources. - targeting specific handsets really limits traffic. - if you see android and iphone doing similar you can just "target all"


07-19-2012 12:19 AM #33 turtle_hammer (Member)

Day 7

Traffic Source: LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/17/12

No data. I turned this off for the day to make new ads and put up new campaigns.

Traffic Source: JumpTap
Stats Date: 7/17/12
Spent: $5.58
Revenue: $0
P/L: $5.58
ROI: 100%

Took a breather this day in order to come up with some new creatives. I was thinking about how my roommate is always saying about someone, "she's a scorpio! that makes total sense!" or "libras are always like that!". So it hit me that - just like you said Mr. Green - there are tons of people who are into this stuff.

So, I thought I should take a straightforward approach rather than trying to be too clever - my worst habit in this business. So.. I made another batch of 3 angles, with 3 banners each. (I'm throwing in the advertiser's creatives just for the hell of it also)



I also have a new set of text ads I'm testing, but I'll wait to post them after I have data. It seemed like volume in LeadBolt dropped tremendously after starting this follow-along.. So I'm guessing that bid prices jumped during those days?

On that note, what's a good CTR to aim for when dealing with text ads and banners on LeadBolt?

I'm currently testing these on JT (waiting for approval) and LeadBolt. As soon as I feel like I have confident data about what works from these two networks, I plan on expanding to Adfonic, MobFox, and InMobi.

I'm also working on Landing Pages for these, but it's going a bit slow as it's the first time I've tried making them. I've switched over to CPVlab for tracking because it's the only easy way that I know how to split test landing pages.

Can't wait for the next update


07-19-2012 12:27 AM #34 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by stackman View Post
Look great! and this is a sweet offer, i see it always on my phone here in Canada

From lots of testing with mobile offers, it doesn't seem like the image plays too much of a role. So i would cut down all your ads from 15 to 6 (2 of each concept).
Keeping the fortune cookie on the ad is a good idea (matches lander)

Enough info yet to tell if android or iphone converts better?

I would recommend testing what your leadbolt rep said for most traffic sources. - targeting specific handsets really limits traffic. - if you see android and iphone doing similar you can just "target all"
Yeah, I keep hearing how great the offer is. I gotta figure this out!!!

To be honest, I've had around 10 conversions total so I can't tell which platform is better. For text ads, I've had 0 impressions for iPhone on LeadBolt no matter how high I bid, so it's been mostly Android traffic. Thx for the advice. You just gave me the idea to just target both platforms on networks where you can send back a phone model token. Should speed up the process a little! However, if I did "target all", I would still be including non-iOS and non-Android devices, which aren't allowed for the offer.

I'm going to take your advice from now on about all the banners/images. What I'm learning from you "big guys" is that the banners should be fewer and very different looking. Not just swapped out images.


07-19-2012 12:14 PM #35 kokofai ()

The new set of banners looks great! Keep me posted on the details too because it's really interesting!


07-19-2012 03:35 PM #36 stackman (Administrator)

"What I'm learning from you 'big guys' is that the banners should be fewer and very different looking. Not just swapped out images."
Bang on. Atleast from my camapigns/testing!


07-20-2012 09:42 PM #37 turtle_hammer (Member)

Update... kind of.

So... after reading everyone's follow-alongs from this contest and the mobile contest earlier this year, I'm realizing I've been approaching things wrong: Thinking too deeply into something that's pretty simple.

For anyone who feels stuck and doesn't know what to do, here are the mistakes I've been making:

--->Focusing too much on the technical aspects. For example, at the beginning of my post I mentioned that I have this specific format for URLs that attempts to track everything at once.

&subid=Affiliate Network~Traffic Source~Country~Campaign Name~Handset*Operator~Publisher~Site~Keyword~Times tamp~Ad

What I finally realized yesterday is that it doesn't need to be that complicated! Each traffic source allows you to split-test differently and has it's own limitations. I don't need to test all of those aspects at once and it's just too many moving parts!

I should choose what to test based on what's most important. Just a couple of things at first, THEN test something else. For example, If I want to test 3 different angles, I should just make 2 ads per angle, choose two sources, and maybe another variable like Web vs App traffic.

3 angles x 2 ads each x 2 sources x 2 types of traffic = 24 ads. With a payout of ~$11.. at 3x the payout being ~$33 per test.. even if I ignored the actual ads and just stuck with testing the angles (dividing 24 by 2), that's 33 x 12 = about $400.

Then, if any of those combinations show promise, grab it and split test further.

You gotta have a plan and a reason for every test you do. Otherwise you're just left with a hole in your bank account and a bunch of garbled data you can't make sense of because it's not statistically significant enough.

Currently, with this offer, I haven't found a profitable combination because my data is too spread out. I have about $160 in revenue and it all seems very random because I didn't have a plan and made too many ads.

