- Thread starter Affmy
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CAMPAIGN SETUP AND OPTIMIZATION
The 2-nd part
Campaign optimization
1. Checking ROI
Here we need to check campaigns’ ROI in order to separate them into two groups: “Promising” with ROI higher than -50% and “Unpromising” with ROI lower than -50%.
2. Optimizing “Promising” group
Cut some banners on ROI and make new to have at least ten of them to add in campaign. Swap your worst performing landing pages with new ones to split-test them again. Bear in mind to use different styles and designs. After that, check your priority handsets and their resolutions to optimize landing pages’ work on these devices.
3. Optimizing “Unpromising” group
The thing here is to find elements in “Unpromising” campaigns that outperform others. If you found, for example, that 3 particular banners massively outperform other 7, cut the campaign down just to these specific elements. After that, just go the same as with “Promising” campaigns (see above).
4. Regularly check already running campaigns
Continue to monitor underperforming banners or placements. Kill them when 5x payout reached without conversion, replace with new ones.
5. Don’t stop optimizing
Always aim to +50% ROI by cutting poor performing banners. Create different variants of your top landing pages’ designs. Split-test new color schemes, backgrounds, text positioning and fonts and any other elements.
On the Way to Great Profit
After establishing even, a single successful campaign, it is possible to scale it up to massive profit.
At first, you will need to follow these simple steps after running a campaign for 4 days with 25% positive ROI.
1. Increase your daily campaign spend. If ROI won’t drop next day, keep increasing until hitting 1/10 of your budget.
2. Keep in touch with affiliate network in order to avoid surprises like payment refusals.
3. Duplicate profitable campaigns in other countries if possible. You don’t even need to readjust creatives, just don’t forget to get quality translation first.
4. And the last, explore other traffic sources to duplicate on!
HOW TO SCALE CAMPAIGN
So, after having really hard times with your campaigns dying as fast as they are created and 80% of your angles just failing and not working out, you found a profitable campaign.
What should you do with it now? Is it time to chill out? No, of course. Milk it as much as possible! Now, this is when scaling comes.
In fact, a lot of newbies struggling when scaling for the first time. But actually, it’s not difficult at all.
WAYS TO SCALE
There is a great number of ways to scale. Feel free to try each one and see which one fits your campaign the best.
1. If your budget is large enough, raise your daily spending to grab all available traffic.
2. Higher bids can help you get into the top spot and increase your volume. Be careful with ROI, though.
3. Remember, bumps are pure profit for you, so keep pushing hard for any bumps on offer.
4. Inspect all available placements. There might be multiple placements on a single traffic source. Consider trying new texts, ads, and different banner resolutions.
5. Think about exploring new sites. Beware that optimization problems might take place.
6. Don’t forget about split-testing. Continue testing new lines of ads and banners, even upon hitting profitability.
7. Setting up new campaigns is okay when there is a volume that you can occupy. To not compete with yourself on bid-based sources, separate your bids by 1-2 cents for each campaign.
8. Duplicating. Cloning your existing campaigns is a good way to get more money while using traffic sources with the same distribution algorithm. Try it if you don’t believe me.
9. It’s much cheaper to work with publishers directly rather than using networks. Spot ones that are doing well and buy their full inventory. It also helps you to avoid competition and bid swings.
10. Scale to other countries if there are nice offers you can handle. Don’t hesitate to spend some money on good translation or change the slang if switching between countries with the same language.
11. Explore new targeting options. Take anything that is provided by traffic sources: genders, ages, hobbies, interests, whatever you can find.
12. Run campaigns on different traffic sources. Desktop, mobile, social, different marketplaces, all of them are good (if accepted by an offer, of course).
13. Consider using obscure traffic to save money. Don’t be afraid to contact unknown webmasters or agencies, some of them might be really good and honest. Sure, you will run into some trouble finding the best sources that suit your campaign but believe me, it’s worth it!
