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Getting my butt handed to me - my 3rd Adult Campaign (33)

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Hi guys,

This is my first Follow Along.

Quick Intro - From the Bay Area, and got in this game from a friend that I met. And have since decided to commit to this space and niche.
I'm currently on my 3rd campaign in Adult, and am 5 months in. I'm also currently getting my a** handed to me, please help!

Campaign Details -

Network: TrafficJunky
Website: PornHub
GEO: AUS
Desktop/mobile: Desktop
Placement: NTV - B
Tracker: Adsbridge
Duration of campaign: Started on 4/26 - optimized and cut out non-performers on 4/30 - and ran until today 5/3.
Current spend: $410
Overall stats: 2.3M impressions, 861 clicks to banners, 341 arrived to the offer page, and 36 total conversions
Total payout: $117
Total ROI: -71%
Offer: Milf Addicts / Bangaroo Babes (Dating-SOI)
Payouts: $3.25
Affiliate Network used: VMG
CPM Bid: 0.175


Challenge 1: One challenge I have is with significant data, I keep hearing how competitive adult is. I get the impression it costs more on adult to gather significant data, so I'm hesitant to pull something when it doesn't work right away. I read that it's better to be SURE something doesn't work, than to pull out too quickly.

Challenge 2: After 4 days of testing, I worked with my affiliate manager to optimize, we cut out some non-performing flows and with optimism headed in to the next few days. However, it's as if after I cut out the non-performing flows, the performing flows stopped performing as well, and I even back out to this shitty -70% ROI. WTF?

Is this because conversions are easier to get on weekends than weekdays? I don't understand.
Is it because my banners are burning out after 4-5 days?
I've read that I should cut a campaign if after spending 5X the payout and I don't see any conversions.. but is this true in adult as well? Where there are such high volumes and competitive?
I think I also read that if after spending $100, and my campaign is like -80%, that I should cut the campaign. Is this true for adult as well?

In spirit of transparency and eagerness to learn, I'm going to post my banners and landers here, along with my offer landing pages I'm running.


Banners:

I started with 5 banners, but after optimizing on 4-30, I kept these 3 original banners running:



Here are the pre-landers I'm running:

Pre-Lander 1: https://milfaddicts.online/


As you can see the only difference between the 2 is the additional headline copy in the second one. I kept it simple since I'm just getting started, and have yet to learn the technical aspects of html, cleaning ripped landers, etc etc. My background is in sales, not in tech.

Offers I'm running:

Milf Addicts Nude Pre Sale: https://www.milfaddicts.com/?page=x1...9cf50881bd1098

Bangaroo Babes Nude Multi Image: https://www.bangaroobabes.com.au/?pa...e81ba6f4e16d0f



My biggest frustration right now is that after a couple days of testing (~$250 in spend), I have what seems like a couple promising and positive flows. Original test was Fri 4/26 to Tues 4/30. Then as I optimized on Tues 4/30 through today Fri 5/3... my "performing" banner CTR's dropped 25%-35%! WTF!! Why is that?? why is it after I optimized my banner CTR drops like 30%?!?!? I don't understand this...

Please see screenshots:

TJ Stats Before Optimizing:



TJ Stats After Optimizing:



Overall Stats in tracker:



If I have like $500- $1000 to spend on a campaign to learn, optimize, and to get something in the green.... should I test the entire WEEK before optimizing so I have data for that entire week, rather than test Fri-Mon and optimize midway during the week?

Cause depending on the day of the week, that's another variable as well right? So would it be better if I just lower my daily budget a bit and test a whole week before looking to optimize?

Any help is appreciated!

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If you only have $500-1000 to spend, you need to switch GEOs. AU Desktop (or any other Tier 1 country) is not enough to run on that budget.

Also for AU Pornhub Desktop TJ traffic, there is no way you can make a $3.25 payout work. Traffic is just too expensive for that.

The math is the math, you'd have to break the laws of Physics to make that work lol

It's not even worth trying to optimize that, just start over with new geo + new offer.

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Thanks @jabong82, what kind of spend is required to run on these Tier 1 countries? Also for something like AU PornHub Desktop TJ Traffic, what kind of payout is needed to make the traffic costs work?

