ripping campaigns... (35)
is it just me, or does it seem that a good chunk of affiliates running dating offers, regardless of which country they are running in, are generally running a handful of the same landers and banners.
I mean whenever I jump on a VPN and start to do a little bit of spying, I always end up coming across the same type of landers and banners over and over again. I'm not going to go ahead and say that I have never ripped a banner or a lander before, but generally speaking, anything I do rip always tends to perform "alright". In a sense where I know that I cannot make a decent ROI or even get myself into profit without a very significant amount testing banners and landers. it simply a method that I take it isn't much news to anyone that it just does not work.
im not too sure if I gotten my point across correctly. I'm obviously not asking how I can rip a campaign and make it profit. What I am saying is I honestly cannot figure out in my mind how the hell these guys are even turning a profit to begin with considering how it is quite a common thing to come across
Yah that is definitely the world of adult, especially all over the self serve networks. Problem is how transparent it all is, it is so easy like you said to jump on a VPN and scout for pages you may have not seen before.
Many people don't feel the need to pioneer, or think it could be a waste of time because they get the new page designed put it up, one day of profit then they wake up to see 10 affiliates are already running the same thing, its kinda why I pushed out to more direct buys.
Affiliates are lazy but it blows my mind how some people make money there margins must be very very slim haha, I try to use as many little tricks to stop landing rips but it still happens and I guess it'll stay that way can't see it changing anytime soon
Isn't that a clear copyright infringement?
Can't speak for other countries but iIf somebody here in germany would copy a landingpage 1:1 it would be less then a day until he gets a C&D.
I once almost got sued (still had to pay arround 1000$) just by "ripping" one image from a competitors site (which yes, was a stupid thing to do).
Copyright infringement requires the original person to actually have rights to the page content/design, which most affiliates wont as they just rip shit from wherever and take images from wherever they want.
Furthermore, most affiliates aren't going to waste their time and money getting a lawyer to C&D every joe affiliate, which would do nothing. Affiliates could just 'comply' and run the lander on a different domain, in a different campaign, and not give a shit.
Also good luck explaining to a judge that your fake rules lander promising sex with lonely housewives was ripped and asking him to feel sorry for you 
^lol
Originally Posted by maynzie
considering how simple it is to pound out a bunch of banners ready to test out or at least slightly modify an existing lander. I just don't get how these guys are able to profit to begin with.
Originally Posted by angry old lady
Originally Posted by zeno
I'm no expert in international copyright law, but I know the laws in germany pretty well and the person who has been c&d'ed (the offender) has to cover all the costs for the C&D and has to sign a agreement to not ever do it again, or pay like 50-100k each time he gets caught. So the C&D is free for the person which rights have been violated and it's like 5minutes efforts to email your lawyer.
Originally Posted by pokersensei
But in the end that's a completely different case and does not make a copyright infringement less serious.
I've gotten lawyered hard for even small copyright violations (like using one image without a source link), so yeah, laws are real. In theory you could also go to the police if the offending party uses a whois protection and have the police contact the hoster, who will return the real company/person behind the domain - as otherwise you would not be able to pursue your legal claim.
Anyway, did not meant to hijack the thread with legal stuff
It's definitely difficult, but if you put in enough time testing you can scale banners/landers across multiple geo's.
The thing is, the same GIF/angle combo won't work perfectly across every country. Different countries respond to different things since their interests/desires/cultures are different.
What I have is a set of 6-8 GIF's that I know work with two solid angles. The angles and GIF's are both diverse, and are something you get out of lots and lots of rounds of testing/optimizing. Out of those 6-8 creatives I generally can find 1-2 winners. The weird thing is, sometimes the worse performing creative in one country will just kill it another. That's why you need a diverse set of proven winners to work with.
Once you have that down you'll need a killer LP as well, something other affiliates aren't using that will give you a small competitive advantage. There is definitely one out there that I haven't seen too many affiliates use that outperforms almost everything else in most GEO's.
Once you have that you should be good to go with the global scale.
So it pretty much comes down to two things -
1. A shitload of testing to build up small competitive advantages over time on landers/banners.
2. A diversity of GIF's/angles that will allow you to find at least 1-2 winners in every country.
That's how I've been doing it at least, maybe other affiliates have different/better systems
Adult has reached a tipping point where you can rip creatives, or create your own, and it probably isn't going to make or break a campaign.
What matters is:
1) The offer.
2) Is the traffic source saturated?
Occasionally, you can reinvent the wheel by doing something completely different and breaking out a healthy margin. But even then, if you expose it to volume, your competitors will quickly catch on.
If 10 affiliates are taking 10% of the traffic each, and then one affiliate develops a killer landing page that allows him to take 50% -- expect those 9 other affiliates to have noticed, investigated and rolled out their own versions by Monday afternoon.
