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Why am I still confused? (9)

12-22-2015 12:12 AM #1 oneano (Member)
Why am I still confused?

I have worked with adult media buying for a while now. At least a year, browsed this forum and others, read follow alongs, (I even tried my own follow along) done everything that I know to do. I have lost tens of thousands of dollars ... and have never had a campaign that made profits worth talking about... sure I had some odd sized banners making me $3 a day here and there but nothing close to making back my investment.

How do I drill down to find out what I am doing wrong? When you work for yourself, you feel like you are working hard, but I feel like an echochamber, like Im working but I have no fresh ideas.

So far I have stuck with broad (milf) dating, sites like LocalMilfSelfies (decent payout of about $4)
I have worked with self serve ad networks, Exoclick and TJ
I have dabbled in niche, but broad dating seemed a bit more promising.

With out a lot of work, I can get 15 cent clicks on usa traffic. I can look at my stats and understand what they are showing me.. I just dont get it... and no one seems to teach it... they all say the same thing take action.. well that doesnt work as you can see...

Its not like these campaigns lost 100%... and sometimes,I could get them really close to breaking even sometimes as close as 5%

So what do I do? Should I post to the forums 1000 times until I get it? What advice can you guys give me?

Im angry, Im mad as I can be at myself, I feel like I have really failed...

Now it is the end of the year, and Im in the same position that I was this time last year. The exception is that the optimism that I had last year has turned into bitterness.

12-22-2015 12:36 AM #2 shishev (Moderator)

In my honest opinion, get out of adult right now, you should have done that earlier.

I used to do a lot of adult a few years back, way, way before it became even remotely popular and I figured why not try it again since I'm trying to get back in the game (last year, and a bit this year) and I came to the conclusion that you would either need a HUGE budget (like really, really huge), or offers and traffic that nobody else has access to. It's extremely saturated. Not to mention how creative with angles and targeting you have to be, the usual stuff will never work. Both of these options were impossible for me, so I moved on to mobile stuff. While I have found little success with mobile, there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel.

12-22-2015 01:39 AM #3 thuglife (Member)

Get a partner at the same level with the same resources as you if you can, preferably someone you've worked with previously.

12-22-2015 11:20 AM #4 caurmen (Administrator)

One other suggestion from what I read in your post - the problem may have been that you've stuck to broad traffic.

Broad is much harder to get working. Particularly in adult, I nearly always recommend newcomers to start by looking for VERY niche campaigns to run. Start small, aim at the "pockets of profit" (to use Finch's phrase) that the big guys are too big to bother with, and build up your cashflow from there. You'll find it a great deal cheaper and easier to build your business, build the amount of traffic you're pushing, and develop relationships from there to make the push to broad.

If you're at a conference like AWA, one thing you'll hear from superaffiliates quite a lot is "oh, I don't bother with $blah_traffic_source / placement / offer, they're too small to be worth it.". As someone who is still looking for success, that's the key phrase - find opportunities where you're not trying to outcompete the biggest affiliates, and build up from there.

And then you can get big enough that you don't want to bother with those small placements any more, and the cycle begins anew...

Also - yes, definitely, do post on the forums 1000s of times! Start a follow-along, reveal all your creatives to get criticism and suggestions (until you get profitable, obviously!), ask LOADS of questions. Embrace your inner noob and don't worry about asking "stupid" questions - that's how you get the sensible answers.

Good luck and let us know how you get on!

P.S. Adult isn't the best vertical right now, as others have mentioned. You've got a lot of practise in so I'd probably say stick with it on very niche placements, traffic sources, etc, and see if you can get it working, but if you wanted to jump ship to a more promising vertical that wouldn't be a bad idea either!

12-22-2015 06:56 PM #5 oneano (Member)

Originally Posted by shishev

In my honest opinion, get out of adult right now, you should have done that earlier.

