[Journey] My journey to $10k a month

[Moonboy]

Hey guys,

I'll do a short intro first here. If you'd like to read more; check this introduction thread.

So about me and my journey. I started in online marketing around 5,5 years ago for a lead generation company (home improvement). I mainly managed their affiliates (in-house affiliate program and networks) and ran native ads. Big budgets and big results, which got me thinking.. Why the hell am I only doing this for a company and not for myself. So here we are.

The plan

Since I don't have big budgets yet, I want to start with push ads. The lower CPC makes it easier to test different offers, optimize campaigns and scale up. I've been looking into popular niches for push ads and I mostly see sweepstakes and dating being mentioned. I've signed up for Anstrex as well, and there I also saw a lot of anti-virus campaigns being ran on push ads, but surprisingly not a lot of sweepstakes(?).

I've did some small tests on sweepstake offers with push traffic (PropellerAds). I got some offers which had some kind of prelander (mostly 2-3 questions before entering the offer) but they didn't seem to work too well.

This was purely some test money to set up some campaigns to test everything out on PropellerAds and see if the tracker was working etc. But it did make me realize I definitely gonna need my own custom landers in order to make this work, and not use the prelanders some offers have included.


To do's

I still need to figure out which vertical I will choose to focus on. A lot of people seem to recommend sweepstakes, but I barely see sweepstake offers on Anstrex. It's mostly dating and the anti-virus campaigns etc., which got me in doubt on which vertical to pick. I will ask my AM from networks to see if they can advise me, but advice from you guys is always welcome as well.

I also need to check out the options for the landers. I know how to set up a Wordpress site, but only with just regular hosting. The landers being used in these affiliate offers also seem to be a bit more advanced in coding (spinners, gift boxes popping up, etc.) which I can't code myself. I saw some options for lander builders which seemed pretty good. LanderLab, Landerize and PureLander to be precise. From what I could tell they all require your own hosting, so the lander tooling + hosting is something I need to dive into as well to see what would work best. If you guys have any recommendations here; always welcome.

 

[Moonboy]

So a small update from my side. I've been looking into the different options I have for creating landing pages. Out of the three options from my first post (LanderLab, Landerize and PureLander), Landerize seems to be the best option for what I'm looking for. Ready to use templates designed specifically for affiliates. Landerize is quite pricey though and I can't seem to find a lot of reviews on it. Anyone here has experience with this tool?

I've also been doing a bit more research on the verticals. Dating and utilities/downloads verticals seem interesting, but I think to start off my best bet is sweeps. I asked my AM's for some good offers for SOI sweeps in tier 3 countries. Even though I don't see these campaigns as much in Anstrex as other verticals, I'm sure it should be possible to run profitable campaigns for it on push ads.

Hope to get some landers live this week to start testing a bit.

Edit: just checked out PureLander again and it seems quite ok for what I want to do, and it's much cheaper than Landerize. I also saw that Adplexity has LP pack of 257 landers for just $1. I know very basic html and css so it might be an option to go that way as well.

 

[T J Tutor]

just checked out PureLander again and it seems quite ok for what I want to do, and it's much cheaper than Landerize. I also saw that Adplexity has LP pack of 257 landers for just $1. I know very basic html and css so it might be an option to go that way as well.

Have you tried the landers out? Interested in seeing how effective they are.

 

[Moonboy]

Have you tried the landers out? Interested in seeing how effective they are.

I've bought the Adplexity lander pack. I know some basic html so I'll be able to edit them in an html editor without PureLander, so I'll try that first.

There are some nice landers in it, although some designs are in there multiple times, but in different language/content.

I hope to get them live next week, definitely keep you guys updated here.

 

[JamesCrum]

I think more testing is needed
Looking forward to your sharing

 

[T J Tutor]

some designs are in there multiple times, but in different language/content.

This is a good thing! Saves you money on translations for some geos.

 

[Moonboy]

Just a minor update (although it's a big step forward for me). Just got 2 of my landers live via Amazon AWS. I didn't have any experience with this before but I managed to get it done with a good tutorial from YouTube. Only thing left now is to connect my domain name to Amazon AWS, set up https and set up CDN. After that it's finally time for the most exciting part; get some campaigns live.

One question that I haven't found the answer for yet; what costs can I expect from the hosting on Amazon AWS S3? The pricing is based on usage, but what can I realistically expect from running these rather simple landing pages? Using some fictional number; let's say I would run a campaign on $50/day, $0,01 CPC. That would be 5.000 clicks per day > 150.000 clicks per month. Does anyone have a rough estimation of what that would cost for the Amazon hosting?

 

[T J Tutor]

Good question. I've been wondering this myself. I know they increased fees a couple years back. We do have some threads in the community that discuss this and explain some of the pricing. This is why I opt for simple VPS platforms with CPanel. There is no question about the cost of the VPS, $30 a month at BlueHost. The same with my dedicated servers ($80 to $120 per mo). I'm keeping my dedicated servers at BlueHost for now, but am in the process of moving my VPS hosting to LiquidWeb ($60 permo). All because BH has moved their VPS support to call centers in India making them go from incredibly great support to some of the worst support I've seen and experienced.

