Voluum - The Ultimate Guide!

[servandosilva]

Voluum - The Ultimate Guide!

Hello Fixers. What's up? I've been doing CPA Marketing for 6 months already and learned a lot of stuff from this forum and others. It's time to give something back. It wasn't difficult to understand what kind of guide or case study I should make, because many people were requesting this already.

Voluum

I receive lots of Skype requests, questions and messages to help people setup their trackers, as that seems to be one of the most "difficult" part for many to get started. You need some basic tech knowledge, but it's not that difficult. However, if you're just starting with CPA marketing, getting used to talk about tokens, Postback URLs, tracking pixels, subids and all the rest can be quite overwhelming.

I use Voluum, and it's a great tracker. But because it's kind of new, there's very little information and documentation on how to install it and use it. Voluum has some information and tutorials in their page, but it's probably not enough for beginners, so here's the ultimate guide.

Don't worry, I didn't use trackers 3 months ago. And learned everything in 2-3 days after asking a few questions to some affiliates. You can setup and learn everything in 1 day if you want. While this guide is exclusive to Voluum tracker, it will probably help you use any other alternative. Some affiliates say you learn tracking, not a tracker.

I'll cover:

• Why Voluum?
• Requirements
• How to install Voluum
• How to add traffic sources, affiliate networks, offers and landing pages
• How to setup postback URLs from different networks (Peerfly, Hasoffers, Cake, Mundo Media, etc.)
• How to setup custom variables and subids
• How to split test offers and landers

Keep in mind this guide might grow in the future, so I'll try to keep it updated and answer all of your questions every day.

Let's get started!

Why Voluum?

Voluum is one of the best trackers available at this moment. I originally started using Voluum because they have a free trial that ends on September, so I had 3 months to learn how to use it, Master it and decide if it was worth it.

I know it’s worth it and many super affiliates are using it. But there’s a good reason behind it aside from the fact that it’s still free for a few days.

It’s cloud hosted.

CPVLabs and Prosper202 are very well known tracking solutions in the affiliate Marketing industry. Both of them are self hosted, which means you need to buy a server (VPS or dedicated) and install it by yourself in it. You get the data, you need to clean it, you need to give some maintenance all by yourself.

Mobile traffic wasn’t big enough, so nobody wanted to track phones, ISPs, carriers and other mobile factors a few years ago, but Mobile is big nowadays, and without the correct information you’ll just spend your budget without being able to optimize your campaigns.

There are 2-3 well known mobile trackers. Voluum is one of them, and there’s iMobitrax (from the IMGrind forums, now R.I.P.) and STM Mobile tracker. Both of them are self hosted and require a good VPS to get started.

Because Voluum is cloud hosted, you don’t need a VPS to get started. Now don’t get me wrong. you’ll still need a VPS to host your landing pages, but you’ll need less resources and the software by itself gets updates and maintenance without distracting you.

Some people prefer a self hosted tracker because they want their data to be 100% theirs, but Voluum has a very secure system, and honestly, you want to focus on learning how to use a tracker and optimize campaigns, instead of thinking if someone could hack into your account and steal your data (that can also happen with a self hosted installation).

Anyway. Voluum is still free for the next 30 days and the Noobie plan has a $0 monthly cost with up to 100,000 events. That should be enough to get you started and try a few campaigns.

Requirements:

If you’re going to use Voluum, you just need a few things:

• A Domain Name
• A VPS if you want to setup a landing page. This one isn’t necessary to setup your account and direct link, but you’ll need it later if you want to improve your conversions. Grab the $30/month package at ASO and get 2 months FREE plus a 25% discount in your first payment
• A Free Voluum account (until september). Sign up here.

That’s it.

How to install Voluum

Go and grab a domain name at Godaddy or your favorite domain registrar. I’m going to use Godaddy in this example, but Voluum has a quick guide on how to install it with Name.

Let’s say I went ahead and grabbed the domain: mobileoffer.com
I’d probably buy it with domain privacy because I don’t want everybody to know who I am when using spy tools.

I’ll use that domain for the whole guide, so please look carefully.

