A 17 Year Old's Mobile Affiliate Marketing Diary

[montengco33]

Hey everyone!
Matthew here, I'm getting into mobile affiliate marketing and thought I'd share my journey with you guys. I've gained a lot of knowledge from other progress threads and hope this can help someone out too. I'm going to be posting an "official" weekly update on my progress every Monday, but will also be posting in this thread whenever something relevant happens. Also, don't expect this thread to be your typical a few updates then disappear, I'm very determined to make this work and want to share my journey.

Background

I'm a 17 year old from Florida. I became very interested in entrepreneurship, business and marketing a little over a year and a half ago, prior to that I was an avid gamer (haven't played since). Since then I've built websites, dabbled in CPA marketing, and devoured tons of books, videos, PDFs, blogs, etc on business. I also did around $600 revenue (50% profit) in a week on Teespring a couple months back, but realized that Teespring campaigns are very short term and aren't as good as CPA offers. I then got my feet wet in PPV and realized that desktop popups from toolbars and games are the past, not the future. I felt like I was wasting my time. This brings me to mobile. Mobile is a booming industry that I can see myself starting a fully fledged company in somewhere in the future, I'll be acquiring both useful knowledge in a relevant industry and profit. I currently have around $1750 in my bank account that I'll be using get started with. My first numerical goal is to average $100/Day (3K/Month), as I'll be starting college in a little under a year and 3K a month should cover my expenses. Obviously I have larger goals for after that but this goal is the most important and relevant to me right now. I also know HTML, CSS, PS CS6, and am learning Javascript, so banner and landing page creation shouldn't be too hard for me.

Progress So Far

Here is what I've done so far:

•Read pretty much everything I could get my hands on related to mobile affiliate marketing.
-MobiManifesto, Mobile Blueprint, other PDFs, Blogs, YeahMobi case studies, etc.

•Hosting: VPS for mobile landing pages.

•Networks: YeahMobi-denied | FurtherMobi-got this | WapEmpire-accepted | Matomy-denied

•Tracking: Voluum - Currently on the free version. I like the software and plan to stick with it.

•Ad networks:
-mMedia($100 deposited - Got a $100 bonus also.) Spent $50 so far.
-Airpush($50 deposited) Spent $35 so far.
-Zeropark($50 deposited) Spent $20 so far.
-Buzzcity($30 deposited) Spent $30 so far.

•Campaigns so far:

This is where I seem to have gone wrong. All of the offers I've promoted have converted terribly. I've spent ~$130 on ads and grossed back ~$7. Take a look at my Voluum stats for the past 30 days.

All of these offers with the exception of the Dolphin browser have been with WapEmpire, the Dolphin offer was with Matomy. I also ran an untracked 7$ Buzzcity test for a $3.60 app download (WeChat) which got one conversion. I launched another campaign today that should be approved by tomorrow so we'll see how that goes. Tomorrow my AM will be sending me a list of offers doing volume with good conversion rates so I'll be testing those offers. Hopefully something starts converting.

 

[Toz]

I was just sitting here, thinking about how I just went through $35 and received 0 conversions, on this mobile offer campaign, and when searching for something, I came across this thread. Looks like I have a few more dollars to go through before I become frustrated. The silver lining is that you have gotten a return on your investment! I think that's pretty awesome!

 

[montengco33]

Update 1

Hey guys, sorry about the late update. I've been super busy with school work and marketing.
So the past week knowledge-wise I finished up the MobiManifesto, read up on lots of mobile marketing info online(ad networks data, blogs, etc)., and watched like 25 mobile case studies. I also applied to MundoMedia and am waiting on my approval. Campaign-wise I spent the first half of the week testing a few campaigns that flunked. Then halfway through the week I thought of an idea that I hadn't tried before for a low paying offer campaign on Zeropark. I ended up getting around 5 conversions and a -50% ROI, which I was still pretty happy about.

