You always have to be one step ahead of your competitor or you will need to directly chase him. This article will teach you how to avoid this by making money with pop ads.
6 secrets to making money with pop ads
It wasn’t that long ago that we were in your shoes. We couldn’t get a campaign profitable, even if our lives depended on it so we know many of the struggles you’re now going through. We had to figure them out the hard way, and mostly by ourselves. If you apply the tips that are shared, we promise you will see progress in your own affiliate business.
Risks are an essential part of life and success in affiliate marketing. You always have to be one step ahead of your competitor or you will need to directly chase him. Of course this doesn’t mean that you should just take the risk blindly without considering the consequences of each action. Calculated risks are the keys to success here. They can catapult you to a completely new level!
1. Use more traffic sources
It was so hard to decide what this first tip would be. There is so much that we could share – we have no idea where to begin! But, we’re going to keep it actionable – something that you can launch or test right away.
So the first tip that we want to share is this:
No matter what vertical you are in, go out and launch a new campaign in at least **5 new geo’s in that vertical over the next 2 days.
For example – if you are testing sweepstakes campaigns in Brazil, but not really seeing potential, stop what you are doing right now, go out and have your landing page translated into Spanish – then find 3-5 sweepstakes offers for Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and Columbia, setup a test, run some traffic to each campaign and see which one performs the best.
You may not think this is a huge tip but I can promise you will see its’ worth. We stuck with 2 geo’s for the longest time and could never get a profitable campaign. Then, one day, we finally decided it was time to try something new and prepped 5 campaigns to launch in 5 new geo’s. It’s a way of decreasing the risk as we diversify the audience.
Guess what – that simple decision led us to our first $300/day profit campaign. So, go out there and launch those campaigns and you can shoot me an email to thank me later!
2. Find a profitable offer
Are you asking yourself why you can’t find one? The answer to this question is not always straight forward but what we’ve found ourselves doing in the past, and what so many affiliate marketers are currently doing right now, is not launching enough campaigns! In other words, you need to be making more effort and taking more action. This is what I call the mental part of today’s tip.
Just how many campaigns should you be launching daily? The default answer is a minimum of 2 campaigns per day. The more you can launch, the faster you will learn what is working and what is not working.
The second part is directly connected to the offers you are testing. Someone Asked Us… What Are the Easiest Types of Offers to Make Profitable?
Keep in mind that what we’re sharing is based on our own experiences and what we’ve had success with. Everyone is a little different so you should always approach affiliate marketing with the mentality of “TEST EVERYTHING”. You will find that a lot of times there is no one correct answer. Instead, there are MANY correct answers and what works for one person may not work as easily for you.
App Installs – Specifically tube apps, utility apps, coupon and shopping apps, branded apps and some gaming or casino apps.
These work well because all the user has to do is download and open the app and BOOM – you get a conversion. Many of these apps will appeal to a broad audience. Some globally, while others are more specific to one or a few countries.
1-Click Mobile Content – Things like gaming offers, sexy and adult style content offers, and even the generic “download now” offers can be great.
These work well because the user simply clicks and then immediately converts or sometimes there is a second confirmation page before the conversion. The best starting point is the lower payout 1-click offers and in geo’s that have lots of traffic volume. You will have to test several traffic sources to find what works for the offer you are testing.
Sweepstakes (low payout) – Find the .50 or lower payout offers that are SOI (single opt-in) and focus on the geo’s that have a mid-to-high volume of traffic.
These work well because the visitor just has to fill out a form and submit it, then you get a conversion! I’ve personally hit $350/day profit on sweepstake offers that paid out less than .20 so I know it can be done quite easily with enough testing.
3. Focus first, then spread out
So many new affiliates keep making the same mistake. They spread exactly the same offer to about 12 different affiliate networks.
Now to clarify, this is not always a bad thing, but, in the beginning, you need to be able to test lots of offers and even the same offer – just with different targeting options to really find the best converting offer.
We have spoken to at least 3 new affiliates this week on Skype and each one has told us they are running on more than 8 affiliate networks. Why is this so important? In addition to the last tip I had about testing more countries, I also tested the same exact offer on 12 affiliate networks. After testing those 12 exact same offers on the 12 different networks, only 2 affiliate networks helped my campaign hit a profit. REALLY?
Yes, really! The exact same offer! Don’t ask me why this happens, it just does.
This is exactly the problem. As you stop focusing on getting 1 offer on 1 network on track, you are just spreading them without adjusting them. You only compare data on a daily basis and say: Offer XYZ did not work on network #1 but it gave me slightly better results on network #2.
Also, you are actually spreading your commissions around and you might end up in problems with cash flow instead of digging deeper into your offer and the network.
Focus on working with reputable networks who have a large number of offers, and, in the beginning, try to test offers with at most 2 networks. Not more.
If you don’t do this one step, you may not find a profitable offer to begin with and the first success ,as we know, is the nurturing point for the future.
4. Find the right traffic source for your offer
If you have struggled to make your campaigns profitable, I know the thought has either crossed your mind, or you have asked yourself this question:
Am I using a good or bad traffic source?
The short answer is that there are no bad traffic sources.