JUST DO IT
If you are still unsure about the scaling process, here are some tips that will help you:
1. Keep your morale high. It’s okay if your first scaling attempts fail. Keep trying and you certainly find ones that work.
2. Slow and steady wins the race. We are heading for constant profit, so don’t jump straight from 100$ to 10000$ a day. Increase your spending little by little to see if everything works.
3. Both of you and advertisers depend on each other, so it’s likely to plan long-term relations. If you are good at running campaigns, a good advertiser will be interested in providing you with all the helpful information, tips, and guides to increase your scaling potential.
4. Quality is important. Ask your advertiser for feedback regularly to avoid such surprises as being thrown off the offer during scaling.
5. Learn when to relax. Do not torture yourself by sitting at the computer 24 hours a day, running offers and making just 100$. Rush it up to 1000$, grab some tequila with cigars and take a break from this crazy ride.
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What should you do when your offer starts to deplete?
No matter how long you run the offer, there will be a moment when it’ll start to exhaust. So, what can you do with that if such a situation shows up?
To tell the truth, the problem touched quite many areas of affiliate marketing. One of them is dating market in its mainstream sector. However, it’s not a surprise that affiliates have troubles in this area, when almost every offer here includes slags or other stuff like this.
It’s interesting that the dating market has shown a gradual growth quite recently. But now it would be hard to find even a single good offer there. Moreover, the ones that used to make you great profits earlier are also under recession.
Though, such a decline wasn’t unexpected. There were few problems which became the first signs of recession. First, it’s overfilled database without new traffic. Second, there is a lack of new angles. At last, there is a strong competition in the market, especially on platforms like Facebook. You probably won’t be able to overcome the offer depletion process, but you can significantly reduce this effect.
A new look for your ad creatives
The one thing that lowers your conversion, especially in a crowded area like the dating market, is so called banner blindness. A lot of similar ads and identical images are the reason of such user’s “disease”. They just ignore the ads, because don’t notice them. Sometimes the problem is even deeper. Users might have a bad impression about the brand you’re advertising. Actually, it’s a very common scenario. Definitely, you aren’t the first who is promoting the brand to the users.
You can avoid such situation by targeting only new users, but that’s not the best decision. You’ll get strong competition, high bids and low profits instead. And even in this case there is a possibility that your landing page won’t be the source of first impression about the brand.
There is a better way to overcome the problem. You should try to change the users’ opinion about the brand. There are plenty of tools to do that via modifying your ads. No matter how you’ll change them, your main message should be the following: the brand being advertised is something new and fresh and all the bad things about it are now in the past.
Also, don’t forget about visual part. If someone has a bad impression about the certain brand, he will just leave your landing page as soon as he sees it's logo. A good way to avoid this type of situation is to change the brand's logo. Just use Photoshop to give it a new look.
Running your campaign on any traffic source
The 1-st Part
If you’ve already signed up for some affiliate accounts, it’s time for you to start. There will be a couple of steps you should pass on your way.
Setting up your first campaign
The following tutorial was made to help you launch the one on any source of traffic. In case you’re going to start with the specific source of traffic, then you should definitely check out the appropriate guide. Though, the following will also be more than useful.
It’ll help you to understand the whole thing better, showing the reason why you’re doing it. If you’re setting up a campaign on different source of traffic, then stick to the guide as close as possible. The tech details for your traffic source, tracker or affiliate network – that’s what you’ll have to figure out and the guide will show you the next steps.
What will you get from it?
Don’t expect the campaign to be a source of income. There’s a very low possibility it will be. A good many of campaigns must be launched and a great amount of optimization work must be made before everything will run properly. And this is true for every new traffic source you start.
Usually, 20 campaigns or more are needed before finding the appropriate one. Be aware that the whole process is a kind of learning which you pay for. If you do everything right, your award will be more than decent.
In case you’re a freshman in the issue, affiliate marketing will definitely be a complicated thing for you. That’s OK, because it is so for almost everyone.
