Spunking $500 on Sitescout then sulking (probably). (24)
I've been doing affiliate marketing for around 4 years now. So far I have only ever really done SEO. I've done really well over the last few years and made great money for the last year and half. Matt C**ts put a stop to that with his latest updates and this "waiting period" has really fucked things up for me. So I am taking some time away from SEO to try to get my head around paid traffic. SEO is great but whenever there is a major update I wish I had more diverse income streams.
So anyway enough of that, here's my plan:
Traffic Source: Sitescout / web only
Geo: USA
Niche: Testosterone Trials
Ive had a small play with sitescout already. I was given a weight loss lander for Malaysia so tried that last week. I just tried one banner angle with 10 different images and got an overall CTR of 0.11% but up to 0.29% for my best image which seems to be ok. The issue was the lander got only 1 click through to the offer and there wasn't much volume so I decided to try something with a bit more potential (just in case).
I had a nice site in the growth hormone niche that converted well so I know a little about this type of niche. I have come up with 2 different angles to test and made 10 banners of each angle. I am sticking to 300 x 250 for now. If I find a winning angle I will test other sizes. The angles I have chosen are my own spin on angles that are proven to work in this niche as per my research on boxofads.
To start I am just using one landing page. It is similar site to howlifeworks type site. If my campaign is approved and I am getting clicks I will try another LP angle also. The lander I have is designed to be approval friendly. It has "advertorial" in the header and makes no outrageous claims etc. I will push my luck more if I can get this approved. However it seems that this type of lander does work as I see this type being used alot.
Just using one offer at the moment also. However I will clone the campaign and add more as soon as I am approved for them. Or, actually saying that I will only test more offers once I am getting LP clicks or it will just make my banner tests more expensive right?
The real headfuck for me at the moment is knowing what sites to place my campaign on. For the Malaysia weight loss there was no choice really due to lack of volume. I did RON and targetted the captial city as I thought that's where the girls with money would be. However there is a shitload of inventory for USA so I dont really know where to start. I guess the obvious would be to look for sites in this niche - bodybuilding etc. But the thing is the angle I am going for is one for older guys wanting to regain their youth so I am not sure thats where they would hang out. PLus I am sure all those sites have millions of testo and HGH banners and they are all banner blind to all the angles I am trying even despite my unique spin....
So anyway, I decided to instead target sites where my demographic would likely be. Even though they are completely unrelated. Not sure if thats a good idea or not - will find out soon if this gets approved.
Not sure if I have set up my pixels correctly or not. All my AMs are offline at the moment. I didnt add any tokens or anything at all. Am I supposed to?? I am pretty sure sitescout tracks everything automatically. I did add the pixel but I didnt add any tokens to them....
OK thats it for now. Any advice appreciated.
Cheers
I think Sitescout is a tricky one to start paid traffic on due to the huge amount of options you have when creating a campaign. I just deposited on Sitescout and I realised that I wouldn't have had clue where to start if this would be my first paid campaign. I've heared that US as a geo is also tricky (althought I don't have experience with it).
Sounds like a solid plan - good luck! Sitescout is definitely NOT where I'd advise most people to start - there's quite a lot of dodgy placements and some seriously entrenched competition. But if you can make it work, more power to you.
What's the payout of the offer?
In reply to Caurmen the offer payout is $38.
OK so my campaign was approved and its all live now. Its been running for most of today so I have a little bit of data to look at now.
I originally added 5 or 6 sites as targets but only one of them was giving me traffic. Maybe the others didnt accept my banners? Impressions bid was all on 0 so it wasnt becasue I was bidding too low. I was bidding $3 on all sites by the way.
Later on in the day I added a few more sites also. I decided to cut sites with more than 1000 impressions and no clicks. is this sensible? The site giving me most traffic has an overall CTR of 0.17% so I think if no clicks after 1000 impressions it must be a bad fit for this campaign.
Some sites are listed twice. I am not exactly sure what that means. I am thinking the same site but from a different ad network? Not sure how to apply my 1000 impressions rule when this is the case. Total = 1000 or each individual occurrence = 1000? Probably the former I should think.
I only had one LP click which is something I will need to work on for sure.
Here are the stats for the sites:
I had 17 banners in 2 different angles.
CTR varied from 0% to 0.46%. all banner received around 450 imps. 7 got clicks and 10 didnt get any.
Both angles got clicks.
So what to do next?
