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PPV - It's "Do or DIE"! Will stick to it UNTIL it works (28)

10-28-2011 04:54 AM #1 harrypotter (Member)
PPV - It's "Do or DIE"! Will stick to it UNTIL it works

Alright, it's my turn

I have been on the forum for 2-3 months now and yup, you guessed it, haven't ran many campaigns at all. What’s been done so far then? Just accumulating information and learning a lot (http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...worthy-Threads), but really no action taken in terms of spending money to buy data.

So, to other STM members who have not yet "succeeded", I have discovered that no matter how much I prepare, there is and always will be more to learn... Just like how someone can't learn to swim by reading a book, the same principles apply to what we are trying to do here. So, it is time for me to finally dive in and spend some money on traffic - to learn FOR REAL.

Today starts my PPV "make it or break it" campaign. No, it's not going to 30 days or 60 days, it's going to keep going until it gets profitable or my budget runs out - I am SURE it will be because I am made this profitable.

The approach I have taken here is to FOCUS on

- one niche (financial/ mortgages)
- one conversion goal (lead gen)
- one traffic source (ppv)
- one network (adon)

My reasoning is that I have seen so many stories on the forums and how folks went from nothing to making over $100 or $300 a day... and a common theme that I found was FOCUS and dedication. So here is my pledge to FOCUS on one thing until it works, because I know I have been dedicated to making Internet marketing work since day 1, even though it has not yet panned out.

Here is what has been done to get to the point of launching this campaign and buying some data for REAL feedback:

1) offer
I talked to a local guy who is interested in acquiring leads online to his mortgage products (targeted at new home owner, refinancing, debt consolidation etc...). We struck a deal on what seems like a fair compensation for both parties, and now we just need leads to come through

2) angle
The angle I chose to start the campaign with is to target homeowners who are paying too much interest, hence the need to refinance. There are lots of other options such as targeting first time home buyers, folks with a lot of debt and needs to consolidate, 2nd mortgages, getting some money out for renos and such)... Once again, since it is all about focusing, I have chosen to look at refinancing first before attacking this from other angles

3) server + CDN
Worked with my host to make sure it my server will hold up for the traffic spike that is going to happen. to be honest, I spent almost a week with them on the phone for hours every day, and where we have gone doesn't seem bullet-proof at all. One of the major reasons is because I have built my optin pages in a wordpress install and with all the plugins, the site just seems to be making more requests than necessary. not the mention the theme is bloated and loading all these images/ javascripts every time the page loads is NOT necessary - but it's too late to change the optin page now...

I also played with w3 total cache and wp super cache to hopefully get the pages to load from static files, but both didn't not pan out because when tracking with query strings, these plugins think we are generating a new page every time and refuses to serve the cached pages - really DUMB imo... Anyway, it is what it is and I have kept w3 total cache to do database, object and minify caching via memcached to hopefully help with the load.

Additionally, because I am not confident that my server will serve the pops fast enough, all landers are served by MAX CDN (you can find the tutorial by one of our mods here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-and-Run-a-CDN). Actually, I am using MAX CDN to serve the entire .php page instead of just the images or javascript static files because I found from testing, load times is very dependent on when the connection starts. Serving the .php lander from MAX CDN was less laggy and had a faster starting connection than serving from my host, which hopefully equals faster pops to capture users' attention. Also did some research to find out good CDN services out there, which is posted here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...esting-Results

HAha, I also thought that MAX CDN was down just a couple days ago but it turns out my host was blocking their ips which would lead to the 502 errors I was seeing. Solution also in above post.

4) funnel
this is very typical rotator setup...
if optin:
traffic --> rotator --> initial lander --> rotator --> optin page --> success page
if exit before optin:
traffic --> rotator --> initial lander --> rotator --> optin page --> exit pop --> second optin page --> success page

5) split testing
the initial landers are all setup into their own .php pages, which allows me to track both CTR and CR resulting from the page

also, from reading in the forum, each target is "unique" in their response rate and the CTR is therefore dependent on the combination of the target + lander... this led to this setup where I want to track high CTR landers and which target responded to it (what target for what lander = good CTR)

the optin page are setup with google website optimizer with multivariate test to find the page elements that increase and decrease optins. the optin page also has two videos being split tested against each other, along with the changes of other important elements such as headlines, body copy, etc...

