My weekly diary on mobile marketing (Goal $100/day)

[asknopt]

Hi there,

To give a little introduction, I'm 29 years old, I'm a software engineer, and I worked in Bangkok for the past 3 years as a backend and front end developer.
I was exposed to AM around 2 years ago, and since then I've launched some campaigns on 7search, facebook, decisive, but never made profit.
I went to some AM events that happened in BKK like STM, and I know a few Affiliates.
I had a 9 to 6 demanding job plus other personal projects on the side, so I didn't really worked hard on it I was just playing around.

I quit my job in January, and been travelling around for 2 months, and now it's time to try this full time. I've saved enough money to invest on AM and live comfortably for 1 year.
So I'm not afraid to fail from a money perspective, and if I do fail I can always get a full time job again.

I subscribed to a shared office space and I'll have the normal 9 to 6 weekly schedule.

So more on AM, I subscribed to CharlesNGO newbie program, waiting for the password to come out, and I read mobileimmersion101.pdf from Taiwo and also his video done 1 year ago

how-to-make-100-a-day-with-mobile-sweepstakes-and-voucher-offers-webinar-replay

The video was so specific and detailed about how to promote this type of offer that I made the decision to work only on sweepstakes for the next 2/3 months.
Also the fact that is a high converting type of offer with low payout means that with lower budget I can start seeing conversions and play around with optimising the campaign.

Details:

Budget: $850 / month on AM only.
Hosting: probably EC2 small on AWS, just waiting to see if someone replies to my post in this forum --> amazon-aws-vs-beyond-vs-liquid.25619
CPA Networks: Need to subscribe to Click Dealer and Mundo Media
Banners and LP: Need to check the competition
Tracker: Probably Voluum.
Task Management: Trello


Goals Week 1 (11-04-2016 till 15-04-2016) - This week is also songkran in Thailand so I won't be too greedy with my goals.

• Get approved in Click Dealer and Mundo Media
• Ask for top converting offers based on volume and EPC as advised by Taiwo and choose one.
• Spy competition.
• Collect Several Banners.
• Collect Several Landing pages.
• Subscribe to tracker
• Subscribe to hosting
• Launch 1 campaign (even if not perfect)

I will be posting every week, feel free to comment my journey, have a good week!
Cheers

 

[Alex AdsBridge]

Hi there,

To give a little introduction, I'm 29 years old, I'm a software engineer, and I worked in Bangkok for the past 3 years as a backend and front end developer.
I was exposed to AM around 2 years ago, and since then I've launched some campaigns on 7search, facebook, decisive, but never made profit.
I went to some AM events that happened in BKK like STM, and I know a few Affiliates.
I had a 9 to 6 demanding job plus other personal projects on the side, so I didn't really worked hard on it I was just playing around.

I quit my job in January, and been travelling around for 2 months, and now it's time to try this full time. I've saved enough money to invest on AM and live comfortably for 1 year.
So I'm not afraid to fail from a money perspective, and if I do fail I can always get a full time job again.

I subscribed to a shared office space and I'll have the normal 9 to 6 weekly schedule.

So more on AM, I subscribed to CharlesNGO newbie program, waiting for the password to come out, and I read mobileimmersion101.pdf from Taiwo and also his video done 1 year ago

how-to-make-100-a-day-with-mobile-sweepstakes-and-voucher-offers-webinar-replay

The video was so specific and detailed about how to promote this type of offer that I made the decision to work only on sweepstakes for the next 2/3 months.
Also the fact that is a high converting type of offer with low payout means that with lower budget I can start seeing conversions and play around with optimising the campaign.

Details:

Budget: $850 / month on AM only.
Hosting: probably EC2 small on AWS, just waiting to see if someone replies to my post in this forum --> amazon-aws-vs-beyond-vs-liquid.25619
CPA Networks: Need to subscribe to Click Dealer and Mundo Media
Banners and LP: Need to check the competition
Tracker: Probably Voluum.
Task Management: Trello


Goals Week 1 (11-04-2016 till 15-04-2016) - This week is also songkran in Thailand so I won't be too greedy with my goals.

• Get approved in Click Dealer and Mundo Media
• Ask for top converting offers based on volume and EPC as advised by Taiwo and choose one.
• Spy competition.
• Collect Several Banners.
• Collect Several Landing pages.
• Subscribe to tracker
• Subscribe to hosting
• Launch 1 campaign (even if not perfect)

I will be posting every week, feel free to comment my journey, have a good week!
Cheers

Hey, @asknopt, it's great. Keep it up and good luck!