I am thinking to let the campaign run some more. I have a new angle which I think could be great but I am running it past my AM first to see if its ok. I am pretty happy with my banner CTR so far but I want more data before I decide whats working and what is not. Landing page CTR is disappointing so need to research more. I could possibly direct link?
Thanks for reading.
Sitescout, in the US, with an offer payout of $38......you're definitely not making it easy for your first campaign!
Honestly my advice would be to pick a much lower payout offer and a traffic source that's not so competitive. You'll learn a lot faster and won't have to spend so much to find out which angles, placements and creatives work.
If you're really set on this campaign though then you need a lot more data. Be prepared to spend $1000s to get enough data on which sites could work, and then potentially more to optimise into profit. Cutting a placement after 1k impressions (which is only 59 impressions per banner) is far too soon for this type of campaign.
Yep, I'd agree with alexpte. However, I'm guessing you've deposited $500 by now so can't really back out on the traffic source until you use that.
I'd recommend switching to a lower payout offer immediately. Try targeting individual sites you have strong reason to believe are legit, rather than multiple sites, and construct angles tailored specifically to them and their audience. That'll give you an easier time getting conversions and much less data (and thus cost) required.
Yeah I guess you gentleman are right, the payout is too high for the testing budget that I have. I guess I was hoping to hit something good very quickly but that's probably extremely unlikely. The thing is I have been wanting to launch a sitescout campaign for ages and just couldn't think of an angle for anything else.
Maybe the best thing to do is learn the ropes with a low payout offer and then when I know what I am doing then come back to this project. I have a really nice new angle for this current project though that I might run a quick test on first however, just need to get it OKed by my AM. The good thing about this new angle is that it is far more site specific so that would narrow down that part of the mix.
So ............... the question is what kind of offer to run? Low payout offers are not really my thing at all though. I have spent 4 years doing Diet CPS with payouts of $60+.
Any suggestions? I am thinking of a dating offer perhaps?
I live in Thailand and read and write Thai quite well so I was initially excited by Neverblue's Thai groupon offer with a payout of over $2. Its very low payout but traffic is dirt cheap here. HOwever the offer pays out after the user makes a purchase not just a sign up, that kind of kills alot of angles I have seen recommended on here.
I dont have to just stick to Sitescout. I'm assuming they dont do a leadimpact and steal your deposit if you dont use it. I can deifintely find a use for that $500 credit if I have to. However I really want to get into display as I love the fact you can scale stuff massively.
Right, time to find a low payout offer and a new angle.... Bollocks! back to the drawing board again!
There are a bunch of TH CPI offer for mobile (utility apps) with a payout of < 50ct. Perhaps try that with a RON campaign on 1 of the exchanges (not all 30 lol). Check which exchanges are good for mobile (Smaato or MoPub for example) and have traffic in Thailand.
Ok so just had a good chat with my AM. He is fine with my new angle on the testo offer plus hes hooked me up with some nice presell landers that are working for him so that saves me time and testing money as mine is obviously failing.
So I am going to give my testo offer a bit more time and see what happens. If there is a little hope Ill reconsider upping my budget but if its (when its?) an abject disaster (or the landers arent approved) I will try a niche dating offer or somethng. Theres a nice looking $6 payout niche dating offer on neverblue which looks promising as a plan B.
Sorry for ignoring your advice please dont stop giving it - ill be on plan b tomorrow Im sure 
Sitescout is a giant hub of messy traffic and you'll want to keep a close eye on placements/siteids. You'll notice a lot are shit and you'll want to block them. They do have a lot of traffic though and i'm a personal fan of Sitescout, i think it's a good spot for traffic as long as you can manage/track well.
Yeah I have started to notice some complete shit on there now. I'm checking every site now manually by visiting it, looking at actual ad placements, then also looking at alexa to try see if the site is legit or not. I am suprised actually that a lot seem to be complete cheap.
Just waiting now for my new testosterone angle to get approved. My plan b lower payout offer I think will be an ebook membership free trial which pays 11 dollars. Does that sound ok? There are a few obvious angles to try with that one and I could even reuse some of the data I got from the other campaign as to which sites are legit.
Offering a down-sell makes sense and is something to split test for sure.
Originally Posted by zeno
The negatives of this new offer though are that theres not much traffic on the network so hard to say if its a good offer or not. Also, personally I find the lander a bit confusing too. I think I might be better off with a proven offer or I am just leaving myself with too many unknowns and too little experience or testing budget.
