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Trying to make it in adult affiliate marketing world (50)

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Hello everyone,

So couple weeks after joining STM, I decided to finally start running campaigns for real. I've been checking many verticals that I should try, and decided that adult niche would be the best for me. I actually always wanted to do something in adult niche, but it was so mysterious to me and I had absolutely zero idea, how is it even possible to make money there.

So during past couple weeks I went through newbie tutorial, got myself Voluum, adplexity, been researching landers, offers, etc. Today I finally launched my first real campaign. After I run it for a while, I will post results and hopefully I can get some insights from you guys. The campaign is targeting Australia and New Zealand. Tomorrow hopefully I can launch campaign for Poland, as I am still waiting for translations.

As for my goals, my first small goal is to have a campaign that is making $10-$20 profit per day, for couple weeks at least. The next goal would be to be making $100 per day profit. So far I am not thinking further than that, as I do not want to stress myself out too much by setting some crazy goals. I will plan further once I get there

So not sure what else to tell at this point Any input, opinions, tips, suggestions would be immensely appreciated. I hope this is the beginning of my journey that I wanted to take for a very long time! Thank you all!

P.S. Is anyone interested about my road so far, here is my intro post.

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Hello again j000st!

So since you decided to try adult, I will be following your thread and providing help if I can

I'm a fan of this approach, it pays to start slow, then looking up as it all starts to come together.

Can you tell me what you want to promote, what vertical?

And where did you decide to buy traffic, if you did already.

I'm sure I can provide insight, just need to know what you are doing in more detail.

Cheers,
Matej.

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Thanks a lot, Matuloo!

At the moment I have a campaign for dating offers. But only form submit offers, so that user doesn't have to make any payments.

I also have some landers ready for generic adult single-opt-in offers. I actually had 2 conversions for Polish traffic with those and that's why I wanna try to continue to test on that geo. At the moment I am only using Mobidea as my network.

As for traffic sources, that minuscule success I had was with ZeroPark adult traffic. However, I will now try to run PlugRush and maybe Ero-Advertising traffic. There still is a small issue with some traffic sources (including ZeroPark), as they require VAT number for residents of EU (since many of them are also registered in the EU). And I don't have my VAT set up yet. So I wanted to first try out those sources, that don't require VAT number. Unfortunately, the largest traffic source, ExoClick, also require it, so I will have to be setting up my VAT soon.

As for my current source, do you have any opinions or tips about PlugRush and Ero-Advertising?

Thank you!

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Using a EU source without being registered for VAT is a nonsense, you would be paying 20% extra. Definitely sort this first.

Try to check with TrafficJunky ... their main office is in the States I believe, so it might work for you and their traffic is solid.

Mobidea is a great network, but not for dating I'm afraid ... try to check something like clickdealer, advidi, affiliaxe, addiliate, mundo etc ... there is a lot of them. For GEOs like PL check with www.imaxcash.com, they had some of these GEOs covered.

For dating, it's better to focus on banner clicks, so plugrush or zeropark are not the best options .. eroadvertising is a solid network, though smaller ... there is also juicyads with similar volumes. Exo is the largest, trafficjunky and trafficstars are big too, plus trafficfactory is good too.

Juicy is outside of EU too I think, so that might be another one to try before you sort the VAT issue.

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Thanks for the info!

Yeah, I noticed that with dating I got zero conversions with popunder traffic. I guess I will try banners for those.

I also tried running single opt-in offers for Ireland geo with Plugrush traffic. Got a conversion even. However, they seem to have not so much popup traffic available (for Ireland at least), so need to find another source. What is your opinion about PopAds.net? How is their traffic quality? Since single/double opt-in offers were the only ones I had some conversions with, I feel like not throwing them away just yet. While probably they are not gonna make me rich, I can hopefully at least achieve my first goal, which is $xx per day.

By the way, what is wrong with Mobidea's dating offers? They seem to have quite a lot of them.

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POPs will convert with the right LPs, the problem is with the quality ... it's usually lower so you will be losing lot's of offers.

Try their banner/image traffic, it's actually kind of a native format, that will convert too and the quality should be a little higher than POPs.