6) future additions

a. site retargeting added to the initial lander
- this will be cpc based not cpm because if the pixel is placed on the initial lander, there was no "action" taken from the user that tells us they are interested
- hopefully, with retargeting, the banners and message will show up in their faces enough times (like liquidweb does) that my prospects will click in to see what is being offered EVENTUALLY
- cpm basis will later on a separate campaign (probably with the pixel placed further down in the funnel so that we know they are at least interested in the offer because they clicked through)

b. other angles

c. other ppv networks

7) targets
I have gone out and done the research to find a bunch of targets starting from a basic keyword. We will see if these bring in the traffic or if I need to go and find more after turning starting the campaign. The majority of targets found right now are urls from different banks and scrapped from the SERP results on Google, Yahoo, Bing when a basic keyword like mortgage is searched

Points of Hesitation and questions:

1) I do fear that this is not going to work out, even though it is a DO OR DIE for me. With cpa offers, if one offer doesn't work, you can quickly ditch. For this campaign, since I need to make it work, I cannot just ditch it and find another offer to promote.

2) I want to take the suggested advice of creating 3-5 campaigns per day, but how do I apply this in my case? I want to focus on this one offer and make it work because there are a lot of benefits of sticking it out like this, and the income that can result is equally appealing. (If I can MAKE one offer work, then I can MAKE any other offer work as well!!!) Should I launch 1-3 landers + keywords instead of 3-5 campaigns per day?

3) I am and have been a perfectionist, which I know might hinder me during the “bringing this campaign to profitability” process. For instance, it has taken me weeks to setup all the landers, optin pages, tracking, server migration, exit pops and there still seems to be SO MUCH more I can do before I actually start bringing traffic in. I am little scared that I will pause the campaign too quickly without bringing in enough data first, or killing a lander or target too quickly because I THINK that it isn't "working"... I really need to get into the "data is the only determining factor for all my decisions" and "spending money to buy data is necessary" mindset.

4) Fear of failure is another BIG ONE... I actually finished writing this post 2 days ago and due to various things that came up, I wasn’t able to get everything done before I post it here (e.g. get traffic flowing, making sure everything was working with tracking and the funnel, etc...). I think this fear of failure is really one of the BIGGEST hindrances for me, because it paralyzes me and prevents me from taking action. If you don’t try, you won’t fail right? STUPID, I KNOW.

Just like how I was supposed to start this campaign 3 weeks ago, it seems I was looking for problems to solve or looking at the most advanced techniques and solutions to complicate things, so that I can get it PERFECT from the very first shot. I think subconsciously, these actions are merely a “hidden” way to delay launching, and hence potentially failing. This is again evident when I was just about to press the activate campaign button, then I was like internally struggling if I should or not because I have not yet got retargeting setup. Which is why I decided to post this, so that I can be accountable to other stm members - who I know will motivate me to push through

5) Adon isn’t known to be a “good” network and I have heard very mixed reviews of it. I am starting here because I have had some experiences working with them and also because I do not yet have an account with another other ppv network. Maybe I should look into getting a traffic vance account or LI account? Then again, I really think this game is ALL ABOUT being a MASTER at one thing... If I can focus on adon and become a master at it, it would be far better than dabbling and being average at a selection of different networks?

That's all for now... Will update daily (I hope!)

Thanks for reading. All feedback welcome.

10-28-2011 05:15 AM #2 getgreen (Member)

For this campaign, since I need to make it work, I cannot just ditch it and find another offer to promote.

This definitely seems like a big ass obstacle here, I don't know if I'd go down this route if this is the case really...

10-28-2011 05:23 AM #3 topgun (Member)

"do or die" I like that...I'll start my follow along as soon as I iron out a couple of kinks(hopefully someone will answer my questions soon) I'll be focusing on ppv as well

10-28-2011 07:04 AM #4 windjc (Member)

Like the attitude. Burn those bridges...

But talk is cheap

Look forward to hearing the updates...

10-28-2011 09:58 AM #5 Mr Green (Administrator)

I like your attitude, it's the way to go.

