Sometimes it just takes a little translation...[NSFW] (12)
Hey everyone,
Just reactivated my membership here and thought I would share a little case study with you that may help you in your path to profitability.
The bottom line: Many affiliates are lazy (including myself). A lot of the time when you find an angle that's working in the US, that angle could be replicated over to INTL waters with ease and be profitable with less competition/minimal saturation of that angle.
Instead, most affiliates rip that exact lander and try to compete on the exact same placement they saw it on with the exact same offer (at a lower payout). Most likely you're late to the game at this point and your margins aren't as good so you're likely doomed from the start. In the end you'll probably be wondering how this other guy is still running when you're losing money.
One of the most common niches that this happens in is adult. It's extremely simple to spy on competition, (I'm sure most of you have done extensive research 
) and the barrier of entry is easy as anyone can toss up a campaign on Exoclick or TJ for $50. We've all seen the same exact "rules/steps" lander copied a million times. I'm guilty of it too.
During 2014, here's a pic of a lander that I saw was making a resurgence for US male enhancement (this angle/lander was initially created by Mr. Green I believe):
This lander promoted a 2 step offer combo (muscle/male enhancement).
Of course I then started seeing numerous different competitors rip the exact page and try to compete on the same placement. Realistically, the initial affiliate was probably focusing on English speaking markets and the copiers wouldn't take ANY extra effort except ripping the lander. This smelled like opportunity to me.
I went and found native translators through freelance sites to translate that lander for me into Dutch, Italian, and French. The result:
So now I had INTL landers. I then went and found INTL offers that could handle the traffic. These ranged from INTL trial offers to straight CPS. All that was left to do was to make new banners. You can either outsource or make your own. I use a combination of both.
Here are some numbers for you to look at. The campaigns ran for a total of 3 months or so on all the popular sources and then some (Exoclick, TrafficJunky, TrafficForce, AdXpansion, JuicyAds, TrafficFactory, PlugRush):
Voluum.png
Views: 307
Size: 304.7 KB
ID: 5772" class="thumbnail" style="float:CONFIG" />
As you can see some of the cost data is missing so the actual net profit was closer to $23k in the end. I won't tell you which network was most profitable but one definitely stood out among the rest.
Also, PERSONALLY, I would stay away from Exoclick CPC RON. I'm not sure if this still stands, but Exoclick RON only allows you to block 500 sites before your campaigns stop running.
Honestly, tons of the Exoclick RON traffic is pure trash/bot traffic and again this is just my opinion, but I think they only allow you to block the 500 sites so advertisers can't stop all of the crap traffic (which I assume Exoclick knows about and needs some way to offload essentially, if they aren't themselves the owner of those fake sites).
So if anyone from Exoclick reads this... you need to change that asap.
The campaigns have fizzled out and I didn't feel like maintaining these anymore but honestly a fresh lander/some new banners in these geo's could easily still turn a nice profit. That's up to you to act though!
This is AM. Everyone will steal landers, banners, ideas. Sometimes it's all about making a little extra effort to go where your competition likely hasn't yet been.
Think about your odds of success when making a campaign. Is it possible to just go copy an adult rules lander and swipe some banners and get profitable? Sure, it's possible.
But is it probable? No. You're competing with 20 others affiliates running the same page who are ramping the bids up higher to win the lions share of the traffic. What competitive advantage do you have here? None. Many affiliates will just end up testing and breaking even and once they drop out someone new comes in and replaces them in the chain.
It's often times a few affiliates who are making the most and tons of affiliates who are making none.
However, why not try and promote a rules lander in Turkey, Nigeria, or Indonesia? How many other affiliates do you think are making that effort? Likely not as many.
Hope this helps some of you make some extra bucks.
I'll be looking forward to scaling more aggressively into mobile and looking to connect with any of you who have had some success so we can mastermind/discuss.
Cheers!
Nice post. I'd try this vertical myself if the cost of getting the data weren't so high. Plenty of opportunities for someone with the budget for it though.
Hey awesome contribution thanks, you're right too man. I'm guilty of everything you mentioned. Going after the different tiers with some new designs will be a smart move for me, thanks.
oh snap its a dick ! , I can understand people spending money on this big dick thing , ....its really anoying for the bedroom, i have grown out of it but for many years it was a hassle if you dont have the big dick 
, i use to say to girls that in the Roman empire time all the status had small dix, the rest is monsterous un natural ..that is what it shuld be
I've seen this LP, although it was translated to another language than those you mentioned. Might as well been your LP. No doubt a convincing lander, but since I don't run adult, I didn't get the shiny object syndrome because of it.