I don't use their traffic for dating, I'm not running pretty much any POPs in adult now.

Nothing wrong with SOI/DOI offers, they are very popular in adult.

I still kinda see Mobidea as a mobile only network with waste majority of their offers being PIN submits (carrier billing), and to be honest I didn't check what kinda dating offers they have lately ... are these regular SOI/DOI offers (email collection)?

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There obviously are some CC submit offers, but also quite a few form submit offers, without any payment. I was trying those, but with no success so far.

I will! However, at least for some countries they seem to have much less inventory available for any ads, other than popups/redirects. But I will explore this. Thank you!

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Can you tell me the name of the form submit offer(s) so I can check what kind of offers it is? Just want to make sure we are talking about the same thing.

Just one thing to keep in mind at this stage ... you don't need HUGE volumes straight away, it's a good idea to start testing low.

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Their office is in Montreal, Canada but Cyprus invoices with VAT ID:

MG Technologies Ltd. (formerly Bridco Trading Ltd.)
Block 1, 195-197 Old Nicosia-Limassol Road
Dali Industrial Zone
Nicosia, 2540, Cyprus
VAT Number CY10280743H

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For example, "16861 - Adult Dating - Multi Geo - 3G + Wifi - Ashley Madison LP3", "17650 - Adult Dating - Multigeo - 3G + Wifi - Ashley Madison LP Lacemask", "17617 - Adult Dating - Multigeo - 3G + Wifi - Casual Dates LP2"

Got it. But then what do I do, if I find good traffic+lander+offer combo and my network has only very limited amount of traffic available? Or in such case it's very likely that the offer would also convert in other networks?

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Good call! They might have two companies though, Cyprus for EU invoicing and something else for US etc ... I've seen this with a few companies, might be worth it to ask.

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Yeah, I just registered and they are asking for VAT number from EU citizens. But no big deal, it's time I solved this issue anyways

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Ah so Ashley Madison is it, this is standard dating yes, but this offer is kinda hard to convert... these big brands are quite saturated, it's better to focus on less known more affiliate oriented offers.

Yup, if you find a working combo, you need to scale to other sources ... bulk of the adult traffic is distributed over a handful of networks only, so it's not that complicated

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If it's possible, could you give an example of such offer? Not 100% sure what you mean by "more affiliate oriented" offers.

That's good to know But based on Adplexity data, it seems like absolute majority of traffic is from Exoclick and TJ. So I guess it's really time for me to solve my VAT issue so I can start on those networks.

As always, thanks for your help, Matuloo!

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I think Adult traffic is mainly owned by 4 big players in this order.

TJ , Exoclick, TrafficStars, TrafficFactory.

If you are paying an extra 20% on the first two you are already starting with a huge handicap.

Sort out VAT first and take it from there.

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I'd probably change the order a bit, but yes, this is the big four

Ashleymadison is a big brand, they even do TV ads etc ... so they are very clean and don't have all that well converting landing pages and they barely show any "skin" ... the less known brands take it a bit further, you will get to pick from several urls, there will be both well designed "mild" landers as well as amateurish looking LP-like landers. Every affiliate network has lots of them, just avoid the biggest brands like match.com, ashleymaddison ...

Yup, you will have to sort the VAT issue for sure. If I may give you a piece of advice, stay away from exo for the starters ... large part of their inventory are smaller site, often with questionable traffic quality, so it takes longer to optimize campaigns there and since the overall volume is massive on exo, you could burn your hands pretty quickly.

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Yes, you are right. VAT issue is the first thing to be solved. With my current traffic provider (PlugRush) it's hard to even test properly on some GEOs, since volumes are quite low...

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What kind of traffic are you buying on PR? Banners ( plugs ) or Pops?

I think they have quite a bit of POP traffic.

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Pops. Well, in some geos yeah, but for example, I am running some offers for Ireland. And their traffic estimator (when I select only carrier traffic) shows only 1.1K available for mobile pops:


By my understanding, that is not so big amount, considering conversion rates are usually way bellow 1%... Or am I thinking wrong here?

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Well I guess Ireland is not a strong GEO for them, 1.1k is pretty low.

