My first PPC journey. POPads + CPALead

[krass]

UPDATE:

I spent $10 on a RON campaign an got back $5.98 = ~-60% ROI.

I've never been so excited about losing money before lol!

I've paused the campaign even though it converts because I think I've pulled all the tricks to get the highest CVR and unless I can get a higher payout offer that converts at the same rate I'll be stuck at -60% perpetually.

It's the weekends so I'll have to wait till monday to get replies from networks. I'm looking for Iphone sweeps and antivirus offers specifically.

That's all for now.

 

[game333]

1. Pick an Offer, split testing network.
2. Setup lander, and angle of views, your target like CTR, CR or....?
3. Result, Positive ROI = Keep and scale, Negative ROI = Keep continue testing the element.
4. Negative ROI Improved = Keep on testing, Negative ROI Maintain = Try once more.
5. Negative ROI Improved = Keep on testing, Negative ROI Maintain = Ban the element.

The headache thing for me always are, cost control, or cost calculation.

 

[krass]

I finally got a campaign into the green! I'm still trying to figure out adsbridge tracker and how to get accurate traffic costs. The way I did it was old school. Spent $10, and wait. If at the end of the day I get less than $10, red. More than $10, green. Fuck me I'm such a noob it's not even funny.

Most networks still don't want me, but I found a network that does, and tested an offer in my funnel and sure enough, I'm GREEN!

As I said I'm still trying to figure out how to get the exact costs so I'm not sure what my exact ROI is but it's aroud 25% i think.

Now I need to work harder and learn faster. I need to come up with at least 2 new lander concepts per day to improve ROI, and also get inside more networks and test more offers.

I'm unsure about a few things:

1. I've read Finch's Premium Post and he said I should wait at least 2 weeks or until I get my first payment before I scale my campaign. Makes sense, because the last thing I need is to spend tons of cash sending tons of leads and in the end not get paid.
2. If I were to wait, I'm worried that other people would catch on, and I'll have to deal with more competition

Anyway creating new lander concepts will never hurt me, so I'll get on that first. I got in touch with a programmer I used to work with before and thank god he still accepts jobs on the side so I'll send some designs his way so yeah.

I'll keep updated. Busy few weeks ahead!

 

[krass]

So I came up with some new lander concepts and I'm looking for a coder to implement lander protection stuff while I'm working on scaling this campaign.

I have some cash in revenuehits (or selfadvertising i guess), but they don't allow carrier targeting like popads. I'm applying to propellerads and zeropark and other pop sources I can find.

I'm also studying a lot about bidding strategies and how to bid to get good volume, but i guess getting a payout bump is the best way to dominate the traffic source.

Campaign is now at a steady 50% ROI.

 

[game333]

Erm, I didn't get into paid traffic but here's a scale.

Since you're having a positive ROI at the moment, I would suggest you to find a network with faster payout.
So this gives you an infinite roll of scaling, go for Net 7, or pay bi-weekly, or weekly etc.

At the moment, since that you're free, try spy more lander that similar to yours, to get better ROI.
I know what you think, you think that 50% is acceptable and probably will copy and go on.
But listen to me, get at least 100%, or higher ROI to gain your experiences.

At the moment you might get +200 XP, and you're level up to Level 7 Pikachu.
But +500 XP can get you to Level 10 Pikachu.

AffiliateFix's Resources has some recommendation, check there.

Don't focus on just the cost!

 

[krass]

Erm, I didn't get into paid traffic but here's a scale.

Since you're having a positive ROI at the moment, I would suggest you to find a network with faster payout.
So this gives you an infinite roll of scaling, go for Net 7, or pay bi-weekly, or weekly etc.

At the moment, since that you're free, try spy more lander that similar to yours, to get better ROI.
I know what you think, you think that 50% is acceptable and probably will copy and go on.
But listen to me, get at least 100%, or higher ROI to gain your experiences.

At the moment you might get +200 XP, and you're level up to Level 7 Pikachu.
But +500 XP can get you to Level 10 Pikachu.

AffiliateFix's Resources has some recommendation, check there.

Don't focus on just the cost!

Thanks mate. I noticed one of the carriers is not converting as good. Glad I separated the carriers into separate campaigns.

I just got accepted into Addspro! Their offer selection is out of this world! So many offers for me to test out! Yay! So now I'm looking to test offers that allow all carriers so that I can get more volume going.

Volume is power - Charles Ngo

 

[krass]

Hope everyone had a great Easter! Since it was the holidays I couldn't get much done. I paused my campaign because I'm not comfortable scaling a campaign when it's only converting for one carrier. I need to test more offers and find one that converts as broadly as possible, so that I can get more volume going.

