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The Biggest Contest of all times is over! All prizes are given to the wittiest, all the glory comes to the strongest. 

But don’t be sad, because we have so many amazing case studies to share. Today, we reveal the story of the affiliate marketer, Lexus Yang, who has launched a very daring campaign and after our Sales Team got to know it, they were amazed. Chapeau (and money prize) to the winner, head-spinning Follow-Along case for you. Get inspired. 

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The story begins: basic case study details 

• Traffic Source: PropellerAds
• Tracking Tool: BeMob
• Affiliate Network: Zeydoo + Monetizer 
• Type of Offer: Survey CPL & Revshare
• Pricing Model: CPA Goal, CPC, CPM
• Ad Format: Popunder ads
• Vertical: Survey
• Offer Payout: $0.02 – $20
• GEOs: Tier-2 and Tier-3 

Here is what our Lexus Yang said before launching the campaign: 

“I believe this campaign will be successful because I have been working with Finance offers for the past few years and they performed very consistently and brought me profits. So I believe this pattern will continue!

What I am unsure about: every time a new ad is launched, there is always something you cannot predict. We can only do it based on our own experience in advertising, but everything is unknown, will it be $0 or $XXXX.” 

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Revealing the secret recipe or the initial strategy

So, the first point our partner highlighted about his strategy was a smart approach to machine-learning algorithms. 

What Lexus Yang suggests is “when using the CPA Goal model, which is the easiest way to get the green numbers, make sure not to hurry with other optimization. Give it a while – CPA machine learning algorithms need time to learn.” 

If you rush, this can end up with imperfect data and maybe not the most optimal decisions to make.

The second thing our contest winner mentioned was the necessity to have a landing page if you are promoting the Survey offer. 

“Having a landing page in such a case is mandatory and the main advantage is high conversion rates, plus – easy access to data. So my goal at first is to break even and then use push receipts or rebates to gain further profit. 

Normally I would only recommend choosing between the two rather than adding them at the start as this may affect your ad CR and in turn your ad drops for machine optimization.”

Take a look at the numbers to see how it all started:

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Popunder and Zeydoo + Survey and Monetizer

The launch day – September 6th

First, our partner launched two campaigns for Asian and African countries targeting 3G and Wi-Fi users separately. Even though he had -20% to -30% ROI, the ProPush.me TrafficBack feature was used to cover possible losses unavoidable when the campaign is new. As Lexus Yang says, his profit and expenses at that moment were almost the same. 

Our partner decided to turn in Bemob’s API and therefore – match the data with PropellerAds, getting maximum accurate information. 

To let the CPA Goal algorithms do their work, our partner didn’t do any manual optimization, but he marked green zones that brought profit to pay special attention to them later. Did these promising zones bring him more traffic? Read on, and let’s see. 

After a day of optimizing his CPA ads, our partner noticed that his 3G and Wi-Fi campaigns went green, which indicated high traffic quality. 

Want to see zone performance? Here you go. The stats are from the previous day, where most 3G zones got 1-4% of traffic, so there is a room for CPM whitelist creation:

The next screenshot reflects zone for wi-fi campaigns (targeting users who rely on this type of Internet connection). Even though the number of websites is not big, it’s still possible to get a couple of whitelists:  

So, this was the day when CPA Goal got up steam. Our partner realized that his focus on 3G was a great idea, since he got his further profit from it. And here is a tip he came up with:

“When/if your offer is good enough, but no longer profitable after a while, you can recreate the campaign, leaving everything exactly as it was, but making sure that your bid is average. It is more efficient than changing your landing page and other promotional materials!”  

And the whitelist creation was already in progress.
And our partner said: 

“Let’s turn our attention to more areas below, as our offer page and lander page have verified that it works. As I mentioned above, Africa is the first area I want to test it.”

And the showtime began…

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September 11th

Almost a week has passed since the work began and our partner decided to test his Survey and Finance offers with the CPM pricing model and create a whitelist for it. With CPA Goal, these offers gained 200%-500% ROI, so Lexus Yang decided to take the middle value for a CPM test. 

To make sure he doesn’t shoot into the dark, he did something we always recommend in our articles – relied on PropellerAds Traffic Estimator. His bids varied from $5-$20.

Let’s check the first results: 

Not green yet, but definitely these campaigns needed some time to show their full potential. 
Still, CPAGoal proved to be ever-green in terms of profit. Lexus Yang set an additional whitelist for the CPAGoal campaign and the numbers were green from the very start:

Small notice for the most attentive statistics viewers: our partner changed the campaign naming, correcting them to African-A-3G-#PA23 and African-A-wifi-#PA23.

So far, campaigns for Asia, Africa and South America were already rolling and we are going to move to them soon. 

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The variety of GEOs for smart testing + Direct Click enters the game

Let’s make a small overview of the other GEOs our partner tested. The testing period was 8-11 of September. 

