Journal of a affiliate chasing the sweepstakes green

[jack45]

Hi all,

Going to be keeping a follow along as sweepstakes is a new vertical for me and I have been needing to take more action recently, need to keep myself accountable.

I'll start off with my recent success, what went wrong and why I decided to take a new route.

Between August and September I had success in promoting the 360 Security app.

One geo in there had great volume, quality and due to the fact I had no competition at the time a low CPM cost. It was all running smoothly for 2-3 weeks then a lot happened in such a short time:

new competitor doubled bids
my campaign was snitched on as someone had contacted support (competitor for sure)
within a few days of my ban, the main publisher that generated 80% profits had been taken down and is now waiting on a decision from the court of appeal

I was a little too cocky in thinking it would be easy to scale the campaign to managed buys. I only tried scaling it in one geo on the networks below but realised they was much more competitive.
Adcash - Much higher bid, same overall quality, low volume after blacklisting to a small profit
Gungo - Much higher bid, very low volume with bad quality.

I then got the campaign going again on the original traffic source to see how quality was after the main publisher had been removed, CV had taken a big hit and it was no longer worth the risk.

A new journey

A period of making a loss and I have decided to ditch app installs, they don't yield the EPCs to compete with other verticals. Sweeps/vouchers is now the focus.

Traffic: Shotgun - I will experiment with pops, mDSP, interstitials and more.
Tracking: Voluum
Networks: Mundomedia, Clickdealer

I just rewatched "How to make a $100/day with Sweepstakes" webinar by Tai which is 100% gold. Got a lot of work to do in picking offers, landers, banners, etc. Will provided more campaign details later.

Golden nugget

As a thanks for joining my follow along, I wanted to give something that helped me with my 360 campaign. I was having a lot of trouble converting Samsung models, my landing page was using a Android Halo theme modal, I decided to put in the extra work to create a TouchWiz (Ssmsung UI) modal and BOOM!! Conversions for Samsung devices tripled. I have attached the files to this thread.

 

[Neo0707]

How long did you do mobile cpi ? Which traffic is that? Thanks

 

[Dmitry.bzns]

Hey I'm working with security apps now, hope my numbers will be close to yours. Good luck with your journey, keep it live. Btw, what traffic do you use and how do you track the cost?

 

[internalsoul]

Awesome Start. keep it going. What kind of traffic are your pushing to your offers?

 

[jack45]

@Neo0707
That campaign was 2-3weeks, before that I had promoted other apk/install offer since august last year.

@Dmitry.bzns
Voluum has a manual cost update which is simple to use.

@internalsoul
Pops/Redirect but am looking to try out mDSP and maybe even facebook

 

[jack45]

Sorry for not updating for a while, I spent a while creating some new landing pages from scratch and then getting translations done, will have to systemise how I launch campaigns - way too slow. The landing pages are nice, I decided to create an "apple" theme which mimics their current website and also replace the 'fb comments' with 'apple forum' style comments.

Anyhow, I was able to keep one campaign going for 360 which has been active from 6th November. It's a handy campaign that provides some profit and helps reach the weekly payment threshold. However it has recently got more competitive as bids have increased and CR has dropped. Stats so far below.

Revenue: $1072.10
Cost: $656.66
Profit: $415.44
ROI: 63%

I finally launched some AU sweeps campaigns yesterday targeting iPhones specifically using my new landing pages but the results have been disappointing.

Plugrush
Revenue: $2.10 Cost: $30 Loss: $27.90

Zeropark

This looks badder than it is. I set my bid high to 0.03 before I went to bed thinking I would bid what the second highest was bidding, but it seems that I have bid nearly $30 CPM for all my traffic </facepalm> If my bid was at $15 CPM then ROI for the "beta test" angle would be around -50% before optimizations. However I don't want to continue this campaign as the volume is too little to get any significant data.

Whats happening now

I got approval for some more iPhone offers I want to test and have setup two banner campaigns on Decisive.
There are 10-12 banners for each campaign, I have taken a shortcut and will only get traffic from carrier/site traffic as it tends to perform better. I'm hoping that I get a few banners which have 1-2% CTR as this has always been a weak point.

Just got a translation back for a 'Download Now' offer I want to promote but am still waiting on lander approval.
Hopefully with a third-tier GEO and a angle that fits in better with redirect traffic I will see better results.

Will try and get more sweeps campaigns running on small pop traffic sources.

 

[johnny9]

awesome follow along ! will follow n learn from you

 

[internalsoul]

jack45 good job mate. Carry on. try to scale it up as much s you can.

 

[K]

Boom, keep up the good work!

 

[jack45]

Thanks for the support guys. Going to try make this next wall of text as brief as possible

The 360 campaign is now barely profitable after the bids increased by 50%. I have paused it for now and decided to put all my focus on sweeps.

Decisive have no traffic at the moment, and I have decided to take a refund they offered me and move on to another mdsp, now know as mdsp1

Spent $30 on a Download Now offer with 0 conversions and decided to stop it.

Tested iPhone offers in a different geo with Zeropark pops and found a profitable combination and believe I have my winning angle. Stats below.

Overall
Revenue: $39.90
Cost: $50.08
Loss: $10.18

Winning combo
Revenue: $30.00
Cost: $25.36
Profit: $4.64

It doesn't end there, after digging into the data more I realised one phone model was very unprofitable; turns out they was using that model to send bot traffic!

There are only two placements with moderate volume which wasn't 100% bot traffic and they was performing very well (100+% ROIs), one of those placements was even at $11 CPM. This has given me the confidence to try scale.