Anyway, I wouldn't trust the traffic estimator too much.

Create the camp and see how it goes.

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Yep, I have it running. Pretty much getting the estimated amount, with average position of 1.3 today. Had 2 conversions, but since the volume is so low, hard to do any conclusions yet, IMHO.

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Then if it shows promise I would open it on Propeller, ZP and AdCash

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All of them require VAT. Damn, I really need to deal with this ASAP D: BTW, does propeller accept adult campaigns? Somehow I thought they didn't...

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Propeller does accept them , just need to tag the campaign as adult.

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Ireland is a small country too, so don't expect large volumes for that network in ANY network.

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You are right...

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Since this is follow along, I feel like I should post some update. However, not so much to post yet. I do have 1 campaign which is technically in the green (from Ireland geo):



However, as you can see, the numbers are tiny (since there is very limited traffic available) and I don't think I can make any conclusions from this yet. Feeling quite confused now (as I know everyone felt in the beginnings of their AM careers) and not sure what to do next... What would pros do?

So I was thinking, since I have limited budget in the beginning, maybe I should be focusing on some cheap markets? Like Asian or African? Since with smaller European geos, which have cheaper traffic, I cannot even get to decent numbers to start cutting some bad offers, landers, etc. And I cannot afford yet to run lots of traffic with geos like US, UK, DE, FR.

And as a continuation of this question, how do people even make in such small geos as Denmark, for example? How is it possible to find good traffic, when volumes are so low?

And one more question. Since I decided to focus on SOI/DOI offers for starters, do you think banner traffic is more likely to convert better than Pop traffic? Or banner traffic is better for offers like dating?

As always, I really appreciate your help, guys!

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Some update. At the moment I have 2 campaigns running that are TECHNICALLY getting some conversions. One is for Kenya, another for Portugal. Bellow is results for last few days for Kenya campaign (traffic source: pops from PlugRush):



And bellow results for Portugal campaign (traffic: banners from Ero-Advertising):


Both campaigns uses landers. The problem is that since these are not the biggest countries, and traffic sources also not the biggest ones, I am not getting so much traffic. So hard to even test properly. But until I set up my VAT and be able to use TrafficJunky, ExoClick, etc. it's the best I can do.

I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions on what to do next. For Kenya campaign I keep cutting placements, and was able to reach ROI of -70% yesterday. But of course, with such small volume it's hard to tell anything. Should I keep cutting placements until I, hopefully, would get to green?

As for Portugal campaign, I am also cutting placements, but also trying to test different banners and different bids. I actually like this way more than popups. It feels like I have more control over the whole funnel, since I can influence CTRs of my campaigns much more.

Should I keep running this also until I get more conversions? At the same time, trying out new banners, landers, etc?

As always, thank you everyone for reading my ramblings and helping me

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Hello again j00st, let me get over the weekend questions

The confusion is normal, it will slowly go away. Yup, you are right, there is not enough traffic to make conclusions from, unfortunately ... you need more of it, that would be the "pro" advice

Asian or African countries have been great to start with, while the mobile offers still converted like charm ... which is gone from the most part now. You can still try it, the traffic will be almost free in many GEOs... but finding a good offer in these GEOs is very hard. BTW, DE is not that bad market to start with, there is a ton of traffic, its not THAT expensive and there are some solid offers around. It's a specific GEO, and many people are not doing very well there (myself included), but those who can make it can scale very high.

With these small GEOs, you simply need to use all big sources out there. It adds up slowly.

I already touched this subject earlier in this thread ... banners are better for dating than pops for example, and dating is usually either SOI or DOI actually

It will be hard to get anywhere without being able to get on the large networks, you need to solve this asap.

This is pointless in my opinion ... you cant really get to profit from -70%, sorry And even if you could, with that small volume you are getting now it will decrease with every placement you cut, so you end up with virtually no traffic at all.

True, banners give you one more step of possible optimization and there is more volume in adult banners than pops, so if you are serious about this, you might as well start focusing on banners now or in the near future.

Yes, I would focus on banners and play with LPs and learning how to optimize the funnel.