I then realized that this low paying offer campaign was sucking up all of my free version Voluum events (<100,000) and turned off the campaign.

I was back to square one and had an idea of what I needed to find -
An offer with a decent conversion rate, based in a country with low bids, and with a payout between $.50 and $2. I decided to run with an offer that was from a company I'd seen repeatedly in case studies and earnings screenshots. I setup the campaign in Voluum and Zeropark and started sending some traffic. The next day when I checked my stats I was surprised to see that I had multiple conversions and was at break even - not bad! The last few days I've played around with bids and the like to try and get more volume, but have lowered my ROI in the process. However, even though I've lost money I am pretty happy with the data I'm getting. I've spotted some trends in the data like:

How one carrier is giving me nearly all my conversions.

And

How one brand is giving me most of my conversions.

When I put two and two together I get this.

Now that I know what I need to target, I'm going to be trying this combination on a few different ad networks. Today I setup campaigns on Go2Mobi (Just joined, $50 + $50 bonus), Buzzcity ($20 Topup), and Airpush. I also want to try out InMobi & AdModa, but will hold off on those for now as I've already deposited like $125 into new ad networks and Zeropark the past two days (all from my life savings).

Things I've learned

- mMedia sucks. Seriously. The traffic is expensive as hell and converts like shit. I've spent $200 (half out of pocket - half bonus) on their traffic testing 5-10 offers and all have performed horribly. Ill probably end up grossing less than $10 from the $200 once I'm done burning through the remaining traffic.
- App install offers suck. I originally tried promoting this type of offer because I thought they would convert easily and be less "scammy". Wrong. They've all converted extremely terribly and don't pay much.
- Don't be afraid to bid high on networks that let you cherrypick placements (i.e. Zeropark). Often times the placements with the best converting traffic will have competition, and the ones that you can get with a 0.005 bid will cost that much for a reason.
- What you think may work will sometimes be completely different from what does end up working. I designed my best landing page specifically for one OS and have ended up getting most of my conversions from a completely different OS.
- Perseverance is key. Last week when I made this thread I was $150 in the hole and had made 2 conversions ($3 total). Now I'm on the verge of making a 100+ percent ROI once I pair my offer with the right ad network/targeting.

 

[Stillbroke]

as far as 1 brand getting all your conversions i say its to depends on your offer
not to generalize but if you have a less expensive your probably wont spend money or apps or do a pin submit that may cost them.

Also I strongly recommend mobicow try a campaign for as low as 5 bucks i had good luck so far with us and au traffic only ones i used so far

 

[montengco33]

as far as 1 brand getting all your conversions i say its to depends on your offer
not to generalize but if you have a less expensive your probably wont spend money or apps or do a pin submit that may cost them.

Also I strongly recommend mobicow try a campaign for as low as 5 bucks i had good luck so far with us and au traffic only ones i used so far

Will do, I just Skype'd them asking for a promo to test some of their traffic.

 

[Stillbroke]

also different offers work better on different traffic types game apps seem do do well with banners (if you have good creatives)

and popup / redirect for utilities

match your traffic type to your offer

 

[Toz]

Wow! Great information here!! Thanks guys!

 

[internalsoul]

Nice journal. Liked the way, you have improved and how to have learned from your own campaigns. Subscribed to your journal.

 

[montengco33]

Hey everyone, sorry about not posting any updates recently. I've had to put my affiliate marketing work on hold to focus on academic stuff this month. Applying to colleges, SAT's, extra virtual class, etc. I'm essentially doing what I normally do everyday for school plus four hours, every day this month, so no time at all to focus on launching campaigns. I've came up with some promising campaign ideas and coded a few mobile landing pages from scratch, but have promised myself to to put everything on hold for the month of October and focus exclusively on school. A small (but unofficial) update on my progress since last month is that I've made my first $100 revenue in mobile, and have gained tons of knowledge. My goal is for November to be my first $500+ revenue month.

