Revcontent Support MIA? (20)
Couple of weeks back I tried a test campaign with Revcontent and I had a load of questions about it when it had finished.
I sent in a support request. Two weeks and two reminders later I've still had no response.
My first support query before that was answered in a day, but the system says the new request and the reminders aren't even being read.
The account is in red because I funded the account by $100 - they spent $150 on the campaign. This is one of the questions I had for them - how / why did this happen?
Happy to fund the account if I get an answer - but do you think this is why the support request isn't even getting looked at?
Seems odd way to handle the matter if so?
This is normal. Sometimes RC overspends a bit than your set budget.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Wow, a 50% overspend can be normal? That's worrying - certainly something to budget for.
The other 2 questions were:
2. Revcontent reports 2,258 clicks but Google Analytics reports 377 users and 460 sessions.
3. The quality of the traffic that I actually saw via GA is incredibly low. The bounce rate is c. 95% and most of the widgets sent traffic with an average session duration of 00:00:00.
Does that seem right to you? Bot traffic?
Really, for my $150 I saw about 300 clicks who could be real, so actually I guess that's about right if you compare it to Google traffic (works out at c. 50c/click), but actually more expensive given they weren't targeted.
Still concerned they aren't even reading my support requests. Do they normally respond well to support?
well arent you asigned a rep? with one network when this happened i just went on linkedin and looked up "my network's manager" hit up one up and tell them your problem and they will help you.
- Jeremiah
Great idea Jeremiah, I'll try that. Thanks.
Talk to your rep.
If you don't have one ask FOR one.
This always happens to a lot of my guys it's normal.
They'll refund you the money.
I just had a new campaign go live with a 100$ daily max and spent 640$ in three hours yesterday :/
Only started with Revcontent a couple weeks ago so this was my first email to my rep lol. Haven't heard back from her yet but has only been about 20 hours.
Certainly hoping they refund it as 99% of it seemed to come from one bad 'pop up' widget with no results, and I took screenshots and sent them to the rep the split second I saw what happened. Bid wasn't even super high or anything either. It spent another 30$ after I disabled the campaign and every ad in it too.
Other than that am loving Revcontent and hope to spend many tens of thousands of dollars with them. Do want to get this 500$ back though.
Also on MGID as of last two weeks. Liking them a lot as well. Traffic quality seems less good with MGID and I've been blacklisting way more widgets, however the MGID spend seems much smoother and easier to manage. Revcontent I feel like when I first learned to drive on a stick shift and its sort of start and stop, start and stop, stall out, start again, etc. With that said though I like the targeting a bit better in Revcontent though too.
$540 over on $100 is insane! Hope you get that back!
I finally spoke to a rep this afternoon, and he explained it was because I'd not set up any blacklists and so i was running to really crappy traffic, all push, with a really high bid so the account was getting blasted.
The sense he gave me was I was winning so many auctions in this crappy traffic zone that I raced past the finish line before the brakes could take effect. I said, seriously, a 50% overspend?? He assured me it wasn't 50%, it was $50 - ie would still only have been $100 or so even if I had ordered a max of a couple of $k.
I was amazed they let you go live in this situation, without pointing out what you can do about black lists, or having them installed as a default - surely they spend more time on support calls than they'd like?? - but then he offered to get his tech guys to help set up my account for my micro niche properly, so that could work out well. We'll get to that next week and I'll try to share anything I learn.
One tip today - he said I should get to the Targeting panel on the boost page and make sure I had 'Target Tier 1 & 2' traffic selected. The problem came because I had no blacklists set, so I was targeting all sorts.
What do you mean by no blacklist? as in you just put it on all the push topics and never blacklisted any widgets before hand?
And if your budget is smaller just pick one topic then blacklist widgets from there then when you got that stable move on.
- Jeremiah
Interesting... thanks for that info..
