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Pay bumps - the key to success in dating - what to expect? (14)

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These days, getting top payouts is one of the key factors to success when running adult dating campaigns. Getting a paybump can literaly turn a loosing campaign into a profit making machine.

The thing I see with new affiliates a lot, is the confusion about the possible bumps they can expect. I got this question asked a lot, and I remember very well how I crawed some easy to understand info with numbers when I was starting out. So I decided to share my first hand experience with paybumps in adult dating when promoting these offers through affiliate networks.

You start with base payouts, also called street payouts. It works like this in the background - an advertiser makes a deal with an affiliate network, setting a fixed price per lead delivered. The aff network takes a share, usually between 5%-20% and the rest is the street payout you will get, when starting with that particular offer. Sometimes its also a revshare deal between the advertiser and the aff network, but lets stick with the fixed rate example so we dont make this complicated.

1. The first pay bump you can get, is when the volume looks promising for the aff network and they are willing to share part of their margin with you in exchange for even bigger volume. The biggest bump I got this way was about 25% on top of the street payout. This was with a network that was starting with exceptionally high margins tho, usually you can get about 5-15% this way.It all depends on the type of the offer and how well the network communicates with the advertiser, but the network wants to keep at least 5-10% profit and only when you run BIG volume, if your volume is low, they want more %. Naturally, a network with higher initial margins, can give you a bigger bump and vice versa, so dont get confused by this.

As an example, I was pushing a SOI offer at $2.70, then got bumped to $3.25 after some time, so almost 20% bump that I was excited about. But a few days later I found the same offer on another network with the base payout of $3.2. Always look around and compare the payouts.

One way or another, every affiliate network has some "space" to increase your payouts without having to do a quality check. Can you do significant volume? Ask for the bump. BTW : $100 worth of leads per day isnt really significant volume You need to understand this is about business, so to pay for the man labor of your aff manager, you have to bring some business in order to get better payouts.

2. The next paybump possibility comes with the quality check. And here it can really be interesting. The differences can be huge, and I mean HUGE. Pretty often, a quality check will result in a nasty STOP sign, but when it clicks, the campaign can quickly become a gold mine. To give you an example of the most extreme paybump I ever had : I started with a DOI offer with below $4 street payout and ended up pushing it for awesome $11 per lead. This usually isnt the case tho. Realistically, you can expect 30-50% bump when the quality is there. Up to 100% bump and more if your quality is AWESOME.

A few examples from the near past I had. Please note I have a proven track record with the aff networks I use, so they pretty much always bump my payouts a bit because they know I can send significant volume :

- $2.0 street payout, my aff manager bumped it to $2.25. after quality check I ended up a bit below $2.8.
- $4.5 street, bumped to $5 by aff manager - booted for quality after about 500 leads.
- $1.75 street, bumped to $2.0 by aff manager. Ended at $2.5 after quality check.
- $3.95 street, bumped to $4.5 by aff manager. Quality check took me to $5.2 and later on it went over $6.50
- $2.1 street, bumped to only $2.2, this was a pretty strict offer. Too me about 2 months to get a real bump, but then it jumped to almost $3, my aff manager told me there are guys running at almost $4 so Im still trying to get it up.

As you can see, it's really hard to set some standards for paybumps or generalize the % you can possibly achieve as it is different from offer to offer and different advertisers treat the bumps in a different way either. However, you need to do your best in order to get those bumps or you dont stand a chance in todays competitive adult world. In case you push large volume, its easier to get the attention of the advertiser and get the bump. I know it hurts to push a loosing offer on a large volume, but sometimes its the only way to get profitable in the long run. Your AM should always be able to tell you a word or two about the possible bump policy, so dont be shy and ask about it.

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Nice read. One comment I would make is avoid running a losing offer just hoping to have a bump after quality check. This is a sure way to lose money. quality bump may/may not come, ur initial goal is to make money with what you have...unless your very confident about the traffic quality you are sending over.

Questions for you:
Sometimes when I start making a quick buck right off the start, I usually don't bother to ask for quality check, its only when I'm losing money that I do.
When do you ask for a quality check?

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Im not sure I fully agree. Obviously, when you are -50% ROI you dont wait for a bump, but I have done it multiple times, and will do it again, running at -10% and waiting for a bump is viable. But I must know there is a possibility to get a BIG bump when the quality is there, not all offers are like that. This is what you need to ask your AM for.

You should always ask for a bump, no matter how well you do with the offer right of the bat. There is always at least some small bump possible. When to ask for the bump? It depends on what offer you are pushing. Since I have the history of good volume, I always ask about possible bumps and my AM tells me when is a good start to do a check. The general rule would be to try to hit the initial daily cap a few times and then ask for the bump. In case of high paying DOI leads, you dont have to reach such high volume, but always wait at least a week or two. You need to let the leads mature too, if you ask for the check too soon, you will shoot yourself in the foot many times as the leads didnt have enough time to convert to paying customers yet. I really wouldnt ask sooner than after 10 days of consistent volume.

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And when do you receive a pay bump and after a few days your offer start to perform worse? And it's not a banner blindness issue, because you choose another offer and the new one destroy the old one.

Is it a fake pay bump? Are they scrubbing the hell out of me?

