Newbie taking on Adult Dating for his first offer (16)
Hello all!
I've been interested in AM for a few years but never knew where to start. Thanks to this forum, I have managed to get an offer. I think I have everything set up, but I guess we'll find out. I'm currently working an office job- it's ok, but it also makes me realize how much I want to call the shots and control my schedule. My dad was an entrepreneur and I grew up seeing him living his life basically as he saw fit, and after growing up around that, not sure I can live my life working a typical 9-5. I have a degree in entrepreneurship, so I'd say that this ideology is a good fit with my education, as well as my desired path in life.
Not totally sure if AM is the path for me, but I've always found myself to be very analytical, and yet very comfortable with abstract topics. In other words, while some people might only be able to work with numbers or language, as an example, my strength has always been in blending the two. So, AM sounds like it could be a good fit. I've been lurking the forums for a bit under a different account, but just set this one up to pursue AM in earnest. I will be grateful for any feedback whatsoever. Feel free to be as critical as you want, as I really believe the only way to learn is feedback, whether that is direct feedback from experience, or just criticism from people who are more experienced than I am.
I'm going to be as transpart as can be with this process, as really, I have no idea what I'm doing.
My Setup
Traffic source: TrafficJunky
Tracking:
Hosting: BeyondHosting Litespeed VPS. I think I'll switch to a CDN after my 6 month contract is up. Naturally, after I sign up for BH they come out with that AWESOME onboarding guide saying CDN is the way to go. Plus, it's cheaper!
Vertical: Adult Dating
Offer: Milfaholic
Payout: $1.75 per lead
Eligible Geos: US, UK, AU, ZA, CA & NZ
Initial Geo: CA (my home country)
Budget: I'm looking to spend about $500 every two weeks. I'm willing to put in the cash to see where this will take me.
Bids: It depends on the "spot" on TrafficJunky, but I'm looking to be #3 bidder based on the tool they provide during the bid setup phase.
Angles: Several angles, naturally. I'm starting with "local horny moms" and giving users the impression that it's a public hookup site ("can you keep their secret?" and hiding the face of the woman in my images to try to be congruent on that front).
Campaign structure: Focusing on Canada to start. Starting out with 2 campaigns initially:
- 350x99 Canada campaign
- 300x250 Canada campaign
Within these two campaigns, I'm targeting every mobile spot available on TrafficJunky for the given dimensions. I will probably split them up based on performance, but given the way you set bids in TrafficJunky, I'm not even sure that's necessary. If I start to target additional geos, I'll put those in separate camps, naturally.
Banners:
or check out this link to see the .gif animations: http://platypus125.com/img/
Landing pages: I'm just going direct for now. I want to spend a bit more time working on this, and get an idea of what kind of performance the offer page itself is going to get. This will be up within the next few days. I've already been blowing my brains out working on this (read: trying to figure out tracking) since I got the offer Thursday, and would like to just get it up at this point.
Actions I took today: I created the campaigns for this offer. I'm really not a fan of TrafficJunky's campaign setup workflow, but it is what it is. I'm gonna learn to work with the one traffic soure before I start jumping around. I'm currently waiting for the campaigns to be approved by TrafficJunky, and the campaigns are already set to Active. So, tomorrow is day 1! I'll let you know what happens.
Current tasks:
- Create landing pages
- Figure out
Voluum (I started out with STM prosper on my server, but I couldn't seem to figure it out. I got voluum tracking first try, however. MIRACLE! But I guess no conversions have fired yet, so we'll see where that goes.) - COME UP WITH MORE ANGLES
- Get data
- Figure out what the hell I'm doing
Offer link: http://k3j27s9ve7.com/?a=474627&c=31269&s1=milfaholics&s3={leadid}&lande r={lander.id}&device={device}&model={model}&brand= {brand}&os={os}&osversion={osversion}&country={cou ntry}&trafficsource={trafficsource.name}&browser={ browser}&s2=
(voluum appends clickid supposedly?)