So I requested approval to run some offers, but since everyone is on holiday I'm just starting to hear from them. I really hope I can find an offer with broad appeal by the end of this month so I can start scaling in April.

I want to go to Germany in May to visit my sister who works there, so that's the goal for my journey. Travelling is fun, but also expensive, so that's why I'm working hard on this. That's all for now, mates. Cheers!

 

[krass]

A small update:

So I got an offer that accepts all carriers. I created separate campaigns for each of the 4 carriers:

Carrier A: 100% ROI
Carrier B: 100% ROI
Carrier C: Not enough traffic
Carrier D: Not eonugh traffic

I'm using popads, and funnily enough I'm not getting any traffic for carrier C and carrier D even though I'm no 1 for carrier C and top 10 for carrier D bid-wise..

Next I tried creating a campaign that includes all carriers, and sure enough I got a ton of traffic. But then the conversions were horrible. I got back only $2 out of $30 ad spend.

So next step would be:
1. Create new campaign using only the carriers that convert.
2. Look for offers that accept and convert for the other two carriers.

 

[krass]

So i've given up testing and trying to get the other carrier to convert. Im just gonna milk this camp as long as i can.

I'm looking for a traffic source that allows targeting a specific carrier only for traffic. Popads allows this, not sure about other networks.

That's what i'll be doing these next few days. Looking for more of the exact traffic that i want.

Any suggestions are very much welcome. That's all for now, guys!

 

[akumadxl]

Hello,
I am also running multiple campaigns on Bing Ads and Facebooks Ads through Max Bounty. I ran surveys, emaillist, and financial. My ROI is in the negative and I've noticed that I am getting a good CTR but no conversion. I am starting to feel as if the networks are shaving off the newbies and there is plenty of evidence off of google to show it. This is why it is important to have a good third party tracking software but they are so hard to installed! Adding a tracking software is the biggest hump for me because it is so technical.

Lets go back to the shaving from the affiliate network. How do we know that these networks are not shaving their leads?

 

[jenny.clickbox]

good luck with your journey, why dont you add me on skype, we will see what we can do

 

[YTZ International]

I've restructured my whole funnel. Came up with new landing pages, putting new offers in rotation.

My latest ROI is ~-50%

Finally getting somewhere. I've tried to make contact with cpa networks but no luck so far. Tried clickdealer, F5 media, Mundo media, Dssply.

The offers that are converting for me are from cpagrip, but I haven't resolved the postback issue yet. Shoutout to Nick from adsbridge for his patience in dealing with a noob. The token is passed to the network but it stops there, cpagrip did not send the conversion back to adsbridge. I tried getting in touch with John but he's travelling a lot so yeah.

So what I'm doing is to separate the campaigns by carrier first, so that I know which carrier is converting. I'll just have to focus on this carrier, and if I want to test other carriers, I have to pause this one. Painstakingly slow.

I really need to get into more networks. Any of you guys can refer me? I'll sign up under your aff link, I don't mind at all.

That's all for today.

Hey

Have you tried signing up for YTZ? We work with lots of newbies. We have a pops rotator campaign that rotates 1000's of offers on a single link and reweights traffic to the top performing offer for your traffic based on the geo/browser/device/OS the user is coming from. This means we will find the best offer for your traffic based on their criteria.

All our rotators are global and work for web and mobile traffic, so you don't have to worry about splitting your traffic out; you can just send it to the rotator and let us optimize the traffic for you! We also have single-offer campaigns if you're looking for something specific.

I can help you set up your postback so that you can start tracking where your conversions are coming from right away. And I can send you a guide that explains how we work and outlines a simple strategy to get started.

Feel free to contact me on skype (marissa.ytz) or by email (marissa@ytz.com) for more info. Or you can sign up for an account here. Hopefully talk to you soon!

 

[krass]

I have two campaigns in profit now, but not getting enough traffic because some big pockets dudes/dudettes have entered the market with enormous bids..

They're bidding upwards of $10-$20 CPM. Goodness.. how do they get profitable since most of the offers in my geo have payouts below $10?

I have the cash to bid that much, but I'm not sure my funnel is strong enough to make that cash back.. bollocks..

I think i might port this campaign to other geos. Which means I'm basically back to square one. Just because I translate the LP doesnt mean it'll convert the same way.

Hmm.. i've learned so much thus far but now I'm not sure what to do.. any suggestions from anyone here?

 

[game333]

I have two campaigns in profit now, but not getting enough traffic because some big pockets dudes/dudettes have entered the market with enormous bids..

They're bidding upwards of $10-$20 CPM. Goodness.. how do they get profitable since most of the offers in my geo have payouts below $10?

I have the cash to bid that much, but I'm not sure my funnel is strong enough to make that cash back.. bollocks..

I think i might port this campaign to other geos. Which means I'm basically back to square one. Just because I translate the LP doesnt mean it'll convert the same way.