Open your GoDaddy dashboard, log in and go to your “Manage my Domains” area.
You’ll find all your domains there. Remember not to use this domain for anything else other than tracking. Don’t install a blog or setup a redirect or anything. Leave this domain clean for tracking purposes only.

You’re going to CNAME your domain to your Voluum’s account. If you haven’t got a Voluum’s account sign up here.
If you have an account, login and click the small gear icon at the top right corner to go to your settings and go to the “Domains” tab. There, you’ll find your own Voluum domain.

It will be something like: abcde.trackvoluum.com

The first 5 letters are unique to your account (abcde). Copy that link.

Now go back to your domain name settings on Godaddy and click the “DNS Zone File” tab. Now click the “Add record” option:

You’ll need to fill up your settings:

• Host: can be any subdomain you want. I’ll use track.mobileoffer.com so I wrote “track” here
• Points to: abcde.trackvoluum.com (Replace abcde with your own code)
• TTL: 1/2 hour

It should look like this:

Click “Finish” and then there will be a “save settings” button in your domain dashboard. Make sure you click that one or the changes won’t be saved.

That’s it. Now you need to link your domain to your Voluum’s account, so go back to the Domain settings in Voluum and add “track.mobileoffers.com” to your main domain.

Leave “Cloaking domain” as redirectvoluum.com and click Save.

That’s it. Your Voluum tracker is installed and almost ready to use.

You can do the same process and have 2-3 tracking domains as backup domains. This is useful if for some reason 1 domain is having problems or if you want to do Double Meta refresh redirects. This is a way of cloaking your links and I won’t cover it at this point. Also, it won’t be included in the Noobie plan later when Voluum goes public, so you’ll need to pay $99 per month.

If you’re reading this guide you’re learning the basics of mobile and tracking, so focus on testing a few campaigns and learn how to optimize and track everything before you think about cloaking.

Give it a few hours before actually running a campaign. The TTL setting at go daddy was set at 1/2 hour, but I’d wait 2 hours just to be sure everything works correctly.

You can check if everything is working in the same “Domains” tab by clicking “Verify DNS settings” next to your main domain. It will become green if everything’s working and good to go (as shown in the last image).

Congratulations!
You have installed your tracker and you’re 1 step closer to become a mobile affiliate. Now it’s time to take action.

 

[servandosilva]

How to add a Traffic Source

Once you have your Voluum account running, you’ll need to add some traffic sources, offers and (optional) landing pages.

You can start direct linking some offers like Games or pin submit offers with reasonable offer pages that don’t require a lander to start.

Let’s see how to add a traffic Source to Voluum.

Zeropark is tightly integrated with Voluum because they’re from the same company. So you don’t need to add Zeropark and it will track the 3 tokens (target, keyword, match) automatically.

I’ll show you how to setup an offer on Zeropark (pop ups and redirects) and an offer with a banner traffic source: Decisive.

Let’s add Decisive as a traffic source:

Step 1. On your Voluum’s dashboard, go to the “Traffic Sources” tab and click the green “New traffic source” button.

Type the name of the traffic source “Decisive” and the postback URL as shown in Decisive’s FAQ: http://win.crwd.io/convert/{externalid}

Now you can add extra parameters, which are different for each traffic source. For example, in Zeropark, there are only 3 parameters (match, exact, target), but Decisive has a lot of tokens you can use as parameters to measure your ROI.

I like to set it up like this, so you can copy it if you want. The order of the parameters doesn’t matter as long as you know which one’s you want to measure later.

Just go ahead and copy my settings or use the ones provided by Decisive in this tutorial.

All parameters are very important depending on what you want to track. Voluum can already track a lot of parameters by itself (country, device, OS versions, models, ISP/Carrier), so instead of tracking those variables I’m adding custom Decisive’s variables that Voluum isn’t able to track like: Placement (app or website), category (Decisive’s categories), adid (banners).

But the most important setting here is the External ID, which will help you track your conversions in the future. In fact, you could just add the External ID parameter and that would be alright to get you started.

OK. You’ve successfully added a traffic source. We have Zeropark and Decisive (pop ups and banners) to start learning mobile.