On mine, I selected US Desktop 100$ a day max, and targeted one single topic at a .60$ bid, which was Health_Diet_Weight-Loss, but almost all my spend on the 500$ beyond budget came from Mens_LifeStyle_PushNotifications... so it seems like it must have been a mistake, as that's not the target I selected..
Hoping they do reimburse me.. wish it hadn't happened as I'm trying hard to be super easy to work with/professional/etc and I hate having to ask for a refund... will let you know what the rep says (not to hijack your thread but since similar issue..)
Jeremiah - I just used the absolute default settings for the campaign. Hadn't seen any docs about setting up any blacklists or selecting traffic tiers - no idea that would leave the door open to that kind of overspend. But I'm a fast learner!
How do you blacklist widgets when you're going in cold though?
The overspend pretty much all came from one widget in the movies_and_television category Jack_I - which I did select, so it wasn't that kind of error for me.
session duration 0 seconds? definitely bots
I think one solution will be to start using an optimizer, so that even if a RevC campaign does start overspending ,at least every single overspending widget will be shut down quickly once it proves its a dud.
I'm gonna keep doing it manually for right now but I can definitely see how valuable an optimizer would be and will probably try one out soon (not sure which is the best at this point).
Hey celador and everyone- wanted to give my own update since I referenced my 550$ overspend above.
Again, I selected 100$ a day max budget, but the campaign went live and spent 650$ within 3 hours before I caught it.
I have spoke with my rep by email twice about it. She has been very polite.
They checked their server history and it sounds like I somehow fat-fingered something and left all topics selected. My intention was to select only one major topic and nothing else, as I had on all my other campaigns so far.
Because I somehow did not do that, it opened the floodgates to every traffic source, including push notifications.
There FAQ does state very clearly not to ever select push notifications unless you have a 500$+ per day budget.
As a result, I am considering it my own fault and not pressing the issue.
I guess I could really push back on them and try to get a credit, but I've chosen not to.
Its my goal to make extremely large amounts of money in media buying or I wouldn't have put my other business focuses on hold, so I don't want to become a 'problem' advertiser over 500$. Hopefully it will just be one tiny drop in the bucket before all is said and done!
So yeah, for any Stackers getting started on Revcontent I would just say to DOUBLE CHECK your targeting after you upload your campaigns, and then I guess with Revcontent themselves they might want to look into something where- if you have push notifications selected AND the minimum budget selected- you get some kind of pop up saying 'Warning: Your Targeting Will Likely Go Past Your Daily Budget' or something along those lines.
But yeah, I'm also going to be using those widget optimization templates they have on my next few tests, and creating one campaign each targeting 1st Tier, 2nd Tier, and 3rd Tier sites with corresponding bid amounts.
Anyway though best of luck to all you gentlemen! Hopefully we will stack amounts of cash far exceeding these mistakes!
Jack, that is... heartbreaking! You must have deeper pockets than me cos the two losses you've had would shut my campaign down for the month, lol.
I don't know though - $500 is significant when you're starting out, and the fact that the system lets you do a 500% overspend with no warning at the time doesn't feel right to me. I'd personally be inclined to push that a little bit more.
Re optimisation - which tracker are you using? I've just started with FunnelFlux and I'm absolutely loving it. Apparently it hooks up to The Optimizer really nicely, so it's got to be worth you plugging that in before there are any more accidents.
Where do you find the widget optimizer templates in RevC by the way?
Yeah its tough but I don't know.. I guess I'm so grateful to be on an affiliate-friendly platform like Revcontent and so optimistic about the earning potential that I'm not inclined to risk hurting the relationship.
The same thing happened back when I first got into flipping houses and mobile homes too and I made a dumb mistake that cost me 5k... it hurt but in the end it was a good learning experience and probably saved me lots worse mistakes. (if this had been a 5k overspend I DEFINITELY would be pushing for a credit though!)