Here is Asia (this was one of the best-performing areas, as Lexus Yang said, so he decided to get some Direct Click traffic for it):

Now let’s see what’s happening in Africa (likewise, Lexus Yang used Direct Click for African regions that previously demonstrated potential and he was right – they brought some green numbers): 

Finally, let’s check South America (this time, no ads for popular areas were created, that’s why they don’t have high traffic, but our partner wanted to wait for a while and see if something changes to understand if he needs to work with highly-competitive zones):

Mini-summary

“I will also increase testing efforts and strive to have green ads and whitelists running in every continent. And let’s look at the top performing ad at the current location, which is green every hour,”

– that’s what Lexus Yang wrote and hurried to showcase his numbers that became prettier and prettier.

And the stats to back up his words:

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September 12th: Survey Exit steps on the stage or more green numbers to come

That day, Lexus Yang created a Survey Exit campaign to test this format for the zones he previously discovered as the best-performing ones. Let’s take a look at the campaign stats quickly turning green:

As our partner mentioned, he got traffic from about ten Zones, “which was 20% win rate overall and could be perceived as expansion traffic.” He recommended:

“If you have well-performing zones that work well with Direct Click and Popunder, you should try expanding and therefore – get more converting traffic.”

Our partner created two new pre-landers for Survey Exit campaigns, still they were pretty much the same visually, only the text was changed. Testing showed that CTR of the first page was a bit higher:

By the way, our partner used ProPush.me for 7 days (CPA and Revshare pricing models) for additional revenue and earned $66 with no effort. Here: 

And let’s see what was happening to Popunder revenue on that day according to Bemob tracker:

Sums for last 24 hours:

• Survey Exit revenue: $193
• ProPush.me revenue: $17
• Popunder revenue: $23
• Total profit considering the traffic costs: $96 

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September 15: Survey Exit strikes again

Lexus Yang started this day with green numbers brought by Survey Exit, here are the campaigns’ stats for the period of 12-15th of September:

Highlighted Survey Exit campaigns are getting more traffic and the revenue keeps growing. Being satisfied with such great news, our partner decided to create… yes, even more tests! And this was the best thing to do. 

To see the full picture, take a look at the Popunder campaigns’ statistics from the Bemob tracker:

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September 18th: Didn’t try Survey Exit yet? Do it!

Our partner saw great results brought by Survey Exit and recommended it to all forum users – this is how the 18th of September started.

It was the weekend before and he didn’t create any new campaigns, so you can take a look at the existing ones and see how they were rolling. 

Survey Exit

Direct Click

ProPush.me

Popunder

Conclusion for 15/09 – 18/09

• Survey Exit: cost – $60 > revenue – $97
• Direct Click: cost – $23 > revenue – $37
• Popunder: cost – $176 > revenue – $248

Also, ProPush.me brought $28, Popunder traffic – $85, and Monetizer BackButton – $6. In total, our partner received about $240 (expressed in round numbers).

Summary from Lexus Yang:

“I think I’m going to favor Survey Exit more for this week’s test, I won’t rule out testing Survey for desktop traffic. Its CR is gradually increasing and trending upwards, plus my main profit comes from Popunder pages, which I’ll be testing to squeeze more profit out of them.”

These are two Survey Exit campaigns launched earlier and our partner claims that he has finished his work with them a day before, and they gave these green numbers in the morning: 

More to come: here is hourly revenue from these two campaigns over previous 24 hours:

At this point, our partner offered some analysis of the Survey Exit campaigns’ performance. He writes:

1. Originating from their ad format, the overall CR is 3-7 times higher than Popunder 
2. Currently their traffic is not too competitive, my bid is only between 50-60% of the offer price
3. Relative to Popunder with a CPA model, Survey Exit with CPAGoal needs patience and one should wait for the algorithms to learn, or they don’t have as much traffic and are more likely to stabilize with your offer and page once matched!

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Total profits for the entire contest

And here comes the most interesting part: counting profits! Our partner eagerly shared his pretty impressive results achieved during the contest:

“I ended up spending $2629.636 on Propellerads Contest #PA23.

• Earn 3160.84 through Survey offer
• ProPush Revenue: $243.84
• Monetizer Backbutton Revenue: $62.5
• Traffic Popunder Revenue: $460.94
• Total Cost: $2629.636
• Total Revenue: $3160.84 + $243.84 + $62.5 + $460.94 = $3928.12
• Profit: $1298.484“

Regarding all of this success, Lexus Yang decided to launch more Survey Exit campaigns and prove its effectiveness. 

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Conclusion  

So, you can see everything from the statistics above. Now, to sum everything up, we will provide a couple of final comments of Lexus Yang:

• CPAGoal: the best pricing model to make your numbers green, just don’t hurry with manual optimization and give CPAGoal some time to learn;
• If you want to get high conversion rates with your Survey offer, a landing page is a must;
• Use ProPush.me tag to cover some of your testing expenses;
• And yes, test every bundle that seems promising to you – this is your sure way to find out what works really well.

Hope, you are inspired! Grab the strategies of Lexus Yang to make your campaigns shine and we hope to see you in the list of our contest winners next year! 

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