Launching a “direct linked” campaign is rather simple if we compare it with the other ones. It’s a good idea to add a landing page for most sources of traffic and verticals, but it will also make the whole thing a bit more complicated. You’d better add a lander after you’ve finished with direct-linking.
Asking an affiliate manager for recommendations about the offer
The primary thing is to choose the concrete offer to be launched. You should figure out the best recommendations for your niche or traffic source from your affiliate managers. Contact them and ask about the relevant offers.
There will definitely be a couple of variants from them, so choose the one that fits the majority of your. That will make split-testing possible.
To be continued….
Running your campaign on any traffic source
The 2-nd Part
Competition analysis
You can use a spy tool for your traffic source in order to find the best ad types for the concrete offer. The time period for the ad search might be the last three month and ten day period. Make sure the offer is similar to the one you have chosen to use. If it is about an app install, look for similar ads. You will need to spend some time on the research, but the results will show your increase.
Your aim is to understand common things that are true for different ads. You should analyze image types, keywords, headlines and “clickable” phrases. It would be a great idea to click on one of such phrases to see the destination page.
The other one useful thing is to see what platform is a basis for website with ads being observed. The mentioned tool is the one that most people often ignore. Usually, Usually, they are in too much of a hurry and make mistakes or just copy what they’ve seen. So, if you do everything right, you’ll be one step ahead of them. Using the STMmembership would also be great. You’ll find a lot of info in guides and success stories.
Searching for appropriate images
There are tons of images in the web you can use. It’s even hard to find the topic that wouldn’t have the appropriate pictures in the search results. Just try to search the relevant site with free photos or use Google images. Note that some of the images, like the ones from Creative Commons, must be licensed in order to be used in commercial sphere. The same is when you’re going to edit them somehow.
The other way to receive good images for your ads is to register on websites with paid photos and images. You’ll definitely find there a lot of high quality pictures. However, that will cost you up to several hundred dollars. But it’s worth your money in most cases.
A good way to choose right images is to look on your successful competitors. Try to find some similar images to the one they use. But don’t copy them fully. Search for something that works better. It could be different color, pattern, style, etc.
Tips to design the banners
This is the moment when you have to show all your creativity. Open special editing tools and try to design something interesting using your own style and the patterns you’ve seen while “spying”.
It is essential to choose the right size for your banners. In mobile sector the 320x50 resolution will be fine. At the same time, for general Web you can use either long 796x80 or almost square 300x250.
The frame of the banner might be very different. Be creative. Add body text, headlines and CTA elements, use the knowledge you’ve received while spying. Then, combine the pattern you’ve created with various images. Save your result with plain names. It will help you not to confuse images when there are many of them.
To be continued…
Running your campaign on any traffic source
The 3-rd Part
How to work with tracking software?
The following issue requires some time before you’ll understand how it all works. Your tracking software is like a glue that puts together different parts of your campaign It shows you what things really work.
It’s not easy to work with the software, though, the next tips will help you to do everything right. Just follow them step by step. First, choose the URL of the offer to start with. Then, set it up in your software for tracking. The best campaign to start is Direct Link. It’s quite simple, which is great for beginners. Then, set your source of traffic in the tracker.
The next step is to create a campaign in the tracker. Again, start with direct linking at this point. In the end, you’ll need Postback to be set up for the offer.
The things to do just after the start
Money is something you’ll need at the beginning. Not much, just a minimal amount for your source of traffic. The sum is often around 100$. After that, your main aim is knowledge. Try to find as much info as possible in related articles and guides. You should know almost everything about your traffic source.
As soon as you’ve finished with studying, launch your campaign. You’ll have to upload the banners you’ve created earlier in it. If you have some problems with this, just ask the support team or search for related guides, which most sources of traffic have.
So, you create your single campaign and then upload all the ads needed in it. The URL of the offer, which was mentioned in the previous paragraph, should be used as the URL for all the banners. In case your source of traffic doesn’t have dynamic tokens support, then change the value “banner” on the appropriate banner’s name.
