My first PPC journey. POPads + CPALead

[krass]

Great Journey. I follow your posts and please don't give up updating your results.

Thanks for the encouragement mate. I did some research and maybe i shouldn't abandon the campaign just yet. I have to move it over to mobile display.

I've been very comfortable with pops, as with pops you dont have to worry about banners. But volume is a problem.

So i need to get out of my comfort zone and learn mobile display. This is a whole other learning curve.

 

[tyoussef]

Just sty with popunder untill dor months then mouve on

 

[krass]

I've made 4xxx so far but lost most of that profit when scaling up. Some networks require huge deposits to start up but then the traffic is very expensive or full of bots so I lost tons of cash. I'm very stressed out right now, and I need a short break from all of this. At least I know which traffic sources I shouldn't use for this particular geo. I need to get some cash back fast.

I tested a physical product on Facebook, price per item is ~$2. I downloaded a simple LP, complete with social proof and all, and put up a sticker price of ~$15. I sent $5 of FB traffic to the lander and got 2 sales. So that's good margin. Problem is I don't have the product yet lol.

Ordered a batch of 180 from Aliexpress, and got on the phone with the customers to explain to them that their product is delayed by 2 weeks at least. That went well. So we'll see.

I'm really burned out from running paid campaigns, although it's only been a few months since I started. I'm used to having a domain under my name, an asset that I could sell off if I wanted to. That's not possible with paid campaigns, though. It's really volatile, too volatile for my liking.

But I do think that everything I've learned from running mobile offers have molded me into a better marketer. I made profit from that physical product almost immediately. That's not something I could've done in my SEO webmaster days.

Here's to a different journey, of building a business selling physical products and seeing where that takes me.

 

[tyoussef]

keep it up as well New Journey ^^ I am Happy For U U leaned Too much

 

[game333]

I've made 4xxx so far but lost most of that profit when scaling up. Some networks require huge deposits to start up but then the traffic is very expensive or full of bots so I lost tons of cash. I'm very stressed out right now, and I need a short break from all of this. At least I know which traffic sources I shouldn't use for this particular geo. I need to get some cash back fast.

I tested a physical product on Facebook, price per item is ~$2. I downloaded a simple LP, complete with social proof and all, and put up a sticker price of ~$15. I sent $5 of FB traffic to the lander and got 2 sales. So that's good margin. Problem is I don't have the product yet lol.

Ordered a batch of 180 from Aliexpress, and got on the phone with the customers to explain to them that their product is delayed by 2 weeks at least. That went well. So we'll see.

I'm really burned out from running paid campaigns, although it's only been a few months since I started. I'm used to having a domain under my name, an asset that I could sell off if I wanted to. That's not possible with paid campaigns, though. It's really volatile, too volatile for my liking.

But I do think that everything I've learned from running mobile offers have molded me into a better marketer. I made profit from that physical product almost immediately. That's not something I could've done in my SEO webmaster days.

Here's to a different journey, of building a business selling physical products and seeing where that takes me.

Man I feel you, I don't remember what's the term that called it, but I assume it called cash roll, your cash roll is low and it's really a headache to run paid campaign.

And congrats to have 2 sales in just a $5 spending on Facebook, you might have even greater result if you optimize it.

AliExpress is a wholesales company managed by individual seller, I did say find a dropshipper nearby you, so he can ship the product fast, that will be better, also you will need to confirm if he have the product on hand.

I'm amazed you phone called your client.
Are they foreign or English speaker.

 

[krass]

Man I feel you, I don't remember what's the term that called it, but I assume it called cash roll, your cash roll is low and it's really a headache to run paid campaign.

And congrats to have 2 sales in just a $5 spending on Facebook, you might have even greater result if you optimize it.

AliExpress is a wholesales company managed by individual seller, I did say find a dropshipper nearby you, so he can ship the product fast, that will be better, also you will need to confirm if he have the product on hand.

I'm amazed you phone called your client.
Are they foreign or English speaker.

The customer is from my native country so no problem haha.