How to add an affiliate network

This is probably the easiest step. To add an affiliate network just click the “Affiliate Networks” tab in your Voluum’s dashboard and click the green “New affiliate network” button.

Type the name of the network and click Save.

I’m using Peerfly as an example, but this works the same for every affiliate network out there. Make sure to leave unchecked both options as shown in the image.

Let’s learn how to add an offer now.

 

[servandosilva]

How to add an Offer

Now we need to add an offer. Let’s see how to properly add an offer and use subids to track your conversions.

Be careful here, because this is probably the “more difficult” step.

What you’re going to do is to select an offer from your affiliate network and get your affiliate link. Most affiliate networks use Hasoffers or Cake as affiliate platforms. However, there are a few networks which use their own custom platform and are a little bit different.

Here are a few examples:

Hasoffers: Furthermobi, Yeahmobi, Adbooth

Cake: Neverblue, Adsimilis, F5 Media

Custom platforms: Peerfly, Mundo Media, Matomy

When you learn how to track, it doesn’t matter which platform you’re using. you’ll find your way.

However, I know the pain of seeing different platforms everywhere with different subids and Post-back URLs when you’re new. So I’ll write an example for each one.

Peerfly

Let’s start with Peerfly as it’s one of the favorite affiliate networks here at the Fix. While Mobile is definitely not big with Peerfly, they have been adding more offers lately, so it’s worth a try. Also, if you promote pearly offers (Social, PPV, etc.) you can follow this same guide to track your conversions and optimize your campaigns.

Open your Peerfly dashboard and select an offer. Let’s use Vindale Research as an example:

Peerfly allows you to pass 3 subids maximum, so get used to pass at least 2 subids:

subid 1: a campaign identifier
subid 2: your tracking subid

You could put the tracking subid in the subid 1 and forget about the rest, but every network using Cake as a platform will need you to use the subid 2 for tracking purposes. Because of that, many affiliates use the subid 2 for tracking and the subid 1 to identify a campaign.

Also, it seems like some networks can check the traffic quality and see if a traffic source is converting better than another traffic source. So if you put an identifier in your subid1, your network could identify them and ask you to stop sending traffic from one source instead of just kicking you out of a campaign.

For example, if you had this offer running in both Zeropark and Decisive, you could put:

subid1: zp
subid2: dcs

This is just an example. Don’t put the whole name or traffic sources. Use a number or anything that would help you identify your campaign without giving away data.

Let’s say you put all the data in your subids with the same offer as an example:

http://trkur.com/tk?o=8484&p=666666&s1=facebook&s2=newsfeed&s3=male34-45

If someone spies on your campaign (and trust me, hundreds of affiliates will), they will know that you’re promoting this vindale research offer from Peerfly using Facebook as a traffic source, with Newsfeed ads and with an audience of males between 34-45 years old.

If your campaign converts, they’ll have the same campaign, with the same landing and offer running in a few days and your profits will be gone. They’ll have more budget to spend and probably better payouts.

DON’T DO THIS. Instead, you can let Voluum give you a unique identifier with their {campaign.id} token. Only YOU will know what the ID means.

The second parameter will be the tracking token. In this case, you will use the {clickid} token from Voluum and you’’ll be ready to rock!

Back to Peerfly

OK… let’s go back to peerfly and grab your affiliate link.

http://trkur.com/tk?o=8484&p=666666

Copy that link and go to Voluum’s dashboard. Click the “Offers” tab and the green “New offer” button.

Select the country of your offer and the network. Leave the payout on Auto.
Now paste your affiliate link in the URL link and add the subid1 and subid2 as follows:

Original URL: http://trkur.com/tk?o=8484&p=666666

URL with subids: http://trkur.com/tk?o=8484&p=666666&s1={campaign.id}&s2={clickid}

If you don’t feel comfortable enough writing this manually, you can just copy and paste both tokens in your Peerfly’s offer page and Peerfly will generate the link for you:

Finally, give your offer a name and click Save. That’s it.

Hasoffers: Yeahmobi, Furthermobi, Adbooth, etc.

