Selling sex for $200 profit days, mid campaign follow along (14)
Selling sex for $200 profit days, mid campaign follow along
The goal, $200 profit every day on adult.
Target country: France.
This is going to be a mammoth post, since you'll be watching this follow along mid campaign. I'm already 2nd week into this, but I decided to start this, because I feel I need some feedback badly. So here it goes!
Start date: 7/29
Campaign setup
Freq. Cap: 3/day (Today, I've set it to 1/day per advice given)
CPM: about 0.45 to .50
To date, tested almost 50 banners (NOTE: I didn't test all 50 at once lol. I test like 10 at a time. I've cut a lot of banners and added new ones along the way).
Total spend: About $1200
Revenue: $783.50
ROI: -34.7%
DAY 1:
Banners
Landers:
Offers
Cost: $40
Revenue: $28.80
So, clearly 1 offer destroyed the other. Is this statistically relevant? Seemed enough for me at the time, I killed the other and focused on the winner.
Not too much statistical differences for banners/landers, so I continued with them. Also, only had 1 landing page this time.
DAY 2:
Banners
Landers
Offer
So I saw that with just 4 banners, I had something very interesting going on here. So I uploaded another 4 for testing.
I also added another landing page to test as well as you can see. Nothing to crazy for optimizing, since there wasn't quite enough data. But things looked very promising. Some banner/lander combos were profitable.
Cost: $116
Revenue: $78
DAY 3:
Banners
Landers
Offer:
As you can see, I uploaded even more banners... maybe this was a mistake? Spreading myself too thin? I also increased my budget quite a bit too to make up for it... but maybe wasn't enough to test this many variables?
I had 1 offer, 2 landing pages, and a bunch of ads. I tried to create banners that would match the offer based on colors. They didn't perform better... at least not on this initial test.
Cost: $196.048
Revenue: $139.75
DAY 4:
Banner
Lander
Offer:
I noticed that the offer CR has stabilized just about 8%, so this seems like its true conversion rate. Way lower than the 20% CR before, but I guess once you get more volume, things become more realistic.
I think I decided to take a gamble, I cut all the other landing pages and testing one new landing page that matched the theme of the offer. This one, I created completely more scratch using 90SecondWebsiteBuilder. It performed better than the other ones, which was a welcome surprise.
What I began to see was that some banners were substantially better performers then others. So I cut in prep for the next day.
Cost: $184.219
Revenue: $113.75
DAY 5:
Banner
Lander
Offer
Things really went to shit this day as you can clearly see in the lower landing page CTRs and offer CR.
Not sure what the hell happened, but my only guess is that Fridays are terrible to run campaigns?
Cost: $156.196
Revenue: $74.50
DAY 6:
Banner
Lander
Offer:
So today was much lower volume, because i greatly reduced my budget. To be honest, I was really scared to keep it running, considering the poor performance of the day before. Today was better, but still bad. The offer CR was 6%.
Cost: $32.906
Revenue: $22.75
DAY 7:
Banner
Lander
Offer:
I felt like I climbed out of the darkness and back into the light. Offer CR was back to 8%+, close to 9% as you can see. I also tested a new (3rd) landing page which was doing better than the other 2 as well.
This was my best day yet, practically broke even! I felt like I was so close... But I had to optimize like a fuckload to squeeze as much conversion juice as possible...
Cost: $155.190
Revenue: $149.50
DAY 8:
Banner
Lander
Offer
As you can see, this day was not as good as the day before. The biggest factor, offer CR dropped back to 6%, down from 8/9% the day before. However, you'll noticed I tested a truckload of new banners.
My thinking was this, I needed more banner testing to find the winners that would push me over into the profit zone. I kind of expected higher cost because I was introducing more variables. But I think this was worth it because some of the new banners showed promise.
Cost: $152.143
Revenue: $100.50
Summary
Well, I still feel a little lost guys. Can't figure out how to push into the profit zone.
What should I do next???
Test new banners
Test new landing pages
Test new offers
Another step to take is to split test with another offer. But its hard to imagine another offer performing better than the one that exists now.