Options for targeting
Actually, they might be quite different for various traffic sources. Still, county will definitely be among these options. So, just choose the one, which is relevant to your offer and ads. And don’t try to aim for many counties. There is another way to set the right options. Just use those you’ve seen to be working good when you were “spying” with special tools.
Is it better to bid high or low?
Right bidding is a key to efficient strategy in affiliate marketing. It varies a lot from one source of traffic to another. So, there is no general advice, but there are some very helpful tips. First, it’s better to start high and move to low when you start receiving traffic. Second, you shouldn’t aim to be #1 in most cases.
Be slightly after the leader. That won’t work only in auctions where the winner takes everything.
Landing page segmentation
If you are an affiliate marketer, finding the traffic that will convert is your main purpose. However, there are some issues that stop most of us from it. One of the biggest problems is that traffic can be very different.
This fact is one you will never be sure about because you have no idea if the ads are reaching your audience, and if the content is good for all of your prospective targets.
You can use demographics and metrics of your visitors for it. That will help you to give them the exact information needed. Such approach is called landing page segmentation.
How it all works?
If you want some action from your visitors, the info you’re delivering them has to match with their own interests. When the landing page follows this criterion, it becomes much more effective. In turn, that influences on your conversion in a very positive way.
In plain words, you’re giving your visitors the thing they want with a purpose to receive the one you want. So, it’s really important to find the “right message” that will engage individuals. Then they should be directed to the landing page, which suits their needs.
How many landing pages are required?
There is no limit to the amount of landers you might use. That all depends on the number of market segments you’re able to define. Each of them should have an appropriate landing page. The following example shows how it is possible to split the market into separate areas:
1. You can use visitors’ geos in order to give them the exact info they require. People in different locations often have different needs.
2. The market also can be divided into segments according to the type of browsing device the visitors use. People can open your lander on PC, smartphone or tablet, so it has to be optimized for each case.
3. Using traffic referral to define the various market areas. This method allows you to see whether your visitors are interested in something and then try to engage them in an appropriate way.
4. You might optimize landing pages for a specific search quires using keywords.
As you can see, there are so many methods to split the market into segment and the amount of these segments is almost unlimited. That all depends on your ability to identify them. The better you are at identifying the trends and numbers on segments, the better chance you have of catching the visitor's attention and receive the conversions.
But if you only have one landing page, or their numbers are insufficient you will miss out o lots of possible sales. Moreover, your Quality Score for PPC might suffer from it, in case you’re working with paid-traffic, of course.
In the end, it’s all about your ROI. If the landing page is unable to engage visitors. This means all of your hard work and efforts are not being rewarded in traffic and conversions like it should, and it is in fact becoming a waste of time and money.
How will the testing process benefit from landing page segmentation?
When you split the market into different areas, you will see what the user's behavior is in each segment. According to this, you’ll be able to divide them into three groups: the one that is working good, the one that requires more optimization and the last, which is just a waste of time. It all will show you how to improve your landing pages in order to suit the visitors’ needs.
In the end, landing page segmentation will make the testing process less complicated. You already know some info about the users from various traffic sources, so there will be fewer mistakes and fewer losses. All that will dramatically increase your ROI level.
Creating mobile banner ads
Every affiliate marketer has his own secrets how to make a catching banner. Still, there are some common trends in the market, which you should definitely be aware of. Not to follow them step by step, but to find something useful for your own ad creatives.
So, the research revealed the following trends:
1. Text part. The body section includes a catching question, which aims to engage the site visitors. The CTA(call to action) part includes such phrases as “Download” or a bit less popular “Click Here”. Usually, affiliates use from 3 to 5 words. The dominating color is black.
2. The most popular colors. There are four of them, which are in trend now. They're black, white, red and blue. Commonly affiliates use contrasting colors for banners. If we talk about background, white and black dominate here.
3. Images. The research shows that icon is the most popular type of images. There is only one of a kind in the banner and the dominating shape is 50x50 pixels.