If you’re promoting offers from an affiliate network using Hasoffers your dashboard looks like this:

If you see the same dashboard, no matter what color or network is it, they’re using Hasoffers.

Select your desired offer and scroll down to the “Generate Tracking” section. You’ll find your affiliate link there.

Click on the “Add SubID” option and then click on “More Sub IDs”:

Now on your Sub ID, copy and paste {campaign.id} and in the Affiliate Sub ID 2 paste {clickid}

Click anywhere in the screen and Hassoffers will generate the link for you.

My original link for this example was:
http://hasoffers.ymtrack.com/aff_c?offer_id=16368&aff_id=66666

My link with subids:
http://hasoffers.ymtrack.com/aff_c?...6666&aff_sub={campaign.id}&aff_sub2={clickid}

Now grab this new link and and create an new offer with Voluum. Fill in the same data as you did with the Peerfly offer and save it:

Cake: Neverblue, F5 Media, Adsimilis

Let’s repeat the process with Cake. If your affiliate networks looks like this, they’re using Cake platform. Many networks use Cake nowadays.

Select your desired offer and open it. For this example I’ll use the Lovoo iOS ES offer from Neverblue.

When you open an offer in Cake, you’ll see the basic info and a few tabs. Go to the creatives tab and grab your unique link. Make sure to grab the link to the landing page you want in case the offer has several options.

Cake doesn’t offer a URL builder like Hasoffers or Peerfly, but as you can see the process is pretty much the same as you did with Peerfly.

My original link:

http://hwoxt.com/?a=666666&c=1233385&m=24&s1=

They already added the subid1 token so I can fill it, as shown in the URL. Now you can manually add the same {campaign.id} token for s1 and {clickid} token for s2.

The final URL would be:
http://hwoxt.com/?a=666666&c=1233385&m=24&s1={campaign.id}&s2={clickid}

As you can see, the URL looks pretty similar to a Peerfly link. But the Postback URL will be different (we’ll see that in the Postback section).

Now grab that link, create a new offer in Voluum and fill the details again (name, country, affiliate network). This Neverblue offer should look like this:

Well done! If you’ve read the guide down to this point, you’ve read 3,000 words already!

There are 2 more steps before launching a campaign. Let’s move to the Postback URLs.

 

[servandosilva]

How to add Postback URLs in Voluum

Postback URLs are very important because that’s how you check your conversions and optimize your campaigns. If you’re not using postback URLs, you won’t know exactly which campaign, traffic source, site, placement or keyword bid is making you money.

As you remember, we passed the {clickid} token in our subid2 in every single offer we setup in the last chapter, no matter which platform our affiliate network used. Now we need to let our affiliate network know that we’re using the subid2 for tracking purposes and that every single conversion that happens in the network, should be notified to our tracker with a Postback URL and the subid2 token.

Again, every platform was its own Postback URL tokens, but they’re not very different. In fact, they’re very similar and just change a sign or two.

In your Voluum Dashboard, go to the settings menu (the gear icon at the top right corner) and go to the “Setup” tab.

There, you’ll find your Postback URL, which should look like this:

http://track.mobileoffer.com/postback?cid={REPLACE}&payout={OPTIONAL}

Remember that I’m using an example domain here. Your domain will be different according to your installation.

There are 2 tokens you need to replace in your Postback URL before you paste it in your affiliate’s offer. Can you tell me which part of the URL contains the tokens/parameters?

Of course, the tokens are {REPLACE} and {OPTIONAL}.

We just need to replace those tokens with the ones provided by our Affiliate network and we’ll be ready to launch a campaign.

The good news is that the token will ALWAYS be the same for every network. So once you know your Postback URL you can copy and paste them in every single platform without problems as long as you always pass your {clickid} in the subid2 parameter as shown in the "How to add an offer" section (another good reason to do so).

Let’s start with Peerfly:

In the page where you select your offer, look for the “Setup Postback” in the left menu:

Copy and paste your Postback URL from Voluum, but now replace your {REPLACE} parameter for %subid2% and your {PAYOUT} parameter for %commission%.

Your postback will be:
http://track.mobileoffer.com/postback?cid=%subid2%&payout=%commission%

Click “Submit” and you’re good to go.

