ADULT DATING some new input needed (13)

hello,
i thought maybe its a good idea to post my results of the last months here for the adult dating vertical i am working on.
i posted a detailed follow along in another adult IM related forum but i think it could be a good thing to discuss my journey here as well cause i am a member here also now :-)

i started with paid traffic end of 2014 with PPV and the only thing that made me a little profit there was some dating campaigns. so i decided after weeks and months of struggeling and loosing a good amount of money to take this dating campaigns into other kinds of trafficsources. okay. the problem was that it is not easy. haha.
my first weeks was around loosing 50% of the money i invested. i took a break and made a vacation and started my new follow along at 04-09-2015.

the whole follow along was a heavy mind blowing up and down ride. some days i thought i am going to be rich (my best day was 194$ in profit) and many days i am short before to stop anything cause i am in a depressive mood :-)

after my best days my best funnel died and since then i was not able to create a new one with such a good ROI.

after i thought the trafficspots could be the problem and tried some new trafficsources but the testing costs me more money then i was able to make. so all my profits are gone again.

this is the stats in overall since april:

Revenue: 18233.86$
Cost: 18096.83$
P/L: 137.03$
ROI: 0.75%

in this stats are not the costs for tracking, servers, bank fees, paid education and such things. its just what i paid for traffic and what i made back. so i am still in the red when you count anything together.

i have read many things about the dating and adult vertical. also finchs premium posts and many things from tuan and jay.
i tested hundreds of banners and dozens of landing pages. also many offers and offer landing pages.
its a hard struggle. but many times i think a make something wrong cause i have read blogs and follow alongs where people have success on a daily basis much faster.

the mosts of profits are from tier1 countries on SOI offers.
yes i have read many times to try tier2, tier3 countries but did not tried this alot.

okay what is your opinion about my struggle?

any advice would be great. have a nice day

(-> i am 39 years old and started in IM many years ago but just like something here and there. stopped many years for another reason and then started back two years ago with some youtube posting and such things. maybe i am to old for this hahaha :-))

As you said in my follow along, we are in the exact same spot man! What I'm focusing on right now is trying to find my competitive advantage. I'm not sure your process, but the process of scraping banners and landers and running hot offers can only get us so far, I'm afraid.

Therefore, we need a competitive advantage. I'm not exactly sure what this entails yet, but hit me up on skype (adam.altman.workday) if you are interested in discussing

keep testing, you wont know when it comes

ok keep testing untill emtry your budget

Looking to see STM "senior" replies to Your question, Outrage666 !

Dating can be a bitch, I know exactly how you feel as I've been through the same stage and it wasnt actually that long ago

It feels like you are working with one blind eye and missing some point that everybody else knows about, but its not the case as far as I can tell. There is no magic formula that you are not aware of, you just didnt find your market yet.

Let me give you a few suggestions

1. if you think that a good dating affiliate can make money in every geo they touch, you are wrong. From some reason, almost all affiliates find "their market" at some point and they do better in it than in the others. For some people its just one geo and one vertical, some people can do good in multiple geos, but its never a "whatever geo I touch I conquer". This has several reasons : languages spoken, the background, offers available, personal preferences ... the problem is, you dont really know what GEO will be the best match for you, so you gotta test a lot of them. And there goes the first mistake you are making : you stick to tier1 geos mostly. Stop doing this, test more GEOs, eventually you will find one that suits you the best. Dont worry about lower payouts, some of these GEOs are massive. Take India for example, there is more than 1 billion of people ...

2. dont get too depressed when you see people posting about their success that they achieved fast, it does happen but its not the rule generally. Many affiliates start raving about how they conquered the game after their first 5 days of $50 profits, many affiliates just flat out lie, then there are those who want to sell you something and need to hype their products with fast success claims.... ignore all this and focus on your own game.

3. the spots : here is the core of your problem most likely. I can definitely tell you that the right spots are often the key to positive ROI. Some spots simply work better than others, you need to find them and this can only be done with testing. Usually it works like this : spots with massive traffic have the most competition so the ROI is limited and they are crowded with affiliates who have high payouts and tweaked funnels, you simply cant beat them at this point. Just as an example, I had an offer bumped from the street payout of $4 to $9.5, try to compete with me in some prime spot, you simply dont stand a chance. A bump like this is not normal, but its a real figure (took me months and 100s of leads per day to get it). Im mentioning it so you understand why sometimes you run into situations where people bid way higher than you even tho you are already at loss with the low bid. So forget about these spots for now, there is a lot of gems that you can find, search for them. I have one spot that is giving me 200-300% ROI based on the day, tho it only send up to 15 leads per day, but hey, gimme 20 spots like this, I will happily take them all A golden tip for you since Im in a good mood : GEO specific sites tend to have more of these small good spots, so if you're promoting French offers for example, search for sites in french language.

