The Man and the traffic: testing makes perfect

Hello everyone! This is the editorial team speaking. You are reading the ninth volume of our experiment The Man and the Traffic. In the course of this experiment, the Man has been learning affiliate marketing from scratch. The purpose of our project is to prove that anyone can learn how to drive traffic. Moreover, we also want to help our SEO specialist Oleg, a hero of our special project, become a top affiliate and launch profitable campaigns to be able to send his children to the best universities (Oleg has five daughters, and so he has to work hard).

Over the course of these weeks, our readers helped Oleg find answers to his questions, and we hope that today you will also lend him a helping hand.

Last week, the Man was driving traffic to Asia and Europe, tried using SmartLink and tested various user targeting options. What’s more, now he has a mentor Mikhail Funk — push traffic expert.

Oleg, we give the floor to you!

Good time of day, dear readers!

Over the course of the last week, my balance in affiliate network ClickDealer reached the minimum payout threshold:

I’m looking forward to receiving my first payout to top up my traffic source accounts. Unfortunately, I had less than $100 on my MegaPush balance, and so I didn’t launch any new campaigns in this network. However, I continued running the MegaPush campaigns I had launched before.

About MegaPush campaigns

Once again, MegaPush campaigns targeted at Malaysia and Taiwan brought a positive ROI. Despite my attempts at optimizing the campaign targeted at Mexico, it failed to generate profit. I also started driving traffic to Norway, and the campaign brought three leads right away, only to plunge into the red later. What is the possible reason behind it? I came across the same issue while driving traffic to the UK and Australia: at first, the campaigns generated a few leads, but then stopped bringing any positive results [Oleg drove traffic to these GEOs in one of our previous volumes – Ed.].

Overall, I managed to generate some profit driving traffic from MegaPush.

Testing SmartLink in ClickDealer

To test SmartLink while running PropellerAds campaigns, I reached out to my ClickDealer manager who recommended driving traffic to the following offer:

• (57990) [WEB+MOB] Mainstream Dating Smartlink /Global.

He also added, “It’s more advisable to drive push traffic directly to dating offers. You should use Smartlinks if you have lots of untargeted traffic or if you want to focus on traffic optimization while letting Smartlink algorithms optimize offers and pre-landers for you“.

The test campaign involving the (57990) [WEB+MOB] Mainstream Dating Smartlink/Global offer brought a negative ROI and generated only one lead from Malaysia. The campaign was launched without any pre-landers.

I opted for the CPC Premium model and set a bid lower than the recommended price. All in all, Smartlinks didn’t work out well for me. I’m planning to test Smartlinks once again taking into account various types of user activity, I think it can work pretty well.

Testing various levels of user activity

Then, I decided to explore different levels of user activity. As you may know, the PropellerAds traffic source allows you to target users based on their activity level: Premium, High, Medium, and Low.

• Premium — top-quality websites with active audience; higher bids are recommended. Available for a limited number of verticals (for instance, traffic supply for gambling and dating offers can be limited).
• High — high CTR, low volume, above average prices.
• Medium — average CTR, average volume, average price.
• Low — low CTR, high volume, below average price.

I used spy tool Anstrex to look for pre-landers for new GEOs (DE) and for the GEOs I had already worked with before (NO, SE). This tool can also come in handy if you want to spy on landings, sites that users get redirected to and redirect chains.

Here are the results of the test:

Mexico:

Norway:

Taiwan:

As regards Taiwan, I decided to opt for the CPM pricing model and was pleasantly surprised after all three campaigns brought a positive ROI.

Sweden:

Germany:

I had launched only CPC Premium campaigns before, but, as you can see, I got different results for each GEO and each level of user activity (Premium, High, Medium, and Low), and therefore I would recommend testing all options.

What conclusions can we arrive at? You should test everything. If a Premium campaign didn’t perform well, it doesn’t mean that you will get the same results with other user activity targeting options. Moreover, Medium and Low user activity groups have huge volumes of cheap traffic for campaign analysis and optimization.

I’m not going to stop these campaigns, as I need to gather more data for further analysis and campaign optimization.

I have drawn up the following testing algorithm:

1. Create and launch a CPC campaign and test various levels of user activity using several creatives and pre-landers.
2. Even if a campaign goes into negative, continue driving traffic until you have enough data to analyze. 20-30 leads will suffice.
3. Having analyzed and optimized a campaign, you can try launching a CPM campaign provided that your banners have a high CTR.

Please correct me if I have missed something. For now, I think that I don’t have enough data to optimize my campaigns properly.

Last week’s results:

• I tested various user targeting options based on their activity level.
• Smartlink didn’t work out well for me: either the offer had run its course (no conversions at all) or there was some other reason behind it I’m not yet aware of. I used the same creatives as in other campaigns.
• I didn’t manage to generate profit: I’ve lost $116 so far.
• The ClickDealer balance has reached the minimum withdrawal threshold, but I will receive the first payout only after September 15.

Plans for next week

1. Continue running campaigns that are now bringing a negative ROI, then optimize them and continue driving traffic.
2. Add new offers to active campaigns to run a split test.
3. Figure out why the campaign with SmartLink didn’t perform well. Test other offers with Smartlinks.
4. Try a new vertical.
5. Start working with my mentor. Speaking about him:

He is Mikhail Funk, a push traffic expert.

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Here is some advice from Mikhail:

• Try driving traffic to dating offers only in the evening (it will depend on a particular GEO).
• Split test all offers and all GEOs in the evening. The higher the number of offers, the higher the chance to find a profitable campaign.

Summary

The resources spent so far:

Money spent for this week (August 12 to 18): ad campaigns in push networks: $311

Money earned for the whole period: the ClickDealer balance (the money hasn’t been withdrawn yet): $649

Balance: $1379

Time: 98 hours

Yours faithfully,

the Man

So, in your opinion, what vertical should Oleg test to effectively use the experience he has gained while driving push traffic to dating offers, learn something new and, of course, generate profit?