I represent AdsBridge tracking tool, so you may get it for free for a month and then extend your subscription with great discount from Affiliate Fix, as well as I will glad to help with all settings on our platfrom

Cheers,
Alex

 

[asknopt]

Hey, @asknopt, it's great. Keep it up and good luck!

I represent AdsBridge tracking tool, so you may get it for free for a month and then extend your subscription with great discount from Affiliate Fix, as well as I will glad to help with all settings on our platfrom

Cheers,
Alex

Hi Alex,

Thanks but I already signed with Voluum as I used it in the past!

Cheers

 

[asknopt]

Hi guys!

So quick update as I'm really eager to leave home after some hard work

--- Goals from last week ---

Goals Week 1 (11-04-2016 till 15-04-2016) - This week is also songkran in Thailand so I won't be too greedy with my goals.

• Get approved in Click Dealer and Mundo Media

Applied for Click Dealer only as Mundo Media was asking for CPA payout, I will try them once I'm actually running the campaign. Waiting for Click Dealer reply. Anyways, I am in subscribed to other CPA networks, one of which has good mobile offers as well.

• Ask for top converting offers based on volume and EPC as advised by Taiwo and choose one.
• Spy competition.
• Collect Several Banners.
• Collect Several Landing pages.
• Subscribe to tracker

Using voluum

• Subscribe to hosting

Using AWS EC2 Small.

• Launch 1 campaign (even if not perfect)

I was not expecting so much work and decisions just to have the campaign ready, but I guess first time just everything adds up, since learning how to spy, prepare hosting, automatize deployment of the landers, adapt landers language, structure, offer, pictures, javascript, dns setup, tracking, etc, etc..

Anyways everything is set, all flows were tested using Voluum campaign link and campaign ready to launch.

I did 2 angles for the LP's and I have 2 similar sweepstake offers.
I could hit start right now in my Traffic Source just for the sake of showing green in the task, but I guess worth waiting for my AM feedback to see if my landers are compliant.

Have a great weekend,
Cheers

 

[asknopt]

Hi All,

So basically my AM did not got back to me, and I couldn't resist the temptation and I did hit start
It's been 9 hours since my campaign was approved in my traffic source.
I got 25,789 Views, 183 Clicks on my offers, 6 conversions.

I'm wondering how much conversations are necessary to be statistically meaningful.
All this 6 conversions were from IOS, and 5 of them were pop under, and 1 pop up.

Is this enough data for me to decide to filter out Android and filter out Pop Up?

Screenshot from Voluum:

Thanks for any reply
Cheers!

 

[game333]

Hi All,

So basically my AM did not got back to me, and I couldn't resist the temptation and I did hit start
It's been 9 hours since my campaign was approved in my traffic source.
I got 25,789 Views, 183 Clicks on my offers, 6 conversions.

I'm wondering how much conversations are necessary to be statistically meaningful.
All this 6 conversions were from IOS, and 5 of them were pop under, and 1 pop up.

Is this enough data for me to decide to filter out Android and filter out Pop Up?

Screenshot from Voluum:

View attachment 6033

Thanks for any reply
Cheers!

That's the motivation! Perhaps it's weekends so your AM spent their time on vacations. Lol
I think it should be enough data for you to cut, decide which has a 90%-100% negative ROI and cut them.

Anyway, good luck.

 

[asknopt]

That's the motivation! Perhaps it's weekends so your AM spent their time on vacations. Lol
I think it should be enough data for you to cut, decide which has a 90%-100% negative ROI and cut them.

Anyway, good luck.

Thanks for the advice
I will cut pop ups for now given it's a separate campaign, so I can save some money and leave the others open.

I wanna run as broad as possible for the first 24 hours to see what's going on.

 

[asknopt]

Update:

0 conversions in the past 8 hours (9pm till now, 7am), wondering if is normal or not, anyways I checked server and offer page and everything seems normal..

----

----

 

[internalsoul]

Seems like you are doing well. It's too early to optimize and 6 leads isn't enough data. Your CTR is way too low. So you might wanna check it and improve it before coming to early conclusions.

From you last post, it seems like you have spent way too much. You might wanna consider your angles and landers again.

