Some random pleb's media buying journey

Nutra looking promising, however the data on those are quite delayed because of the sales process.

Customer submits order form -> call center contacts him -> he either rejects or orders -> COD delivery can take up a few days too.


Conversions in the green = customer paid, I get paid.
Yellow = Pending -> customer has been contacted, order is on the way and not paid yet, or customer hasn't been contacted yet by the call center
Red = Customer didn't end up buying or submitted incomplete order form.

Each of the yellow conversions has the potential to net me $22 once it turns green - or 0 if it goes to the trash.

If 5 out of those 7 pending ones convert, I'll end up being in profit.
If 4 out of those 7 convert, I'll be breakeven.
Anything below means campaign is currently at a loss.

I've already disabled feeds that cost me $10 or more without a single lead (maybe dumb because a conversion could net me $22).
I had feeds I've spent $4 on with 3 pending conversions.

I'm doing In-Page push for those, t3 geos, cpc is ~$0.0002 hence the retarded amounts of clicks.

Dipped my toes into native ads for nutra, but I feel like I'd need some T1 geo offers for those (higher paying than just $22). I don't mind having a low CR on T3, the traffic is dirt cheap - natives on T3 still are exponentionally more expensive than in-page push tho.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some better data regarding the conversions and can build up from this.

Hey guys, I know it's been a while.

I'm still on it, just had to deal with lots of personal bullshit since my last post.

As for the nutra stuff, I had like 20+ leads, but not a single one converted into a sale (means I don't get my $22 for each one). This is the point where I decided to ditch Push House, as I don't really want to keep paying for traffic that doesn't convert or gets me banned. Even after all the filtering I did, it's still garbage.

I'm starting to test those offers with propellerads tonight, maybe the results will be better (yeah I'll have to gather data to create blacklists all over again, which sucks but that's part of the game).

I also started working on my job board website today. I plan to have it completed within 2 weeks (completed as in ready to promote and apply for API access of bigger job portals to automate the listings).

Also I was using some porn/girl generating AI for my adult creatives. Since I'm not promoting adult offers atm and don't want to let my credits go to waste, I started an Instagram account to post those. I got content for almost a year now and will post 2-3 pictures/stories per day. Launched it last saturday, got 13 organic followers so far. Considering the account takes me only 5 minutes per day to maintain I'll just keep posting - maybe I'll be able to monetize it at some point. It's more or less about not wasting resources I bought (the AI subscription).

Last week of July I got 1 week off of work, by then I hopefully have some campaigns figured out and my job board ready for promoting.

Good friend of mine just killed himself, so I'll prolly take a few days off.

Found a new vertical to work with, shitty results so far but I'll keep you guys updated.

Don't take the easy way out guys, you'll close your own chapter but also open a new one for those who held you dear.

Keep pushing.

sorry to hear that

Alright I'm back.

One of my managers was kind enough to provide me an actual traffic report for the traffic I was buying, needless to say it's complete garbage.

Push house traffic being shit I already knew off but even propeller was providing me with a good 80% of trash.

Before I start spending money on campaigns again I'll have to work out a way to detect bots.

Landing page will have an invisible CTA button now, which redirects to a bogus offer -> no human should be able to even click this button -> on to the blacklist they go
I'll add IVT-metric reports as add-on on bemob (it's not free but better than paying for fake traffic)
Absolutely 0 direct linking anymore unless I'll run it on geos and zones where I have blacklists for.
Maybe a headless detection script on the lander could help as well to filter out pupeteer "users", not sure if that would actually get results or not, maybe one of you guys can tell me.

For anyone just starting out - don't believe a thing ppl show you on YT when it comes to push ads. Simply direct linking on broad and being in the green won't happen... and if it does you won't get paid out.

Optimizing by blocking non-performing zones alone won't cut it either.

Before you spend money on campaigns, try to figure out a way to collect and blacklist bots efficiently.

Tough lesson to learn after blowing lots on campaigns already... but better tackle the problem now than never.


I'm also going to slap a push subscription collection tag on my lander - either from propush or evadav. This way I'll get some cashback while testing.

For anyone wondering which vertical I'm at now, it's gambling. One of the casinos I'm working with has a really good affiliate manager. He replies within minutes, not weeks as crakrevenue did. And they also were kind enough to give me a proper traffic analysis instead of just banning me during their quality check.

If anyone has an idea if there's any way to claim back some cash on the page I'll be redirecting the bots to, please let me know - however, I highly doubt that this could be monetized in any way.

That's it for now, keep grinding lads.

By the way, can anyone tell me why bemob recommends to use a custom domain as tracking domain?

Also I'll be launching campaigns again in an hour or so. Finished up the honey pot on my landers, will take it slow in the beginning to make sure the bot detection works as expected.

Excited to see the results with gambling offers. Are you promoting revshare or FTD payout?

Good luck with the journey.

fewer43 said:

Excited to see the results with gambling offers. Are you promoting revshare or FTD payout?

Click to expand...

Revshare for now - which is fine, as the traffic I'm bringing in is still garbage.

Full setup is lander with push subscription collection, gambling smartlink from a CPA network as backoffer and my main casino on the CTA button.

Hopefully the propush will give me some cashback on my spendings whilst I'm figuring things out.

I don't wanna move to CPA/FTD model for gambling yet - as I suspect to get banned rather quickly when bringing in garbage leads. If I can get revshare working I might negotiate a hybrid model.