Anyway still waiting for campaign approval on this new offer. Its a shame sitescout dont approve on the weekends whats up with that? Pretty sure the high spenders get approved 365 though.
SO today I have a bit of a weird one.
I have 9 clicks showing for a site, but no impressions or spend are showing for it at all. The number of clicks does match with how many clicks the banners are getting. Anyone experienced this before?
I have several target sites online but I am only receiving traffic from a small number. Does that mean that either my banners or LP are not accepted by that site or is it to do with the LP url not being whitelisted yet? Is there anything I can do about this?
SImilarly my new banners are approved and online but haven't received any impressions at all. My old banners are still getting impressions, one has performed above all the others consistently but its CTR is still just 0.22%, My hopes are on this new angle but I am not sure why they dont get impressions. I am using a celebrity angle, but the celebrity actually does endorse the product and my AM says its ok to use, so I am not sure why I am not getting impressions on these new banners....
How long have you waited for the data to update?
AFAIK SiteScout updates pretty quickly, so if it persists, I would send a bug report to their support.
its been a couple of hours now and still showing 9 clicks but no impressions.
It makes a big difference to the campaign as there has only been 12 clicks overall!
Ill see what their support say.
Not very impressed with sitescout at the moment.
For the last 4 hours when I log in, the campaigns dashboard is completely blank. No access to stats, no option to pause or change bid. No access to nuffink at all. Its not a major issue for me as I have limited the campaigns to a small spend each day. But it makes me think what would happen if I had a big spend campaign that wasn't going well that I needed to pause! Could literally spunk the whole lot without being able to stop it. Support aren't the speediest of individuals either.
What traffic source would be a decent alternative for a paid traffic noob?
Decisive's very user-friendly and easy to learn, and from there you can jump to other mobile sources. POF is good - you'll never get huge on there, but you can learn and make a profit. Facebook has the scale, and is a bit more complex, but is more doable than it used to be.
Those would be 3 of my main recommendations. Anyone else?
OK so I decided to take all the advice from this thread on board.
I have signed up with decisive (just waiting for my log in to be sent). In the meanwhile I still have $390 or so in my sitescout account so I am going to run a $0.27 app install offer. The offer is for Thailand so the traffic will be cheap. It is the sort of offer you can probably get away with direct linking and its also has a very general appeal. In fact I may as well say what the offer is. Its MOBOMARKET which is a sort of alternative to Google play store.
The plan is to do a RON on the Thai mobile traffic on sitescout with a low bid and see what hits. Hopefully I can try and find some banners and placements that work and go from there.
Gonna try a load of different banner styles and see how I get on.
Good call!
The mobogenie offers have been done to death, so you'll need an imaginative angle to get it to work. With that payout you've got plenty of space to experiment, though - try weird stuff!
OK putting this on hold and having a bash at mobile.
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...309#post174309
Originally Posted by caurmen
With FB, I see so many people saying games are good for noobs, but what does that mean? Can you make profit with them and if so, why only noobs? Why do the experienced move on to something else?
You'll never go 'huge' on PoF simply due to volume.
Volume limits how much you can spend and make on a traffic source and it always will.
On PoF, have $xx a day as your goal as a newbie. There are certainly people making $xxx-$xxxx a day there but that may take a hell of a lot of work and/or experience.
But, on the flipside, you won't burn $500 in a day by accidentally having an extra zero in your campaign budget. Yes this does happen to people on high volume sources. Quite seriously, an accidental fat thumb on FB or Adwords could cost you thousands.
On FB, games are good for newbies simply because it is a relatively clean vertical = you are unlikely to get banned for your ads, and the payouts are low = you can get conversion data faster -- just like with every other source/vertical.
Of course you can profit with them. Otherwise no one would run them...
On any one traffic source, people are usually making money in all of the main verticals.
As for 'experienced affiliates moving elsewhere', this isn't necessarily the case.
As you get better at Facebook you will want to leverage that to approach higher payout offers that have broad appeal -- which would otherwise be too difficult to run as a newbie.
Again, this is not a Facebook thing.
$xxx / day is doable on POF with some hard work, but any more than that probably isn't going to happen unless you stumble on something seriously killer.
These days, I'd mostly consider POF a springboard to bigger traffic sources, or a way to set up very long-lasting campaigns with minimal oversight needed.
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