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Step 14 - Success / Failure Stories

My poor results are in. Great exercise for me. I have seen how disastrous it is to over optimise a campaign. Thanks for the lessons!!!

 
@Olivey Can you comment more on the idea of over-optimization in your case? Here are my noobie thoughts: aren't campaigns a continuous pursuit of optimization? Meaning: pare until you find the combinations that yield green? It surely is more complicated to that, and there is nuance I'm missing..hence why I see "over-optimization" a common theme when folks give advice to those of us who are new :)
 
After Rounds of Testing and Optimization, My Campaign Has been Green for 3 Days

Granted, I'm receiving little traffic, but the process to get here has been invaluable and a wild confidence builder :). I went into this with a Learner's mindset, and what really helped was expectation-setting right from the outset (thanks to @Luke for being very transparent about what the intention of this guide was for us newbies - an opportunity to learn with low risk).

Campaign Launch


1st Round of Results After Drilling Down, Removing Under-Performing Country+Offer Combinations


2nd Round of Results After Drilling Down, Removing Under-Performing Combinations Again


3rd and Final Round of Results After Drilling Down, Finding Profitable Website Placements within Profitable Country+Offer Combinations


Profitable Campaign 1 the Past 3 Days



Profitable Campaign 2 the Past 3 Days



As you can tell, these campaigns don't generate much traffic, but they've continued to stay in the green since the last optimization..I haven't touched my bid after following the initial strategy in the guide, and honestly, I have no idea if these even have potential to scale..my guy says no, but I'm too newbie right now to know, haha. I'm guessing there simply isn't enough traffic to scale, but I'm not quite sure how I'd even go about finding out or answering that question..

Edit - And since I'm not entirely sure where to go from here, I'm moving on to the intermediate guide!
2nd Edit - This was my first ever Affiliate Marketing campaign..the Beginner's Guide helped remove the obnoxious and irrational fear of just getting started
 
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@CMT824
when you started creating the first campaign, then you have, rightly, optimized.

When and why did you create a second campaign?
And in this case, in what terms did you create the second campaign? ie starting from scratch (countries, offers etc etc)?
 
Thanks so much, Luke, for such a detailed walk-through, I learnt so much from this Pop Guide! Really appreciate your time to help out newbies....for Free too! These are the results of my campaign...

Should I optimize by focussing on United Arab Emirates alone? Thank you!
 

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Thanks so much, Luke, for such a detailed walk-through, I learnt so much from this Pop Guide! Really appreciate your time to help out newbies....for Free too! These are the results of my campaign...

Should I optimize by focussing on United Arab Emirates alone? Thank you!
UAE comes up with potential quite a bit. Worth a try.
 
After optimization, I managed to get the campaign in the green. It's not bringing in much per day but ROI is 14.8% over the last two days. I may have over-optimized.

My optimizations:
  • Target one specific country that was performing well
  • Prune website IDs that were not performing well
  • Target specific hours that were performing well
  • Cut my bid back to $0.0002 to capture more profit at the expense of less traffic. I settled on $0.0002 as this was a common EPV per tracking.
My results over the last two days:



I'm not sure how to scale this particular campaign at this point. I do think this process of targeting time of day in particular countries could find other profitable campaigns.

I did manage to find a solid website or two.



I might try to run other offers to these particular sites with landers to increase my EPV. If I can up the EPV, I could increase my bid to improve traffic flow while hopefully maintaining/increasing a positive ROI.

Overall, excellent guide Luke! This was very helpful in building confidence with creating campaigns and effective tracking/optimization while seeing actual conversions.
 
After optimization, I managed to get the campaign in the green. It's not bringing in much per day but ROI is 14.8% over the last two days. I may have over-optimized.

My optimizations:
  • Target one specific country that was performing well
  • Prune website IDs that were not performing well
  • Target specific hours that were performing well
  • Cut my bid back to $0.0002 to capture more profit at the expense of less traffic. I settled on $0.0002 as this was a common EPV per tracking.
My results over the last two days:

View attachment 33329

I'm not sure how to scale this particular campaign at this point. I do think this process of targeting time of day in particular countries could find other profitable campaigns.

I did manage to find a solid website or two.

View attachment 33330

I might try to run other offers to these particular sites with landers to increase my EPV. If I can up the EPV, I could increase my bid to improve traffic flow while hopefully maintaining/increasing a positive ROI.

Overall, excellent guide Luke! This was very helpful in building confidence with creating campaigns and effective tracking/optimization while seeing actual conversions.
Nice! Make sure to go through our Intermediate Course :D
 
Here's Day 1 stats. The numbers are messed up because of Bot traffic. The second image where I viewed the results by Referrer Domains are the accurate numbers.




For Day 2 I removed one underperforming offer and chose just a couple of the best countries. I lost significantly less money.



For Day 3 I tested just Iran, with 2 of the best offers and a few of the best Website IDs.



I modified the campaign in the middle of yesterday and it's now in the green.

It's spending really slow though. I kept the bid at 0.00033 and so it's only spent around 20 cents of the new $5 that I put into the budget.

Does that mean I should increase the bid?
 