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I mean there is no hard and fast answer to your question, but if you only got $500-1k to spend, Tier 1 is gonna be hard because it's tough to get significant data. What budget is really dependent on your financial situation and risk tolerance. Off the top of my head I'd say you'd want at lest $4-5k for Tier 1, and ideally more. Thats just me though.

As for AU there are DOI offers that pay $9-10 ea that can work there, you would have to run one of those to even remotely make the math work.

There is no way you can pay like $0.50/click and have an offer that pays $3.25 lol

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Jabong is right, the prices you are paying per click now, simply won't make it possible to profit with the offer you have now. $3.25 is too low for a desktop offer, even though it's a SOI.

The thing with these offers is that you often need to run them at loss initially, until you prove the quality and your payout get's bumped. For a quality check to make sense, you need to send at least 100 leads, 200+ is better and that's where you're gonna "hit into" the budget you have. 200 leads at $3.25 would be $650, considering you'd be in loss, it could easily burn your whole $1000 budget ... and there would still be the possibility that the quality would be poor.

I would also recommend to look at some other GEO, or at least a different set of offers with more competitive payouts.

On top of that, pornhub is performing weird lately, the quality is inconsistent and the CTRs kinda suck over there. So you might also want to try some other site within TJ or test some other traffic source. Trafficfactory has pretty solid quality too, for example.

A tip for you: whenever you see something like -70% ROI on a proven source, something is wrong with your funnel and spending $400 on it is a total waste. Do not wait that long.

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Damn, @jabong82 and @matuloo I appreciate the feedback guys. That makes sense.

Thank you for breaking the numbers down for me @matuloo, and explaining how the approach is to test quality with 200 or so leads, and with that amount my $1000 is obviously not enough.

Okay, back to the drawing board with another GEO/offer.

Now question is, if I see a ROI like -70%, and spending $400 is too much, when should I cut the campaign? After $50? After $100? After $200?

I didn't cut it initially because I was worried I wasn't getting enough significant data... but then again I don't want to wait too long, so for ADULT, roughly how much should I spend before scrapping the campaign if I'm seeing something like -70% ROI? For Tier 1, 2, and 3 geos?

Thank you guys again!

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As far as "how much" is enough to test, again that's like asking "how long is a piece of string?"

$50 may be sufficient for an offer that pays $0.50/lead (Tier 3 geo) but maybe not for a Tier 1 offer like you were running ($3.25/lead). Obviously generally the higher the payout the larger the budget you will need to test to get significant data.

Also you're going to have to learn why something you're testing is working or not working. Are you running a crappy offer? Are you running crappy landers/banners? Are you running on a crappy traffic source? Maybe all 3?

This again is something you can only learn with experience, and again will vary based on your budget and risk tolerance.

Maybe Matuloo can chime in and give you some advice lol

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As jabong mentioned already, it depends a lot on the offer payout. The higher the payout, the more $ you have to spend to get at least some level of significance. That's why we always recommend to start with low payout offers.

We also need to set 2 things apart : certain FUNNEL and the offer/campaign as a whole.

You can have a good offer, but you also need the right funnel to promote it. So spending $50 on an offer that pays $3.25 is not enough to say that the offer is bad and it cannot work. But if after $50 in spend you see -70% ROI, that clearly indicates there is something wrong with the funnel and there is pretty much no point in pushing it longer. You need to make changes to the funnel, then you can test further.

The problem here is, that since you don't have much experience yet, it's hard for you to tell what part of the funnel it is that's causing the problem. As jabong mentioned above, it can be the banners, the LPs and indeed, it can be the offer too.

The only way is to take it step by step. Start with some funnel, give it some traffic, cut the worst elements, send some traffic again. If the results are poor, change the banners, run again. If it improves a bit, try to swap landers, send traffic again. The try to swap the offers/offer-urls, send traffic again. For these particular steps, you don't need to send that much traffic to really see if it helped, quite often something like 10x payout is enough. It's ok to spend more, but the numbers must justify it. If you are at -15%, for example, then by all means give it more time to get significant data, but at -70% it's pointless and you need to change something in the funnel before running traffic again.

I wrote this article some time ago, it might give you a few ideas, check it out : http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-of-my-methods

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Thank you again @jabong82 and @matuloo for your feedback.