I always read mixed reviews about AWS. I've thought about trying them many times, but never pulled the trigger.

This is the AWS Pricing Calculator. Give it a go and show us your results please.

THX!

 

[Graybeard]

Costs are by bandwidth used (usually)
if so;
if the landing page is 500KB =$KB
$KB*requests (hits) per period or billing month

added**

not sure if computing time is added to this
my unmanaged servers are a lot less
but then it's ssh only and any other api, or server daemon make or use

 

[T J Tutor]

Costs are by bandwidth

Yeah, I just didn't want to take the time on my day off to do the math.

Thanks for the formula!

 

[Moonboy]

Yes I found the calculator as well, but there were many variables to fill in in order to get a estimation. Not sure which data I have to fill in where, but if I'm correct, with the fictional numbers in my previous post, it would be around $40 a month.

I used Amazon AWS because I thought it was considered one of the most reliable and fastest hostings available. I'll just monitor the budget closely first days of running my campaign to make sure there are no surprises at the end of the month haha.

 

[Moonboy]

Day 1

Yesterday I launched the first campaign. It's a SOI offer in a tier 3 country. I've set up 3 landing pages and got 2 different offers. I'm running both Classic and In-page push, both with a budget of $10/day.

The overall results aren't too good yet.

When I drill it down to the landing pages, the conversions don't really vary, but 1 landing page is performing significantly better so far in regards of CTR. That's something I'll keep an eye on for the next days.

The real difference is visible between the 2 offers. It's too early to draw conclusions here, but so far 1 offer is performing better.

I'll let it run for another day, but I must say that the overall CR is still quite low IMO. I don't have much experience with these offers, so maybe you guys know what a reasonable CR is for these offers? I don't have a blacklist/whitelist yet. That might make a big difference. But there is not enough data yet for that.

Edit: forgot to mention that the Classic push and In-page push campaigns both are performing equally so far.

 

[Emmawantstolearn]

Hi!

Day 1

Yesterday I launched the first campaign.

What traffic Sources are you running it through? Taboola?

I'm running both Classic and In-page push, both with a budget of $10/day.

What did you select as your highest bid? Or did you just set it up for the day?

Thanks for this,
Looking forward to more updates!

Good Luck

-

Em

 

[Moonboy]

Hi!

What traffic Sources are you running it through? Taboola?

What did you select as your highest bid? Or did you just set it up for the day?

Thanks for this,
Looking forward to more updates!

Good Luck

-

Em

No I'm running push ads. Taboola is only native.

For the in-page push there was a minimum cpc of 0,03, which was above the cpc that the traffic chart mentioned so I went with that. For classic push I went slightly below the recommended cpc.

Thanks!

 

[Emmawantstolearn]

Taboola is only native.

Oh! PropellerAds. I guess I missed it earlier.

Good Luck!

-

Em

 

[Moonboy]

A bit delayed, but a new update;

I had the campaign running for 3 days with a budget of $ 10 per day (Classic push and in-page push seperated, so actually $20 per day).

The campaign was far from profitable. After spending $67, I had a revenue of $11. There were definitely possibilities to optimize the campaign, but didn't see realistic options to get it profitable.

Had a chat with my AM from the affiliate network and he recommended some new campaigns. But I also want to use Anstrex more in order to find other campaigns that are successful now and run those.

Had a busy week but I'm back on it this week to get a new campaign live.

 

[Moonboy]

You need $6 or $7 per conversion to break even with that sort of traffic at that cost.
Find a new offer or traffic source

Thanks for the input!

It was my first time testing a SOI offer with my own landing page, so I didn't exactly know what to expect performance wise. The best performing lander had a CTR of 50% (I think up to 60% should be possible, for maximum results), but the CR on the offer was kind of disappointing.

I'm using PropellerAds, so I think regarding traffic source it should be quite ok? A lot of people seem to use it?

Regarding the offer; an option would be to run a CC submit for example, but that would probably lower the CR rate as well, so I'm not sure if that would help too much at this point?

 

[Graybeard]

You need $6 or $7 per conversion to break even with that sort of traffic at that cost.
Find a new offer or traffic source

 

[TrafficStars]

Hey guys,

I'll do a short intro first here. If you'd like to read more; check this introduction thread.

So about me and my journey. I started in online marketing around 5,5 years ago for a lead generation company (home improvement). I mainly managed their affiliates (in-house affiliate program and networks) and ran native ads. Big budgets and big results, which got me thinking.. Why the hell am I only doing this for a company and not for myself. So here we are.

The plan

Since I don't have big budgets yet, I want to start with push ads. The lower CPC makes it easier to test different offers, optimize campaigns and scale up. I've been looking into popular niches for push ads and I mostly see sweepstakes and dating being mentioned. I've signed up for Anstrex as well, and there I also saw a lot of anti-virus campaigns being ran on push ads, but surprisingly not a lot of sweepstakes(?).

