My mobile CPA journey

[ltd79]

Hey everyone,

It's Tim here, I've been a long time reader and thought it was about time I did a follow along.

This is my journey on mobile CPA, not only to help others, but so it can be a hub for all the questions I have along the way to help get my campaigns profitable.

I am quite a beginner in mobile CPA, though I've done internet marketing for about 3 years and had some success here and there.

Ok, so let's get started!

Budget: $1,000
Tracker: Voluum
Spy software: Adplexity
VPS: Vultr
Vertical: Sweepstakes

Traffic Networks:
PopAds
PropellerAds
ZeroPark
Adcash

CPA Networks:
Mobusi
Mobidea
Clickdealer
Adcombo
YTZ
Monetizer
CPAgrip

I've been playing around creating campaigns just to familiarise myself with setting up campaigns/tracking etc.

My first campaign was direct linking to gaming/pin submit offers on CPAgrip. I used Adplexity to spy, then just set up campaigns targeting the same placements. I get the odd lead here and there, conversion rates suprisingly high, but very low volume traffic for those placements.

The second campaign I made was similar to a Youtube video I watched, where Andrew Payne did a campaign on Zeropark and Afllow/Monetizer.

Basically he just did a RON campaign on Zeropark going to Monetizer's redirect smartlink. He spent $100 for about 800,000 visits and had over 200 conversions. Then he just optimized from there. He was just direct linking to that one link.

I set up a similar campaign but the results were veeeeery bad lol. I targeted only T2 countries, but unfortunately most contries were converting at 1 conversion per 20,000-30,000 visits.

I paused countries that had no conversions after 20,000 visits and ran more traffic with same results, very low conversion with lots of visits. I was hoping to find some countries with 1 conversion and under 5,000 visits but no such luck.

I'm bidding 0.0001 per visit like in the video, targeting all T2 countries, smartphone, android/ios. Does anyone know why the conversion rate is so low? I've spent about $15 and had only 9 conversions.

I'm not too worried as these were just playing around campaigns but it would be good to get some feedback if I'm doing anything drastically wrong.

Next steps:
1) Talk to my affiliate manager at Clickdealer and ask what's converting in the sweepstake vertical and best country.

2) Use Adplexity to find landing pages in my vertical that have been running lots of traffic for extended period of time. Download landers, clean code, add back button script etc etc. Add them on my VPS.

3) Create campaign in traffic source for specific country.

4) Create Voluum campaign. Add 2-3 different landers to split test. Let run to gather data.

Then I will optimize and cull once I have some data coming through.

I think this way is better than "throw sh!t at the wall and see what sticks" as I already know the country and offer that converts. Also it's proven time and time again to stick with one offer WITH a landing page.

I probably wont update this journey every day, only when I make progress, but if I get stuck along the way or need some advice I will use this thread to ask.

Let's get this show on the road!

Cheers!

P.S. I intend to keep this thread ongoing until I am able to create my first profitable campaign. Any help is GREATLY appreciated

 

[Sanshez]

Hi mate, i think you covered everything on this campaign, and everything should be good, so good luck for this, just keep us updated on it, i'm following.

 

[Xero]

Can you sahre the youtube video?

 

[abdellahi]

good luck with this

 

[ltd79]

Hey, I'm back with another update!

@Xero the video is:

So I've been running a couple of AV offers. 1 is $1 payout and the other is $3.20.

I've been using ZeroPark, PopAds and PropellerAds (maybe too many?) as my traffic sources to start off with. I actually just got my campaigns accepted on ZeroPark so will see how the results go for that.

Traffic is a bit slow on PropellerAds even though I have the max bid and broad targetting options. It is single carrier traffic.

These are my stats so far...

I've had 2 conversions which I'm chuffed about.

I'm running 2 landers on the Romania offer, and 1 so far on the Iraq offer.

I'm not sure where to go from here? I have cut 2 placements already as I had spent well over $7 for each placement.

I don't have enough conversions to cut bad performers yet.

Should I just wait and keep running traffic? The conversion rate seems pretty low considering the amount of clicks I have.

Apart from that everything is running smooth. My landers are loading nicely with good CTR, clicks in tracking are matching the traffic network so not loosing any.

Plan is to keep it running for a few more days, see if there are any more placements I can cull. I will also see how ZeroPark campaign goes and do the same.

I have a $10 per day budget for each campaign.

If you guys have any pointers let me know!

 

[lorenzo]

How did you choose the offers? Ask your AM how many conversions top guys have for those offers

 

[Hadas Mash]

In ZeroPark - are you running a domain campaign or pop?

 

[AstroBoss]

good luck with this mate.

 

[tyoussef]

okay i will give you some helpful tips.
don't spend too much money on placements .
any placements with very low CTR and no conversion pause it .
any placement with very high CTR and no conversion pause it .
all this means bot traffic comes from that placement.
also make sure your landers are super faster, make them up in cdn will be cool .
during the test always bid higher, why ? : to get some good placements appears in your tracking tool so you can stick with them, cus if you are bidding lower you will get only bad traffic from bad placements that nobody wants .
that's how RON works .