Its going to be a tough fight since you are venturing into a not so well known PPV network, plus you are promoting an unproven offer.

You got guts sir! Looking forward to seeing your progress.

10-28-2011 10:40 AM #6 ppchound (Member)

Good luck with AdOn - hope you make it!

10-28-2011 06:42 PM #7 alex_b (Member)

Damn, I can relate to so much you wrote, especially point #3 and 4 which are big blocks for me, too. Sometimes it feels as if I subconsciously create stupid obstacles and "things I need to read about first before trying" that I end up never getting started. A limited budget and fear of losing all of it before turning everything around and profitable paralizes me as well...

Wish you the best of luck with this, subscribed!

10-28-2011 07:13 PM #8 harrypotter (Member)

Originally Posted by windjc

Like the attitude. Burn those bridges...

But talk is cheap

Look forward to hearing the updates...

agreed. i have been talking too much. this time, it's time for action

Originally Posted by Mr Green

yesh, odds are stacked against me it seems. with the help and suggestions from the forum, i hope i can prevail

Originally Posted by alex_b

one of the videos in the stm mindset post (http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread.php?119-3-Mindset) helped me. thanks for posting it tijn! check it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAHAQ7zmqxE

(i don't know why, it won't let me insert the video or embed it)

Highlight:

Folks, if you want to win in business, you’ve got to be a leader. Leadership is everything! You show me anything that wins and I’ll show you a leader at work. You show me a successful church, boy scout troop, club, football team or business, I’ll show you something run by a leader. See, I thought at one time in my life that you had to be smart to win. I used to have these smart people that dressed so pretty and talked so pretty and used these big words. They just intimated me and I said, “Art, you can’t ever be that good. Art, why don’t you just throw in that towel and go back and coach football?” Well, I found 2 things out about smart people… I think it’s almost impossible for a smart person to win in business. I find that smart people spent their whole lifetime figuring things out. They always trying to figure out an easier way and a quicker way. Another thing I found out about smart people is they just don’t get around to doin nothing! They see someone like Art Williams and everybody says, “Well, he can’t do it. Somebody like that can’t do it.” But, he does it! See folks, I want you to know, almost everybody in America almost does enough to win! They almost get there, they almost are over the hump, they almost have it going, they “almost” in everything they do… “Almost” is a way of life to almost everybody in America! But, the winners “do it”! What do they do? They do whatever it takes to get the job done! They do it and do it and do it and do it and do it and do it until the job gets done! And, then they talk about how great it is to be somebody they’re proud of.

By no means am I smart... BUT damn, i WAS (until now) someone who is "always trying to figure out an easier way and a quicker way" and "just don’t get around to doin nothing"

10-29-2011 03:08 AM #9 harrypotter (Member)

Day 1 update

nothing exciting to report. worked with my adon rep and everything looked very promising. campaign activated and waited for the traffic to come. boom, first hurdle.

hurdle #1 = no traffic

bid up from the minimum to 0.011, $11 cpm and got a whomping 7 views in total for over 10,000 keywords. The conclusion after a day of work is... I quote:

bids up to .011

ok u should see some tracktion there.

16188 Keywords, should get something

lol ok u will get traffic'

stil nothing my friend

"ahh u are targeting canada"
"i do not have much canadian traffic"
"yes right now the focus is on us publishers"
"once i get that estabklshed I will work on other geos"

so no use keep bidding up then right?

i dont think so

guess they don't have Canadian traffic, so much for focusing on adon... looks like it's lead impact or traffic vance. just got my new lead impact account and I like how their advertiser inquiry response is quite fast.

on the bright side, while I was bidding up and waiting for the traffic, I did get retargeting setup... what's the point though right unless i get traffic? yeah, well at least it setup I guess.

need traffic now, BADLY. will have to wait at least 2 more days for my campaigns to be approved over at LI come Monday.

in the mean time, I will learn more about LI

10-29-2011 03:30 AM #10 Mr Green (Administrator)

Leadimpact is a step in the right direction for sure.