Campaign link: http://com/8b7261cf-e76d-4563-95d0-abfa186a3f1e
Postback: http://.com/postback?cid=#s2#&payout=#price#&txid=#tid#
Aff network pixel: <img id="5004821_cpa_testing" src="https://ads.trafficjunky.net/tj_ads_pt?a=5004821&member_id=263841&cb=[RANDOM_NUMBER]&cti=[TRANSACTION_UNIQ_ID]&ctv=[VALUE_OF_THE_TRANSACTION]&ctd=[TRANSACTION_DESCRIPTION]" width="1" height="1" border="0"> (I pulled the link out of this pixel and put it in voluum as the postback- is that what I'm supposed to do when A4D doesn't provide me a postback?
As mentioned, open to any feedback you have. I'm here to learn!
Nice setup man, I'm glad you picked Canada to start with thats a good choice. Milfaholic is a really good offer too, but one thing with adult wap is looking at it as a long term campaign. Try to deliver the best quality leads you can by using top tier tube sites, try not to use the word free on your lander and it seems mature women on your banners tend to lead to higher quality.
Reason is, this leads to higher payouts. Milfaholics goes FAR higher then $1.75 a lead, have you asked your affiliate manager if they can bump you on the offer too, you should be able to get a little bit more of a squeeze on that payout.
Either way looking forward to your first round of data man you got a solid foundation!
Originally Posted by maynzie
One golden tip specific for the milfaholic company offers, mark your placements with Subids, the good thing about them is that they usually will tell you what placements to stop and not kick you from the offer straight away. This way you can optimize your placements and only run in those that work for the both of you. For this to work, you need to place something like this into the banner urls : &source=TJ1 and use following numbers for the other placements, then they will tell you to pause source TJ1 or TJ3 for example, so keep a spreadsheet where you note what source ID means what placement. Its a good idea to use something more general than TJ, nobody has to know where exactly you are running
Also make sure you try the different milfaholic offer urls, some of them perform way better than the others, I have seen a massive difference between them. The one I ended up pushing outperformed the weakest one like 3:1.
Good luck
Day 1
Alright, well my first full day of campaigning has basically come to a close. Here's the damage:
Spend:$50 (budget capped)
Clicks:478 in
Conversions:3 in
Impressions:Not entirely sure TBH. TJ was tracking impressions earlier, and I even pulled a report. But now when I check TJ, it says 95 impressions, which is certainly not correct. I suspect it was around 190,000ish
Banner CTR:(assuming voluum is correct) about 0.25% lol. Back to the drawing board!
CR: (running direct, remember, and assuming voluum is correct) 0.64%.
ROI:-93%
Issues I Had
I wasn't passing my creative names or placement names into voluum, so I'm basically running blind on that front. I think I have it set up now, though. Here's an example URL I placed into my URL on TJ: http://.com/8b7261cf-e76d-4563-95d0-abfa186a3f1e?creative=xxxxx&adspot=yyyyy&payout={p ayout}&cost={cost}&externalid={externalid}
I subbed in the relevant creative title for xxxx, and the relevant spot name for yyyyy. I don't think that TJ supports dynamic tokens, but I put those in there anyways. I don't really know why- maybe just a hope that somehow TJ does support dynamic tokens?
Also, my CTR was atrocious. My banners clearly need some work. My 300x250s were especially bad, and I paused them tonight because I don't think any of them were over like 0.1% TOPS (high volume too [.10,000] so I can be pretty confident they suck]. My 305x99s weren't as bad, though. I was actually expecting the opposite. It's a shame I don't know which ones were the best performers. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.
Highlights
My first conversions!!! Pretty cool to see.
One of my 305x99s had a 0.85% CTR, so while that isn't very good at all, at least it outperformed the others so I should have some insight as to what people were responding to.
What I Learned
Well, my angles need some work. I took a break tonight because I've been pushing myself pretty hard trying to get this going. Tomorrow night, I'm gonna lock myself in my room and crank out a bunch of banners with a couple new angles (I have some weird ideas I think I'm gonna test out, because what I started with obviously didn't work- time to get creative I guess), and a bunch of colours, borders, pictures, etc. for each of the 2 new angles.
What I Need to Do
- Come up with 2 new angles & a variety of creatives associated with them
- Make LPs that are consistent with the angles
- Determine which offer page converts best
Questions I Have
- Is there anyway to pass cost into voluum from TJ?
- What should my campaign structure be? Right now it's grouped by creative size. I kind of want to just toss everything in one campaign so I can set it to a $35 daily limit, putting me right on pace for my $500/2 week budget.