Question Matuloo - You talked about differentiating between whether it's the issue with the funnel vs offer and how after spending $50, and I see -70% ROI, it clearly indicates something wrong with the funnel. How do you know it's an issue with the funnel and not the offer here? I'm not understanding fully. Also, what % ROI should I be looking for when initially testing? What % would be a sign that there isn't an issue with the funnel?

Also, in the article you wrote on "How to Optimize," you talked about checking for BOT traffic as a first step. Is that something you recommend doing even for the top traffic networks like TrafficJunky, TrafficStars, etc?

Thanks again!

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With these networks, it's not really necessary, the traffic is as good as it gets for tube traffic. All their sites are legit, so the amount of BOTs should be acceptable. But when working with a source like exoclick, you really need to do some kind of bot test to find the worst placements.

It can be the offer too. The offer is actually part of the funnel. To make sure it's not the offer that's causing problems, simply test several similar offers, if all of them perform on a similar level, it must be the ads or LPs. You can also apply the same logic to offers. If after a solid amount of ads and LP tests, the offer still remains deeply negative, it's not strong enough and you need a new one.

Most of my tests start around the breakeven point or small profit now, but that's because I already had profitable funnels in all GEOs I work with, so I have something to use as a benchmark. But generally speaking, if you fall below -50% ROI, it will hardly be possible to optimize this into profit. Something like -30% in an initial test is a good sign.

Take these numbers with a grain of salt though, it depends on a lot of factors and the way the traffic is structured. Some placement or ad might take up a large part of the rotation, and skew the results. There might be some targeting segment that's not working and that takes the whole campaign down ... it's always good to deeply analyze the traffic after an initial test and see whether it's all bad or something takes it down.

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Thank you @matuloo, I deeply appreciate your insight & feedback. It's been very helpful. I'm going to target a smaller GEO and go back to the drawing board

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Me personally, I made same mistakes as you. Started in Tier 1 GEOs(CA and US) , burnt all of my budget there. Then switched to Tier 2 GEO. By that time, I have no money to continue. Your CPC is too high tbh.
Start from scratch with a smaller GEO, follow the tips from matuloo and other top guys here, you will definitely see success. Try to lower your CPC, initially test only few creatives at a time, like 5 banners, 2 landers, 2 offers give them time to gather data till 3x the offer payout. Then try to make decision and proceed from there. I had done lot of mistakes like you not knowing them. You only lost few $$, as suggested by matuloo and jabong82, follow their suggestions and tips.
Why are you using 2 domains for landers?


P.S: Just FYI, TJ is not good right now.

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Hey @chandhu I appreciate your reply, I'm curious, why do you say that TJ is not good right now? Why is that?

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You can chevk recent threads and posts about TJ here in STM. Please read them and you will understand why.
I am not saying it's not good but if you know how to make it profitable with their traffic, you can proceed but for people who are getting started like us, TJ is not for us. Or else don't use PH, just choose other ones like RT.

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Traffic Junky is still a good source, but it's definitely not as newb friendly as it was before.

After being at it for a while, I think a lot of guides out there on adult dating are really old (over 5+ years ago) that recommend TJ, and I'm not so certain it's great for newbies to start at.

First off the traffic is REALLY expensive, and the quality in my opinion has gone down from before. Also these days users are more savvy than they were years ago, so offer CVRs are down too. This combo of increased costs and lower offer CVRs means that there really is little room for error in your funnel.

Also they do sell off blocks of their traffic to brand advertisers, so you really have to watch where your ads show up in the rotation. Just because you are top bidder when you check in TJ, doesn't mean you're actually receiving first impressions. Sometimes you are, but there are times where you may be way down there because TJ sold a block to some advertiser.

Also you have to learn to deal with their shitty interface. Often the numbers are far off (especially with mobile), and certain spots have become infested with bots. So it takes a while (and a lot of $$$) to really learn the ins and outs of the traffic source.

Furthermore because of the expensive traffic costs and tons of brand advertisers, I think TJ favors super affiliates more. I think in most cases you'll need a significantly bumped payout to run on many of the spots, and this goes for smaller spots as well. And these high payouts are usually only given to super affiliates that can run consistent high volume.

For example there are campaigns I run on TJ where my payout is like 40-50% higher than the street payouts on the network, and I can barely get spots to work. I would bleed money like hell if I just had the street payout or a slightly bumped one.