I also recently changed Freq. cap to 1/day instead of the original 3/day. Fellow affiliates have been telling me that when testing a new campaign always do 1/day and only move up to 3/day or more if the campaign proves profitable.
Also, here are some landing page variations I was using/testing for your treat:
I had to do a crude job censoring this since I didn't want to completely give out my angle, lol.
PS. I forgot one more thing, I cloned this campaign over to another website. I'll update you on that too after today.
First thing, ask your AM for a bump and a report on quality. Tell them the campaign has potential for decent volume but isn't going to work if backend quality and associated payout increases aren't there, in the interim any bumps will help a lot with testing.
Thanks for the reminder Zeno. I actually asked for a bump a day ago, so I'll make sure to followup on that. In your experience, what is a typical bump? Can this be increase by 15, 20, or 25%? How soon into a campaign should I be asking for a higher payout?
The bump % depends on the payout amount, i.e., 2.60 might become 2.70 - 2.85, 5.50 might become 6. It also depends if the bump comes from the networks margin or if the advertiser bumps your rate, the latter being a more significant bump (though keep an eye out for advertiser bumps, they often increase your payout and simultaneously increase the scrub rate % so your epcs stay the same or get worse as they try to hustle you to scale up thinking that you're gonna make more money.
In that case, a bump wouldn't be game changing to my campaign. Though it might help keep it closer to breakeven so I can keep testing without bleeding quite as hard.
Would love to see how this ends up. I had a similar situation trying adult dating in FR and DE. I found the best converting offer from split testing offers at 10 networks, got a paybump, split tested ~25 banners and ~15 LPs. I couldn't quite get it to break even, much less profit, so I finally dropped it.
Best of luck!
Very good start dude!!!!
-50%roi you can definitely come back from that, take Zeno's advice and keep reporting back you can hit those days man for sure!!
Best thing about adult is as soon as you're in profit you can open the floodgates of traffic for some HUGE days!
day 9
Banner
Lander/Offer
I combined the offer/lander in 1 image to make life a littler easier.
You'll notice I kept the same lander. I may test a new one soon, but I wanted to find my winning banners first.
I also tested a new landing page for the winning offer and a second new offer. The new landing page wasn't better and the new offer flopped. So, I killed them and returned back to my tried and true winning offer.
Also you'll noticed I added more details. The cost is about 80% accurate, but it helps give an idea on overall performance.
Next move is to collect one more day of data, and then cut more banners. Hopefully by then, I'm breaking even... that's the idea. I may have to test more offers/offer pages to see if I can get something that converts a little better. If I can hit 10%+ on clicks to offer conversion, I'll be nicely profitable. From there, I guess test more landing pages... try once again to theme landing page to the offer page to see how it does.
Revenue: $75.50
Cost: $127.423
Day 11 - BREAKEVEN
Banners
Landers
Offer:
Sorry, I skipped a day. But basically what happened is that I noticed that the offer had multiple offer pages. So for day 10, I asked my AM which ones were converting best, and surprise surprise, she mentioned a bunch that I haven't even thought of looking at.
Guess what? The new offer variation converted almost 60% MORE! Damn son!
So after that, I spent all of day 11 hammering that one offer variant. The result? Breakeven.... FINALLY. Its only 1 day at this reaching this milestone, but its finally a relief to stop bleeding money out the ass.
Other problems
I am already one of the top bidders (top3). So as far as scaling.... I'm pretty much capped out at this point. My budget is set to $4k a day, but I only spend barely $100!
What to do to scale?
- Up freq cap from 2/24 to 3/24. But I suspect my profitability will go down as well.
- Find other sites/placements that seem similar.
I've actually already started testing in other traffic sources/placements, and the initial results are not too bad (-30% ROI). But these will require a lot of optimizing to get profitable, clearly.
What to do to get more profitable?
- There are some banners that are clearly out performing the others, I could focus in on these.
- I could test new landing pages that align a little better with the offer.