As for the cash flow, yeah it's a headache. I just learned that for revenue $1000 and above I can ask for weekly payouts. Im no longer sending traffic so too late for that i guess.

I have another campaign that im optimizing. Antivirus offer this time. Actually i have 2 potential offers getting $0.015++ epc with just ripped landers.

Got the antivirus one to $0.03 epc yesterday, campaign at a steady -50% ROI now. Not sure if i want to continue with that though.

I dont want to work really hard and get a campaign that gives me 4xxx over two weeks and then dies. I mean that was a dream to me in january but now i want more stable campaigns.

Not sure how to do that yet though.

I got some offers from my AM asking me to try international offers. Is that a good idea? Offer accepts traffic from multiple geos it seems.

I have never moved away from this one geo, so this is a step out of my comfort zone for me. How do I go about translating landers? Need some tips on how to do this and get the message across as effectively as possible.

The final week of April taught me a huge lesson:
"Don't over-extend yourself"

I read somewhere that if you find a winning campaign, scale it like crazy. What I didn't realize is not all traffic sources are equal, so you have to take time to master all of them one by one, unless you have huge cashflow.

I signed up on several traffic sources at once, and i suspect some of those sell brokered traffic, which means the costs are higher.

So now I have a decent blacklist in Popads and Propellerads, and I need to find more traffic sources that have good traffic and add those to my portfolio.

Traffic sources i tried to scale with and failed:
Exoclick - $200
Wiget media - $500
DNTX - $100
Reacheffect - $100
Go2mobi - $100
Selfadvertiser -$100
And an additional $1000 lost on propeller ads and popads because i didnt realize i was caught in a bidding war.

Total damage: $2100 worth of school of hard knocks education. Hope my next adventures would be more profitable

 

[tyoussef]

I hope That u have learned Too much My Friend I can See That

 

[internalsoul]

krass you have burned a lot of your budget trying too many traffic source. Here are my few suggestions for you.
1. Start will some low payout offers and easy to convert offers. Higher payout doesn't always mean you will be profitable or you will make huge profit. Sometimes with low payout offers you can make huge profit.
2. Don't try to many traffic source at a time. Try to master one at a time.
3. While scaling the same rule applies. When you will scale your campaign to other traffic source, you will notice that all traffic source won't yield you the same results. Some will be profitable and some won't be.
4. Try working on goes which has less competition. It can bring you good ROI. Geos with higher competition will always have high bids which will obviously result it low ROI(Varies from campaign to campaign).

 

[game333]

Hey @krass I've never seen any one burn that much of money in different traffic source in a short period of times, at least there aren't any posting.

I did say, what @internalsoul said was true, lower payout often prove to have better CR rate, it gives you a better picture what your result will be for a minimum budget of spending.

Paid traffic sources are not a "dump money and you get multiple from it" no, it's not.
I've tried that and failed in the past.

Did you tried scale in different countries like Tier 3 counties, they have ridiculously cheap clicks.
I remember I've read somewhere, someone posting most people bid on U.S. clicks and they are wrong.
Competition, expensive, bid war often happen.

Your education sure a bit expensive.
Gratefully, many of our members here shed you lights.

 

[marketerLevi]

Hi guys, I noticed some posting about PropellerAds, so I thought I'd post this here. I just signed up with them and I'm extremely dismayed. It wasn't until after joining, making a deposit, and getting to my first campaign that I notice they don't have any *actual* targeting! Well, not what I consider targeting anyway - they have only geo / device targeting. That is to say it's all RON traffic, and something they seem to have conveniently hid from potential ad customers... now that there isn't any sort of category targeting, much less URL / keyword targeting, it seems I'll be in for a long, expensive, daunting path of optimization, burning through thousands of dollars (which I can't afford) for each campaign just to finally narrow down my traffic to a category that I *should* have been able to select in the first place.

ATM I'm on a shoestring budget and I need laser-specific context targeting in order to get a decent and fast ROI, and the the whole concept of blind RON advertising seems utterly undoable to me at this time. I know what my targets are and have always avoided RON like the plague. But at least I bid low. So do you think their RON campaigns with a low bid and small budget (more/less 2x the cost of the CPA) would possibly back out with them, or should I just go for another ad agency?