Hi All,

So basically my AM did not got back to me, and I couldn't resist the temptation and I did hit start
It's been 9 hours since my campaign was approved in my traffic source.
I got 25,789 Views, 183 Clicks on my offers, 6 conversions.

I'm wondering how much conversations are necessary to be statistically meaningful.
All this 6 conversions were from IOS, and 5 of them were pop under, and 1 pop up.

Is this enough data for me to decide to filter out Android and filter out Pop Up?

Screenshot from Voluum:

View attachment 6033

Thanks for any reply
Cheers!

 

[asknopt]

Seems like you are doing well. It's too early to optimize and 6 leads isn't enough data. Your CTR is way too low. So you might wanna check it and improve it before coming to early conclusions.

From you last post, it seems like you have spent way too much. You might wanna consider your angles and landers again.

Thanks!

Yes my CTR is really low.
I can improve the landing pages language given I used google translator for some phrases, and also one technical thing in one of them.
I have a third LP new angle, and I will use it soon.

In the meanwhile one more conversion came, again iOS, interesting how Android users click way more but not convert.

I'm wondering about two things right now,

1) What should I aim for CTR % for Pop Under ?
2) How many conversions you guys need until make a decision? Do you base that in some statistic formula, or by use gut feeling? I guess experience with type the of offer, traffic source and country is also important of course.

Cheers!

 

[game333]

Thanks!

Yes my CTR is really low.
I can improve the landing pages language given I used google translator for some phrases, and also one technical thing in one of them.
I have a third LP new angle, and I will use it soon.

In the meanwhile one more conversion came, again iOS, interesting how Android users click way more but not convert.

View attachment 6036


View attachment 6037

I'm wondering about two things right now,

1) What should I aim for CTR % for Pop Under ?
2) How many conversions you guys need until make a decision? Do you base that in some statistic formula, or by use gut feeling? I guess experience with type the of offer, traffic source and country is also important of course.

Cheers!

It really depends on individuals, should you try to optimize more to get better CTR %?
Conversions are directly being influenced by the sales page, or how you sales the item to your customer, how you convince them and make them believe a stone can make you rich. Basically a psycho-pages.

Anyway, don't use Google Translator as major of the language being interpreted are not as the input defined as.
Get someone to be your translate like Fiverr, you can get it literally everything for $5.

Don't get discourage by it, I see you're facing some troubles here, but troubles shooters is the way you improve yourself, is the path you should gain knowledge on.

The "OUCH, IT"S PAINS!" makes you remember what causes the error and won't fall the same mistake again.
Well, human are developed that way.

Keep posting bro.

 

[asknopt]

It really depends on individuals, should you try to optimize more to get better CTR %?
Conversions are directly being influenced by the sales page, or how you sales the item to your customer, how you convince them and make them believe a stone can make you rich. Basically a psycho-pages.

Anyway, don't use Google Translator as major of the language being interpreted are not as the input defined as.
Get someone to be your translate like Fiverr, you can get it literally everything for $5.

Don't get discourage by it, I see you're facing some troubles here, but troubles shooters is the way you improve yourself, is the path you should gain knowledge on.

The "OUCH, IT"S PAINS!" makes you remember what causes the error and won't fall the same mistake again.
Well, human are developed that way.

Keep posting bro.

Hey man thanks for the feedback!

I decided my next campaign is gonna be on either English or Portuguese speaking country as I can play with the language. I will use translation services once I played with text and see how people react to it.

I was able to improve a lot my CTR up to 10% using different landing pages and cutting off under performing websites.

This monday, I'm still investigating what happened, my CTR dropped to 0%, my server seems really fine, I think it might be voluum, I connected to the country I'm promoting with VPN, and when I click on offer link it kind of hangs and takes long to resolve the offer link.. I'm now testing a campaign that is exactly the same, but just different voluum link..

In the meanwhile I'm already on $200 spent, I have 14 conversions so far.

I don't mind to keep spending on this campaign just because I feel I'm still learning new things. Everyday there is always something I'm improving, wether the back button redirect, or passing the variables to the LP in order to display user specific info or checking for bot traffic..

I tested by now more than 7 LP's (Google play store theme, what's app theme, lucky wheel, apple theme) and did some AB testing in each of them but again the language is something I can't play much for now.

 

[asknopt]

Hi all!

So I've been quiet on posting but working almost everyday on this.

