Gaming niche is a billion dollar industry.
Many affiliates want to get “rich” fast, but this is not actually possible like that… you need a lot of work and testing.
And some of the best tests can be done with cheap traffic and from there you can scale.
This is going to be a guide to show you the exact steps to taking a negative ROI gaming offer and flip it into a profitable ROI campaign.
Screenshot:
Introduction:
In this guide we’re going to be using Propeller ads traffic source and a CPA network called Traffic Company. We’re going walk you though the steps we took to build our campaign and then how we optimized it to achieve profitability using my favorite tracker CPV Lab Pro.
Traffic Company CPA Network is one of the good CPA networks on the market, having not only exclusive offers, but also their own offers.
| Table Of Contents: | Section: |
| Introduction |  Go To |
| ➀ Step 1: CPV Lab Campaign set up | Go To |
| ➁ Step 2: Create Propeller Ads Campaign | Go To |
| ➂ Step 3: Gather Data | Go To |
| ➃ Step 4: Optimize the campaign | Go To |
| ➄ Step 5: View Results | Go To |
| Conclusion | Go To |
Tutorial:
We will show you how to:
- setup the campaign in the tracker
- how to setup the campaign with your traffic source
- what to pay attention to
- how to optimize a negative ROI and switch it to positive
Step 1: CPV Lab Campaign set up
We will setup a direct link and landing page campaign in CPV Lab ad tracker. We want to make sure all our tests are tracked so we can optimize the campaign based on real data.
First we’re going to add the required fields in the “General settings” area.
Then, adjust our settings in the Macros & Tokens section.
For this case study we are using PropellerAds traffic, which is easy to use and quite cheap and good for initial testing of a campaign.
Choose our landing page:
From here we’re going to use a predefined offers and set the share percentage.
These “Shares” in the settings of a campaign in CPV Lab allow us to define how much traffic we want to go to a specific offer (total is 100% and we split it between the offers we use).
Screenshot: offer page
After we add our pixels to the page we can save the campaign.
Step 2: Create Propeller Ads Campaign
Now we’re going to create a new Propeller Ads campaign. We’re going to add a campaign name in the “Campaign Name” field, and select the traffic type to “Websites“
Next, we’re going to add our CPV Lab Tracking URL in the Target URL field, and in the Traffic Sources section include both the Exclusive Inventory and the Partner Traffic.
Now in the Countries & Conversion Price section area we’re going to select the country field to “Iraq“, and set the Daily Campaign Budget to $17 and the Total Campaign Budget to $17.
In the Targeting Area we’re gong to select the Platform to “Mobile” and the OS (operating system) to “Android”.
The Browser was set to “Google Chrome“, Browser Language to “Arabic“, and the Mobile ISP to “Asia Cell” to match the requirements of the offer. From here we saved the campaign and checked the data.
Step 3: Gather Data
Once the campaign was live, it was allowed to run long enough to collect meaningful data. The daily budget was set at $17, ensuring enough volume to analyze trends.
After spending around $12, only a few conversions had occurred, leading to a negative ROI. At this stage, it was crucial to identify which traffic zones were profitable and which were draining the budget.
We can see that we have a loss of over $1 in profit.
Step 4: Optimize the campaign.
Instead of scrapping the campaign, the next step was data-driven optimization:
- Sorting by Conversions: The data was sorted in CPV Lab to identify which sub-IDs (zones) were generating conversions.
- Isolating Winning Zones: Only the profitable zone IDs were extracted and saved.
- Creating a New Optimized Campaign: A fresh campaign was launched using only the winning zones from the first test.
Next we’re going to duplicate the campaign.
Grab all the converting sub ids that CPV Lab is returning after tracking the campaign.
We go to the traffic source dashboard and we only include the converting zone ids into the duplicated campaign by adding them into the Zone limitations section.
Step 5: View Results
The new campaign, focused exclusively on high-performing zones, was launched and quickly showed improvement:
- Budget Spent: ~$16
- Profit Earned: $7.70
With positive results coming in, the strategy then shifted to scaling:
- Increasing Budget: Slowly increasing ad spend on profitable zones
- Monitoring Stability: Ensuring conversions remained consistent
- Adjusting Bidding: Fine-tuning CPA goal settings for maximum efficiency
From here we can scale this campaign by trying to increase the bid, or creating multiple ad types.
Conclusion:
Hopefully this helped you understand how to create a winning campaign with international traffic. There are a lot of opportunities in non English speaking countries that you can purchase traffic from at a much cheaper rates.
Always track campaign performance with a tool like CPV Lab
- Identify and cut out non-performing zones ASAP
- Optimize by reinvesting in profitable traffic sources
- Scale gradually while maintaining stability
By following these steps, it’s possible to turn negative ROI campaigns into profitable ones while minimizing risk. If you’re running affiliate offers and struggling with optimization, consider testing this approach!
Personal recommendation:
In order to get campaigns successful you need a tracker like CPV Lab Pro to analyze the data properly.
The reason I chose CPV Lab is because the data is easier to understand and customize. Many of the other programs I’ve used make it difficult to customize the metrics is more difficult to understand the data, which can cost you in the long run. You can pick up CPV Lab Pro here!
Guest Author: Patrick Hill
Patrick is an affiliate marketer with 8+ years marketing experience. He was certified at Meclabs Research Institute in 2019 for value proposition development and a Photoshop designer. He has experience working as a technical support manager at a CPA network, and loves to make graphic design and programming easy for average people.