4. offers offers offers : how many offers have you tried? Looking back at my first attempts, I did a big mistake and wasted a lot of time on it : I was stubborn as a bull and wanted to make one offer work no matter what. As you can imagine, it didnt work out. Only when I started to test more offers I eventually found something that worked well. Dont make the same mistake, test several offers. Also keep one thing in mind, almost all offers have more than one landing page available, test them, you will be surprised how often some work better than the others.

Just dont give up and test, this is all there is to it. Keep on going, try to increase the volume and higher payouts will come too. Youre not doing that bad, so far you didnt actually loose any money on traffic, all you need to do is improve it a bit.

And btw : Im 38, so you're definitely not too old for this

All the best

02.09-07.09
____________

Revenue: 315.45$
Cost 405.44$
P/L: -89.99$
ROI: -22.19%

Total:
______

Revenue: 18549.31$
Cost: 18502.27$
P/L: 47.04$
ROI: 0.25%

hello everyone,
a short update. its overlapping a bit in data with my last post but this is the stats of the last days together. i was not able to do much traffic.
yesterday i started to look for some new geos and tier2 offers and built the first new campaigns in this countries i want to try.

its funny how low the payout are. you have to send much volume to make some bucks there :-)

the funny part is i made a break even on a low basis just with letting some banners run. over night i got some little badder results and cutted all banners and let only the best funnel run. again its now on break even.
the offer have a 100 lead cap. so i decide to let it run some days so much i can and then i can ask for quality check and maybe for the first paybump. hope this will be possible. also i will test a bunch of new banners.
the problem is the language. i do not understand one word :-) so for the first i just use ripped banners and test around with this. same for landers.

my best funnel have now a CTR of around 48% on lander and a CR of 12,5%. this is much better than my USA campaign right from the start.
i will update here not daily but on regular basis.

have a nice day

Originally Posted by smalcolm

As you said in my follow along, we are in the exact same spot man! What I'm focusing on right now is trying to find my competitive advantage. I'm not sure your process, but the process of scraping banners and landers and running hot offers can only get us so far, I'm afraid.

Therefore, we need a competitive advantage. I'm not exactly sure what this entails yet, but hit me up on skype (adam.altman.workday) if you are interested in discussing

hey,
thank you for this great reply.

i think its time for me to test more geo´s now. it looks like i am into much love with my one campaign have done so great for me before.
i do some testing now with other countries.
like i wrote before: the only thing is that the payouts are so massive low for tier2 that you will need thousands of leads per day to make some serious cash :-)
its like 0.40$ or something around in street payout.
but i don´t care. if i am able to find a great funnel there and then scaling to hell can maybe also make some bucks.

offers: for the usa i tested several offers and offers landing pages. the problem was more that the banners that make high EPV do not have a good CTR. i tested much on trafficjunky, trafficfactory and exoclick. so i think i tested many spots :-)

for now i take your advice and focus to bring a tier2 campaign into profit and maybe scale this one when i am able to. so i could reinvest to buy data for usa again ....

thanks again!!!

Originally Posted by matuloo

Dating can be a bitch, I know exactly how you feel as I've been through the same stage and it wasnt actually that long ago

It feels like you are working with one blind eye and missing some point that everybody else knows about, but its not the case as far as I can tell. There is no magic formula that you are not aware of, you just didnt find your market yet.

Let me give you a few suggestions

1. if you think that a good dating affiliate can make money in every geo they touch, you are wrong. From some reason, almost all affiliates find "their market" at some point and they do better in it than in the others. For some people its just one geo and one vertical, some people can do good in multiple geos, but its never a "whatever geo I touch I conquer". This has several reasons : languages spoken, the background, offers available, personal preferences ... the problem is, you dont really know what GEO will be the best match for you, so you gotta test a lot of them. And there goes the first mistake you are making : you stick to tier1 geos mostly. Stop doing this, test more GEOs, eventually you will find one that suits you the best. Dont worry about lower payouts, some of these GEOs are massive. Take India for example, there is more than 1 billion of people ...

2. dont get too depressed when you see people posting about their success that they achieved fast, it does happen but its not the rule generally. Many affiliates start raving about how they conquered the game after their first 5 days of $50 profits, many affiliates just flat out lie, then there are those who want to sell you something and need to hype their products with fast success claims.... ignore all this and focus on your own game.