Since my last screenshot I've spent more $100 and made more 8 conversions. So it's a 2 conversions improvement for the same amount of money >P
I don't really care that I've spent this, I think it does not make also sense with the level of knowledge that I have to move to another offer/campaign, because I'm still learning a lot each time I live the campaign. Also I have enough variables to worry about, bringing in more variables would be just start from the ground

-----

My goals for this week:

Improve my monitoring (high priority)

I had a problem this Monday, and I'm still troubleshooting what happened, I had LP that had 8% CTR and dropped to 0%. I'm suspecting it's voluum because I did ping tests and the time it takes to load the page is the same as before.
Connecting with a VPN and clicking on offer link, www.volumtrk.com/click , takes some seconds until it changes to final offer link. I'm also A/B testing the offers, I have 3 similar offers, so I know it's not my CPA network issue.

So my goal for this task is to find proper software that can test full flow and give me results in millis for each step.

1) http://volumtrk.com/8xxxxx-3xx0-xxxx-8b9a --> MyLp.com | Resolving took 302ms
2) MyLp.com | Loading page took 504ms
3) http://volumtrk.com/click --> http://mycpaofferlink.com | Resolving took 102ms
4) http://mycpaofferlink.com --> http://finalofferlink.com | Resolving took 100ms
5) http://finalofferlink.com | Loading took 100ms

I hope I don't have to build a crawler by myself to get this kind of stats in a organized way >P


Better Reporting (high priority)

So basically voluum is great, but if I wanna do more complex reporting, let's say for example:

Generate a report of Android clicks where I wanna exclude certain days (e.g. one of the days I tested bot traffic i don't want that to interfere with my overall stats) and certain LP's (in Voluum you can choose to use a certain LP for report but not exclude).

So after talking with support, they don't have GUI click button to export all raw data.
But they have a REST API, so I need to check what I can collect from their API and see if I can generate the report I want with the data available.


Port my campaign to english speaking country and improve LPs (medium priority)

So far, I've been the lazy affiliate that spy on competition and use their LPs, sorry but I know the gainers are on being creative and doing something different. There is just so much to learn that I'm leaving this one when all other things are sorted.
For this to happen I also need to promote in a country that I can speak the language so that I can understand people's reaction to text. Using translation services at this stage I think it would be an extra cost and time that I don't wanna have.
So I will be porting my campaign to other countries soon.

Configure proper flow in Voluum (low priority)

So, currently I'm using a link of a new campaign inside the LP.
I created a back button redirect campaign where I collect where the user clicked (e.g. clicked on back button or click on a FB comment, or any other clickable place)
I'm not sure this is the best way to track it though as I this data will be separated from the main campaign. I know in voluum there are flows and support send me an alternative way of doing this which was a bit complex and I left it for future, so I will be checking on this.


------

I think that's it, have a good week!!

 

[kate.dispply]

Wow, nice thoughts, keep us updated.

 

[asknopt]

Hi all!

I will post soon an update on my tasks, in the meanwhile I'm thinking out loud about some questions, well if anyone has patience enough to answer would be cool, but I will find the answers sooner or later I guess

1) Does anyone use big data tools for reporting and monitoring? I mean, if I spent $250 and I have over 100k rows of single events, I'm imagining a super affiliate having millions or more per campaign.
Given excel handles around 1 million rows, and given voluum does not allow exclusions, I guess you guys must be using other stuff like Hadoop, Elastic search, kibana, grafana, etc.

2) When you start a campaign, and you go for breaking even, do you go for breaking even before you start optimising?
Meaning you will focus strictly on LP and make it break even without any optimisation on the campaign?
I'm asking this, because I'm almost breaking even in this campaign, yesterday I was green half of the day already, now the issue is, I optimised so much that I only have between 200-800 visits per hour depending on the time.. so that's not really enough traffic.
And I started subscribing to other traffic sources, but a lot of them have less settings than the one I ran, for example I can't choose OS version or browser version.

I guess the lesson learned is to make it profitable or breaking even before making any kind of optimisation.

3) When you use themes landing pages, do you buy subdomains matching the theme? Do you think if it's a big company like google and I use www.google.com.mydomain.com I could have legal issues? I'm thinking on a/b testing that.

4) I was reading about A/B Testing, Multivariance testing and statistics in general.
Do you guys use any software to calculate this kind of stats? Like how many samples you need to collect and how many conversions you need to get before you make a decision with a 95% confidence level.
Or do you use your sixth sense gained from experience?

