Thread: Day 3-8: b)Setting Up Links for Mobipium (Voluum)

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ACTION

Next, we'll be setting up tracking links for Mobipium offers. Let's go!





1)First of all let's pick an offer to run!

Remember in the first lesson, you were instructed to ask your Mobipium AM for offer recommendations? Hopefully you've received some suggestions and got approved to run them!

Next, let's decide on an offer and geo to test. We want to choose a geo that has a good amount of traffic (i.e. visitors) on either or both of the traffic networks we'll be testing on (the reason for this was explained in the EXPLANATIONS section in the previous post).

a)Open Up the Traffic Chart at PropellerAds:

-Log into your PropellerAds' account: https://partners.propellerads.com/#/app/auth

-Go to the Traffic Chart: https://partners.propellerads.com/#/app/trafficChart

Make sure "Onclick (Popunder)" is selected at the top (should be by default).

b)Open Up the Traffic Chart at PopAds:

-Log into your PopAds account: https://www.popads.net/users/dashboard/advertiser

-Go to the Inventory Chart: https://www.popads.net/traffics/inventory

c)Pick a geo:

-Pick a geo that is a)a developing country, b)that has either over one million "Total Impressions" on PropellerAds, or "Raw Traffic" on PopAds, or both, c)that is accepted by at least one of the AM-recommended offers.

You can find a list of developing countries on this page (look for section "Developing countries according to International Monetary Fund"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country

(If no geo fits all three criteria on EITHER traffic network, forget about the "over one million impressions" requirement. Still, try to choose a geo that has more rather than less traffic. And if none of the AM-recommended offers have top geos that are developing countries, then just choose a geo that is a developed country - but try to avoid geos with the worst competition: US, CA, UK, ZA, AU, NZ.)

-If the chosen geo is accepted by more than one AM-recommend offers, pick ONE offer to test first. If in doubt, pick the one with the lower payout so you may be able to collect more data on smaller spend.


2)Set up the affiliate network on Voluum including the postback. (Only needs to be done once ever.)

-Log into Voluum. Click on the "Affiliate networks" tab at the top > "+ New affiliate network".



Click "Create custom affiliate network" then click "Next" (advice: don't choose existing templates even if you see your affiliate network listed here, unless you're already familiar with how tracking tokens work - otherwise you'd just get more confused).



In the "Name" field put "Mobipium". Click "Save".



-Next, we want to set up the postback for Mobipium, so that they can send conversions and payout data to Voluum. In Voluum, click on the "Settings" icon at the top (it looks like a little gear) > click on "Tracking URLs" tab at the top > click "Copy" after the "Secure postback URL".



-Log into Mobipium's affiliate dashboard at https://affiliates.mobipium.com/dashboard. Go to the left menu > "Pixel". Paste the postback url you've copied from Voluum into the "Please provide your callback URL here:" field, then replace "cid=REPLACE" with "cid={tid}", replace "&payout=OPTIONAL" with "&payout={pay}", and delete "&txid=OPTIONAL".

For example if your original postback from Voluum was:

https://voluumdomain.com/postback?ci...&txid=OPTIONAL

Your edited link should look like:

https://voluumdomain.com/postback?cid={tid}&payout={pay}

Don't forget this next step - a lot of people in the $1 guide did! In the field "Please provide your unique tracker parameters.", paste this:

tid,pay

Don't forget to click "Update" for BOTH fields!




3)Add the offer to Voluum.

Next, add the chosen offer into Voluum.

-Go to Mobipium's dashboard > left menu > "Market". Find your offers using the filter. The easiest way may be to filter by "Country" then "Carrier" then "Flow" (1-click). Let's say your chosen offer's geo is Algeria, and the accepted mobile carrier is Ooredoo, then you could filter as follows:



(If search results span multiple pages, click on the "+" sign at the bottom to proceed to the next page.)

-When you see one of your offers, mouse over it and click on "+ Info".



-Scroll to the bottom and click on "Setup Campaign".



-The "Input Name" would already be filled in for you. Check the box for "I have read and agreed to the accepted traffic and regulations." and click "Setup Campaign".



-Click on the copy icon in front of the url to copy it.



-Go to Voluum > "TRACKER" at the top > "Offers" tab > "+ New offer".



