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Gold Voluum - The Ultimate Guide!

servandosilva

Well-Known Member
Voluum - The Ultimate Guide!

UPDATE: Here is the entire Voluum Guide by Servando from the Dojo. Voluum - The Ultimate Guide!
(Update by Admin)


:ninja: 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.

*This is the part 1 and 2 of a 7 part series to master Voluum and learn how to track and optimize your campaigns. If you're not a tech guy or you're having problems to get started because you don't know how to track tokens, subids, postback URLs and more, this guide is FOR YOU. The whole guide is available INSIDE THE DOJO, Along with some landing great pages and other mobile case studies to get you started.



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
    (INSIDE THE DOJO)
  • How to setup Postback URLs from different networks (Peerfly, Hasoffers, Cake, Mundo Media, etc.)
  • How to add offers and 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. Get your FREE Voluum account here: Voluum.

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 (I used GoDaddy)
  • 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.

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.

2.jpg
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.

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

3.jpg
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:

4.jpg
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.

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

6.jpg
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.

7.jpg
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.

8.jpg
Type the name of the network and click Save.

9.jpg
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.

** To learn how to properly add offers and use subids, tokens and Postback URLs, you can read the rest of the guide inside the DOJO. **
The rest of the parts you can find there are:

  • How to add an offer and use subids to track (Images and link examples included)
  • How to setup Postback URLs (Images included for different networks like: Peerfly, Neverblue, Yeahmobi so you can copy them and start no matter which network you're using)
  • How to create a campaign and start running traffic
  • Learn how to split test landers and offers

Also, don't forget you can get Cashmoneyaffiliate case studies and landing pages inside the Dojo. Oliver has also uploaded a few recent landing pages that can be perfect for Gaming, Dating and Download offers. Those alone are probably worth the lifetime subscription. Join the DOJO now :)

Questions and comments are well received. LIKE this post if you want to see more guides and case studies :ninja:
 
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Thanks for this amazing guide my friend!
this is the only guide I could actually understand ... you are the best! :)

Question :
1. I have done the domain thingy , on Domain > Verify DNS Settings - it turns green .. URL is : Track.mydomain.com
on Voluum :
1. on affiliate network > added as Mobpartner(nothing special to add there)
2. on traffic source > buzzcity > this is the link I have put : http://www.api.buzzcity.net/vconvert.php?partnerid=*numbers*&clickcode={blabla24}&hash=*the hash code given by buzzcity* <--- this is the link exactly.
3.when added the offer : I have chose Mobpartner > URL : Domain pending ICANN verification.

So those are the settings I have done .. and I still dont get statistics etc.

this is the link I am publishing on buzzcity :
Redirect



So .. what I have done wrong then?
 
Thanks for this amazing guide my friend!
this is the only guide I could actually understand ... you are the best! :)

Question :
1. I have done the domain thingy , on Domain > Verify DNS Settings - it turns green .. URL is : Track.mydomain.com
on Voluum :
1. on affiliate network > added as Mobpartner(nothing special to add there)
2. on traffic source > buzzcity > this is the link I have put : http://www.api.buzzcity.net/vconvert.php?partnerid=*numbers*&clickcode={blabla24}&hash=*the hash code given by buzzcity* <--- this is the link exactly.
3.when added the offer : I have chose Mobpartner > URL : Domain pending ICANN verification.

So those are the settings I have done .. and I still dont get statistics etc.

this is the link I am publishing on buzzcity :
Redirect



So .. what I have done wrong then?

1. Green means it's ok :)

1. (LOL) fine

2. You need to change the hash from buzzcity for the externalid token. We're talking about the postback URL here, aren't we?

3. You need to add the campaign id and clickid tokens with subids. Otherwise it won't track anything. Did you add all the tokens from buzzcity so you can track whatever they allow you to track?

Finally: why did you use that link on buzzcity? You need to add your voluum link (when you create an offer) now that you're using a tracker. If you add the link from your affiliate network, then you're bypassing the whole tracker man :)
 
Hi, im new to voluum. Are there variables i can append to my campaign when im tracking a multi-step funnel campaigns. I have a landing page that has multiple landing pages in it. After the visitors enter's my campaign url and goto another page, i lose the ability to track them. I used propser before and since they use tracking pixel i can pass keywords on it and it will track them, but i don't know how to do that in voluum. Thanks
 
If you have multi step landers you can still link them and append the click URL at the end to track conversions with Voluum. You'll know the CTR between the first step and the offer, but not the ones in between.

Don't know if it's possible, but their support should be able to help you, especially since they're out of the BETA phase now.
 
As I understand If I'll be using Zeropark + Voluum I can only get 3 parameters: (target, keyword, match respectively) to scale???
It means I can only add 3 tokens to my lender option in voluum {var1}{var2}{var3}
I just hoped to display a Voluum parameter {model} and {os}on lander. Sorry for noob question, I realize that if Zeropark and Voluum 1 company It must be better cooperation.
 
As I understand If I'll be using Zeropark + Voluum I can only get 3 parameters: (target, keyword, match respectively) to scale???
It means I can only add 3 tokens to my lender option in voluum {var1}{var2}{var3}
I just hoped to display a Voluum parameter {model} and {os}on lander. Sorry for noob question, I realize that if Zeropark and Voluum 1 company It must be better cooperation.
Those are custom parameters from Zeropark (which BTW, they now have 5 or 6).
You can still all the rest of the parameters like OS, device, IP, etc and add them to your landers if you want.
 
Thanks for the great tutorial.
I am new with Voluum.I am going to use it for tracking my bing ads campaign. The problem is that I use 3 different Landing Pages ( Landers) in Bing Ads. I don't A/b test them, I just use them for different Ad Groups. How is the proper way for tracking them - to create 3 different campaigns in Voluum using each of my landers ?
 
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:

:ninja:

Hey , Mate

Are You Still Using THe Decisive Traffic Source . How is the traffic of Decisive are they bot or real traffic ........
 
Hi servando i want to know why my facebook ads amnager show me for example 27 clicks in my offer and my voluum only have 2 or 8 max can you help me with that? thanks!
 
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