 

[ltd79]

@lorenzo Yeah pretty much, they usually know what offers convert well.

@Hadas Mash Just pop for now.

Thanks @AstroBoss

Thanks for those awesome tips @tyoussef! I have a couple of questions regarding your post.

1) With the placements that have high and low CTR for my landers, what if the landing page just sucks, or is REALLY good but hasn't had enough data to see if it converts. Would I need to know a rough CTR of that lander? Otherwise I might kill placements too early thinking they are bots.

2) If my offer is say $3, how much should I spend before I kill that placement? At the moment I've been doing about 2x the offer.

3) Another problem may be my VPS as it's situated in the states, far from where my traffic is. What would you recommend I use - Amazon S3/CDN etc?

I had some traffic from ZeroPark going to both AV offers, and I made 1 conversion for each offer as you can see in the pic The clicks in Voluum are WAY more than inside my affiliate network though.. It's saying I have about 8,600 clicks to my offers even though my Voluum stats say a lot more.

Also there is a problem with one of the landers, I'm not sure what's up with it or if it's the traffic source but it looks like it's getting clicked more than once...maybe bots? I will need to take a look.

Would it be wise to set up a bot trap landing page?

One last thing...the Iraq offer is saying I have all "Lite-Clicks" and no normal clicks, but 1 conversion anyway. Anyone know what these are?

Thanks again!

 

[PatrickTJ]

I would really love to see the progress in your campaigns. I am interested in getting into mobile campaigns

 

[tyoussef]

1) With the placements that have high and low CTR for my landers, what if the landing page just sucks, or is REALLY good but hasn't had enough data to see if it converts. Would I need to know a rough CTR of that lander? Otherwise I might kill placements too early thinking they are bots.

am talking of course when you get some data let's say if you are running AV means after getting 100 impression and no click then black list that placement, why 100 impression only because AV landing page has to be really aggressive .

2) If my offer is say $3, how much should I spend before I kill that placement? At the moment I've been doing about 2x the offer.

most of the times you will not reach that level of spending because you already optimizing the campaign based on CTR, but if the CTR is good and every thing is okay after spending 1Xpayout of the offer and no conversion then you may kill, also if you do get conversion and the CVR of such placement is still - then see how negative it is and see if you still can improve the landers or you just have to kill because the traffic of that placement is not relevant for your campaign.

3) Another problem may be my VPS as it's situated in the states, far from where my traffic is. What would you recommend I use - Amazon S3/CDN etc?

the best thing is to create a droplet in the geo where the traffic comes from , or use amazon cloud front, and i do suggest you start with droplet cus you already have that .

I had some traffic from ZeroPark going to both AV offers, and I made 1 conversion for each offer as you can see in the pic The clicks in Voluum are WAY more than inside my affiliate network though.. It's saying I have about 8,600 clicks to my offers even though my Voluum stats say a lot more.

that's click loss and not only you who has that problem , that's normal, you can still optemize some of that traffic using smartlink but don't think of that now untill you start sending huge amounts of traffic .

Also there is a problem with one of the landers, I'm not sure what's up with it or if it's the traffic source but it looks like it's getting clicked more than once...maybe bots? I will need to take a look.

Would it be wise to set up a bot trap landing page?

it's good to bot test your campaign, but just follow what i mentioned above and you can still use bot trap lander because it will help lot to detect bot placements .

One last thing...the Iraq offer is saying I have all "Lite-Clicks" and no normal clicks, but 1 conversion anyway. Anyone know what these are?

i don't know what you mean by lite-clicks and who tells you that the cpa network of the tracking tool ? .

Thanks again!

no need to thank bro .
Your are the best .

 

[parabay]

Some friends of mine are too getting into this method and their results vary quite a bit, good luck this looks like a very good set up!

 

[AstroBoss]

@lorenzo Yeah pretty much, they usually know what offers convert well.

@Hadas Mash Just pop for now.

Thanks @AstroBoss

Thanks for those awesome tips @tyoussef! I have a couple of questions regarding your post.

1) With the placements that have high and low CTR for my landers, what if the landing page just sucks, or is REALLY good but hasn't had enough data to see if it converts. Would I need to know a rough CTR of that lander? Otherwise I might kill placements too early thinking they are bots.

2) If my offer is say $3, how much should I spend before I kill that placement? At the moment I've been doing about 2x the offer.

3) Another problem may be my VPS as it's situated in the states, far from where my traffic is. What would you recommend I use - Amazon S3/CDN etc?

I had some traffic from ZeroPark going to both AV offers, and I made 1 conversion for each offer as you can see in the pic The clicks in Voluum are WAY more than inside my affiliate network though.. It's saying I have about 8,600 clicks to my offers even though my Voluum stats say a lot more.

Also there is a problem with one of the landers, I'm not sure what's up with it or if it's the traffic source but it looks like it's getting clicked more than once...maybe bots? I will need to take a look.

Would it be wise to set up a bot trap landing page?

One last thing...the Iraq offer is saying I have all "Lite-Clicks" and no normal clicks, but 1 conversion anyway. Anyone know what these are?

Thanks again!

You are welcome dude!