-In the "New offer" window, paste the offer link you just copied from Haka into the "Offer URL" field. Next you'll need to replace the tokens in the link. Let's say your original link is:

https://4535993.freshingclicks.com/?...waGmSYFwe_hmqw

Append &tid={clickid} to it:

https://4535993.freshingclicks.com/?mob=CUR1Mx-wYzgEVeDsmn2JBfGXPvk5fwaGmSYFwe_hmqw&tid={clickid}

-Copy the offer name from Mobipium and paste it into the "Name" field in Voluum.

-For "Affiliate network" select "Mobpium"".

-For "Country tag" field, set to "Global" if the offer accepts traffic from more than one geo, or set this to a particular geo if the offer only accepts traffic from a single geo.

-You can look over other settings, but they should be left at default.

-Click "Save".





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EXPLANATION

There's not a lot to explain for this lesson - everything similar to what we did in the previous one.

In the last lesson I talked briefly about offer requirements and restrictions, but didn't go over examples because Haka offers hardly had any. Since Mobipium's offers have a lot of the usual offer requirements you'll find on networks, they will make perfect examples.


Examples of Offer Requirements and Restrictions

Let's use this offer as an example.



And let's quickly go over some of the requirements and restrictions, and possible consequences of deviating from them.

Accepted traffic: Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Push Notification, Mobile App, Redirects, Popunders

Always make sure the offer accepts the type of traffic you're planning to run, before setting up the campaign. Pop traffic in particular is not accepted by some offers (but this particular example offer does).

Why pop traffic in particular? Because pop traffic is infamous for low traffic quality which will result in low lead quality. We talked about lead quality in the previous lesson. Pop traffic is interruption marketing - an ad popping up to distract the site visitor from whatever they're doing. So visitors are usually not terribly interested in what the ad has to offer. Not to mention the fact that we can't target different audiences for pop traffic, unlike on Facebook where we can target by age, gender, interests, and behavior, so we can't bring the right offers to the right people - just very general offers to the masses (offers that have broad appeal such as antivirus and sweepstakes).

But pop traffic is cheap for exactly these reasons - which is, again, what makes it a good traffic type for learning the ropes.

Accepted traffic: Mainstream, but not Adult.

Adult traffic is traffic from adult websites. Mainstream traffic is traffic from OTHER than adult websites. Some traffic networks have one type - e.g. PropellerAds only has mainstream traffic. Others have both - e.g PopAds has both mainstream and adult traffic, and you'll allowed to specify which one (or both) you want to target in each campaign.

This offer example accepts mainstream traffic only. Some mainstream offers can actually convert very well on adult traffic, and some affiliates do sneakily send adult traffic to offers that only accept mainstream traffic. But if they're caught by the affiliate network or the advertiser (i.e. owner of the offer), it's game over - the affiliate likely won't be allowed to promote the offer anymore, with the possibility of having commissions withheld and even kicked from the affiliate network.

Targeting requirements: Algeria Ooredoo, Mobile, All OS

These are important to know, so that you'll know how to specify targeting options when creating campaigns on traffic sources.

This particular offer only accepts mobile traffic, so no desktop. All OS - so android, ios, etc. are all accepted.

And because it's a 1-click DCB (direct carrier billing) offer, only carrier traffic (i.e. 3g/4g/5g, no wifi) from a specific carrier (Algeria Ooredoo) is accepted. I'll talk more about how DCB offers work below.

Sending traffic outside of these targeting requirements will not work - as I'll explain in a bit.

Daily Cap: 100

If you see daily cap mentioned in the offer description, you should ask your AM whether it's a network-wide cap (i.e. 100 conversions TOTAL allowed from all affiliates) or a cap that applies to the individual affiliate. Also ask whether the cap is a hard limit, or if it's put in place to evaluate lead quality (as mentioned in the previous lesson) and can be lifted later.

Traffic not allowed: Misleading, Content Lock, Incentivized, Autosubscription

These are pretty common offer restrictions.

Misleading - Refers to your landing page which we haven't started using yet, so I'm jumping ahead a bit. No lying allowed. For example "we've scanned your computer and found a gazillion viruses, so you need to download this antivirus now" or "congratulations you're the lucky winner of an iphone 11!"