All of your Peerfly offers will have the same Postback URL as long as you’re using the same Voluum account. So feel free to copy and paste this link every time but replace this example domain with your own domain.

Hasoffers: Yeahmobi, Furthermobi, Adbooth, etc.

The same process is really easy with Hasoffers. Go back to your offer and scroll down to the “CONVERSION PIXELS/URLS” section.

There, paste your original URL and replace the {REPLACE} parameter for {aff_sub2} and the {PAYOUT} parameter for {payout}.

Your original Postback URL from Voluum:

http://track.mobileoffer.com/postback?cid={REPLACE}&payout={OPTIONAL}

Your Postback URL for Hasoffers platforms:

http://track.mobileoffer.com/postback?cid={aff_sub2}&payout={payout}

Click Save and you’re good to go.

This Postback URL will be the SAME for all your affiliate networks using Hasoffer platform. Just make sure you’re replacing it with your own domain instead of this one I’m using as an example.

Cake: Neverblue, F5 Media, Adsimilis, etc.

Open your offer and go to the “Testing & Tracking” tab. Now copy and paste the Postback URL from Voluum and replace the {REPLACE} parameter with #s2# and your {PAYOUT} parameter with #price#.

Your original URL was:

http://track.mobileoffer.com/postback?cid={REPLACE}&payout={OPTIONAL}

Your postback URL for Cake platforms:

http://track.mobileoffer.com/postback?cid=#s2#&payout=#price#

Click Save and you’re good to go.

Again, this Postback URL will work for every Cake affiliate network as long as you’re passing the {clickid} in the subid2 field and you’re using the same Voluum’s account.

Make sure you grab replace the example domain with your original domain.

 

[servandosilva]

How to setup a campaign

Except for the landers, which are optional, this is the last step you need to start running your campaigns. This step is really easy and you’ll love it.

Go to your Voluum’s dashboard and open the “Campaigns” tab. Click on the green “New campaign” button.

Now select the traffic source and country and Voluum will add them to the name of the campaign.

For the costs model, you can either select CPC or CPA if your traffic sources allows that, but in this case, because we’re going to use Zeropark, this options will disappear as Zeropark is integrated with Voluum.

Leave the redirect mode as 302 unless you want to cloak your links (not necessary at this point) and then select the lander (optional) and the offer you want to promote.

If you don’t have a lander yet, you can check the “Direct Linking” and just select the offer instead.

Finally, give your campaign a Name and click Save.

A new link will appear in your campaign when you hit the save button. It will be marked in green.

Now copy the link and create a new campaign in Zeropark. Voluum will track EVERYTHING including: targets, keywords, conversions, OS, Country, ISP/Carrier, etc.

Sit down, relax, and watch the traffic flow so you can analyze it


If you’re promoting an offer in a different traffic source (e.g. Decisive), the process is the same. Just select your traffic source and select your payment method (e.g. CPC = 0.01) and hit Save. Now copy and past the new link for this campaign and submit it to your favorite traffic network. Again, Voluum will track everything you need, except for the exclusive tokens (you need to add them separately in your link).

I’ll cover how to use custom variables in another post. You have read 4,000 words and your brain is probably overloaded already. Go ahead and try to setup a Zeropark campaign. Let me know how it works and don’t hesitate to ask any questions

There are a few things I’ll still add to this guide, but overall, this is all you need to learn how to track and start running campaigns. I’ll cover the rest of the topics in the next days and I’ll update the guide when that happens. Stay tuned!

 

[K]

Wow! Amazing work man. Well done and thanks.

 

[azgold]

OMG, this is absolutely awesome! Perfect for those of us who are tracking-setup-challenged! I'd given up on Voluum because I couldn't figure out the domain set up. I'm going to try it again, using your tut as my guide.

Thank-you!

 

[ash213]

wow this is powerful.

Thank you sir.

Going to set this up tomorrow.

Do i really need VPS?

I have domains with godaddy and hosting with hostgator.

Will this be ok?

 

[servandosilva]

wow this is powerful.

Thank you sir.

Going to set this up tomorrow.

Do i really need VPS?

