Andy Barden
Member
I have been a member for a short while and in the affiliate game for a number of years. My day job is heading up the Clickwork7 Network that until now has done very nicely being a very traditional affiliate network with traditional pubs and a good range of direct finance, survey, mobile and gambling clients.
The owner of the company has been media buying for around 7 months as he was obsessed with the potential of this side of the business. Until now, I have been pushing back on his desires for me to get involved as my team needed me day to day and I knew this would consume me!
I have now got them to a point where my time is a lot more free and could push back no more. As a learning experience, I knew that working with him on his journey and adding my opinions would be invaluable.
In just one week, I have taken so much information away and have actually become a little obsessed with the detail. This thread is simply a daily update of what we are doing and the results. It will undoubtedly bore some people as I am a complete novice however I wanted to document our journey somewhere other than my evernote!
Day 1 - 17.08.16
Following a sit down with my boss, we have decided to start with a few key steps...
1) Login to Adplexity and filter by
Geo
Longest running
Popup
2) Get a feel for whats out there and look for sweep landers to try. (Choose 3)
3) Go through a couple of his popular networks and see what is available in...
India
Thailand
Vietnam
Obviously at some point we are going to have enough data to optimise the campaign. A key thing within this process is to look at the traffic sources and blacklist the ones spending your cash with no return. (I have since established there are other things to tweak first and not to be too eager with this)
We are using Voluum for our tracking and for our initial tests, popads for traffic. Both platforms seem pretty straight forward but I'm sure they both have their complications that I will discover later!
ITS GAME TIME!!
There's me thinking I would just dip my toes today and get to know the system...Noooo, that approach is for pussies so I'm told and we jump straight in with a campaign my boss has been looking at for a while.
THORS HAMMER - (You can guess where this is going)
Mens health is a vertical that I have been lead to believe has legs if you get the right geo and test, test, test with your ads and LP's.
So we choose that as our vertical, Thailand as our geo, popads and adult as our traffic source and Adcombo as our network. As a newb, Adcombo is good as its easy to test ad and lander with a very simple interface.
With a few clicks, a top up of budget and lots of vigorous notes from me, our offer is live with the 2 pre landers and 1 lander that the dorris at Adcombo suggested were the highest converting. You have to start somewhere right!
What have I leaned today?
1) Split testing initially is vital. 2 - 3 variations of a pop lander
2) Tier 3 countries can be harder to optimise as they are often phone conversions rather than C/card. This means there is a delay on conversions by maybe 24 hours
3) US, UK, AU are all tier 1 geos - very expensive with a huge amount of competition
4) India do not seem to run many sweeps
5) Most of the tier 3 geos are heavy in dating (or porn if we are being honest)
6) Most networks in this space are pretty easy about what you are running and few need to check your ad copy
7) A lander in pop ads is the initial pop that a user sees. (A lander in traditional marketing is the final offer page) This can be ripped and hosted to include the various styles and angles you want to test
8) Testing early is key, stop reading and get playing!
9) Accept you will lose money and set small goals
10) Voluum can be used like Cake (Who I use for C7) to track all campaigns as long as there is a global post back with that network in place
11) Much of the offers in tier 3 geos are the same. Lander and offer page rarely have anything that ties them together like a typical affiliate campaign
And breath.....
If you are laughing at some of my assumptions, that's cool, I understand I am a novice but one day, with a little help from my friends, I will know my shit!
The owner of the company has been media buying for around 7 months as he was obsessed with the potential of this side of the business. Until now, I have been pushing back on his desires for me to get involved as my team needed me day to day and I knew this would consume me!
I have now got them to a point where my time is a lot more free and could push back no more. As a learning experience, I knew that working with him on his journey and adding my opinions would be invaluable.
In just one week, I have taken so much information away and have actually become a little obsessed with the detail. This thread is simply a daily update of what we are doing and the results. It will undoubtedly bore some people as I am a complete novice however I wanted to document our journey somewhere other than my evernote!
Day 1 - 17.08.16
Following a sit down with my boss, we have decided to start with a few key steps...
1) Login to Adplexity and filter by
Geo
Longest running
Popup
2) Get a feel for whats out there and look for sweep landers to try. (Choose 3)
3) Go through a couple of his popular networks and see what is available in...
India
Thailand
Vietnam
Obviously at some point we are going to have enough data to optimise the campaign. A key thing within this process is to look at the traffic sources and blacklist the ones spending your cash with no return. (I have since established there are other things to tweak first and not to be too eager with this)
We are using Voluum for our tracking and for our initial tests, popads for traffic. Both platforms seem pretty straight forward but I'm sure they both have their complications that I will discover later!
ITS GAME TIME!!
There's me thinking I would just dip my toes today and get to know the system...Noooo, that approach is for pussies so I'm told and we jump straight in with a campaign my boss has been looking at for a while.
THORS HAMMER - (You can guess where this is going)
Mens health is a vertical that I have been lead to believe has legs if you get the right geo and test, test, test with your ads and LP's.
So we choose that as our vertical, Thailand as our geo, popads and adult as our traffic source and Adcombo as our network. As a newb, Adcombo is good as its easy to test ad and lander with a very simple interface.
With a few clicks, a top up of budget and lots of vigorous notes from me, our offer is live with the 2 pre landers and 1 lander that the dorris at Adcombo suggested were the highest converting. You have to start somewhere right!
What have I leaned today?
1) Split testing initially is vital. 2 - 3 variations of a pop lander
2) Tier 3 countries can be harder to optimise as they are often phone conversions rather than C/card. This means there is a delay on conversions by maybe 24 hours
3) US, UK, AU are all tier 1 geos - very expensive with a huge amount of competition
4) India do not seem to run many sweeps
5) Most of the tier 3 geos are heavy in dating (or porn if we are being honest)
6) Most networks in this space are pretty easy about what you are running and few need to check your ad copy
7) A lander in pop ads is the initial pop that a user sees. (A lander in traditional marketing is the final offer page) This can be ripped and hosted to include the various styles and angles you want to test
8) Testing early is key, stop reading and get playing!
9) Accept you will lose money and set small goals
10) Voluum can be used like Cake (Who I use for C7) to track all campaigns as long as there is a global post back with that network in place
11) Much of the offers in tier 3 geos are the same. Lander and offer page rarely have anything that ties them together like a typical affiliate campaign
And breath.....
If you are laughing at some of my assumptions, that's cool, I understand I am a novice but one day, with a little help from my friends, I will know my shit!
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