You need some exclusivity to stay ahead -- whether that is the offer, the payout, the margin you can operate at, or the creative itself.
Original creative work, being the easiest of those factors to duplicate, is losing value fast.
Originally Posted by Finch
What I see a lot of affiliates do wrong is copying the same placements, banners and even offers thinking it should work while they will always run up against bigger adult affiliates that are on completely different prices for both the offer(s) and traffic sources.
If one can chuck out 10/15k a month they can get so much better deals on CPMs. There are a good amount of top placements on some of the bigger tubes that also do deals with other companies/setups with prices as low as 15 cent CPMs compared to the 50-90 cents you pay on others.
There is a ton of combinations out there that have been running for months and they still work.
If you can get campaigns running break-even or close to profits, imagine running those on 1/3 or even 1/4 what you are paying now.
Creativity comes in many ways and should start with the traffic source and getting the better deals on that traffic, and not necessarily the banners and LPs you run.
Originally Posted by mvaneijk
Originally Posted by angry old lady
Also take a look @ these guys: https://www.mediareps.com
And LinkedIn is also your friend, you can literally find just about anyone on there.
Another good way to go about this which would not require a full mediabuy is finding the same tube placements on different traffic sources, sometimes you end up paying half the prices for the same placements.
Always look for that edge
Originally Posted by Finch
speaking when it comes to banners, as soon as something decent comes around. it doesnt take long before every man and his dog has blasted it to the point where it isn't worth much to run. where as, something as simple as changing the image in a banner can have quite a significant increase in CTR/CVR
sure eventually someone will come along and rip your stuff. but you still get quite a few days of profit from it considering the 1 min of effort. to me that seems like less effort than to rip a mass amount of banners and trying to find something that works.
but then again. everybody all has their little secrets here and there that give them a bit of an edge whether its from a traffic source or something else.
Originally Posted by mvaneijk
Also take a look @ these guys: https://www.mediareps.com
And LinkedIn is also your friend, you can literally find just about anyone on there.
Another good way to go about this which would not require a full mediabuy is finding the same tube placements on different traffic sources, sometimes you end up paying half the prices for the same placements.
Always look for that edge
Originally Posted by angry old lady
The problem is that if your new choice of image works well, the instinct is to scale it. And when you scale anything on these self-serve platforms, it's instantly noticeable and instantly replicable.
There's always short term money in searching for better creatives.
But I think the long term advantage comes from having a better infrastructure in place.
It's a zero sum game really.
If whatever impressions you take from Affiliates X, Y and Z are due to superior banners or landing pages, then you're profiting pay cheque to pay cheque. It's an advantage that won't last for long.
If you can take those impressions by negotiating a better deal, or using better technology, or getting a better payout, or simply avoiding platforms where real-time competition is so fierce, that allows you to build a wall against your competitors.
I'm not saying it's a waste of time to optimise banners -- but as a competitive advantage, the most gain is to be had from parts of the model that are harder to replicate.
Originally Posted by Finch
I agree completely with Finch.
They way adult works these days makes it nearly impossible that your edge will be the creatives.
People with spy tools and with an army of outsourcers will be able to rip your work before you make a healthy profit on it.
You need to work on edges that are not as easy replicable as creatives. Such can be :
1 - Higher payouts
2 - Direct traffic deals
3 - Better technology
4 - Better process
5- Ability to work on big volume / super slim margins
Originally Posted by bbrock32
Lack of scale and a noncompetitive cost structure are two of the main reasons you will be at a MASSIVE disadvantage if you are just working by yourself as a one person shop.
- Suppose you are a medium sized solo player (SoloCo) doing about $2 million revenue a year, $1 million of gross profit, and post tax profit of $500K.
- Let's now compare your situation with a much larger 6 person outfit (TeamCo) working together doing $12 million a year and $6 million of gross profit.
Importance of Scale and Cost Structure Advantages
Suppose that both of you could develop a new proprietary traffic optimisation and tracking technology system, and by doing so you can improve your profits by 35%. However, this technology will cost $2 million to develop. (For CPAs out there, lets just assume for the sake of simplicity that we will just expense this cost and not capitalise it on the balance sheet)
- You would essentially be wiped out for the year. Your gross profit would initially go up to $1.35 million, but the development cost will bring it down to a gross loss of $650,000 for the year.
- Assuming you have some overheads, your net loss would be even greater.
- Since it is almost impossible for a solo operator to get any type of external financing whatsoever for their AM business, unless you had $650,000 socked away from your previous years (and not wasted on trying to impress your wannabe "baller" friends with rented Lamborghinis), you would pretty much be wiped out.
For TeamCo, on the other hand, this is a pretty easy choice.