10-29-2011 06:09 AM #11 extremesg (Member)

Getting rid of Adon may have just turned your 'follow along' profitable.... they have so much junk/shit traffic. At least starting with LI, you know their traffic converts, now just need to work on the angle / ad / lander.

Good luck dude

10-30-2011 09:29 AM #12 danny27 (AMC Alumnus)

Kick some ass man!

10-31-2011 01:02 AM #13 harrypotter (Member)

10-31-2011 01:13 AM #14 harrypotter (Member)

Thank you to phoenix and eliquid for providing much insights in liane’s follow along thread. The following two excerpts really helped me.

#1 - get traffic

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ll=1#post26307

This is why i mentioned hitting 50 or so high traffic URLs. What phoenix is doing is grabbing a shit ton of URL and seeing which of those have traffic so he can run, and what I am doing is ALMOST the same thing, except im grabbing like the top 50 high traffic URLs that I know have high traffic.

Our end result is the same, but our first steps are slightly different. phoenix is looking for which URLs have traffic and then after finding those, more then likely optimizing his LPs and campaigns, whereas I am getting the high traffic first and optimizing my LPs and offers first, then weeding out which URLs I need to focus on.

Either way you cant go wrong. You are going to have to optimize your URL targets and your LPs/Offers so it doesnt matter really where you start first. You just have to do it though.

#2 - optimize LP
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ll=1#post26707

Do not start fresh, YET. Do not add in new targets, YET.

Personally, I like to fine tune my LP first. Some people like to fine tune their URL targets first. Here is why I like to fine tune my LPs first.

Say your running a diet campaign and you pull together 100 targets giving you high volume related to diet. You throw up a couple LPs and let it rip. If you start to weed out the URL targets first ( taking out the ones with lots of impressions and no clicks ) and get that down to like 10 URLs targets AND then optimize your LPs, how do you know the URL targets you took out just didnt like your LP and therefor didnt click as much? If you had a better LP, maybe those targets you threw out would have done better?

With that, I like to collect up a bunch of URLs related to my campaign and run it with several LPs being rotated out for my offer and see which one. I generally use LPs with wildly different layouts, colors, and ad copy to see which is going to perform the best in general across all the URL targets. So 1 LP might be a direct link, 1 LP might be a flog type LP, 1 LP might be a short form, 1 LP might be an ugly white page with a video, 1 LP might be a gorgeous layout, 1 LP might be long copy, etc.

Once I find the best generic LP for my general URL targets ( should only take 1 day ), I look thru my targets and find the URL targets that gave me the most impressions and the ones that gave me the best CTR/conversions ( should be the same 1 day you ran your LP test ).

I'll make a new campaign based on this 1 LP and these high impression URLs and URLs that gave me good CTR/conversions. You don't have to make a new campaign, I just do it for organization. Now I am set up with URLs I know give me traffic, I know give me clicks/conversions and I know what baseline LP I am going to use.

From this point on, I basically add in another LP that is exactly like the one I picked to run now, but with a different call to action, or a different image, etc. I only change 1 thing on the 2nd LP and I run that LP at 20% and my winner from the test at 80%. I do this so I dont lose a bunch of money if the 2nd LP bombs worse then the winner. Since I am running on URLs now that have a lot of traffic and clicks/conversions, I should know within the day ( or even in an hour ) which of the 2 LP I am now running will do the best. Once I declare a winning LP, I do the same thing over and over again until I can not get a better CTR for my LP ( might take a week of testing ).

While doing all of this, I am slowly weeding out URLs too. Like phoenix had said earlier, I also look at which URLs are now 2x over my payout and cut them out, which URLs might have started to send only a trickle of impressions ( sometimes it happens ) and cut them out or raise their bid ( if I fell back due to a competitor ) and which URLs sent in conversions but then dried up on me ( sometimes you get a sale magically and then no more at all for days and days ).

At some point, you end up with a really good optimized LP and the best URLs you can get WITH your LP too.

This might help also, I am 90% of the time under the impression you can make ANY target work ( replace target with ad network, etc ).

Unless your just extremely unlucky or bad at this, you can almost pick any URL with good traffic and only run that 1 URL your entire life until you get it to just work for you.