I have domains with godaddy and hosting with hostgator.

Will this be ok?

You need a VPS

Shared hosting sucks for paid traffic. Especially for mobile traffic. It can kill all your conversions and your click loss will be very high. If you're direct linking then no problem.

 

[azgold]

You need a VPS

Shared hosting sucks for paid traffic. Especially for mobile traffic. It can kill all your conversions and your click loss will be very high. If you're direct linking then no problem.

Just curious as to why that is?

 

[servandosilva]

Just curious as to why that is?

A shared hosted account is usually very slow. There's a good click loss if a site takes more then 3-5 seconds to load, and that is with a computer. Your ISP speed could be anywhere from 1Mb to 1Gbps.

When you're browsing in a phone, the phone is slower, the CPU is usually slower, the 3G connection sucks (Kbps) and people are desperate to check their Facebook or notifications. Even with a VPS, some people won't even get to your lander and they already closed the app. So you need something fast.

With shared hosts, you could lose 30% or more of your traffic, so imagine just throwing away your money for nothing.

Now imagine if you send 10k clicks or 500k clicks per day. your server will just crash or the shared hosting company will kick you out because you'll be affecting all the sites that are hosted in the same server.

Conclusion: get a VPS

I'm using ASO and their $30/month plan so far has been really good.
Yes, that's an affiliate link, but it will direct you to the same plan I use, with 2 months FREE and a 25% discount coupon in your first payment. Of course you can use another service if you want.

Regards.

 

[PiQano]

Just one work : Amazing :d

 

[ash213]

hi mate.

would you set up a traffic source first, and fund it, before setting up the volumm?

i have done the basic set up, till the point of adding my links, sources etc.

cheers

 

[servandosilva]

hi mate.

would you set up a traffic source first, and fund it, before setting up the volumm?

i have done the basic set up, till the point of adding my links, sources etc.

cheers

There's no required order for that.
You want to have your account funded when you want to run traffic, but doesn't matter if you fund it before or after registering it on Voluum

 

[ash213]

fantastic guide

finally managed to get a zeropark campaign up, in conjunction with tracking via voluum

but i have one question.

with regards to the links on my landing page that direct the customer to the offer....should they be with tokens/sub ids etc OR just the raw link the affilliate company provide me, ie. click dealer?

for now i have just put the links into my lander that clickdealer have provided me on my portal for this offer.

but i have added all the tracking tokens/sub ids, when setting up via voluum..

please advise...just worried i have put wrong links on my lander...

thank you

 

[musicman]

Thanks so much for this guide.

 

[servandosilva]

fantastic guide

finally managed to get a zeropark campaign up, in conjunction with tracking via voluum

but i have one question.

with regards to the links on my landing page that direct the customer to the offer....should they be with tokens/sub ids etc OR just the raw link the affilliate company provide me, ie. click dealer?

for now i have just put the links into my lander that clickdealer have provided me on my portal for this offer.

but i have added all the tracking tokens/sub ids, when setting up via voluum..

please advise...just worried i have put wrong links on my lander...

thank you

Hello Ash.
No, the link you put in your landing is the one Voluum gives you in the setup page (the same page where you grabbed your Postback URL).
If you use the offer links directly from your network, Voluum won't track anything.

Should be something like: http://track.yourodomain.com/click

 

[ash213]

Hello Ash.
No, the link you put in your landing is the one Voluum gives you in the setup page (the same page where you grabbed your Postback URL).
If you use the offer links directly from your network, Voluum won't track anything.

Should be something like: http://track.yourodomain.com/click

thanks for reply

so should it be the link that looks like this?

http://track.arcadeoffer.com/voluum/XXXXXXX

 

[ash213]

ooh ok, i worked it out...

i found it in set up, it is

http://track.xxx.com/click


HOWEVER....how will my landing page know which offer to display?

thanks.

 

[servandosilva]

ooh ok, i worked it out...

i found it in set up, it is

http://track.xxx.com/click


HOWEVER....how will my landing page know which offer to display?

thanks.

Yes. That's the one.
When you create a campaign, you select the landing page and the offer. So Voluum displays the offers you choose.