- The software still costs them the same $2 million to develop, but as a result, their gross profit has increased by 35% at the same time (so by $2.1 million).
- Furthermore, they are in an even better strategic position than they were before.
- Now because they can deliver so SO MANY MORE leads, they are in a great position to deal directly with the advertiser and cut out the affiliate network and their 25-35% cut as well. This will now increase THEIR gross profit by at least ANOTHER $2 million a year.
- So now TeamCo is doing about $9-$10 million gross profit for year. Now they can afford to pay a top tier law firm $500,000 to organise their business in the most tax efficient manner possible.
- So now they are able to get their post tax profits up to about $7.5 million of free post tax cash flow a year. Needless to say, that is a lot of financial firepower you now have to compete against.
So, what is the likely outcome? Well, chances are now TeamCo will pretty much kick your butt. They can use the EXACT same creative, landing page, offer as you, and still have a MASSIVE competitive advantage against you. It will be like the corner bookstore trying to compete against Amazon or Wal-Mart. Unless you can pull some big rabbits out of your hat, you will just get killed.
I am not saying this is impossible. But you really need to have some VERY strong edges in this game, now that it has gotten so competitive.
Just having a better creative will usually not cut it.
^ That is pure gold!
It's funny how every time I read on of your posts I think "that looks so much like common sense, how come I never thought of that myself before?".
if im reading this thread more and more i am thinking really that this game is not for the one man army anymore..
who cant negiotate better deals because he has no significant volume
who cant negotiate a traffic deal because he has no big ad spend compared to a team
whose creatives aint going to make the difference
and so on and so on
^In a way, yes.
But this is accentuated if you target traffic sources that are known to be popular 'entry points' for noobs.
There are still sources out there where the one man army can
Originally Posted by Finch
I have my heart hot-wired to a digital nuclear detonator if it ever stops ticking.
Originally Posted by Finch
By the way guys, just curious of the entry level to a transition from self-served to managed buy. How much cash should one prepare, if we were to start from purchasing traffic from one Geo. Let's say US/UK
Originally Posted by sascpateam
That really does depend on the buy.
From my experience though, you'll get a much better deal by taking on multiple geos.
Use your own ad server instead of a single static banner placement to serve native ads to every geo (use their flags to increase performance).
Funnel whatever you can to CPA offers -- then resell the rest of the dud impressions.
Making use of more geos than other affiliates is a good way to get an edge on the competition. Probably one of the most underrated edges that is attainable at no extra cost.
Naturally, if you are only willing to accept the prime US traffic, then straight away you are going to be paying 'tax' on your ads for their premium nature.
Originally Posted by Finch
he means the flags of their country on your ad.. its a subtle sign that often increases ctr. you should check his premium posts for more of this tricks. with an ad server he means that your server is going to check where a visitor is from for example the netherlands and then shows the dutch banner. Because if you buy more geos you will get the traffic and you need to figure yourself out which banner to show to them..
^Yeah, flags are a great CTR booster, especially in countries where users aren't used to seeing direct response aimed squarely at their eyeballs.
That said, it's less effective in America where there's a chronic case of flag blindness!
As for the server:
http://www.revive-adserver.com/
This one is free.
Instead of adding a banner, you slip in your code and serve different banners for different countries, rotate them, with frequency capping etc etc.
You can't use it for self-serve platforms (most of them anyway) but if you're doing a direct buy, you can get much more bang for your buck and avoid the common banner blindness issues.
^
awesome. thank you
would you guys recommend doing global buys?
really I suppose the biggest thing is trying to figure out if the ad spot is a wise decision or not. ive sourced out some flat rate offers from a range of sites from $1.5k-60k/month all global buys. not sure how to approach it in terms of what to look for. I'm thinking I should continue to look until I can target a handful of geos instead of a global buy.
Originally Posted by alpacino
Originally Posted by radiosurf
Any rays of hope for those of us that haven't made it yet?
re-read finch's posts...there is opportunity, you just won't find it so easily in the most obvious places. you need to dig deeper and accept smaller placements.
Yeah, the more campaigns I launch, the more I learn about what works and what doesn't and how to skip those placements where there are 300 guys battling for the same spot.
I've been learning what works in creatives and angles,etc.
Still, my immediate goal for about a year and half now has been to get to $100/day profit and every time I think I finally make it, I get knocked down again.
Maynzie's been following my struggle for ages now hehe...
I recently realized that you need to be ready to spend $200/day to get to my goal. Otherwise, you won't collect enough data before the offer gets taken down, people start copying ,etc.
I definitely think this is not an area for newbies anymore....
yes its true that the adult world is changing a bit, but it is still completely possible to reach a goal of $100/day without any specific edge. you just need to test the crap out of everything.
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