Scaling and making more money

[hellimac]

Hello everybody, this is my first post on AffiliateFix, and I'm glad to become part of this forum !
To tell you a little about me, I am French, 23, and I am trying to make money with affiliate marketing for around 5 months now. But I decided to be more serious about it, and to help me with that, I decided to write a journey here.

I am promoting CPInstallations offers on mobile only for the moment, but I may try something else in the future.

As a tracking system, I started with Voluum with a free month plan, and got my first experiences, then I moved to the free plan of Adsbridge to be able to continue testing without spending money on the tracking system. I managed to get one campaign with a ROI of around 5%.
But then Adsbridge also decided to change their plans, and removed the unlimited free plan. That's when I decided to create my own tracking system. I am a computer science engineer, and creating web applications is my work, so I put it in good use ! I created it from scratch, using a PHP framework (if some people are interested, I could talk more about that, but it's not the point right now) and made it based on my needs, and as fast as possible (that was my main concern). From time to time, when I need a new feature, I develop it and add it to my server.

I am currently using two traffic sources : ZeroPark and DNTX. I also used Redirect.com for a while, and it was converting well, but for 2 months now the results are really bad so I decided to pause it.

I managed to find a converting campaign with DNTX, with a price of 0.003 per visit, and I was earning around 1$ per day. I tried to scale it by raising the bid to 0.004, but even though the traffic raised, the ROI didn't follow, and I was loosing money. So today I went back to the original cost of 0.003.

But I decided to create a new campaign in which I whitelisted all the sources with a positive ROI. So I will have one campaign for "tests" and one campaign with sources working well, that should bring me money.
Is that a good thing to do, or are there any reason to avoid ?

Every week, I also try to check the stats, and blacklist the sources with very bad results (no conversions and poor CTR). But I sometimes have some troubles to choose the one to blacklist. For example, I have some results of sources with 0 conversions, and a CTR lower than the average, but with only 60 visits, so I guess the statistics doesn't really mean anything.
How do you do that, and know when to stop a source ? Starting at how many visits is it relevant to use statistics to remove or validate a source ?

My goal for the moment is to be able to scale things up, and to make a little more money, so I will try things and write them here. I hope I could use your help for my questions, and maybe with the time help you too !

 

[krass]

Are you using a landing page mate? Try to improve your funnel, assuming your offer converts very well. Test as many landers as you can. Use aggressive landers. The whitelist method sounds great in theory, but it's very unstable. Here's why:

1- How do know it wasn't just a freak conversion? You might have to wait for at least 3 conversions to know that it wasn't accidental conversions. You don't want to whitelist a site that only converts once then never again.

2- You'll get really low volume this way. Volume is power in this game. If you can get 100% ROI using this making $50 per day, you're stuck there. That's your ceiling. The most you can do is raise your bid, but that'll eat into your ROI, and again, also limited volume.

3- You'll get publishers who decide not to send traffic anymore. What if suddenly one of your profitable whitelists decide they don't want to monetize using pops anymore and want to use adsense? You have no control.

Source: tried the method myself, and wasn't happy with it.

These are only three, but I'm sure the more experienced people can give you better reasons. I suggest you improve your funnel. Spend time looking for good, aggressive landers that convert.

 

[kate.dispply]

Hi!

How do you do that, and know when to stop a source ? Starting at how many visits is it relevant to use statistics to remove or validate a source ?
You may decided it based upon other sources stats. For example, if average CR is 3% based upon (60-100 clicks) and specific source has same number of clicks but 0 conversion you'd probably shall think about stopping it.

 

[hellimac]

Are you using a landing page mate? Try to improve your funnel, assuming your offer converts very well. Test as many landers as you can. Use aggressive landers.
[...]
I suggest you improve your funnel. Spend time looking for good, aggressive landers that convert.

Yes, I do use landing pages all the time. I created around 20 of them, and kept the 4 best ones. The CTR is around 16% and the visit to conversion rate is around 0.90% So for about 100 visitors I get 1 conversion. Is it too low ? I got those numbers by targeting the audience, so I guess if I want to scale up I should expect way more. Should I try to create other LP with better figures ?

And I do understand your points, I didn't think about that. It's true that while I can make a little money, I won't really be able to scale.

Hi!
You may decided it based upon other sources stats. For example, if average CR is 3% based upon (60-100 clicks) and specific source has same number of clicks but 0 conversion you'd probably shall think about stopping it.

I guess it is what I am doing then. I follow the trends of the statistics to decide weither to close a source, but only when the number of visits and clicks are high enough. (Around 200 visits / 50 clicks).


Today I also decided to add graphs to my tracker system, and I could see a big "hole" around 12:00 (9:30AM in the timezone of the audience) :

This is the gathered stats of 4 weeks of the campaign so I think it is pretty relevant in terms of statistics. I am thinking about day-parting this time from my offer, but it will remove a lot of traffic. So should I day-part 12:00, or find some solutions to make the conversions better at this time ? And if so, what solutions could I have ?

9:30 is maybe the time people are arriving at the office, and they don't have much time to use their phones, and are focused on work. Maybe adding a timer on the LP at this time could have an urgency effect, and make them convert more ? If that's the case, I will have to add some rules on my tracking system to be able to redirect to a certain LP depending of the current time. I will think about it !

 

[HCFGrizzly]

Yes, I do use landing pages all the time. I created around 20 of them, and kept the 4 best ones. The CTR is around 16% and the visit to conversion rate is around 0.90% So for about 100 visitors I get 1 conversion. Is it too low ? I got those numbers by targeting the audience, so I guess if I want to scale up I should expect way more. Should I try to create other LP with better figures ?

And I do understand your points, I didn't think about that. It's true that while I can make a little money, I won't really be able to scale.



I guess it is what I am doing then. I follow the trends of the statistics to decide weither to close a source, but only when the number of visits and clicks are high enough. (Around 200 visits / 50 clicks).


Today I also decided to add graphs to my tracker system, and I could see a big "hole" around 12:00 (9:30AM in the timezone of the audience) :
View attachment 5908

This is the gathered stats of 4 weeks of the campaign so I think it is pretty relevant in terms of statistics. I am thinking about day-parting this time from my offer, but it will remove a lot of traffic. So should I day-part 12:00, or find some solutions to make the conversions better at this time ? And if so, what solutions could I have ?

9:30 is maybe the time people are arriving at the office, and they don't have much time to use their phones, and are focused on work. Maybe adding a timer on the LP at this time could have an urgency effect, and make them convert more ? If that's the case, I will have to add some rules on my tracking system to be able to redirect to a certain LP depending of the current time. I will think about it !

The countdown things sounds like a great idea. Nothing like a feel of urgency to get uneducated (sorry, but that is what they are if they don`t realize what that countdowns is ) visitors to convert.
If I would be you, I would focus on the period of time 11:00 - 21:00, as it seems this is the best time your offers convert.