--->Making too many ads without thinking about my budget. I started with around 15 ads! Granted, I don't have to split-test country, and carrier, wifi vs operator traffic because the offer is very limited in what it allows, it's still way too many to test, especially when considering I have to split-test ad networks and affiliate networks.

That leaves me with more shit going on than I can keeping track of. It's very unorganized.

--->On that note, the payout on my offer is too high for my budget. It's 11.25 for a reason: It's super competitive in CA on Rogers. Traffic comes in slooooow and I can't afford to bid high enough to get fast results.

--->Sitting in front of my computer for too long. Take breaks and refresh your brain. Go to the gym. Go for a run. Get your blood flowing as it helps you think. Now I have this pinched nerve in my back that's super painful, my eyes always hurt, and my mouse-hand hand feels carpel tunneled like a 70-year-old secretary's.

--->The biggest mistake of all: Not making enough ads and putting up enough campaigns! I put up a few and then sit there for days splitting my attention between the refresh button and the forum.

A lot of nothing happening = A lot of money not being made

As of today, I'm committing to choosing at least 2 mobile offers per day with low-to-mid payouts, making a couple of banners/text ads for each, throwing a couple bucks into a few different ad networks and then QUICKLY putting up a few campaigns. I'm going to track only what is relevant to what I'm testing (in addition to handsets, sites and pubs of course) and I'm not going to over complicate things.

After that, I'm going to go out and enjoy the rest of my day or night.

Thanks to everyone in this forum for helping me understand all this stuff. I know success is right around the corner And please, let me know if I'm wrong about any of this.


07-23-2012 03:00 PM #38 getgreen (Member)

I'm loving these in depth follow alongs. It seems the people who are more thorough with their follow alongs are the more analytical people (like myself) who are ironically more prone to sabotaging themselves due to over-analysis and not keeping things brand-dead-simple. Keep going man, good shiz!


07-25-2012 12:23 AM #39 turtle_hammer (Member)

Thanks getgreen, and yeah I agree. I definitely plan on changing that though. Sorry for lack of updates, I had to go out of town for a few days (family stuff) and just got back. I'll have updates tonight as well as a new angle I've put a lot of work into


07-26-2012 12:09 AM #40 turtle_hammer (Member)

Alright, so I know that my 14 days of this follow-along are over... but I had to leave town for a few days and couldn't work on it. On top of that, I left my JT campaigns running on accident and emptied the rest of my balance without realizing it. Luckily there wasn't more than a couple hundred!

The following stats are from two sources and I just threw them together along with the dates because I didn't mean to run it.

Day 8-13

Traffic Source: JumpTap & LeadBolt
Stats Date: 7/(18-23)/12
Spent: $288.13
Revenue: $56.25
P/L: $231.88
ROI: 80%

Even though this is going beyond the contest, I'm not giving up and I spent quite a bit of time in the airport learning how to make and optimize mobile landing pages. I learned some Javascript and made a landing page sequence in CPVlab. It goes a little something like this:

What's your Chinese Astrological sign? Choose your birth year and I'll tell you. Here's a partial description of your sign and if you want to know more about yourself, click here for your daily fortune! That's basically it. I wanted to come up with an angle that's as close to what the offer is actually offering so my LP's don't have much of a gap to bridge between my ads and the offer page I'm trying to keep it simple. Also, I was thinking of doing western astrology initially, but I think that Chinese astrology is more of a mystery for westerners, and therefore people will more likely be interested.

As of update 2.14, CPVlab allows you to make a landing page sequence where you can CHOOSE your lvl 2 landing pages that appear, as opposed to relying on the random page linking based on your share %.



So, basically, each year they choose (the birth month and date don't actually don't do anything, so it's not completely accurate, but I think it's good enough. The signs actually change around Feb of each year. I didn't want to spend days learning how to program an actual astrology calculator!) sends the user to one of 12 links, each corresponding to a page with a description of their Chinese sign.



Example of one of the 12 pages:



My banner ads:







Text Ads:

Title: What's Your Chinese Astrological Sign?
Description: >>Click Here to Find Out<<

Title: You Dont Know Your Chinese Sign?!
Description: >>Click Here for Your Daily Fortune!<<

I tried sneaking this one by...



And I'm pretty sure they thought about it for 20 minutes or so

I'm going to start with Android on LeadBolt only since that's where I've already had the bulk of my conversions, then move to JT, and hopefully others. Definitely BuzzCity (Thanks Kokofai).

I hope I get better results this time around. I feel this is a stronger funnel... but we'll see. You can't ever tell.

I've had such a good time and have learned so much in this contest... so to give back, this might be the end of my part in the contest, but I'll keep you all updated until I profit!


07-26-2012 02:13 PM #41 mmdollars (Member)

"Are you a cock?" lol. The banner angle looks very neat to me and the celeb banner -> LP sync is really good and the LP should bring the visitor into the horoscope mood. Very curious to see the results!
Just a thought...you could try a little tweak to the lp angle which MIGHT bring in more sync to the offer - after telling their chinese sign, you could say something like "Crack your (Rooster/Rat) Cookie to get your daily fortune" as a call to action.


