BJ's FB FA FTW!!! (8)
Hey Everybody
So... one of the hardest decisions I have had to make in my long career (3 weeks) as an affiliate marketer (wannabe affiliate marketer noob) has been the decision to change traffic sources.
I started out with POF as many do, and saw some quick small successes. That part was awesome, and it gave me the confidence to move on.
I was using POFpro, that was awesome too... seriously, if anybody is starting out and decides to go with POF as a traffic source, bite the bullet and use POFpro, its the bee's-knees.
POF is awesome in general, the people there are really helpful, and for certain offers it is as close to a guaranteed way to make some money if you put in the work and use the right tools... I mean really, if you are running a dating offer on there you know your entire audience is already prone to sign up for dating sites as they have done it before... doesn't get much better than that. There are a ton of resources on how to be successful with POF, plus POFpro does so much of the legwork for you culling ads through hurdles, its a great place to start.
But for me, it just wasn't a good fit... here are a few reasons:
I didn't like being limited primarily to dating offers. Im sure gaming and relationship-related offers would work fine too, but for the most part if you are on POF you are running dating offers. (please read statement above about my noob-like status before you take any of this with more than a grain of salt.)
It can take a long time (relatively) for ads to get approved. During the day its pretty quick, usually within an hour or so, sometimes much faster, but if you upload a bunch of creatives in the evening you are going to have to wait till the next day to get them approved. For somebody like me who likes instant gratification, that's a long time. If I didnt mind waiting for traffic to start rolling in, id still be building niche sites... but as Veruca Salt so eloquently put it in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory... "But I Want It NOW!!!".
With Facebook for example, Its awesome uploading an ad at midnight, having it approved within 10 minutes and seeing traffic start rolling in within 15 minutes. Talk about instant gratification.
Part of the investment of both time and money in this industry is our investment in knowledge of the systems we use. I want that investment to pay dividends as my traffic sources change throughout my career. With tools like p202, STM Mobile Tracker, CPV Lab, and
I have zero regrets about starting with POF. I dont believe I would have seen such immediate success (albeit small) which is a huge boost to confidence to keep pushing forward.
It also gave me perspective on what I need personally from a traffic source and why.
So its on to Facebook. Wish me luck.
Traffic Source:
Facebook
Tools:
Digital Ocean VPS for Landers
Zeno's FB Gaming Knowledge Bombs hes dropping all over the place
LotsOfAds Trial (no images in the trial, but helpful to see what copy others are using)
Testing Budget:
$1k/month, $33/day
Scaling Budget:
$20k
It sounds like you're making a good call to move on. There's a big difference between saying "I can't make this work, but it'll be easier elsewhere" (it almost never is) and saying "OK, I mastered that traffic source, what's next?".
Although I'm amazed that you don't mention the biggest perk of FB over POF: SCALE. POF's awesome and I still love it, but FB has so much more scale available...
Looking forward to seeing how you get on - and I happen to know there's a mega-uber-post coming soon that will help you and other FB users out a LOT.
Day 1 (last night)
I chose an offer for League of Angels based on magnetics testing in his awesome follow along.
I had reservations saying this as I was afraid it might seem like I am swiping his info, but im not using any of his creatives or copy, just the info that he tested a few offers and had the most success out of the gate with LOA.
I got
I pulled up a few 1080p youtube videos, and took screen grabs of them everytime a sexy character appeared. I chose to do it this way so my creatives would be somewhat unique compared to the rest of the ads on FB for the game.
I put them all in PS and and transformed to fit the ad image size. Picked my favorite 10 out of the bunch and saved as jpg @ quality 7
Then I fumbled around in FB power editor for a couple hours trying to figure out the best way to organize everything in Campaigns and Ad Sets. Im sure the way I did it is not ideal, but hopefully someone here can help remedy that for my next campaign.
Heres How I have it organized:
I have 7 Campaigns, 1 for each age group I am testing, in 3 year increments:
Then I have 7 Ad Sets, one for each Campaign Labeled with broad Targeting (location, sex, age group):
I then have 10 ads (different images labeled i1-i10) in each 3 year age group for a total of 70 ads:
As it is now, the Campaign level and Ad Set levels are completely redundant so I know something has to change.
I ran the campaigns for several hours, culling ads as if they reached 1200 impressions with no clicks (probably too soon?)
There was a clear winner for image, but that ad was still at best around a 0.05 ctr depending on age group, which tells me my specific targeting sucks and/or my copy sucks... probably both, but thats why im here 
.
I am also currently direct linking because I read that was advised for gaming offers (its a 3-4 field signup page with plenty of cleavage, but I will be testing with a lander soon.)
My tracking is screwed up (which seems to be par for the course for me...) so im trying to figure that out asap. Are there any resources for setting up
It seems like it would be easy, but im having trouble
My Targeting:
Gender: male
Interests: Battlestar Galactica Online, AdventureQuest Worlds, Massively multiplayer online games, Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, ZOMG, Free Realms, gunshine, Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall, pet forest, Browser games, fusion fall, fusionfall or Drakensang Online
Language: English (US)
on Right column on desktop computers
My copy:
You Haven't Played This MMORPG Yet?
League Of Angels is 2014's Best Free-to-Play Browser MMORPG. Start Playing Now in Seconds!
My plan was to find an image and age group(s) with the best CTR, then start testing Different Ad Headlines and Copy.
My ads were running fine last night, I lowered my max daily spend to $2 before I went to bed, as I knew that would be enough to get the data I needed to cull the rest of the ads, and this morning the ads had stopped running after midnight, and now my ad previews are not available in the Facebook ad manager. I was sure to point my links in Voluum directly to the Offer LP's as Peerfly's afflinks are blacklisted, until everything was approved.
I just started running one of the campaigns again to see if it gets any impressions, but i fear facebook might have come around again and slapped me.
ok, thats all for now. lots of issues to work out but im moving forward. thanks for reading.
Originally Posted by caurmen
Heck yah Scale was of course a huge factor (not sure why I left it out!). I guess all of the other less-obvious stuff was on my mind because it might be things people starting out wouldnt necessarily think about.
btw, you rock.
All my ads showing as active but not delivering as of last night, and ad preview is not displaying in Ads Manager or Power editor.
Looks like im going to have to recreate my campaigns. My best guess is my click-through domain was flagged or something because it was redirecting to a Peerfly aff link, after I had all my ads approved with a direct link to the lander.
any other ideas?
Have you checked if you can get the LoA offer on multiple networks? Always worth split-testing across several networks to get the best conversion rate on any offer!
Originally Posted by caurmen
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