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As always, thank you, Matuloo! BTW, about DE geo. I was thinking myself about it, actually. I guess I will be trying it for sure. Could you tell, if possible, what is so specific about it, as you mentioned? I asume I need to translate landers, but is there some other stuff I need to know?

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They want to sell all the traffic they have

But I hope they will add more targeting options too, would be about time for them to work on it.

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No joke here bro. Been talking to them for almost 2 years about this as I'm sure you and others have. Even recently, trying to negotiate a deal to do a big buy with targeting options but... nope. They just don't care.



Andrew

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Yup, from some reason, they tend to ignore most request they get from affiliates. Their super slow admin, separate tool for stats, absence of targeting options ... has been giving me a headache for a years already

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Haven't posted for a few days, so I think it's time for an update. My main campaign, that I was running on one of the smaller TJ sites died out. Most likely banners burned out, since I was running them for like 3 weeks with good results. Now just trying to find some new good creatives and hopefully can continue running that campaign. While it wasn't getting much traffic (I was rarely able to spend more than $50 daily, and I was getting over 80% of impressions there), it was still quite good and getting steady results.

However, after like 2 weeks of struggle I think I manage to turn my Pornhub campaign into green! Today is pretty much first day that it has decent ROI (a bit over +20% now). It started with -60%, but after daily tests I managed to optimize it. Nothing super special was done, just tested bunch of banners and landers And then, once I found something that works, tested variations of them. Honestly, I am still mind blown, how much difference it can make simply changing image in landing page.

Also, one more thing I did was to analyze campaign results by OS. It's crazy how different results are on different OS. However, since I cannot exclude iOS on Traffic Junky, I optimized each OS individually. So by using different landers and offers for iOS traffic, I hope I managed to minimize loss and make overall campaign green.

I also launched 1 desktop campaign. After I ran it for two days, I choose best banner/lander/offer and today I am running it at about +10% ROI. So pretty promising so far.

Now I hope I can keep running these campaigns in profit for a while. So main concern and question is "how to do it?" I know creatives (banners especially) will die out quite fast. And currently these campaigns both have only 1 banner. So I was thinking, very important thing to do now is to try testing new banners, while running this campaign. And hopefully I can find at least couple more with similar results, so I can at least rotate them. But honestly, I would REALLY appreciate if you guys can give me any tips on how to keep campaign running with similar ROI as long as possible.

I also wanted to ask about budgets. My Pornhub campaign is currently running at $200 per day. However, since I am not running it all 24 hours per day (some hours at night perform awful, and also hours, when World Cup matches are broadcasted), it is spending about $150 or so. If I wanna scale up, is it usually fine just turn up the budget? Like I wanna make it $300 per day or so. Or it's very often that in such case performance drops?

As always, thank you all for all the support and help! I know it's still just a beginning of the road, but it's still nice to see some results finally!

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You have 2 options ... either milk the banner for what it's worth and collect the ROI, or sacrifice part of the profits to test new banners at the same time. The best way to do it, is to run 80% or more of the traffic through the profitable banner and the new banners would get the remainders ... easy to do with sources that offer weighted banner rotation. With sources that don't, you need to create a new campaign and limit the spend by targeting options, budget, bid etc ...

Depends on the source and the banner rotation algo ... in case the budget is limiting you and there is way more volume for grabs, upping the bid doesn't have to lower the performance. If you are reaching the volume cap and the algo will try to push you harder by increasing the cap for example, the quality can go down. On some sites/sources, the quality also depends on the bidding position a lot, so it can completely change the performance.

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Thank you as always! In this case traffic source is Traffic Junky, so I guess it most likely shouldn't affect performance when increasing budget, since I know exactly where my ads are gonna be shown. And they don't have frequency capping for mobile anyways...

Another question I have is about running campaign only on certain hours. I remember reading your comment in one of the others newbie follow-along threads. And you said that to be able to identify profitable hours you need to have more data and more conversions. Just wondering, how much data are you talking about? At the moment on this campaign I only run it during day times (basically 10AM to 11PM) and exclude those few hours when football games are being shown. I ran this campaign for about 2 weeks now, when trying to optimize, had about 750 conversions during that time. So my question is, is this enough data to make such conclusions, that daytime hours perform much better? Also, the ROI was massively different. While in daytime I had 40-70% ROI, at nighttime it was exact opposite, -40 to -100%.