 

[montengco33]

Update 2

So it's been over a month since I last posted, and quite a few things have happened. I had to postpone everything for October as I was hit with five college applications, SAT's (I kicked ass ), a virtual class, and the end of my school's first quarter grading period (also kicked ass ). What little free time I had I spent immersed in countless affiliate marketing related materials. I read nearly every blog post from CharlesNgo, MalanDarras, and IAmAtilla. I re-read the Mobile Affiliate Marketing Blueprint 10+ times. My goal was to essentially stuff every little piece of useful advice I could find on the net into my head. I also expanded my abilities in HTML, CSS, & Javascript considerably. That along with me switching most of my development tools to cloud based ones has resulted in me becoming a machine that pumps out landing pages like no other.

Anyways, when November finally rolled around and I had survived the horror that was October, I went all in. I decided on two offers for testing, then got to work on making banners and landers for them. I ran a small test on both of them and the second offer showed promise, with about a 50% ROI right off the bat. I split test a few more landing pages and found a winner. I was now at a 100% ROI and things were looking good. One day 10$ revenue, the next day was 25$ revenue, and the day after was around 50$.

The next day I unfortunately learned exactly what an offer cap was and lost 15$. I paused the offer and the next day it went down. I was back to square one, but already had plans on my mind. I got back to my grind coding up landing pages almost immediately and had a few ready for testing on this new offer I had selected. I ran some traffic tests in four different GEO's and got around a -50% ROI average the first day. Two countries showed promise so I took the best performing landing pages and made a few similar to those, testing all in both GEO's. Long story short, I'm now quite profitable in both of those GEO's after a bit of testing and serious time spent coding new landing pages.

Yesterday I hit up an AM from YeahMobi and was able to get accepted, and was very surprised to see just how much higher the payout was. I believe that this along with the weekly payouts will result in my growth being exponential. So yesterday I switched my links in Voluum to YeahMobi's and went to sleep. This morning I woke up to this..

And this from Voluum.. (I don't really mind though lol)

My goal now is to scale hard and fast. My challenge will be doing it with my limited capital base, but i'll find a way.

What I've Learned

•Angles make or break you.

•Consider exactly what your visitor is thinking when they arrive on your landing page when you're designing it.

•Think big, not small. Scalability is the most important thing to consider when choosing an offer. To me that means multiple GEO's, and no offer cap.

•Split testing landing pages is MUCH more important than you think, and is usually the difference between a 30% & 100% ROI. The change of a simple button color has resulted in one of my current landing pages doing just that.

•Simply check the math. If the network's conversion rate is at 5%, and the offer pays 1$, then the max you should pay for traffic is 2.5-5¢.

•Music helps. I've found that I perform better while blasting my favorite DnB track rather than when I'm listening to the sound of my mouse clicking.

•Spying is free. Seriously. Just visit lower quality sites with majority mobile visitors on your phone and you're bound to get a glimpse of how these other affiliates are doing it. You can even download a free VPN app to see ads for other GEO's.

•The only winners are those who persevere.

 

[yafee]

Love to read this great journal. Many new insights and information I found helpful here. thanks guys

 

[jonmic2k]

How are you getting your CTR % so high?

 

[servandosilva]

Nice comeback man. Keep us updated!

 

[newlxx]

Nice journal. Subscribed. Keep us updated.

 

[montengco33]

Small Update..

Yesterday was my first $100 profit day, with a little over $180 total revenue.

And I had to upgrade.

 

[jonmic2k]

Congratulations!

 

[K]

Well done man, keep going!

 

[Effect]

Any update on stats mate?

 

[solare1]

Loving this follow along. Keep em coming!

 

[Jon H]

Nice work so far! Few questions. Where can I get the "Mobile Affiliate Marketing Blueprint" and you said something "If the network's conversion rate is at 5%...", how do you find the network's conversion rate?