5) In your Landing page, do you have any code to see where user clicks? For example let's say you have 3 questions in your LP, do you check their answers? Do you see if they drop on the first or second or third question?
I think google analytics allows this kind of stuff, this could basically save money from AB testing.


I start to think that If I had a team would be so much better, there is just so much to learn and so much to do, and each component of the campaign is so different from the other, e.g. Marketing vs Technical vs Statistics.

Anyways, have a good weekend!

 

[asknopt]

Hi all,

So regarding my tasks from previous week:

Improve my monitoring (high priority)

I start using Network & IT Systems Monitoring – Monitis

It works pretty good, you can check loading times for the whole page, CPU and Ram stats by installing a agent in your server, set up alerts, number of people viewing your pages, etc.
I can't still do the break down I wanted to as explained in previous post, but I guess for now is good enough.

Better Reporting (high priority)

So on this one I basically start studying a bit of statistics, more related to AB testing.

A/B Testing For Beginners: 70 Resources to Get You Started
Evan's Awesome A/B Tools - sample size calculator, A/B test results, and more
Get Data Driven

I also started coding a python agent to read from Voluum Rest API and storing into a file the json.
The things is, to do a proper solution, I would have to use either Dynamo from amazon or other kind of DB supported by Elastic search company, because in the end I would like to use their tools for analysing the data.
I would have to keep running this python agent 24/7, and treat failures properly, handle duplicates, etc.
Point is I realised to have a proper solution on this it would take me 1 to 2 weeks to have everything working fine.

So then occur me what's the point of having a nice store inside when you still don't have customers?

I stopped and decided this week to focus only on LP (increase CTR and CR)


Port my campaign to english speaking country and improve LPs (medium priority)

I started running my campaign on a country recommended by my AM, but I realise there isn't much traffic at least in the traffic sources I'm running.

I think I need to go for a country like Brazil which I can write/speak the language, volume is huge and traffic is cheap.

Configure proper flow in Voluum (low priority)

I ended up not having time for this one as it was low priority anyways.


-----


So to resume last week, I'm still running my initial campaign, and there was a day of the week where I was almost profitable, I was green big part of the day, but then end of day was red again.

When I reach green, I started trying all sorts of things to push for it, I started opening my campaign again because I didn't had enough traffic, bidding higher, subscribed to other traffic sources. None of this worked, I realise now that I should make it break even or green with almost no filtering in the traffic source, meaning, working for most of the traffic, and only after that optimise. My campaign was only working for a certain OS version, for a certain browser version. A lot of traffic sources don't even allow you to select this kind of detail like zero park or adcash.

---

So in total so far in this campaign this was my spendings, lost $200.
I think is now time to stop this campaign, and start fresh, I learn already quite a bit from it, and I don't think I can improve it much more given the language barrier as mentioned before.

Anyways I'm quite happy that I made $73.4 out of $271.04 given when I was playing around in the past I had like 0 conversions.

---

Focus of this week:

Start fresh, launch a new campaign in another country, I really wanna do the same type of offer, but not sure if countries like Brazil or India have the same time of offer converting well. I might need to subscribe to other CPA networks as well to have more choices.
Focus only on marketing side, try to play with text, see how CTR and CR reacts to text changes.

I also wanna start networking a bit more, and I'm also looking for a partner, trying to ask friends to join me on this quest, etc. I'm motivated enough to do this on my own, but I do like team work, brainstorm, etc.
Plus things would just speed up way more.

Anyways, this is it for now.
Have a great week.

 

[game333]

You're seeing result and I'm glad you did, but wouldn't that a little over spending?

If I were you I would shocked and panick of the money I've spent bring me such result.
Obviously I don't have any much experiences on paid marketing oh well, good luck to you in anyway.

Cut spending? Optimized?

 

[asknopt]

Well, I think as long as I'm learning there is no issue in spending. If I had given up before I would not even have that green day I had. Anyways, I still managed to spend less than my budget the past month so I'm not worried at all.

There is a good post from this guy that explains giving up too soon is also not good.
Green and Red: How To Find Profits Buried Within Losing Campaigns - Malan Darras / Music. Marketing. Madness.

Regarding cutting and optimising it's not really possible, I'm targeting very specific OS version and browser, I cut down a lot of websites and I almost don't have traffic. So I can't really also escalate to other traffic sources as well given the criteria being different.