 

[krass]

Hi guys, I noticed some posting about PropellerAds, so I thought I'd post this here. I just signed up with them and I'm extremely dismayed. It wasn't until after joining, making a deposit, and getting to my first campaign that I notice they don't have any *actual* targeting! Well, not what I consider targeting anyway - they have only geo / device targeting. That is to say it's all RON traffic, and something they seem to have conveniently hid from potential ad customers... now that there isn't any sort of category targeting, much less URL / keyword targeting, it seems I'll be in for a long, expensive, daunting path of optimization, burning through thousands of dollars (which I can't afford) for each campaign just to finally narrow down my traffic to a category that I *should* have been able to select in the first place.

ATM I'm on a shoestring budget and I need laser-specific context targeting in order to get a decent and fast ROI, and the the whole concept of blind RON advertising seems utterly undoable to me at this time. I know what my targets are and have always avoided RON like the plague. But at least I bid low. So do you think their RON campaigns with a low bid and small budget (more/less 2x the cost of the CPA) would possibly back out with them, or should I just go for another ad agency?

Pops were never meant for laser targeting man. It's interruption marketing 100%. If you already know your audience why not use FB ads? You can really laser target on FB

 

[marketerLevi]

Well at least the good pop-under networks have always laser targeted. That's always been the case in my extensive experience with half a dozen contextual marketing agencies since 2007. I just burned through 24,000 untargeted clicks in an hour and I'm gonna ask for my money back. With targeted pops I was getting 1 conversion worth around $15.00 out of 700 cicks, but with untargeted it's been 0 out of 24,000 in the same geo-target.

There are certain targeting formulas that make a night & day difference to the user - if it's relevant enough to what they are seeking at the exact moment they're seeking it, they will be far less likely to be annoyed by the pop up. And if for example, part of your targeting criteria is for home-ownership, targeting becomes more crucial because no matter the quality of the traffic, the non-homeowners will never convert

 

[marketerLevi]

I'll let you in on a few of the CPV agencies that do laser targeting and have personally yielded good ROI for me: TrafficVance, Popads, Zeropark and MediaTrafic (although the latter and former have gotten too expensive in recent years. Mediatraffic doesn't always convert and Popads only has category targeting)

 

[krass]

Those are awesome tips mate! Thank you! You doing mobile?

 

[marketerLevi]

Nope, the above are all in reference to desktop (PC) traffic, of which the majority of their traffic is from for most all of those agencies, though there is some mobile traffic avail... I've never really earned from mobile yet

 

[krass]

BLOOPERS:

I built a decent blacklist, and included it in my campaigns. I didn't see any noticeable increase in ROI. So I worked my ass off creating new landers, tweaking existing ones, etc. But I could only get the camp to -50% ROI and hit a brick wall.

I went to sleep and said confound it. I woke up, set up a new camp, and I saw it:
I set the campaign to ONLY SHOW TO MY BLACKLIST.

Bloody hell. I should EXCLUDE the placements, not INLCUDE them. That's whitelist..

tl;dr: I'm an idiot.

Wasted a good $200 on this dumb mistake...

 

[marketerLevi]

was this regarding campaigns on PropellerAds? And did you actually earn a profit from your new list? (the one mistaken as the blacklist)

 

[krass]

Propeller Ads yup. I've been doing great on Propeller Ads actually for mobile pop traffic. Made xxxx in April alone before the competition flooded the whole geo with bids.

 

[Ankit Aggarwal]

Hey Krass, Exiting to know more about your journey. I am on the same place where you started

 

[krass]

Hey Krass, Exiting to know more about your journey. I am on the same place where you started

Thanks for the support, mate. All the best to you.

So i came up with some new lander concepts and within a few hours they're getting ripped left, right and center.

Fucking annoying how these fuckboys are just trailing behind me polluting the market with copied landers and bids.

How do I protect my landers?