So question is, are these numbers enough to make such conclusions?

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I'm not a big fan of dayparting, lots of data is required and you know what adult is like, the impulse behavior of users often screw up any trends. Then there is the difference between regular weekdays and weekends ...

But ok, if after 2 weeks of running 24 hours a day, you really see a strong pattern, then feel free to pause during some hours, it should be enough data.

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Thank you! And yes, weekends can be different, I will analyze them separately. But for workdays it looked like pretty strong trend.

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I feel like I need to rant a little bit and hopefully, I could get some reassurances Because I feel kinda lost again (despite my yesterday's post may have seemed like things are getting good now )

So today my campaign is again performing quite crappy and it just feels like I cannot make a breakthrough... I will tell in a bit more detail my whole story so far. Matuloo (and others), I would really appreciate if you could point out what am I doing wrong, or where am I thinking wrong.

So beginning of June I started with DE campaign on one smaller TJ site. As I mentioned before, I was rarely spending more than $50 per day there and pretty much controlling 2 spots (header and underplayer) on that site. Pretty much from the start it was getting positive ROI (I got lucky there) and with some testing of banners/landers/offers I was able to get over +50% ROI there. It ran up until recently, for about 3 weeks. Finally banners died out and I wasn't able to find new good ones yet, but I am sure I will be able. Now I am mostly concentrating on my Pornhub campaign.

So yes, the Pornhub campaign. Because the campaign I was running on smaller TJ site had very limited volume, I was thinking I had 2 choices: create campaigns for other GEOs on the same site, or take current campaign on current GEO to bigger sites. So Pornhub looked the best choice, so I took it there. However, the campaign didn't perform at all in the beginning. It started at -70% ROI. BUT, it wasn't so bad, because this was a learning opportunity. I am running this campaign for over 2 weeks now, and was able to optimize to 0% and then even to +10% yesterday. I spent about $1500 on it, got about $1000 back from it, so it's not super bad. Probably now it wouldn't take me so long to do it Biggest realization was that iOS and Android performed very differently, and that I should optimize those OS separately. Android was performing fine all along, so my goal was to minimize loss on iOS, which I did also last couple of days.

BUT now we arrive at my frustration. Yesterday, as I mentioned, I had +10% ROI on this campaign. So I was thinking "awesome!". I already had best banner, best lander, best offer identified so I was thinking "ok, no more tests for at least today. Will only run my best combo". And I am. And while I cannot say it is not converting, the conversion rates dropped again. It was suppose to be running at about +30% ROI, yet it is barely at break even. And I am sitting here again, scratching my head, thinking "what is wrong"...

Honestly, I know it's stupid, and I know it's not true, but I am even starting to think the whole dating vertical just doesn't work. And at the same time, I know it's not true, since there are many affiliates who are making consistent profits there. I am pretty sure if it wasn't for this forum, I would have quit already, since I would be feeling extremely lost. Here I can get some reassurances and answers.

So now I have several questions/concerns. First: what should I do with this campaign and how to achieve those next +30% ROI? Should I just keep testing landers, or their variations, and hopefully I can find something even better? I don't want to abandon this campaign, since I took it from -70% ROI to +10% ROI, so I hope it is still possible to get those extra 20-30%. Or should I just do nothing and just wait bit more? It is running at break even now, so maybe later in the day it will pick up? Yesterday, for example, first part of the day was way better than evening. Maybe today it will be the opposite? And also, when checking for ROI, maybe it's always best to check weekly ROI, not daily?

And second question is this: how to get at least some stability in dating campaigns? I know I have to test new banners, ideally I would have several banners in rotation, so they don't burn out so fast. Any other tips? Or I should just accept, that it is pretty volatile, and I should be looking at weekly ROI, not daily? Since some day it might be +10%, another day +50%?

Thank you in advance for your answers! I don't know what I would do without this forum...