- I could test new banners.
The problem is that since I'd be introducing new variables, its possible I'd be bleeding money again.
Whats everyone's thoughts?
Get yourself solidly in profit first, then start looking at scaling.
As for how to boost profit - yes. Do all of them 
Try and find other banners similar to the ones that are performing, test new landing pages, AND test new banners! The more variables you test, the faster you'll find the ones that really work.
Obviously, don't go crazy, and do keep statistical significance in mind when testing (testing 10 LPs at once, for example, ain't a good idea). But generally, try and mill through your problem space as fast as possible.
I agree with Caurmen, before you start trying to master another source build a solid foundation with what you got going on at the moment.
Step one I would do is become the top bidder, so you can get more data running through your tests even if it means you might lose a little money. Then you can drop your bids down again.
Playing king of the hill with your top 2-3 banners, and try to make new ones that will beat them. If you see large positive statistical significance between tests then keep testing until the differences are minimal. Then move onto landers. By the end of the test your campaigns should be optimized enough to be profitable on the source that you were losing -30% on.
Thanks so much for your words of wisdom Mr Green and Caurmen!
Day 12
Banners
Lander
Offer
COST: $80.971
REVENUE: $58.50
= -27.7%
Yes, negative ROI much further down from breakeven the day before.
I anticipated this, I was testing a bunch of new banners. But as a result of testing new banners... if you look at the screenshot above, we seem to have uncovered some gems. As you can also see, most of the new banners are positive ROI. Not enough data, but its a great start!
What I'm learning: Sometimes you have to take 1 step back so you can take 2 steps forward.
Towards the end of this day, I killed a bunch of banners that were under performing as you can clearly see.
NEXT STEPS
Per Mr Green's suggestions, I'm going to raise my bids to be the top bidder.
Maintain freq. cap at 3/24.
Do an excel spreadsheet analysis.
Because the retarded source that I'm buying traffic from fails to fire conversion pixels (many others seem to have same issue), I have to look at my data with 10% error in cost. So to get 100% accurate data, I need to export the data from the traffic source and match up the exact cost with an export from CPVLab so I can have a clear picture.
Anyways, once I get another days worth of data, I will cut banners and move into testing landing pages again. Hopefully by then, I have something consistently profitable and ready to scale to new traffic sources/placements.
PS. HUGE fan of you Mr Green, I read all your case studies/guides... phenomenal!!!!!! <3
Very nice followalong, like everyone said above, get you profit to maximum potential, THEN expand like you're trying to take over the world.
Day 13
Pay bump = DENIED. They want minimum 500 leads A DAY. Bullshit. This would have seriously helped with ROI if I would've gotten it, I'm dealing with such tiny margins at the moment.
Banners
Lander/Offer
Cost: $79.289
Revenue: $94.25
+18.9%
(Got another conversion in there once I manually uploaded subids)
Basically, I followed everyone's advice. Tried to make myself the top bidder (couldn't beat the top bidder who had no freq. cap on). And I cut a few losing banners.
Whats interesting is I have quite a few banners that are in positive ROI range. I think I may just adjust the weight so that I show my best performing banners the most while also keeping the other ones in the rotation still.
NEXT STEP:
-Optimize more banners
-Test landing page elements (headlines/messaging/colors)
UPDATE:
I noticed towards the end of the day, I was quickly knocked back down as some of my competition bidded higher. Now I have to admit, this bidding war seems pretty damn lame... makes we want to try other traffic sources even more.
But I theorize that due to the super competitive nature of my placement, perhaps other traffic sources will yield much higher margins, granted that I optimize properly for them?
Getting anxious to test other higher volume/less competitive sources. I know I'm making progress, but I still feel so far away from my $200 profit/day goal 
Also, I just can't seem to get much volume with this traffic source/placement. I'm totally ready to spend $200-$500 a day to get this puppy rolling, but the volume isn't there. I have more than enough time to optimze this placement while also researchingg and lightly testing the waters elsewhere. I know I have a winning combo... hopefully its time to scale soon.
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