Moving Forward

I sent an email over to mdsp1 to talk about creative approval as I have had trouble in the past and received a helpful response which approved my creatives and also told me what exchanges are being aggressive with their approval of sweeps. I have set up some 320x50 banner campaigns on a few exchanges which are now pending approval.

Talked to my manager at a managed pop network and will hopefully have my campaign up and running tomorrow morning, however it depends if I can the work done as I am out tonight to meet some mastermind peeps attending AppsWorld.

Decided my new split-test hierarchy for sweeps landing pages:

1) Offer
2) Angle
3) Theme (System UI, WhatsApp, Google Play, Snapchat)
4) Ad copy
5) Testimonials
6) Everything else

 

[Dmitry.bzns]

Good luck with this campaign, definitely follow along! I am doing antivirus now (pin) but its very difficult to squeeze that conversions. I will try for a month, if no major improvements, I will be competing with you on Sweeps

I like your split test order, do you code pages yourself?

Cheers

 

[jack45]

@Dmitry.bzns

I do swipe, but if I want to create something new I can also code the html/css/js
I did most of my learning from books but also did a good video course which shows how to design a website in photoshop, then make the exact same thing using html and css.

 

[jack45]

MDSP1 banner campaigns approved and I want to update this with my initial impression!

Overall there are 8 campaigns split into App/Carrier, App/Wifi, Site/Carrier, Site/Wifi and further split over two different ad exchanges. One mistake I have made is to not split campaigns based on OS.

The first thing that strikes me is the win rate for 2 campaigns is 70+%, and the other 6 campaigns are below 10%. All campaigns are using autobid so I will definitely get in contact with support to try and learn more about what could cause this discrepancy.

I had a problem on PubMatic ad exchange with a few publishers giving me lots of bot clicks which has completely skewed my banner CTR and made my job analysing much more difficult for those campaigns. Note: If you are going to run a campaign on PubMatic, block the following pubs: TuneIn Radio - Radio &amp; Music (3142719), entertainment28791 (3583823), TuneIn Radio - Stream Live Radio (3139743)

I have been quick to identify the best performing OS and 3 out of 8 campaigns with potential.

My best campaign has one banner at 1.3% ctr and another 4 banners at 0.9X% ctr at around $0.10 cpc

My landing page is rubbish as I created a quick one just to get approved and translated it using google translate. Will restart the campaign tomorrow using proper landing pages so I can get real data to report on.

 

[mrcolorwolf]

Great follow along, i am new to mobile, any advise on how i can get started?

 

[Joojick]

You absolutely rock! keep it going, wish my landings were that profitable))

however, why do you use them for pop-traffic? is it makes more convertible?

 

[jack45]

@mrcolorwolf
I think the very first thing I would do is look at my current skill-set and budget. For example if you only have a $500 budget and don't know html/css, then buy a few books to learn those basics whilst you build your budget up with a 9to5.

Highly recommended - Join the Mobile Immersion Area, for a newbie it is great value for money. Get access to creatives and also learn how to do specific things practically all other affiliates keep secret.

Pops will be easier to get profitable than banner traffic. Less variables involved and much more relaxed creative restrictions.

Although most people would suggest starting with app installs due to the low budget requirements, I genuinely think SOI sweeps is better as they have more competitive EPCs.

@Joojick
My landing pages aren't too different from what everyone else is using, key is to never copy without modifying it and always be split-testing!

I have always struggled with banner CTR in the past, it is only today I have seen 1+% ctr and can finally see light at the end of the tunnel. The landing pages will likely perform better on banner traffic, will find out tomorrow

 

[Joojick]

@jack45

Do you really recommend Mobile Immersion Area? It's quite expensive, so much doubts about it. I've started with CPI with nice network, however still afraid to run anything beside incent (

 

[johnny9]

@mrcolorwolf
I think the very first thing I would do is look at my current skill-set and budget. For example if you only have a $500 budget and don't know html/css, then buy a few books to learn those basics whilst you build your budget up with a 9to5.

Highly recommended - Join the Mobile Immersion Area, for a newbie it is great value for money. Get access to creatives and also learn how to do specific things practically all other affiliates keep secret.

Pops will be easier to get profitable than banner traffic. Less variables involved and much more relaxed creative restrictions.

Although most people would suggest starting with app installs due to the low budget requirements, I genuinely think SOI sweeps is better as they have more competitive EPCs.

@Joojick
My landing pages aren't too different from what everyone else is using, key is to never copy without modifying it and always be split-testing!

I have always struggled with banner CTR in the past, it is only today I have seen 1+% ctr and can finally see light at the end of the tunnel. The landing pages will likely perform better on banner traffic, will find out tomorrow

what kind of competitive intelligence do you use ??

 

[jack45]

@Joojick
I would say try it for one month and get as much from it as you can. I guess it depends on your current budget.

@johnny9
I am not currently subscribed to any competitive intelligence tools. I spy on adcash, propeller ads, zeropark on my Samsung Galaxy S4 + HideMyAss VPN. I also try spy on mDSP but can never find any affiliate ads.

 

[Dmitry.bzns]

@Joojick
I would say try it for one month and get as much from it as you can. I guess it depends on your current budget.

@johnny9
I am not currently subscribed to any competitive intelligence tools. I spy on adcash, propeller ads, zeropark on my Samsung Galaxy S4 + HideMyAss VPN. I also try spy on mDSP but can never find any affiliate ads.

Does HideMyAss method actually works? do you go to a url that made you a conversion and see what pops up? I have my s4 with broken screen, might revive it for that purpose.