- Does the offer page conversion depend on the landing page, or is it generally independent? Is it worth looking for the highest performing OP before I have LPs up and running?
As always, feedback is appreciated. Feeling very motivated by the fact that I even got some conversions, but understand I have so much to learn. Can't wait to see the progress I make even over the next few days!
Originally Posted by maynzie
Is the payout bump something I should take up right away, or should I start proving value and driving conversions before I bring that up with my AM?
Originally Posted by matuloo
One golden tip specific for the milfaholic company offers, mark your placements with Subids, the good thing about them is that they usually will tell you what placements to stop and not kick you from the offer straight away. This way you can optimize your placements and only run in those that work for the both of you. For this to work, you need to place something like this into the banner urls : &source=TJ1 and use following numbers for the other placements, then they will tell you to pause source TJ1 or TJ3 for example, so keep a spreadsheet where you note what source ID means what placement. Its a good idea to use something more general than TJ, nobody has to know where exactly you are running
Also make sure you try the different milfaholic offer urls, some of them perform way better than the others, I have seen a massive difference between them. The one I ended up pushing outperformed the weakest one like 3:1.
Good luck
Originally Posted by jardin
But you can also try split testing with different networks. I've seen that offer with a much higher payout before, even without paybumps.
Tj is cpm so it's tough to get an exact click cost into
Great work! However, you REALLY need to use landingpages. Don't be lazy on this just because you want to see stats. It's a lame excuse
Day 2
Spend: $25
Clicks: 474
Conversions: 4
Impressions: 194,574
Banner CTR: .243609115
CR:.008438819
ROI:-72%
What I Did
So my creatives all had quite a few impressions, but one placement in particular had a much higher CTR than the others (almost double). Still not where I want it to be, but oh well. I paused the other placements, as I had a lot of impressions on each spot. Not sure if this is preemptive or not, but they all had more than 5,000 clicks (which I remember reading is the point at which you should start pausing creatives that aren't meeting your CTR goals). Although none of them are, I still kinda need to keep on truckin' with this campaign. Along a similar vein, I turned down the weight on the offer page I was exclusively running on the first day. Just want the others to catch up so I can have a better idea of what works!
I made a landing page -and by that I mean downloaded one of the awesome lander packs from STM, and found a nice mobile responsive one with a quiz at the end. I modified it a bit to match my offer more thoroughly. The code was actually broken, so I had to fix it so it worked. I made sure to put my
I also had 2 calls with 2 new aff networks and got accepted into both. I need to submit some paperwork in the morning to get the ball rolling, then I'll scour their offers to see if my offer is there so I can split test.
I also increased my budget on the campaign to $35, putting me roughly on pace for the $500/2 week budget I keep talking about.
Issues I Had
I had trouble finding relevant images, as I mentioned.
I also realized I need to spend some time getting more comfortable with CSS. I'm OK (at best) with HTML, but can at least navigate my way through the code from these templates. I'm pretty slow though, so I'm gonna start dedicating an hour every night to playing around on codecademy getting more familiar with these languages. Unless anyone has another suggestion on how to best learn, of course.
I had just put my landing page into voluum right before writing this. Literally was about to submit and then thought "hey, maybe I should check my link!"…BROKEN, of course. Paused campaign and got it up and running again. Phew!
Highlights
Well, at one point I had a +100% ROI. I had 4 conversions early, then they died.
matuloo's tip to try the other offer pages was awesome! The offer page yesterday was like 0.6% CR. Today, there were 3 pages that led to conversions- 6.45%, 3.03%, 2.78% CR on 31, 33, 36 visits. Don't think the data is representative enough yet, so I'm gonna keep all 11 pages in there for now.
What I Learned
- Try all the offer pages! Didn't realize there could be such a big difference between them, but in retrospect, this makes sense.
- My coding skills need some work, but I already have a plan in action to improve them. As well, I need to find a decent source for some milf-y photos. I wasted way too much time looking for those pics.
- CHECK YOUR LINKS BEFORE YOU SET THEM LIVE HOLY SHIT
- I thoroughly enjoy AM so far!
