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What went wrong here? (8)

10-18-2016 02:12 PM #1 zupreme (Member)
What went wrong here?

As I've mentioned in a previous post my previous success in affiliate marketing came from Clickbank (both as an affiliate and as a product maker) but that was years ago. Since then I've focused on my core business (hosting and IT management) which pays the bills for me and my employees. Now I'm returning to affiliate marketing and the game has definitely changed so I'm taking it slow to see what works and what doesn't.

My first campaign has been for a gaming sales and rental service (a Peerfly offer) and it has been a total flop. I'd love feedback as to what went wrong. Bad offer, bad traffic source, etc.? After more than 300 clicks registered at Peerfly and no conversions I've paused the campaign to assess what is not working. Your feedback is appreciated.

Here's the data:

Offer Network - Peerfly
Conversion Payout - $19
Traffic Source - Facebook Ads
Traffic Targeting - 18 - 45 y/o, USA only, gaming interest only
Clicks registered at Peerfly - 334 raw (321 unique)
Ad Views registered at Facebook - 7,974
Click registered at Facebook - 92
Amount spent - $36.66

10-18-2016 05:21 PM #2 caurmen (Administrator)

Ok, could be a number of things.

First up, you've spent less than 2x the payout of the offer to test. That's just not enough data to tell if it's likely to convert. Normally I'd recommend 4x payout on web - if you get no conversions after that, it's likely a dud.

Gaming is a very broad demo, so you could have targeting problems too. What sort of game is it? If it's not very VERY broad appeal you probably need to narrow down.

There are a few other potential issues too but those are the first and biggest ones that jump out.

10-18-2016 08:13 PM #3 zupreme (Member)

I don't mind saying specifics here. It's for GameFly (the game sales and rental service). They are an online competitor to GameStop. I have read about the 4x limit for testing but honestly when I saw 300+ visits to the offer and zero conversions I felt that it was a waste (given that this represents a lower than 0.3% conversion rate).

Thanks for your input and any further guidance you can provide.

10-19-2016 09:32 AM #4 caurmen (Administrator)

Aha, yeah, I know that offer. It's been running for a long while.

I'd probably recommend moving on to another offer. It's a high payout meaning expensive to test, and I've never heard of that particular offer doing very well ( although of course that doesn't mean that there aren't some people out there who have cracked it).

USA is also very competitive, particularly in the run up to Xmas.

10-19-2016 10:37 PM #5 zupreme (Member)

Thanks! I've moved on to another campaign with a lower payout. Right now I'm really just trying to get my feet wet again to learn what's working and what's not working nowadays. I've got a pretty decent budget on hand to scale things going once I find the right formula, but I am taking a slow and measured approach to learning those formulas.

Thanks again.

10-20-2016 11:11 AM #6 caurmen (Administrator)

That's very smart: keep your powder dry for when you really need to blow something up!

Looking forward to your next updates.

Oh, as a side note: I'd strongly recommend signing up to a bunch of other affiliate networks if you haven't already. It's always good to be able to split-test between networks.

10-20-2016 11:51 AM #7 zupreme (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by caurmen View Post
That's very smart: keep your powder dry for when you really need to blow something up!

Looking forward to your next updates.

Oh, as a side note: I'd strongly recommend signing up to a bunch of other affiliate networks if you haven't already. It's always good to be able to split-test between networks.
Any recommended networks I should be looking at. I've almost been exclusively testing peerfly offers so far. I did try doing a couple of ClickBank offers too initially but I read so many warnings about Facebook ads banning people for ClickBank offers that I backed off.

For that matter if you have and good traffic sources to recommend I will happily take those too.

10-21-2016 09:48 AM #8 caurmen (Administrator)

There's a list of good networks to start with over here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-First-Network

Definitely join a bunch and then split-test offers between them.

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