I modified the campaign in the middle of yesterday and it's now in the green.

It's spending really slow though. I kept the bid at 0.00033 and so it's only spent around 20 cents of the new $5 that I put into the budget.

Does that mean I should increase the bid?
Yeah, you could try increasing your bid. But, you also have optimized this down to just a few sites and those sites may not have a lot of traffic. That's okay, you've done what you were supposed to do :)
 
Hi, I'm new to this kind of thing, and I just want to ask: Let's say the offer I want to promote says pop-up ads are not allowed. If I use a landing page, can they still track or see that I'm using pop-up ads, or will they just see that my traffic is coming from my landing page? Can I use pop-up ads if I redirect my traffic to my landing page even if the network says pop-up ads are not allowed?
 
Hi, I'm new to this kind of thing, and I just want to ask: Let's say the offer I want to promote says pop-up ads are not allowed. If I use a landing page, can they still track or see that I'm using pop-up ads, or will they just see that my traffic is coming from my landing page? Can I use pop-up ads if I redirect my traffic to my landing page even if the network says pop-up ads are not allowed?
It's likely if you are using your own landing page that the advertiser would never know you are using pop ups. Now, should you use pop ups? Well, I would ask your AM if they think there will be an issue if you do. Or, do a small test and see if there are any quality issues. If you break the rules, there's always a chance you won't be paid for that traffic so I would not spend hundreds of dollars without getting confirmation first.
 
Hi, I'm new to this kind of thing, and I just want to ask: Let's say the offer I want to promote says pop-up ads are not allowed. If I use a landing page, can they still track or see that I'm using pop-up ads, or will they just see that my traffic is coming from my landing page? Can I use pop-up ads if I redirect my traffic to my landing page even if the network says pop-up ads are not allowed?
They can know if they find you in one of the many spy tools available.
 
Ok so I've been following the newbie guide for a few days now and after two rounds of optimizations I have this:




Now I know it's nothing to write home about but to actually see a little bit of green gives me the hope that this really does work.

I've cut the bad countries as per @Luke instructions and optimized for webids and dropped underperforming offers.

I've kept my bid at 0.00033 so traffic is really slow...

Overall, I've learned more from my time spent on this forum, than I've learned through the more expensive courses I've been through. Luke keep doing what you are doing bro! This little success has me so happy you won't understand.

It's kind of a rush when you make optimizations, test and see the results!

I have two questions:

1) Should I raise my bid and keep optimising my campaign?
2) When should I start the intermediate course?
 
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Overall, I've learned more from my time spent on this forum, than I've learned through the more expensive courses I've been through. Luke keep doing what you are doing bro! This little success has me so happy you won't understand.

Awesome. I always love hearing how much the Pops Guide can make a difference. It's such a great course!

 
Ok so I've been following the newbie guide for a few days now and after two rounds of optimizations I have this:

View attachment 36868
View attachment 36869

Now I know it's nothing to write home about but to actually see a little bit of green gives me the hope that this really does work.

I've cut the bad countries as per @Luke instructions and optimized for webids and dropped underperforming offers.

I've kept my bid at 0.00033 so traffic is really slow...

Overall, I've learned more from my time spent on this forum, than I've learned through the more expensive courses I've been through. Luke keep doing what you are doing bro! This little success has me so happy you won't understand.

It's kind of a rush when you make optimizations, test and see the results!

I have two questions:

1) Should I raise my bid and keep optimising my campaign?
2) When should I start the intermediate course?
it’s always so satisfying when your campaign turn green

1. Yes you can try to raise your bid and see if it makes different and i’m sure you can learn one or two new things from it

2. You can start intermediate course immediately if you want, but just a reminder, the minimum deposit in the ad network use in intermediate course is $100 also it takes time to do it so it’s better to start now, you can still continue your beginner course campaign while trying to learn on how to setup your landing page, campaign and other things in the intermediate course
 
Overall, I've learned more from my time spent on this forum, than I've learned through the more expensive courses I've been through. Luke keep doing what you are doing bro! This little success has me so happy you won't understand.
That is so good to hear. I appreciate the feedback :)



1) Should I raise my bid and keep optimising my campaign?
2) When should I start the intermediate course?
1) you certainly can. The campaign will never be a massive winner simply due to the nature of the offer imo, but it's still fun to play with and learn from.

2) I think the Intermediate Course is the next logical step because it forces you to start playing around with landing pages, which is pretty important :)
 
Hello, I have finished The Beginners Guide & here is the result:
(1)First Test
I choose Puerto Rico,United Arab Emirates & Iran as my second test target countries, because there EPV is over $0.0003 which is my cpv in popads. I also stop offers Push_Smart_2 & Push_Smart_6 because their CV are low.



(2)Second Test
The second test speed is much slower than the first one. I have stopped Iran & United Arab Emirates because they got 1000+ visits but still in red and I am going to stop Puerto Rico too. I think all 7 PN offers do not work for this campaign & I am going to find & test more offers for it. At the same time, I will continue to The Intermediate Guide & learn more. Thanks Luke for the detailed tutorial.


 

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