And then yeah, I am using
I just downloaded TheOptimizer about two hours ago and am working on integrating it now. Had to ask my Revcontent rep to enable API access for me so hopefully that won't be a problem. Already got MGID going. Slight problem with Thrive getting integrated so waiting on support ticket on that.
I am extremely optimistic about using an optimizer. I have an MGID campaign that I've been steadily improving but every day new bad widgets pop up so its hard to ever get traction. I think having the optimizer just blacklist every bad one that comes up really quickly will be a massive help.
That campaign is still at -60% or so so will be interesting to see what the Optimizer can do to it.
Have done about 4 other campaigns but shut each down from poor results. Have many more in the wings though waiting to test 
Sticking with this one because its an evergreen vertical where I can continually try new offers, so I'm willing to invest a little more getting a good whitelist/experience/data/etc.
What are you using for Landing Pages/hosting?
Which traffic source are you liking the most so far?
Oh and then celador this is the widget optimization templates I was referring to: https://faq.revcontent.com/customer/...tion-templates
Jack that template page is gold for me right now where I am, thanks!
At the moment I'm using my own domain - starting learning by driving traffic to my own products. Once I have understood it all I'll be widening the net, at which point am thinking of Landerbolt for hosting/ripping/importing.
I've been using Facebook for a few years, so am not bad at that - use Adespresso for speed of implementation and optimizing on that. I've got my fingers burned many times with Google Ads, have a grudging respect for it, again, am liking Adespresso for that too because it simplifies it.
Keep us posted with Optimizer feedback - looks terrific.
Right on, very cool.
My first campaigns using those Tier 1/Tier 2/Tier 3 templates were interesting... it definitely worked as far as bidding different levels... Tier 3 averaged about 7 cents a click, Tier 2 50 cents, Tier 1 1.10$... lots of bad widgets in 3, a few in 2, one or two in 1.
I think for testing offers though in the future I might just try Brands instead... like Breitbart, CBS Weekly Standard, etc.
I was testing a survey offer (first one ever) and it failed dismally, but I couldn't tell to what extent it was the offer/landing page vs whatever sites I was getting traffic from.
Even though testing on a big Brand site might come out more expensive and might limit your exposure to one specific market, I think the surety of knowing you're really testing the offer and being able to compare it like that might be beneficial.
So yeah, re-working my survey idea and then am going to re-test it out just on a single Brand or two.
Other than that have been having WAY more sales on MGID than Revcontent so far. Probably due to my ignorance with Revcontent more than anything though. You can tell it has huge power and is a great network, but it reminds me of learning to drive a stickshift whereas MGID feels like more of an automatic.
Still not profitable on MGID but my main campaign on it is in an evergreen niche with lots of offers so comfortable buying more data/optimizing more despite not being profitable yet.
Also going to test out Clickfunnels vs Landerbolt to see what the difference in LP ctr is with identical-looking LP's (since CF is a lot slower if I understand right).
No matter the result I would still use Landerbolt because of its ripping ability, which is gold, but I want to do some more 'technical' or fancy LP's with email capture and multiple offers and stuff like that which I only know how to do on Clickfunnels... but am worried the slowness/bulkiness of Clickfunnels, hence the test. Will let you know how it goes
And then Optimizer has been great so far- huge time savings and HUGE piece of mind not worrying about renegade widgets eating up all my spend! Also gotta give a bit shout out to their tech guy Losid who hopped on Skype with me and walked me through a couple things when I was having an integration problem- never had a company or platform do that before and was very impressed.
Great stuff Jack. I've been away for a week, but thanks for the update.
My Rev ad rep has now gone AWOL as well as their support, plus I do have some experience with Facebook ads, plus the niche I'm experimenting with (my current business) is a micro niche, so I'm going back to Facebook for a week or so.
The thinking is that testing in a niche I understand thoroughly with my own products will help me master FunnelFlux, at whcih point I can come back to wider offers and places like Rev/MGID.
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