Now, this means you have to be extremely creative with LPs, offers, monetization though. PPV is also expensive too. A lot of you guys don't understand this, but your paying $15 CPM at Trafficvance and $11 CPM at other places MIN. A lot of you guys are paying upwards of $20 and $30 if not $100 CPM on some of these placements.

If you do any "real" media buys, this would be fucking ridiculous. Compare this to Facebook and I can get away with paying .20 per CPM ( yes 20 cents ) or Adwords where I could pay almost the same .20-.50 CPM. I have some content image campaigns where I was paying .08 CPM.

Even though I don't recommend running 1 URL, my thought process is you can make almost any URL work within reason. You just need to pair the right pre sell and the right offer to them. Now wither that offer is a CPA/CPS offer, or maybe your offer is "collecting emails" and then backend selling them is a different story for another post.

Just always keep testing, thats the point you need to take away.

(worry about later) #3 - optimize offers, targets & LP as related to offers

(worry about later) #4 - optimize ROI

10-31-2011 02:20 AM #15 harrypotter (Member)

as per phoenix (http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ow-along/page4)

the worst mistake I have ever seen traders or marketers make is to:
1. not have a plan. 2. change the plan un-methodically while in action.

I always have:
a. strategy [and reason for it] b. metrics c. entrance and exit rules d. money & risk management parameters [how much for how long and why] e. the ability to track.

If I do not or can not. I do not put money into.

my metrics (first draft):

1. offer payout --> our ideal cost per acquisition = $15, after optimization happens. so what i am thinking is to use $20 as the payout and cut-off metrics
2. cpm or cpc --> going to stick with lead impact only (maybe TV but we will see); CPV min bid = 0.011 ($11 cpm) [should be 0.015, ($15 cpm)]
3. # of targets --> going to start with 12 - 20 targets that are related and high traffic (won't know until i test IF they are ACTUALLY high traffic for ppv)
4. # of offers --> one offer

and then for budget
5. # of ads --> currently have 3 LP setup
6. # of offers --> one offer

then for profit: going for loss to BE to profit
7. est. length of time of offer (how long this vertical looks like it keeps offers around) --> offer is going to be around cause that's in my control

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

for cut-off... seems like the general rules could still apply:

50% payout, no clicks - Pause any targets that have spent 50% of your offer payout and not received any clicks.
100% payout, no conversions - Pause any targets that have spent 100% of your offer payout and not received any conversions.
-50% ROI or less - Pause targets

So bringing it all together we should have these rules to turn a target off:

threshold (50% payout, no clicks): Kill at $10 (~660 views @ 0.015; ~900 views @ 0.011)
threshold (100% payout, no conversions): Kill at $20 (~1300 views @ 0.015; ~1800 views @ 0.011)
maintenance threshold (what %, $ or clicks to kill AFTER conversion): -50% ROI or less
time threshold (how many days let target run with no conv or passing threshold): 2 days

so assuming i use 20 targets...
this test will be roughly a $400 test?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

what do you think fellow stm'ers?? look right?

thank you very much in advance for your feedback. much appreciated!

10-31-2011 02:21 PM #16 tijn (Moderator)

those thresholds are more geared towards low payout offers like email submits.

they will still work with higher payout offers but your testing budget it gonna expand exponentially.

Early on therefore you could consider halving your target metrics,

threshold 1 - no clicks - $5 spend per target
threshold 2 - clicks, no conv - $10 spend per target
threshold 3 - -50% ROI should be ok
time threshold - 2 days is probably too short if your starting out, maybe go for more relevant targets (lower traffic), but 4-5 days on this metric

then once you reach break even you can start to improve CTR/CR and dial in the targets you previously excluded.

hope this helps

11-02-2011 12:26 AM #17 harrypotter (Member)

little update... been

waiting for approval and tomorrow hopefully, waiting to seen if the targets picked are high volume enough.

can't believe min bid for Canada is 0.017, which is more expensive than US at 0.015 (yes, I have tried different categories and subcategories... still the same). on other traffic networks I have used, international traffic has always been cheaper than US bids... anyway, it is what it is.

with the way things are going, I might want to start other campaigns since it seems a lot of the time, there is much waiting involved.

wait for new keywords approval
wait to see if there is enough traffic volume
wait to see if landers are doing well or not
wait for enough data before decisions can be made

if i work on more campaigns, i guess i can shorten my learning curve more because I should get exposed to more... anyway, that's it for now

11-02-2011 12:56 AM #18 m0thm4n (Member)

Have you tried Lifestyle > Other ?