Hmm.. i've learned so much thus far but now I'm not sure what to do.. any suggestions from anyone here?

They just filter out all the trash and bid high, where they only receive those traffic from the whitelist.

 

[krass]

They just filter out all the trash and bid high, where they only receive those traffic from the whitelist.

Thanks for the input, mate. So here's my situation, if I may bounce this off you:

Campaign 1:
In the green so far, around 20% ROI, not much. But it's broader in nature, and more room to scale. Accepts traffic from 3 carriers, and also wifi traffic, although I haven't tested the wifi traffic I'm pretty sure it won't convert as well, since the ones paying for conversions are the carriers. Antivirus offer, $3 payout.

Campaign 2:
Was doing 50% ROI before the big pockets came in and hogged all the traffic. Looking at my ROI, I can only safely increase the bid to 2x my current bid. Or maybe it doesn't work that way? Only accepts 2 carriers and only android traffic, so less room to scale. Sweeps, $3 payout.

This is the toughest part in AM: making the decisions. In fact, I actually paused this profitable campaign 2 for a while because I was looking for a different offer that accepted a more broad audience. Looking back, I should've just milked it for all it's worth.

Win some, learn some. Today I will take a step back, rest, clear my mind and decide how I will play the game tomorrow.

 

[krass]

So I took the plunge. I dumped campaign 1, and focused everything on campaign 2.

Bid the maximum, and sure enough, the traffic and leads came raining in. I could only break even, but managed to negotiate a 10% payout bump from my AM. So now I've found the sweet spot in the bids, and the campaign has been in the green for a few days now, although the profit is only like $7 per day.. but hey, at least it's my first campaign that's actually profitable so yeah i'm stoked =)

Now my focus is to scale laterally to other traffic sources, which is easier said than done. I've had to make deposits in a few traffic sources and it's very daunting to put up more cash into campaign when I don't know if the traffic source would even work for my campaign.

Traffic source A: Redirect traffic source. I didn't know the difference between pop or redirect sources but I've put in my cash so.. shit. I'm using PPR on the source but I'm only getting a trickle of traffic (~300 clicks) so far. The traffic did convert once though so I'll just let that run since it's super cheap.

Traffic source B: This is one of those traffic sources that you have to put a ton of money up front just to be able to create a campaign. Payed up the cash, campaign got rejected. Made changes to LP, campaign now approved, but no traffic. SHIT. Good thing the rep is responsive, so got in touch, he checked my campaign setup, found nothing wrong. He forwarded my issue to the developers, so I hope that gets resolved soon.

Traffic source C: Being a noob, I got confused as to how popunders work. It didn't say whether the popunders are for mobile or desktop? Or maybe it's the same for both? I don't know. Whatever. I decided to go where the traffic is, and uploaded a 300x50 banner and target that traffic. Learned some photoshop skills on YT and got it done. Just got the campaign approved, so we'll see what the data says tomorrow.

All in all, scaling a campaign is scary as fuck. But this is the only way to make bigger bucks, so.. yeah. This is the only place I can talk about this, goodness this is a really lonely industry. That's all for now, need to make more banners.

 

[krass]

I think im being scrubbed by my network. My tracker recorded 24 leads but my network only counted 18. Need to find a different network with the same offer and compare.

 

[tyoussef]

cool krass i am folowing you if you a programmer or web designer i can help you i am a technical gay
nice subject

 

[Denis Marinho]

Ual, I just read all of posts and Congrats!

It's very cool see your evolution and your emotion when you have a GREEN campaign! It's really amazing

I'm following here too

 

[krass]

cool krass i am folowing you if you a programmer or web designer i can help you i am a technical gay
nice subject

Wow! Thanks, dude, I'll keep that in mind if I have new lander concepts I want to test. Appreciate it!

Ual, I just read all of posts and Congrats!

It's very cool see your evolution and your emotion when you have a GREEN campaign! It's really amazing

I'm following here too

Thanks for the words! Means a lot to me, this biz can get lonely after a while.

UPDATE:

I learned a few things about my traffic source yesterday:
1- Bidding max doesn't mean you'll get all the traffic, especially if other bidders are engaging in a bidding war.
2- The longer you stay on a bid, the more stable your traffic will come.

Background story: So I was testing a different offer and bid really high to get as much of the traffic that I can. Ended up spending $116 bucks but only got back $42. Back in the red. So today I went back to the bid I was in when I was in the green but not getting much traffic. So in the red again for two days now.

My other traffic sources aren't doing as well as my main one, so still a lot of testing to go to get it to where they are stable.

On a positive note, I managed to beat my main LP by 100% ROI. So I'm now using the stronger LP, hopefully that'll help with the profitability.