4. Engaging buttons. Affiliates usually use 1 button painted with red, green or orange color. Its size is 100x30 pixels. The button has rounded edges and it is almost always situated on the right. In case there are two buttons, they're placed on both sides from the center.
5. Animation. The animation here is very simple. There are 2 frames that change each other making the banner blink. The time between the frames is 0.3 seconds. The whole animation edges the banner, which is static itself.
6. Other details. There is always no visible border in the banner. The tone used is OS or Android styled alert.
Which approach is the best for campaign optimization
Finding the way to make your campaign profitable is probably the most important task for you as an affiliate marketer. There are two different methods that can be used for this issue. They are called whitelisting and blacklisting.
These methods have a totally different approach to the optimization process. Each one has both advantages and disadvantages, but the second one is more preferable. If we look at the two ways of optimization a bit closer, it’ll be clear why.
Blacklist method key features
This approach uses a quite simple principal: you cut the worst placements and leave all the others running. Still, it won’t be so easy as it seems to be. Blacklisting requires persistence and relatively big budget. Surely, there will be some initial losses and you should be able to cover them.
Unlike the whitelist marketers, the ones that use blacklisting work with the whole available market in order to monetize it. For example, if there are 1000 placements, blacklister will cut 50 that don’t work and leave all the others.
Whitelister will do the opposite thing. He’ll use only 10 that are 100% profitable according to his info. And now the situation is the following: whitelist marketer has 10 placements, which were profitable earlier and there is no guarantee for this in the future.
At the same time, blacklister has 950 variants and each one has a chance to hit the jackpot.
This approach aims to create a better traffic funnel. It includes such things as:
1. Choosing the best possible offer (it’s the first thing you should do).
2. Landing pages upgrade to improve the content quality.
3. Creating better ads for your campaign.
4. Focusing on long-term perspective.
And now the best thing about the blacklist strategy. It leaves you a huge space to scale up your campaign, which is almost impossible using the opposite approach. So, if you want to play big, then blacklisting should be your choice.
To be continued…
Whitelist method main characteristics
The key point of this strategy is to focus on something that is undoubtedly profitable (according to your info) and to receive an immediate revenue. Whitelist marketer will choose 10 placements out of 1000 available and work only with them.
This approach is common for affiliates with a small budget. They can’t afford losses because of scarce funds, so they grab the first profitable thing they see. Then these marketers set their bids to the appropriate level in order to get the biggest amount of valuable traffic.
This strategy looks rather good initially, but only if market leftovers are enough for you. The whitelist method creates a border that makes it almost impossible for you to scale up the campaign. There are a couple of reasons why it is so.
First, such approach significantly reduces your volumes. You work only with a small amount of placements, which were profitable some time ago. And you can’t be sure it’ll be so in the future. Second, if you ignore all the other placements, you’ll never see when the new awesome one will appear. At last, banner blindness will be as fierce as possible when you use this strategy.
If you’re still a whitelisting fan, just keep in mind the following things:
1. Only stick to the placements with the highest volume among the profitable ones.
2. Your campaign will require active management, so be ready to monitor it every day.
3. You’ll definitely have to change ad creatives very often.
4. Don’t expect your profits to last for a long time, market is very volatile.
Still, there is one really good thing about the whitelist strategy. It allows the new affiliates with small funds to enter the market with high competition level. However, it’s not a great idea to grab every placement that seems to have ROI a bit more than zero.
Is there a universal strategy to follow?
Definitely, you can’t say that a certain approach will always be better. Blacklisting is the best one for scaling up, but there are some networks, where the opposite method will be much more lucrative.
Whitelisting isn’t bad. You just don’t have to stick a group of profitable placements like a madman. It won’t let you to go any further. For really big campaigns a single placement doesn’t matter much.
Whichever strategy you choose, there is one thing you should always avoid. It’s over-optimization. It’s a really bad idea to kill every placement that isn’t undoubtedly profitable. That will block you the way to any possible growth in the future.
So, be wise and think of what you can reach in a long term perspective