This is happening too much lately with me

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Conversion rates can go up and down, that's one of the factors you cannot influence much. It can also be scrubbing of course to some extent, but I don't want to speculate too much about it without proof. Performance also changes from one day to another, weekend and normal day week ... there can be more factors involved.

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Hi @matuloo, since the conversion rate is something that obviously impacts the profitability of a campaign, and is not something you can influence much, what are your thoughts on how that will impact your mindset while running a campaign?

For example if the CR fluctuates and you are no longer in the green, do you cut the campaign if after a while it doesn't pick back up? Do you try to create better creatives? I am really just wanting to understand your mindset around this since CR is such an important aspect in this business.

And you obviously just focus on what do can control right? I am just curious how you view/approach this issue.

Thank you as always!

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Hello

Just to set one thing clear, as I see I could have been more specific with the reply you quoted: What I had in mind when I said you cannot influence the conversion rate going up and down was the "natural" fluctuations and the possible scrubbing. In other words, things do happen so you will see CR going up and down all the time and there is not much you can do about it.

The important thing here would be to learn how to identify whether a drop in CR is one of these fluctuations or your funnel is losing steam. Because once the ads burn out, for example, you need to step in and make changes and influence the performance that way.

To give you an example: when I see a sudden drop in conversion rates, first thing I do is to check the funnel. I look for possible tech issues, I ask the AM if the offer is working and whether their backend is working properly. I also ask about the performance that other affiliates see with the same offer.

Next thing to check is the bidding situation at the sources I'm getting traffic from. I do a deeper analysis of the traffic with the goal to identify any chance in traffic distribution. Someone could have outbid my campaigns, some good performing publisher might have lost volume or stopped sending traffic.

If everything works properly and there are no significant changes with the traffic, I do not touch anything and let it run for a while.

If the performance doesn't pick up until the end of the day, I try to pause the campaign for a few hours and relaunch. If it still doesn't help it's time for more changes/tweaks.

Based on the particular situation, there are several possible steps I would take.

- if the ROI isn't in the red a LOT, I would try to let it run to see whether it's really just a random decline, 1 or 2 more days max. Quite often, the performance just comes back.
- If the performance won't come back, it's time to split test with a similar offer.
- if the ROI dropped a lot, I would start to mess with the creatives. Banners first, LPs afterwards. Moving the bids around is also an option. Just don't do it all at once, you need to be able to see what happens after each particular change.

To sum it up, if CR goes down I check the funnel and look for problems and talk with the AM. If no problems jump out, I let it run for a while and eventually try to pause/restart campaign. If it doesn't help, I split test a different offer with the same funnel. If it still doesn't help, it's time to work on the funnel again.

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Yo Yo Mr. Matuloo,

after how many leads you think its reasonable for an affiliate to approach the advertiser and ask for the pump? A lot of guys ask it directly at the start, some after 20 Leads and some never :-D In my eyes it should be around 200 Leads, there we can see already a tendency...

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I think a payout bump should be offered in these cases;
- affiliate doing decent steady volumes for some time (depending on offer/geo/traffic source what is "decent"), reward them with a slight better payout
- affiliate brings in very high quality
- if caps need to be filled because advertiser wants more - > to scale - > payout bump
- compensation because of downtime/mistake/whatever

Most of time scaling means losing margins, so it's quite fair IMHO to request a payout bump.

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What worked the best for me, was to start sending stable volume of leads, several days in a row. The amount per day depends on the GEO. So for example in the Nordics where the payout for a DOI can go well over $10 and the volume is limited, 30 or so per day for a week should be enough. When working with a large GEO, for example the US, it needs to be higher... maybe 70+ leads per day and again for a few days in a row. I had the best results when I was slowly increasing the volume, that way the initial leads had time to mature. Sending like 100 leads straight of the bat in a single day to a new offer, that can "scare" many advertisers and they will ask the traffic to stop. So it's better to start slowly.

But I would say I pretty much agree with the number you posted, 200+ leads sounds like a reasonable sample before even considering a quality check.

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One more thing about payout bumps.

I guess many of us had the situation that we received a payout bump and then suddenly the CR dropped.
We can only speculate about the reasons for it but fact is that it happens.

What I always recommend is to ask for a separate offer URL for the higher payout so that you can run the initial payout and the higher payout together.
When you see that the performance on the higher payout dropped too much that the initial payout is doing better you can just stop it.

That way you can compare the different payouts directly and only continue with what´s working best.

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TBH I think 1/2 the time you get a decent "paybump" they just give you the "bump and scrub" lol.

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Had this happen to me a lot of times too, got a bump then CVR went down The best is when I get a bump without having to ask for it, that happens from time to time too.

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My 2 cents in my role as an AM:

For quality check, most advs do it after 100 leads generally. Which could lead to one of few scenarios:
- Adv will ask to pause if there's 0 sales or could wait out a while
- Adv will likely continue for a while if there's 0 sales but good DOI (on a SOI offer)
- Pay bump and cap increase if quality pans out

When a network bumps, the bump could come from either the network margin or the adv side. end of the day, the bump depends on the nature. If it's quality, it's unlikely you will get shaved because everyone wants the scale, lower margin, high volume. If it comes from margin for testing and more volume, then it's possible that you are scrubbed. Regardless, you should be able to tell when a CR drop is abnormal or not.

when you get a pay bump and can go uncapped, you are golden

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