I've did some small tests on sweepstake offers with push traffic (PropellerAds). I got some offers which had some kind of prelander (mostly 2-3 questions before entering the offer) but they didn't seem to work too well.

View attachment 22492

This was purely some test money to set up some campaigns to test everything out on PropellerAds and see if the tracker was working etc. But it did make me realize I definitely gonna need my own custom landers in order to make this work, and not use the prelanders some offers have included.


To do's

I still need to figure out which vertical I will choose to focus on. A lot of people seem to recommend sweepstakes, but I barely see sweepstake offers on Anstrex. It's mostly dating and the anti-virus campaigns etc., which got me in doubt on which vertical to pick. I will ask my AM from networks to see if they can advise me, but advice from you guys is always welcome as well.

I also need to check out the options for the landers. I know how to set up a Wordpress site, but only with just regular hosting. The landers being used in these affiliate offers also seem to be a bit more advanced in coding (spinners, gift boxes popping up, etc.) which I can't code myself. I saw some options for lander builders which seemed pretty good. LanderLab, Landerize and PureLander to be precise. From what I could tell they all require your own hosting, so the lander tooling + hosting is something I need to dive into as well to see what would work best. If you guys have any recommendations here; always welcome.

Hi Moonboy!
I would recommend you to run mobile utilities offers on growing markets like Brazil, Indonesia and India. These GEOs have enormous traffic volumes and many fresh users. BTW, Recently we made an affiliate case study. There we have tested VPN offers with in-page push ads.

 

[Moonboy]

Hi Moonboy!
I would recommend you to run mobile utilities offers on growing markets like Brazil, Indonesia and India. These GEOs have enormous traffic volumes and many fresh users. BTW, Recently we made an affiliate case study. There we have tested VPN offers with in-page push ads.

Utilities was one of the verticals I was looking at to test out. I will definitely check the case study and see if I can test something in this vertical!

Sounds like too many click bots to me ... 2% to 20% CTR would be more the norm IMO. It varies so much for reason of the creative's quality and the offer's affinity to the user. SOI will be on the high end as it is a very low barrier conversion.

Try using this as a traffic filter

Adscore

Advanced protection for your Ads margins. Protecting over 1B impressions per day for leading advertisers and ad networks.

www.adscore.com

only issue is that domain is on some ad-blocker lists ...
but it will help to clean your traffic --compare the differences

The CTR was from the landing page to the offer BTW, not from the ads to my landing page. I did see some other case study where they reached a CTR from landing page to offer page of around 60%, so I thought it might be normal for this vertical.

I have no experience yet with bot protection, but I've read a lot about the fact that these traffic sources can have a lot of bot traffic. They have a free trial so I will see if I can implement it. The pricing is based on impressions on my own landing page it seems? The price is very fair then as well!

 

[Zaryab Khattak]

Sounds like too many click bots to me ... 2% to 20% CTR would be more the norm IMO. It varies so much for reason of the creative's quality and the offer's affinity to the user. SOI will be on the high end as it is a very low barrier conversion.

Try using this as a traffic filter

Adscore

Advanced protection for your Ads margins. Protecting over 1B impressions per day for leading advertisers and ad networks.

www.adscore.com

only issue is that domain is on some ad-blocker lists ...
but it will help to clean your traffic --compare the differences

Hey mate,
thanks for sharing, it seems very useful an would defiantly would like to learn more about it can you share some thoughts how it goes and results!

 

[Graybeard]

It was my first time testing a SOI offer with my own landing page, so I didn't exactly know what to expect performance wise. The best performing lander had a CTR of 50% (I think up to 60% should be possible, for maximum results), but the CR on the offer was kind of disappointing.

I'm using PropellerAds

Sounds like too many click bots to me ... 2% to 20% CTR would be more the norm IMO. It varies so much for reason of the creative's quality and the offer's affinity to the user. SOI will be on the high end as it is a very low barrier conversion.

Try using this as a traffic filter

Adscore

Advanced protection for your Ads margins. Protecting over 1B impressions per day for leading advertisers and ad networks.

www.adscore.com

only issue is that domain is on some ad-blocker lists ...
but it will help to clean your traffic --compare the differences

 

[Zaryab Khattak]

Utilities was one of the verticals I was looking at to test out. I will definitely check the case study and see if I can test something in this vertical!


The CTR was from the landing page to the offer BTW, not from the ads to my landing page. I did see some other case study where they reached a CTR from landing page to offer page of around 60%, so I thought it might be normal for this vertical.

I have no experience yet with bot protection, but I've read a lot about the fact that these traffic sources can have a lot of bot traffic. They have a free trial so I will see if I can implement it. The pricing is based on impressions on my own landing page it seems? The price is very fair then as well!

Hey mate,
I was been reading your thread and comments so far, I also got many things to learn and still waiting on to see where your results go on!

Just adding my part, did you tried other then sweeps/dating niches like loan, insurance etc. And from my point I would definitely like to add Geo targeting also play a main role for the offers. So maybe the offer you are trying on the specific geo actually don't have results from the region!

I would definitely like to hearing from you about this as it will help me learning things as well