3. the spots : here is the core of your problem most likely. I can definitely tell you that the right spots are often the key to positive ROI. Some spots simply work better than others, you need to find them and this can only be done with testing. Usually it works like this : spots with massive traffic have the most competition so the ROI is limited and they are crowded with affiliates who have high payouts and tweaked funnels, you simply cant beat them at this point. Just as an example, I had an offer bumped from the street payout of $4 to $9.5, try to compete with me in some prime spot, you simply dont stand a chance. A bump like this is not normal, but its a real figure (took me months and 100s of leads per day to get it). Im mentioning it so you understand why sometimes you run into situations where people bid way higher than you even tho you are already at loss with the low bid. So forget about these spots for now, there is a lot of gems that you can find, search for them. I have one spot that is giving me 200-300% ROI based on the day, tho it only send up to 15 leads per day, but hey, gimme 20 spots like this, I will happily take them all A golden tip for you since Im in a good mood : GEO specific sites tend to have more of these small good spots, so if you're promoting French offers for example, search for sites in french language.

4. offers offers offers : how many offers have you tried? Looking back at my first attempts, I did a big mistake and wasted a lot of time on it : I was stubborn as a bull and wanted to make one offer work no matter what. As you can imagine, it didnt work out. Only when I started to test more offers I eventually found something that worked well. Dont make the same mistake, test several offers. Also keep one thing in mind, almost all offers have more than one landing page available, test them, you will be surprised how often some work better than the others.

Just dont give up and test, this is all there is to it. Keep on going, try to increase the volume and higher payouts will come too. Youre not doing that bad, so far you didnt actually loose any money on traffic, all you need to do is improve it a bit.

And btw : Im 38, so you're definitely not too old for this

All the best

hey man. i'm in the same boat as you right now. i'm always on skype if you want to chat: yothisisnetr. i'm doing tier2 geos right now and testing a bunch of different things.

one thing i can say that i'm learning about different geos is you have to test a lot of different styles.. i like to start out by ripping a bunch of banners and seeing what gets the best CTR/CV. you read finch's premium posts so def take that stuff into account.. try cartoons, bbws, grannies, milfs, asians, indians, etc. you never know what certain countries go click crazy over. this is where i started finding a bit of progress.. i'm still no where close to being good at it so i'd love to chat with you and we can help eachother learn stuff.

keep at it man. i'm rootin for you.. following ur thread.

Originally Posted by outrage666

02.09-07.09
____________

Revenue: 315.45$
Cost 405.44$
P/L: -89.99$
ROI: -22.19%

Total:
______

Revenue: 18549.31$
Cost: 18502.27$
P/L: 47.04$
ROI: 0.25%

hello everyone,
a short update. its overlapping a bit in data with my last post but this is the stats of the last days together. i was not able to do much traffic.
yesterday i started to look for some new geos and tier2 offers and built the first new campaigns in this countries i want to try.

its funny how low the payout are. you have to send much volume to make some bucks there :-)

the funny part is i made a break even on a low basis just with letting some banners run. over night i got some little badder results and cutted all banners and let only the best funnel run. again its now on break even.
the offer have a 100 lead cap. so i decide to let it run some days so much i can and then i can ask for quality check and maybe for the first paybump. hope this will be possible. also i will test a bunch of new banners.
the problem is the language. i do not understand one word :-) so for the first i just use ripped banners and test around with this. same for landers.

my best funnel have now a CTR of around 48% on lander and a CR of 12,5%. this is much better than my USA campaign right from the start.
i will update here not daily but on regular basis.

have a nice day

thanks for reply. the problem with the offer i tested like i rote above (it was a tier3 offer as well) was that the merchant cut my payout to 0.20$!!!! with this number i was not able to making profits again anymore. i tested another offer for the same country but this was not working also cause CR was much lower.
so at the moment i stop dating. it makes me such sick. i need some weeks doing something else and will go back later maybe.

i am working now on something else and will start with traffic in some days. i will see if this makes me more fun(and money) then the dating thing at the moment. i do not want to jump from one thing to the next but i worked really hard the dating way the last months and had not that success and i burned out with this vertical for now.

thanks

Originally Posted by outrage666

thanks for reply. the problem with the offer i tested like i rote above (it was a tier3 offer as well) was that the merchant cut my payout to 0.20$!!!! with this number i was not able to making profits again anymore. i tested another offer for the same country but this was not working also cause CR was much lower.
so at the moment i stop dating. it makes me such sick. i need some weeks doing something else and will go back later maybe.

i am working now on something else and will start with traffic in some days. i will see if this makes me more fun(and money) then the dating thing at the moment. i do not want to jump from one thing to the next but i worked really hard the dating way the last months and had not that success and i burned out with this vertical for now.

thanks