Did this campaign require a lot of daily maintenance from you or was it more like autopilot?
Great case study 
I believe this applies to mobile as well. Some of the most lucrative campaigns I have had have been in foreign countries most affiliates are to lazy to bother with. Lol
Originally Posted by mazsot
If anyone plans on running this, one hint on the banners that worked for me is sticking with images that have the guy in a solitary act. What I mean is, pics of a guy using a fleshlight or playing with himself would always convert better than banners of a guy and a girl together.
My theory on this is that anyone buying a male enhancement product may have some shame about this "problem" so they more or less want to keep it to themselves...
Certain images may trigger an undesired mindset or emotion in the person which can make or break a sale.
I'll throw you guys a bone here and show you some banners that I was using.
The pics of the guy by himself always worked best as I mentioned. When these died out I had to go and make new banners. This worked for a while as well:
You always have to keep rotating banners in adult to stay ahead of the game.
That's a great case study, thanks for sharing!
Originally Posted by sirob4
If anyone plans on running this, one hint on the banners that worked for me is sticking with images that have the guy in a solitary act. What I mean is, pics of a guy using a fleshlight or playing with himself would always convert better than banners of a guy and a girl together.
My theory on this is that anyone buying a male enhancement product may have some shame about this "problem" so they more or less want to keep it to themselves...
Certain images may trigger an undesired mindset or emotion in the person which can make or break a sale.
I'll throw you guys a bone here and show you some banners that I was using.
The pics of the guy by himself always worked best as I mentioned. When these died out I had to go and make new banners. This worked for a while as well:
You always have to keep rotating banners in adult to stay ahead of the game.
Originally Posted by aimhigh
From the campaign above, I probably ended up losing $5k through Exoclick. Most of the losing campaigns in the
My overall goal here was to scale as much as possible once I saw it was profitable and I thought I could optimize Exoclick early on with good browser/os targeting and blacklisting sites but ultimately I decided to fight a losing battle there and it cost me.
Also, you really need to think about the overall variance, especially if you're a small affiliate. Overall, the campaign had about $121k in revenue and $98k in cost so let's round that to $120k and $100k.
If you break that down over 100 days, on avg, I would be spending $1k daily and generating $1.2k in revenue. This really isn't huge profit margins.
Some days the campaign would be killing it with $1k profits but other days the overall campaign could spend $1k and only make $600 in revenue.
So the overall trend is still moving up but there might be some swings. There might be some smaller affiliates here who see this thread, copy the campaign and spend $500 and only make $150 and think "oh wow, another loser", but maybe had you tested the same campaign a day later you would've spent $500 and made $650 and decided to pursue it further.
I guess my barometer for cutting banners/placements is quickly seeing, "Can I make it profitable?"
If I spend $100 on a placement and make $10 then of course I'll cut it asap. If I spend $100 and make $50, and see I could cut a few browsers, sites, carriers, etc... and maybe get it closer to even then I'll let it run and slowly build more data to see how much closer I can get it to even. Then I might start thinking about other factors like bidding less to get it over the hump but taking less traffic, lp changes, can i make a better banner?, and so on.
Hope that helps.
Originally Posted by sirob4
I have friends from NL and GE whom will translate for me too, got a great graphics friend to make banners as well and also some decent LPs. Must admit my budgets pretty shit and I see some people talking about $100 per day, frankly, unless I made profit or money back I doubt Id come close to that.
You sound like you have it worked out which is awesome man, you have clearly worked hard and it's paying/paid off for sure. Hopefully, ill be where your at soon dude. I think it was TrafficFactory I tried out last time, maybe next time ill test out TJ instead.
PS
Sent via mobile btw, sort for amy typos. Thanks again for the advice it's appreciated.
Awesome thread.
One way to get around the 500 site limit on Exoclick would be to whitelist the sites that did perform (albeit only up to 500) instead of blacklisting sites that did not. This leads to high ROI's but low volume which beats having a campaign lose $$$.
Home > General > Affiliate Marketing Forum