11-02-2011 02:29 AM #19 harrypotter (Member)

yeah... i tried

lifestyle > other
automotive > other
computer > other
b2b > other
even adult > other
education > grad

all the same... weird how canada is more expensive with less traffic (since there is less population)

tried uk lifestyle > other and that was also 0.017...

hope i am not doing something wrong

11-02-2011 10:48 AM #20 tijn (Moderator)

With LI international for most Geo's is more expensive then US. TV is the other way around but its shit volume most of the time.

So no your not doing anything wrong - just dealing with LI

11-03-2011 06:27 AM #21 alex_b (Member)

Originally Posted by harrypotter

with the way things are going, I might want to start other campaigns since it seems a lot of the time, there is much waiting involved.

wait for new keywords approval
wait to see if there is enough traffic volume
wait to see if landers are doing well or not
wait for enough data before decisions can be made

I'm facing the exact same thing right now though budget means a limit for me in regards to throwing up lots of campaigns and seeing what sticks. Glad you figured out the category issue in another thread already.

11-03-2011 04:58 PM #22 harrypotter (Member)

brief update...

from yesterday to today, got a total of 101 views! ahhahah.

these keywords were top search terms in google so i am baffled at how little volume there is. My bids are set so that I am also #1 for most of my keywords - started with 31.

so... should i
a) scrape a ton of urls so that they can add together and get a bunch of views?
b) try to find another 20 or so urls that are "high traffic"

i am thinking b) is the option because then I would have a smaller amount of targets to manage

11-03-2011 05:00 PM #23 bbrock32 (Administrator)

Yeah , def go with option B.

Use affexpert and select only targets with a low alexa rank ( high traffic ).

11-04-2011 06:13 AM #24 harrypotter (Member)

brief update...

stats today:

673 impressions $11.44 spend (cap was $10 a day)
0 conversions

landers (I CANNOT believe they are so evenly matched thus far...):

2.37%
2.39%
2.37%

most targets I have are simply not enough volume to test I THINK, I don't know... all together, from the targets that generated views, it ranges from 1 to 38 views, and then there is my top target

2
7
6
1
8
1
1
1
29
38
16
12
2
10
1
442
4
22
1
1
9
4
5
30
24
3

the higher volume target (thanks to bbrock32) stats:

442 views
20 clicks
4.52% CTR

i am thinking i will just cut them all and work with just my top target

this way i can optimize the landers and the offer page.

just like what eliquid said in another thread:

what do you guys think?

11-04-2011 08:24 AM #25 harrypotter (Member)

Originally Posted by Mr Green

hum.... was thinking about what has happened thus far and it seems like i am working backwards a little here.

just like Mr.Green said, I have an unproven offer here...

the best way to solve this is to well, get some conversions. thus, i need traffic to test against my offer first to make sure my offer page converts (i know it converts on SEO traffic). so, probably going to change from landers to direct linking

the question now is if i should run it against 1 target.. or a variety of targets

11-09-2011 05:35 PM #26 apoc (Member)

harry, looking forward to your next update. this is very similar to something i'm working on (((in the early stages though...

11-17-2011 06:23 AM #27 harrypotter (Member)

alright... time for an update. sorry it has been a while.

just from running some traffic, i noticed that there really isn't a lot of volume for my current targets + area targeted. however, it should be suitable right now as i am still in the testing phase, but i assume i am going to need to find new targets/ traffic source in the near future.

as for the offer, i have changed the entire strategy from getting all the information we want right away down to a simple email submit. hopefully there is less resistance in filling out the form and after getting their email, i can continue to market to them to get the rest of the necessary information

i need to tidy up my numbers before i can post them. will keep you all updated

11-17-2011 08:58 AM #28 tijn (Moderator)

some good changes.

and yes - your better off starting small and lazer targeted, optimizing your path/offers/landers, and then going broad. That way you loose less money and make more

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