The Man and the traffic: a series of unfortunate campaigns

Hi there! This is the editorial team speaking. The Man continues to explore the wonderful world of affiliate marketing and gain new knowledge through trial and error. The experiment has been running for six weeks already, and Oleg has got a grasp on how to launch campaigns, pass moderation and avoid buying clicks for $10 each.

Oleg’s fifth daughter has been born recently, his regular job still takes up a lot of effort (thanks to Oleg, we have finally launched the updated version of our website) and so he doesn’t have much time left. However, it doesn’t prevent him from mastering new skills and gaining new experience, as well as launching and analyzing campaigns. Keep up the good work, Oleg!

This week, the Man started driving traffic to Tier 2 countries. When he was working with new GEOs, he came across new problems and questions. We hope that you will answer some of Oleg’s questions and prove that the affiliate community is not just a host of people who are interested only in money, but rather true professionals who are always willing to lend a helping hand.

Oleg, we give the floor to you!

Good time of day, dear readers!

The week has passed by quickly, but, unfortunately, I have nothing to boast about.

In my previous article, I discussed my plans for the week ahead. Let me briefly remind you what I have planned to do:

1. Talk to traffic source managers, analyze and take into account the features of each source.
2. Talk with affiliate network managers about offers and inexpensive GEOs. I’m interested in offers for Tier 2 countries.
3. Pay more attention to creatives and take into account the features of each GEO and traffic source, as well as the moderation process.
4. Prepare new landings (5-10 new pages). Analyze the conversion rate and disable landing pages that show poor results.
5. Launch ad campaigns.

The two biggest problems I come across are the lack of time and knowledge about affiliate marketing. Morеover, gathering and analyzing information is very time-consuming, and so I don’t have much time left to actually drive traffic. Let me remind you that the time I can dedicate to affiliate marketing is limited, as I have a fam ily and a regular job. I hope that with the course of time experince and knowledge will help me work faster.

So, speaking about the first plan item, I have studied all the data on what creatives get accepted in traffic sources. I would like to thank traffic source support teams: they gave elaborate answers to all my questions. As a result, I didn’t encounter any problems with moderation.

The manager at affiliate network Clickdealer suggested driving traffic to the following offers:

• 59770 [MOB] Naughtythai /TH SOI 25+ 0,55 USD;

• 69341 [MOB] DivierteteLigando /MX 25+ SOI 0,4 USD;

• 68126 [MOB] ContactosRapidos /CL SOI 25+ 0,7 USD.

I was also advised as to what landing pages I should use for each offer: in its turn, it will help you save time and money on testing.

The analysis I carried out through spy service Anstrex revealed that there were few dating campaigns targeted at the GEOs I had chosen. So, the question arose as to what pre-landers I was supposed to use. What language should I choose for a particular GEO, for instance, for Thailand: Thai or English? The same applies to other GEOs. It was also difficult to find some well-performing pre-landers, as in most cases affiliates used SmartLink and didn’t create pre-landers.

Thai campaign

As regards Thailand, I focused on three feeds: direct traffic feed without a pre-lander, age verification in English and a pre-lander in Thai with two questions.

The first Thai campaign I launched in PropellerAds (CPC Premium) generated 7 conversions (ROI -11.06%). Of course, there is too little data to analyze. All conversions were generated through a pre-lander with age verification.

Then, I launched two more campaigns targeted at the same GEO, but this time on the CPC Middle (11 conversions, ROI -41.21%) and Low (8 conversions, ROI -63.66%) models respectively. Again, all conversions were generated through a pre-lander with age verification. After this small test, I decided to relaunch a campaign with new creatives and drive traffic only to those GEO zones that generated conversions.

You can find the best performing creatives below:

Unfortunately, the new campaign was not particularly profitable: 3 conversions, ROI -74.07%. It is still active, however, and it’s possible that something will change.

But I already have some questions to ask:

1. When can I start optimizing a campaign? How much money should I spend on traffic or how many clicks should I generate to get reliable data?
2. Why did the English pre-lander with age verification generate most conversions?
3. What criteria should I use to disable non-converting zones in PropellerAds? Would it be right to optimize a campaign by leaving only the zones that convert?

I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me find answers to these questions.

I launched a similar campaign in MegaPush: 14 conversions, ROI -33%.

So, all the Tai campaigns I launched didn’t bring any profit.

Subtotal for Thailand

Spent: $48.31

• $37.1 in PropellerAds
• $11.21 in MegaPush

Results: 42 conversions — $23

ROI: -52%

Mexico campaign

I used a similar approach and almost the same creatives when setting up a Mexico campaign. Overall, I launched two campaigns and used mobile pre-landers that showed almost the same conversion rates:

In total, both campaigns have generated 4,135 clicks. I believe that this data is not sufficient to carry out an analysis. Also, I didn’t test other pre-landers.

Subtotal for Mexico

Spent: $36.94

• $3.88 in PropellerAds
• $33.06 in MegaPush

Results: 44 conversions — $18.94

ROI: -51.27%

Chili campaign

As regards this GEO, I have generated only 935 clicks. The campaign is still active. It’s not a big GEO, and so the traffic volumes are not huge. I used the same creatives as in the Mexico campaigns:

Subtotal for Chili

Spent: $12.38

• $3.38 in PropellerAds
• $9 in MegaPush

Results: 5 conversions — $3.5

ROI: -77%

Conclusions

All the campaigns I launched brought a negative ROI. I managed to generate both clicks and leads, but not enough to start making a profit. In theory, I should cut traffic costs (I have no other ideas but to try running a CPM campaign), generate more conversions from clicks (it concerns whether the creative corresponds to the pre-lander and the pre-lander corresponds to the offer) and find offers with higher payouts (which is rather difficult when it comes to Tier 2 countries). To analyze and optimize my campaigns, I need more stats than I have now.

Plans for next week

1. Continue running campaigns to get more stats
2. Launch 2-3 more Tier 2 GEOs
3. Start working with other types of landing pages (age verification in different languages, pre-landers with 2-3 or 6-7 questions)
4. Analyze and optimize campaigns according to the GEO zones, creatives and pre-landers
5. Continue running campaigns after the optimization

Summary

The resources spent so far:

• Money spent: ad campaigns in push networks: $322
• Money earned: the account balance in the affiliate network Clickdealer (hasn’t been withdrawn yet): $102

• Balance: $1650
• Time spent: 68 hours

Yours faithfully,

the Man