07-29-2012 08:10 PM #42 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by mmdollars View Post
"Are you a cock?" lol. The banner angle looks very neat to me and the celeb banner -> LP sync is really good and the LP should bring the visitor into the horoscope mood. Very curious to see the results!
Just a thought...you could try a little tweak to the lp angle which MIGHT bring in more sync to the offer - after telling their chinese sign, you could say something like "Crack your (Rooster/Rat) Cookie to get your daily fortune" as a call to action.
Thanks! That's a great idea. "Crack your rooster cookie" is a great segway to the offer page The results are pretty bad so far (and good I think) for the day or two that I ran it unfortunately.

Level one LP --> Out of 139 clicks to the page, only 13 clicked to lvl 2, which is 9.35%
Level two LP --> Of the 13 visitors, 8 clicked through to the offer page, which is 61.54%.

No conversions. But 8 people making it to the offer page says nothing.

I think lvl 1 was pretty weak. So it's definitely time to test a couple of different lvl 1 landing pages with stronger calls to action and different angles. Also, as I'm looking at all of the level 2 pages, the brief preview fortunes are pretty boring!

"This can be a satisfying day. It's possible to do research or discover resources to help build a more secure future. Pay close attention to....."

REALLY? Is that going to entice the user like, "You are... the SEXY Rooster! This can be a VERY satisfying day! This might be a good day to make lingering eye-contact with the opposite sex, as today the monkey's sexual attractiveness is higher than most. Try this....." ?? haha. They're all very boring and need to be changed.

However, even with this weak copy, the higher lvl 2 CTR really says something about this angle so it's not time to give up yet.

The first landing page needs to be WAY more enticing and have a very bold CTA. I think split testing two themes, love/sex and money, might be better. Also, with different lvl two pages along the same theme.

Also, in leadbolt, even above .30, my banners got no traffic for Android. The text ads got quite a bit however, but their CTRs were around 2.4%. So I think I need to test my banners elsewhere.

So today I'm going to make 2 new lvl one pages and edit all of the level 2 pages. I'll edit this post later with images!


07-29-2012 11:20 PM #43 turtle_hammer (Member)

Okay, here goes:

First I'll be split testing these two Lvl 1 pages:





So, I removed the month and day input forms. They take too long and are probably a large part of the reason the last one did so poorly. I doubt most people will give any thought to the fact that China's new year is different from ours

Also, Seeing the word "SEX" pop out of the page will make anyone at least read it!

I also redesigned all 12 of the sign pages to look like this:



There's nothing more interesting to people than how to improve their own love/sex life. Also, I added "(Example)" so users don't think, "why should I pay when I just got my daily fortune for free?"

In case someone hits the button without choosing their birthyear, they get this page:



Also, they don't even need to hit the back button. The form will automatically forward them to the correct page after their choice. The back button is really only there to convince them to take action and for the error page.

I'm curious about something though: If someone goes to the error page, then hits the back button and chooses a correct link, will that mess up CPVlabs tracking that particular click at all?

Since LeadBolt doesn't really have any banner traffic for Android or iPhone, I'll just do one more round of text ads.

I'm going to throw these banners up on JumpTap for iPhone (I want to test iPhone first because these will show up exactly like this for iPhone users)

Also going to throw them up on BuzzCity. Hopefully I'll see better results this time. Let's see what happens!


07-31-2012 02:05 AM #44 stackman (Administrator)

I think your on the right track and i agree with your hypothesis, but here are some recommended changes.

- I would only have a 1page flow lander. Your already giving them a part of what they want with the second page, also too many pages on a mobile phone can hurt. Your stats do show strong #'s from page 1->2 but i think thats because you already got those people interested from page 1 so it's probably best to take them to the offer page at this point)

- I think a good portion of your converting demographic is younger girls and they don't care much for chinese astrology, they care more about if guys like them, sex advice, celeb sex stuff etc.. Stuff with more of an edge.


08-02-2012 05:23 PM #45 turtle_hammer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by stackman View Post
I think your on the right track and i agree with your hypothesis, but here are some recommended changes.

- I would only have a 1page flow lander. Your already giving them a part of what they want with the second page, also too many pages on a mobile phone can hurt. Your stats do show strong #'s from page 1->2 but i think thats because you already got those people interested from page 1 so it's probably best to take them to the offer page at this point)

- I think a good portion of your converting demographic is younger girls and they don't care much for chinese astrology, they care more about if guys like them, sex advice, celeb sex stuff etc.. Stuff with more of an edge.
Thanks for that

Yeah, as fun as it was to make, my 2 page flow isn't really working out. I need to start putting myself in the minds of the people who are already interested in this type of thing: Girls and romance. Let'g give this another go!


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