Content Lock - Some sites will keep certain content blocked or blurred out until the visitor completes a CPA offer. The drawback is that visitors usually aren't truly interested in the offer itself - they're only completing the offer to get to the content. So the resulting lead quality can be low (again, we'll talk about lead quality later so don't worry if this doesn't make sense yet). This is why some offers don't accept content lock traffic, so do content lock on your landing page.

Incentivized - This is when you promise to give visitors a reward for completing offers. Content locking above is a form of incentivized traffic. Other common incentives are game points, raffle tickets, access to downloads/products/services, or even cash. Again, conversions from incentivized traffic is often worth less because lead quality is lower.

Autosubscription - This is really blackhat so I won't go into details. There are very sneaky ways to get visitors to subscribe to DCB offers automatically without them having to click on anything or being aware that they're subscribing to anything, unless and until they check their phone bill to discover the charges. I'm not an angel but stuff like this I would never do - it's what gives affiliate marketers a bad rap.

Lastly, 2 important points:

1)You may not need to follow what is listed in the offer description.

2)There may be requirements/restrictions that are NOT listed in the offer description.

There are lots of reasons why offer descriptions may not be accurate, and they often aren't! Which is why I've emphasized time and again the importance of checking with your AM before running any offer.


On 1-Click Offer Conversion Flow and How to See the Offer Page

Lastly, I want to quickly go over how 1-click offers work.

Mobipium provides screenshots for their offer pages, so you can check them out. For example:



If the visitor clicks on that "CONFIRM" button, they're locked into a mobile subscription, where they'll be charged a fee by their mobile provider as part of their phone bill. Sometimes it's a one-off fee, but often it's a recurring fee - daily/weekly/monthly that will be charged until the user cancels.

This is why these offers are called "1-click". They're also called "single opt-in".

There are similar offers that require 2 or 3 clicks to subscribe - called "2-click" and "3-click" offers respectively. And there are other types of DCB (direct carrier billing) offers as well - if you're interested check out this post from Mobidea Academy.

The important things to know here:

1)These offers only accept traffic from specific mobile carrier(s), because the offer owner needs to have an arrangement with the mobile carrier in order to collect payment. So sending traffic from unaccepted carriers will not work.

2)The visitors must be connected via their data plan, not wifi, so we can only target carrier traffic and not wifi traffic. Only when a user is using data would their mobile provider know which customer they are and which account to charge when they subscribe. This is what makes the 1-click possible in the first place. Some of these 1-click offers will show a different version of the offer to visitors that are using wifi - the offer page would need to collect some type of information from the user though.

Which brings me to another point: To see the offer page for these 1-click offers, you'll need to have a data plan with that specific mobile carrier. Otherwise, what often happens is the affiliate network will detect that you don't fit the offer requirements, and will redirect you to another offer that DOES accept you (visitors from your country and mobile provider, using the device you're using, etc.) Networks call this the "geo-redirect" (although it doesn't only redirect people that don't fit the offer's accepted country, but other stuff like mobile carrier and OS and device).

So, if you want to browse to your affiliate link to check out the offer page, chances are you won't see it. You'll get redirected.

Some networks like Mobipium will show you screenshots of the offer page, and for most purposes that should be enough information for you to decide whether you want to promote the offer or not. If you really want to check out the actual offer page yourself, there are ways - such as subscribing to Adplexity Carrier to "disguise" yourself as someone who's connected by 3g/4g for a particular mobile carrier.

1-click offers are mostly promoted without a landing page, so it's often not necessary to see what the offer page looks like. But for offers that need to be promoted using landing pages, it can be good to see what the offer page looks like, so you can tweak the landing page to ensure smooth transition from landing page to offer (by using similar language or even similar look and feel if that's not against offer requirements).

Fortunately, many of those offers don't JUST accept 3g/4g/5g traffic from specific mobile carriers. If you want to check out an offer that accepts wifi but doesn't accept traffic from the country you're located, you can get around the affiliate network's geo-redirect by using a VPN. A VPN will allow you to disguise your IP to make it look like you're from another country. For VPN recommendations see:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...pn-theese-days



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We are now ready to set up our first campaign at a traffic source - which will be the focus of the next lesson!




Amy

Lesson edited: Choose only one offer instead of multiple (to keep things simple at first). Also: Offer can be launched on either traffic source instead of a specific source.


Amy