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I've been in this situation before too

The reason why this happens, is your funnel wasn't strong enough ... you need to improve something, could be the banner, the LP or the offer.

To make it in adult, you need the best available offers and the best possible payouts ... that's how you reach consistent profits.

When I was starting, I got stuck with the US geo for a few months, could make it green but always for a few days only ... so exactly what you are seeing now. I had to switch to a different GEO, picked a smaller one in EU and suddenly it all started coming together. It also helped to move away from exoclick to a few different platforms, I had good results with eroadvertising at that time ... lower volumes, but higher ROI.

So, if you feel you are stuck in a spot and can't move ... make a change. Test a different GEO, or source or placement ... or give it one more try and test more banners and LPs, and mroe offers for sure.

On a side note : DE is giving me headaches for years, I can't reach consistent profits in that GEO too, no matter what I try.

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Thank you, as always! Honestly, your experience in this field is invaluable!

Yeah, I was actually thinking the same. I guess having +20% ROI one day isn't good enough yet, since results can fluctuate quite a lot. Will try to improve the funnel more.

Hmm... I see your point. I was just thinking, since I managed to make it work (at least for 3 weeks) on one smaller site, I was thinking I could also port it to Pornhub. Since I was hoping I can scale it up. But yes, I will still try some things, and if it doesn't happen, I will move on to another GEO.

Maybe there is something very specific about DE that makes it so hard But yes, I guess there is no point wasting time on GEO, which is so hard to conquer for whatever reason. But I will still give it few more days.

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Maybe you will, but it's also possible you'll get stuck there for the next few months and won't get anywhere.

The best setup is to operate in multiple GEOs anyways, promoting a range of various offers ... so keep the small profitable camp running and look for more ... that's also a viable strategy, $30 per camp when running 15 camps is not shabby at all either

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So, after some more tries, I decided to change my targeted geo 3 days ago. I chose one of the Nordic countries. There were some good DOI offers with great payouts from Advidi. So first 2 days I ran, it all seemed good. Even conversion rates were close to what I was getting at DE, so future looked bright And then yesterday evening it all stopped. The campaign was partially optimized, I already saw couple banners and landers than performed way better than others, so I was running only those. So I waited till now and there were still no conversions.

So I investigated a bit and discovered that for the offers I am promoting the registration confirmation emails go straight to Promotions or Spam folder. I tested one of the offers 3 days, ago, before starting sending traffic to them, and at that time registration confirmation email was coming to normal inbox folder (also, the offer I tested the registration, was performing the best, comparing to others. So maybe emails from other offers were already going to spam/promotions).

So the question is this: is it possible, that Gmail just yesterday starting sending all/majority of emails from this dating site to spam/promotions folder, and that's why it stopped converting for me? Those offers been running for a while, and Gmail decided to spam all emails from them pretty much now? I guess there is certain limit when Gmail decided that all of emails, coming from certain site, are considered spam. And I was just unlucky, that it happened yesterday.

Or, this doesn't really matter, and when promoting DOI dating offers, the fact that registration email goes to spam, doesn't really affect conversion rate? People, who register, are still very interested in it and will dig out that confirmation email from wherever it is? Even though for me it would be hard to believe, that it wouldn't affect conversion rates, but who knows, I am constantly surprised in my AM journey...

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Also, one more question I came up with. What about retargeting in adult dating vertical? Is it worth retargeting people, who visited your prelander and didn't register? Was thinking of doing it with ExoClick pixel, since it's the largest network of sites. Or are those registrations so purely impulsive, that if someone didn't register, there is no way he will register later?

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People do check even their spam folders, and maybe it's just in the promotions folder not directly in spam ... and for example on mobile phones, the folders are not used yet, at least no in my phone So I can see promo emails directly in the feed.

It's also possible that there is some problem with gmail and the particular offers you are running ... try to ask your AM, they should be able to tell you what the overall performance looks like and whether there was a drop.

But it can simply be a problem of not strong enough funnel ... this happens in smaller GEOs quite frequently... first few days are good, then it tanks ... rotating stuff helps ... rotate EVERYTHING .... banners, LPs, offer urls, offers ... the more you can keep in the loop, the longer it can last. I know it's hard to find multiple solid banners, lps etc ... but that's what you need.