Im determined to make this work, other people make it work, then so can I. Or, I am a total idiot and should take your advice

Originally Posted by thuglife

Get a partner at the same level with the same resources as you

This is much easier said that done. I have worked to do some networking, but I havent found anyone willing to work together. When I do encounter someone that can successfully make $100+ a day in adult, they dont make time to work with others, they are too busy scaling.

Originally Posted by caurmen

One other suggestion from what I read in your post - the problem may have been that you've stuck to broad traffic.

I have really worked with broad traffic trying to make it work. That is where the volume is at, but I couldnt get consistent results no matter what I did. Maybe if I did a much larger $1000 a day budget, I could get results, but honestly, I feel like Im throwing money away not "buying data" because none of my campaigns take off.

Originally Posted by caurmen

find opportunities where you're not trying to outcompete the biggest affiliates, and build up from there.

This seems to be much easier said that done.. I see to face a lot of competition at every angle. Even when I try out some niche offers, targetting keyworks (like on traffic junky) I get almost no volume or poor results or both.

Originally Posted by caurmen

definitely, do post on the forums 1000s of times!

Im going to start posting many more questions.

Originally Posted by caurmen

Start a follow-along

My follow along is here
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ack-this-thing

Originally Posted by caurmen

Adult isn't the best vertical right now, as others have mentioned. You've got a lot of practise in so I'd probably say stick with it on very niche placements, traffic sources, etc, and see if you can get it working, but if you wanted to jump ship to a more promising vertical that wouldn't be a bad idea either!

Why isnt Adult where I want to be? I set my expectations low... I expect about 30% profit on a campaign and consider that to be good. I know that I have to face banner blindess with every turn. I know that I have to work hard to source the best offers constantly... and all of this sounds good to me. Why would I want leave exactly? (other than my pattern of failure?)

12-22-2015 07:04 PM #6 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Hello,

as you might know, adult is my playground so let me chime in a bit

First of all, you said you already lost multiple $10.000, am I reading it right? Cause your trafficjunky screenshot only shows a couple thousands since summer. And those are SPENT, not lost, I assume you made something back. So what is the real situation?

I am asking this for a reason, I personally (or my team) had to spend about $30.000 to get into constant profit. And it took months too. I say SPEND, not LOST, thats a huge difference. I had strikes where I could see $200 daily profits for a week, then drop into negative numbers again for another week. Back and forth. The important thing was to see some progress. The overall loss before getting into constant green numbers was about 2-3k, maybe even less, I dont remember it exactly as it was some time ago. So in case you feel you have spent too much and still not seeing the profits you want, dont freak out just yet, adult MIGHT take way longer.

The problem I see from the few lines you typed is this : "So far I have stuck with broad (milf) dating, sites like LocalMilfSelfies (decent payout of about $4)" ... Seriously man, fuck this approach and restart.

MILF as an angle these days is pretty much worse than having no angle at all, since its not an angle anmymore We are all fishing for the older people, crawing older but still hot chicks, so pretty much any dating affiliate is pushing the MILF angle. Having MILF in the offer name is no longer a real advantage so it seems. Find different angles, more niched, or simply forget about niches and push as broad as possible, it can work both ways. Do this : ask your AM what is an offer where pay bumps are possible fast for good quality. And then push it, even tho you will be loosing on it at first. Thats almost the only way to make it big in adult dating these days, you need bumped payouts so you can bid high and get the best traffic.

There is more to this, some networks are better than others, some creatives work better, some landers work better.... but this is not something I cant tell you without putting my own biz at danger, you need to put the puzzle together on your own For now focus on pushinig the right offer.

There is also one more tip I want to give you, as you sound like a person whos not gonna freak out right after he spent $500. Let a campaign run for a week without touching it, this can be very enlighting. Pick some where you dont loose much, and Im pretty sure you will see it go green on some days. Very often, all it takes to get an adult campaign into green numbers, is not fucking with it too much In all honesty, arent you tweaking and optimizing the campaigns too much?

Dont give up, you will get there, I know exactly how you feel now!

Good luck