What I Need to Do
- Tomorrow I'm actually gonna make more creatives with more angles. I was going to today, but thanks to my man dennis calling me out for being lazy (nailed it- thanks buddy!) I knew I had to prioritize the LP or else I would never do it.
- Work on HTML/CSS skills
- Come up with a second lander to split test mu current one against. The one I have is pretty snazzy- I think I'll handcode a shitty one and see what the difference is. Plus, it'll give me a chance to work on my HTML/CSS
Questions I Have
- How can I increase my CTR? Any tips based on what you can see on my banners? I'm only running the 305x99s now, the 300x250s were atrocious.
That's it for tonight! I'll catch up to you guys tomorrow. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HELP!
Well done on checking your lander! That could have been a real pain - nice work.
Increasing CTRs: try some different designs and colour schemes. The black and red is eye-catching but not necessarily inviting.
Also, I'd recommend spending some time looking for images (I know, aargh) and then Photoshopping the hell out of them - increase vibrance, sharpness, maybe do some selective blurring to make elements pop.
Looking forward to your next update!
Hi jardin,
Pretty interesting stuff there!
Congratulations, keep up the good work, and don't hesitate to contact us if you need.
Anton
Damn man you're making great progress, regarding the offer payouts if you're close with your affiliate manager you can get it right away.
Increasing your CTR, if your spots allow gifs use them they tend to have higher CTR. But you don't want to increase CTR in place of losing CVR, in the end profit is what matters. You can definitely increase them by using similar colours to the tube sites you're targeting, have had extremely high CTR's doing this, but always notice a dive in conversion rates so its a real balancing act.
Thanks for all the support! You guys motivate the shit outta me. That being said, I had a long day at work and I’m exhausted…didn’t get around to working on the creative as I said I would. I definitely have a tendency to go balls to the wall when I start something new and crashing, so I’m doing my best to try to manage my moods and keep my energy levels in check.
Weekend is coming up though- locking myself away to get up that banner CTR!
I’m gonna change my reporting so that my TJ &
Day 3
Spend: $27.39
Clicks: 423
Conversions: 6
Revenue: $10.50
Impressions: 116,763
Banner CTR: 0.362% 
only room to improve though.
Landing Page CTR: 8.70%
CR: 10.35%
ROI: -61.664841183%
What I Did
Tried to keep my costs under control by only focusing on the placement that is providing clicks. Not much else.
EDIT: Altered my LP1 to split against my new LP2. Also, increased my bid a bit, paused a creative (one of the two creatives I was running had all 6 conversions today- probably not representative, but I'm gonna have to relaunch this weekend anyways once I get my creatives all done up). I also increased my budget so that I'll have spent $70 over the last 2 days.
Issues I Had
Energy level is SHIT. Had to work late tonight so it was tough to find motivation to deal with anything. The lack of sleep the last few nights has definitely caught up with me. But tomorrow is a new day!
Highlights
Well, new conversion record without doing anything, as well as a new PB ROI.
What I Learned
- I need to do more to maintain my energy levels. Going to start making time for exercise & meditation in the morning.
- Working full time and AM is tough to handle, but I’m going to make it work.
- I guess the LP helped with conversions after all!
What I Need to Do
- Make more creatives- going to make additional designs of the 2 angles I have tomorrow night
- Come up with 2 new angles this weekend
- Alter the copy on my LP and split test that. Currently, the LP I have is relevant to my offer, but not overly. EDIT: I ended up feeling motivated and made a second LP with an image of an older woman and more MILF-geared copy. Really not different at all, but interested to see the results.
Questions I Have
- Anyway I can transfer total impressions into
Voluum ? This would be suuuuper handy, but I don’t think that’s doable - What metric should I be watching to see the balance between banner CTR & CR?
- How can I better manage my energy while working FT? Is it acceptable to take a night or two off during the week, or would it be better to spend less time every night working on things instead?
- How many visits do I need to my offer pages to determine if they’re working or not? My CTR/CR are both shit so I’m really not getting much traffic, especially considering I’m pitting 11 offer pages against one another.
Here’s my lander BTW, forgot to attach last night: http://platypus125.com/milf/1.html?s...ser}&isp={isp}
As always, feedback is appreciated! Call me out if I'm being a piece of shit, I beg you!
Try to split test also with cartoon landers. I had some success with them in the past !
keep on updating! bro
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