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I tried it with exoclick but with mixed results ... in some cases it seemed to work, in some it did not. Try it to see if it works for you ... just give it time, you need large audience, don't try to retarget a pool of 1000 users

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A bit more positive update Yesterday was the day when I got first good ROI and profit! Had $135 profit with +47.52% ROI. I have had some days, where one campaign would have decent profit, but then other campaigns would kill that profit. So yesterday was the first time when my both campaigns were profitable. And also, the first day with $100+ profit. So it's pretty awesome!

So as I mentioned, I have 2 campaigns. My Nordic campaign, that I launched few days ago, was the star of yesterday. I spent $136 on it yesterday, and got $224 revenue, so about +64% ROI. Of course, it's a DOI offer, so results can fluctuate quite a lot, but still, it's looking quite positive.

Also, I relaunched my DE campaign, after I got a really good bump on one of the offers I was promoting. After 2 days of running at around break even and optimizations, yesterday it made +31.78% ROI. I spent $149 and got $197 revenue. I hope I can optimize it even more.

So that's the short update. I will try to keep these campaigns alive as long as possible. Will always look for new banners and prelanders, so I can keep things fresh for as long as possible.

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Excellent, looks like the effort you've been putting into this is finally starting to pay of! Great going, keep it up

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I guess everyone is now enjoying Barcelona and AWE, so likely this will be read after the event. But still decided to post an update

So after my last post, where things seemed to be getting a bit brighter, as usual, everything went to shit again... Pretty much next day I was close so 0% ROI and day after that back to negative. Stopped that SE campaign, and my decided to give my DE campaign one more try with some new placements. It started quite well, ran on new placement for 2 days at around 0% ROI, during that time got some data to be able to optimize better. And after optimization was able to run it for 3 days with about 50% ROI. And then yesterday, BAM, again ROI at 0% and today negative again. It's pretty much like you, Matuloo, said about DE geo - never able to make it work for more than a few days... So I decided it's time to abandon this geo. At least for now and for dating offers.

Couple days ago also launched a campaign for ES (Spain). It looked quite promising, ES traffic on TJ seemed to be quite cheap, browsing those sites through VPN it seemed like they are dominated by dating offers, so looked like a good geo to test. And first couple days I ran the campaign, got some data and some banners/landers looked like clear winners. So did some small optimizations (not much, just removed absolutely worst creatives) and now continuing to run the campaign. Yet today (at least so far) it again performs like shit... Of course, I will wait whole day, sometimes just few hours make up for the worse hours of the day... But in general moods are really shitty...

Honestly, not sure what to do and how to handle this roller-coaster. It's just anything I try so far turns to shit. And it's not like I just blindly copy stuff from Adplexity. I of course start with some banners/landers from there, but after finding best ones I always create my own variations of them (which I later find on Adplexity, which means others people are using them also). I honestly again feeling so lost and not sure what I am doing wrong...

Maybe it's time for me to try out some other vertical, like COD from Adcombo, for example. Couple months ago, I had some decent results with them, considering I had even less knowledge than now. I'm pretty sure Matuloo is sick already of my whining, but I only try to do this when I feel completely desperate

EDIT: Next morning after posting this I kinda reevaluated everything, and things don't look as dark, as I made them seem in this post I think it was just a moment of weakness and frustration. I was thinking of deleting this post, but decided to leave it, since it's a good reminder to me, about how I felt at some point in my journey.

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I'm glad you left the post here ... this is one of the great things about STM, you can see what phases others went through on their journey. There is a lot of frustration in AM, especially in the beginning, that's why many fail at it ... but it's something that can be overcome and those who manage to do that, usually also make it in the long run.

Bad days are part of the process, there is no way to not get those from time to time ... the important part is to not give up and keep moving. We all are getting such day, nobody is profitable 365 days in a year. When you feel like its to much, just take a day of, get a few beers ... then return with a clean mind.

I'm not, don't worry about it ... I've been in the same boat at some point, so I know exactly what's going on in your head

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