What does it mean when everyone says the US is too competitive??? (11)
What does it mean when everyone says the US is too competitive???
I have been working at this AM gig full on for about 3 months. About a month ago I started pushing some adult dating site offers in the US on Traffic Junky. Yes, I did exactly what most of the seemingly good affiliates suggest staying away from, which is adult in the US. Nevertheless, this was a calculated decision on my part for a couple of different reasons (mainly because I had a friend who had started on that path and he would be able to help me work out some kinks as far as setting things up). One of the things I continue to come across on this forum and elsewhere is that everyone recommends staying away from the US, especially on the adult side and to probably stay away from traffic sources like TJ and Exo. One question that i feel like has never really been answered is what everyone means when they say that the US (and adult) are too competitive??? What does it mean to be too competitive in this context? Is is because it is impossible to buy enough traffic at a decent enough price? Does it mean that it is too difficult to find good offers to push because the market is kind of dried up? Smaller guys don't have access to higher payouts and direct placement buys? etc...
It would be helpful if someone would be able to explain this in a little more detail?
Thank you,
there are people or groups of people who already have optimized funnels that are making them money or know how to optimize... They are spending large sums/day 20-50k+/day and are probably operating under lower ROI... More volume, lower ROI... To compete against that you will lose money fast unless you are willing to put up with large losses until/if/when you can profitably optimize your sales/conversion funnel...
Not the best place to learn the basic/simple stuff, like how to create banners, landing pages, tracking, etc..
Thing with the US is that yes, it's a huge market, yes there are lots of opportunities but also it's where all the major corporations/companies are investing most of their money in. So in the adult space like you mentioned, you're going against Ron Jeremy, Playboy, Brazzers....multimillion dollar companies that are buying the exact same spots you're tying to buy to get a $3 per lead. Not only that, after you put a banner in the US, again, with adult in mind since you mentioned it, it takes 3 hours for Advidi or Budbi to steal your banner and slap their logo on it and mass scale it quick (if it's a good one). Since most affiliates are always looking at the US market to see what is going to be the next "big thing". It's where most noobs start so the chance that ppl will copy your campaigns and try to replicate it is much higher.
CPM is more expensive. There are more people fighting for very little margins just because there is a lot of volume. Can you get it to work? Certainly. But you must bring your A game and be prepared to go up against the sharks and the top affiliates, and thing is, campaigns in the US at least in my experience don't last too long. I don't see why a newbie would want to come fight black belts when they can fight with white belts and have a fighting chance...
No one says you CAN'T do it, it's just not wise to start here when you can kill other countries for 200% + ROI. Which is another thing, newbies are usually on a low budget, since your ROI is so low, you might need to spend thousands a day, a lot of newbies don't have that luxury, so why not go to a country that will probably cost you $100 a day for a 100% ROI ?
Thanks for the informative replies karim and prof. To hammer down a little more, do you guys have any thoughts on adult internationally? It is not as competitive as in the US, but will I still be faced with a pretty high degree of difficulty and competitiveness in adult anywhere? Would I be better served just going away from the US and adult all together?
Thank you,
Adult is still wildly profitable, maybe not as easy as 2 years ago but if you step back and walk a different path to the 90% of marketers you can find yourself some nasty little pockets of ROI quite easily.
US video placements, you better have some big big budgets, same goes for US wap. Like Karim said, these guys might work with only 10-20% ROI but they have the budgets to make that still a good income.
How ever there are SO MANY placements in adult, SO MANY overlooked! Go for obscure placements in tier 2 countries, especially in Europe where the payouts could be $10-15.
Adult is 'saturated' where the competition is, where its 'easy' to rip and stick campaigns for the lazy, adult is HIGHLY profitable in places people overlook, where you actually have to be creative with your own works but is super super high rewarding and consistent.
One more question:
Mobile, web or both for international adult?
Originally Posted by maynzie
for an example here's a nice pocket I found last week. stats are over a 5 day trend.
spend: $58.48
return: $303.75
ROI: 419.4%
not exactly baller status, but its basically free fucking money. just have to go and collect it.
Originally Posted by 2amarketing
With mobile you will usually need bigger budgets due the the number of factors.
Make your life easy and go with the GEOs Maynzie suggested and go for the Web so you can hit ROI with low budget, after you have more $$ to spend try other GEOS, then hit mobile.
I hit ROI with USA Mobile in Adult and have been running for a yearh, I don't have to tell you how many thousands per traffic source you will need to spend boy.
I mean, who the hell can compete with Ron Jeremy anyways? the man has a 8==========D 10" dick! how can u beat that shit?
Joking aside, avoid a big headache and frustration, I mean it can be done, but if your mindset is not strong enough to lose $5,000 or $10,000 before hitting profits consistently, then avoid USA for now.
It's not that it's TOO competitive, it's that sometimes (depending on the niche) it's very competitive. Then you have to deal with fighting bids with more people. I think that's the gist of it.
It all comes down to how good is your campaign, what advantages do you have, and can you destroy the competition. If you can then competition doesn't matter.
Success has two aspects.
The second aspect is the game in which you choose to compete.
Some games are highly competitive and others are not.
In competitive games, you want to find games where your skill is greater than that of the other players. Your absolute skill is not what matters; it’s your relative skill.
Think about it this way: Say I invited you over to my house to play poker on Saturday night—and that you like to win.
If I tell you that there will be some players that are as skilled as you and a couple of rich players who don’t play well, your response should be: “I’ll be right over.” Why? While you know the amount of money entering the house at the beginning of the evening and leaving at the end of the night is the same, you can see how your gain will come at the expense of the weaker players.
On the other hand, if I tell you that the players expected that evening have skill that is equivalent to yours, the response should be: “No thanks, I’m busy.” In this case, there’s no reason to believe that you will come out a winner because there is no mismatch in relative skill.
And if you find yourself in a game unsure of which players are weak or strong, learn a lesson from Warren Buffett: “If you’ve been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, then the patsy is YOU.”
I feel there are 2 strategies in enter a new competitive market in CPA Dating:
1. Go in loose money / break even until you have optimized and eventually receive competitive advantages/an even playing field. (Higher Budget needed)
For example, on a traffic source I'm currently running on, I run non niche traffic and I make 30%~ ROI, however my payout is 40% higher than the opening network payout. So even if you enter the market with the same skill / optimized campaigns, your still going to be loosing money in the beginning. That being said you might be better than me (wouldn't surprise me, I'm pretty lazy 
)
2. Niche up a mainstream offer, for example super niche targets that the big players couldn't care less about because they are to small. Then produce high quality leads from this and use it to gain a competitive advantage, higher payout, direct with offer, more frequent payouts. Then move into less niche / less obscure traffic sources, which now you should be at least competitive with your new pay out etc.
I used strategy 2, however now all my niche angles haven't been touched for months and anyone could come in and optimize way better because the angles are to small to warrant my time now, if I see they are loosing money its more likely I will just pause them than optimize, or if they sit at break even, I wouldn't even now because my system I use wouldn't pick up on the new competition.
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