I did manage to get 2 FTD so far but they only deposited $5 each.

I hope my new measures finally will get some proper results when it comes to filtering bad traffic, I'm still sure positive ROI can be worked out eventually.

Wishing you the best in your journey!!!

cracklings10 said:

Wishing you the best in your journey!!!

Click to expand...

Thanks mate, I could really get a break. But shit ain't all sunshine and peaches

One last question guys, maybe someone can help.

What's the smartest place to redirect bot traffic to? Another domain owned by me? Assume I set up google analytics for it, can any useful data be gathered from this?

Might be tempted to just send it straight back to propeller or w/e traffic source I'm using but if I pay for it, I want as much data as possible.

The honey pot is working, launched a campaign, paused it after $5 spent.

Lots of zones with 100% bot traffic -> disabled immediately.

Funny enough, the additional IVT (invalid traffic) metrics I've purchased on BeMob are catching only about half of the bots that fell for my honeypot -> might disable them again, as my own free method to detect them is more efficient.

Following!

Good luck with the journey.

Alright, I'm happy to say that the bot problem is solved!

I also contacted my manager at the ad network I was using and they provided me whitelists now for my vertical, geo and format.

To my surprise the bot traffic dropped to below 1% - so I consider it one problem less.

Now to the actual hard part - my lander is pure garbage, I had a bounce rate of over 99.x %

So it's either ripping some from Anstrex now (rather avoid because most gambling landers are made from casinos themselves) - or adjust the funnel to collecting emails, which is easier to rip and change up enough to not get into DMCA trouble.

For those interested in the numbers (yes they are shit):



I managed to bring down the cost to acquire a depositor down to $25-ish, which still nets me quite a loss. However, in the very beginning it took my $500 to get my very first depositor.

In order to break even I'd either have to manage to bring down the cost for a FD down to roughly $5 or be able to have ppl deposit higher amounts.

The big question is if that's even achievable at all.
At least I went from blowing hundreds with 0 results to blowing hundreds with some results. My blacklist is growing, the further campaign cost will be lower with every day passing, maybe I can reach critical mass eventually.

Also, I got my hands on an insanely cheap popunder traffic source. My plan with this? Collecting email addresses and try to target those ppl through emails. At the same time I will run a backoffer to a gambling smartlink and collect push subscribers on the lander. The traffic feels cheap enough that I could get back about half of the spendings with the push subscriber collection alone. Got my account approved there, deposit approved too - monday I can launch the test campaign with $10 (the guy approving campaigns is in the weekend already).

Keep grinding lads!

SomeRandomPleb said:

Alright, I'm happy to say that the bot problem is solved!

I also contacted my manager at the ad network I was using and they provided me whitelists now for my vertical, geo and format.

To my surprise the bot traffic dropped to below 1% - so I consider it one problem less.

Now to the actual hard part - my lander is pure garbage, I had a bounce rate of over 99.x %

So it's either ripping some from Anstrex now (rather avoid because most gambling landers are made from casinos themselves) - or adjust the funnel to collecting emails, which is easier to rip and change up enough to not get into DMCA trouble.

Click to expand...

A few decades ago, I used to promote cams through spam emails and achieved decent results without requiring much technical expertise. The strategy was to send out as many emails as possible. However, this tactic no longer works effectively.

Nowadays, I also purchase traffic from advertisers, but most of it turns out to be low-quality or junk traffic. I would like to ask for your advice on how to filter out bot traffic on landing pages.

Great journey man. I've always wanted to dabble in this but I'm too afraid of burning through tons of cash haha. I don't think it's very scalable but have you looked at Google threshold accounts for low volume but decent traffic?

The honey pot I set up is like this, but surprisingly, there are no records of it being clicked at all. I wonder if the traffic I bought is just too high-quality, or if my honey pot setup is too easy for the bots to recognize. Can anyone tell me?
.cta-button {
position: absolute;
top: 10%;
left: 90%;
transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
width: 30px;
height: 30px;
background: url('enter.jpg') no-repeat center center;
opacity: 10%;
color: white;
}

<a href="http://xxx.com/index.phtml?FID=5141" target="_blank">
<div class="cta-button" onclick="recordData('c2')">click here to enter</div>
</a>

AlvinWu said:

A few decades ago, I used to promote cams through spam emails and achieved decent results without requiring much technical expertise. The strategy was to send out as many emails as possible. However, this tactic no longer works effectively.

Nowadays, I also purchase traffic from advertisers, but most of it turns out to be low-quality or junk traffic. I would like to ask for your advice on how to filter out bot traffic on landing pages.

Click to expand...

Place some hidden links and forms at the very beginning of your <body> tag. Those things can't be clicked by humans because the css hides it. If you get a click/submit for any of those fields it has to be a bot click. Also work with a tracker to get data about IVT metrics. There's also tools like adscore (haven't used those yet).

jamie3000 said:

Great journey man. I've always wanted to dabble in this but I'm too afraid of burning through tons of cash haha. I don't think it's very scalable but have you looked at Google threshold accounts for low volume but decent traffic?

Click to expand...

Thanks mate. Yeah, I really underestimated how much cash it burns in the beginning. I haven't looked at google treshold accounts yet, reason being that I don't want to be on bad terms with google when starting out. I'll be saving FB & Google up until I manage to climb out of the cesspool of push ads.