With that said, allow us to clarify. Some traffic sources do seem to perform better than others but this can be caused by a variety of factors. The lesser known sources can sometimes be complete garbage, but if you stay with the more reputable sources, my statement above is correct.
Why the traffic source may not be the problem:
- Maybe you have not learned all the tricks to make that traffic source work well.
- Maybe you are running in verticals or offer types that do not work well on that source.
- Maybe you aren’t bidding high enough to get good traffic and you’re just left with all the junk traffic that the big affiliates are leaving behind.
- Maybe your offers or landing pages really suck and that is the problem.
- Maybe you don’t know how to properly test campaigns yet.
- Maybe you’ve tested 3 campaigns and you’ve had no real results, so the only thing you conclude is that the traffic quality is bad or full of bots.
I could go on and on and on…
The reality is, every traffic source has some amount of bot traffic – it just varies from source to source. You will find both good and bad traffic on every source. That is what testing and blacklisting placements is for.
If a campaign performs badly on one source but does 100% ROI on another source, that doesn’t mean the first source was bad. It was just not the right fit for your campaign.
So, after you’ve gotten your feet wet with a few campaigns, I highly recommend that you test several more sources. You will start to see better results from your tests and you will learn the strengths and weaknesses of each source. TIP – try to request a rep at those sources.
We’ve tested over 45 different mobile pop sources…
At some point, you will do the same. But let me cut through some of the confusion and help give you some direction. If you are new or are on a limited budget, I suggest using no more than 2 or 3 traffic sources at first. Get some experience under your belt and then start expanding.
5. Get your targeting right
We were chatting with some affiliates on Skype not too long ago and were sharing with them one method that we use to get new campaigns profitable on Plugrush. Based on their response, it seems like most advertisers underestimate the power of this method.
How do you target correctly?
We all know how to target by either wifi or mobile carrier. Even specific mobile carriers can be targeted, but did you know about Blacklisting ISP’s at the campaign level? How does this help your campaign? Well, in some cases, you may be getting most of your conversions from just a couple of ISP’s and the rest are not converting at all. You can blacklist the non-converting ISP’s and that will boost your overall ROI for that campaign. In other cases, you may find that several ISP’s are converting but only one or two are converting profitably and have decent traffic volume. You could blacklist everything except the profitable ones and reduce your overall volume potential while very quickly reaching profits.
- Blacklisting by domain – example.com – this exact domain would be blacklisted. It also suggests other domains that you might want to exclude.
- Blacklisting by IP ranges – 10.10. – this would blacklist any IP range starting with 10.10.xx.xx, but you can also be more specific and blacklist a larger scope of traffic by typing in 10.1 and it would blacklist anything that started with 10.1 such as 10.13.xx.xx, etc.
Keep in mind that this is not a method that you implement at the beginning of your optimization process. This is something that you look at mid to late stage of your optimizing, and is best suited to increase your ROI. Only in the event that you see the bulk of your conversions coming from one or a few ISP’s would we advise you to blacklist all of the rest.
Now you know a couple options that we consider when trying to improve our ROI or make a campaign profitable. We challenge you to now ask yourself this question…”What else do I not know about my tracking software and the traffic sources that I use?”
6. Optimize your campaigns
How is your campaign looking now compared to your old set up? You can’t tell me that nothing improved! Now that you’ve got some wins under your belt, you’re ready for the next step in becoming a successful affiliate marketer. For this step, stop and evaluate what kind of marketer you are.
Ask yourself the question: “Who am I?”
We have managed hundreds, if not thousands of paid advertising campaigns and while we were learning to optimize campaigns, we also learned a thing or two about people. From our observations, we have noticed two groups of people…
The first group is what we call the “Launch and Pray” group and the others are the “Snipers”.
Launch And Pray “Optimization”
This group of affiliate marketers launch their campaigns with good intentions and hopes for success, then say a little prayer and hope everything goes well. Sounds like a winning strategy? You’re on the right track if your answer is no! The problem with the “Launch and Pray” method is that you’re hoping to discover a winning campaign by throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks with no real strategy behind it.
Sniper Campaign Optimization
Is this a group that you should want to be a part of? Short answer: YES.
The majority of our most successful campaigns have been from this methodology.
The only real “con” is that initially, you will most likely be “losing” money as you work to get the campaign profitable.
The time and patience needed for this type of optimization isn’t for the weak-minded, as regularly seeing an unsuccessful campaign will wear at your patience and motivation. The good news is that your patience and targeted efforts WILL eventually pay off.
Before even launching a campaign, the “sniper” does their due diligence by understanding not only their offer, but also the traffic source they’re running on.
They do this through the use of a marketing persona of their target audience.
Instead of running a campaign on RON, they map out several tests that they’re going to conduct with their offer. These include:
- Unique marketing angle – the hook that will capture the visitor’s’ interest
- Landing page style
- Target market (Marketing Persona)
- Different placements to run the traffic from
Now, there is no “best way” for everyone, but the answer that is most likely to get you results lays somewhere in-between. Each of these strategies has their strengths and their uniqueness, but unfortunately, most people take each to the extreme. Do your research if you want to have a better understanding of each type of Marketing Strategy, then choose the one or the mix that best works for you.
In the end, we all know that data is king. If we can reproduce our steps and make a scalable strategy out of it, only then will it work as desired.