That doesn't mean you can't make money on TJ, I still buy a good amount of traffic from TJ. But you just really have to know what you're doing as the margin of error is so thin.

It's definitely not a newb friendly platform, and I think probably a lot of promising adult dating affiliates go to die there lol.

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Thanks @jabong82 for the in depth answer.
What traffic source(s) do you suggest as more newbie friendly these days?

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Tbh there's not really an "easy" traffic source as each has it's pros and cons.

Exoclick, Traffic Factory, and Traffic Stars I think are all great places to start.

Man if I had to do it all over again I think maybe I would go with Exoclick.

There's a lot of trash sites on Exoclick, but the statistical reporting and targeting options they offer would be really helpful in learning why something works and why it doesn't.

So when you run campaigns there you can drilldown into the data and usually find pockets of profit and then target that, which is something that a traffic source like TJ doesn't really allow.

But that's just my opinion. Again there isn't an "easy" source, they all have their ups and downs.

I am just not a fan of "TJ for Newbs" as I think it's not that easy of a source to work with.

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TJ is really harder to work with these days, in the past (just a few months ago actually, maybe a year) it was VERY easy to reach the breakeven point with their traffic, now it's not the case anymore. Personally, I believe it's because of the "off-bidding" deals they are doing. Part of the valuable traffic goes away and it's hard to perform well without it.

Exo has definitely the easiest to use interface and the best targeting options, the only reason why it might be harder to work with them for new affiliates, is the amount of crappy sites in the mix.

If I had to recommend one source to newbies these days, it would be trafficfactory. They have their flaws too, but I think it's the easiest source to work with now.

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Fuck guys, I appreciate your honesty @jabong82 @matuloo

This is what I have been experiencing, just over and over again falling flat on my face with these campaigns, I even moved to GEOs like MX and BR, and still getting like -95% to -90% on some initial tests *facepalm*

I have also heard of the block sells that TJ does for top impressions....

Have you guys noticed if the difficulty on TJ has also increased with regards to smaller GEOs? Or do you feel like it has gotten more difficult across the board on TJ?

Shit if you're barely kicking a profit with 50% increased payouts, that might not be a great place for someone new to start out with less experience and street payouts...

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Im not saying that you can't profit at TJ, I still buy a lot of traffic from TJ. I'm just sayin it's not very newb friendly.

Because the traffic is so expensive, you really have to have a dialed in funnel with a good payout. Theres really no room for error, you gotta know what you're doing and how to put together a funnel.

The problem that I experienced on TJ when I was less experienced was running on spots I really had no business running on. Certain spots are just wayyy too expensive to profit, but as a newb since the traffic is high quality, you can get conversions even using a shit funnel that "give you hope".

You start thinkin well maybe if I just test a new angle, new headline, new LP, new banners etc. I can get to profit. But there are just some spots that are too expensive that will never yield profit, and the only way you can know this is through experience (which you don't have).

Being able to identify these black holes of money is really something you can only develop running campaigns and gaining experience.

With your question about "smaller geos", I think many of the more experienced "intermediate affiliates" figured out that they can't hang in the bigger geos on TJ, so they go to the smaller ones (nordics, smaller european countries, latin america etc) so even those geos you will find a lot of competition. If you check geos like SE, NL, NO etc. you'll see there are quite a bit of affiliates there too fighting for traffic.

Again TJ is a good source but I think it's one where it's not that newb friendly. I still buy traffic in large and small geos on TJ profitably, but it's taken a lot of work and experience to be able to pick and choose my spots.

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Gotcha, I appreciate that @jabong82, that's really helpful to understand the "black holes of money" spots. Yeah the chances of me running a funnel with "no room for error" right now is pretty slim lol....

I do want to stick with and master a traffic source, I just don't know if sticking with TJ would be the best move at this point, or just pivot to something like trafficfactory.

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That's really a hard call to make As Jabong mentioned, it's still possible to make profit with TJ, but due to the "block selling" it's just quite hard. If I was in your shoes, I'd probably move to trafficfactory for example. You can return to TJ anytime, as soon as you have a solid funnel to work with.

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Just consider moving to other traffic source as suggested by matuloo and jabong82

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Gotcha, thank you @matuloo, generally speaking, if I'm researching on a site, let's say Pornhub, and I don't see any dating offers on the ad placements, does that mean it wouldn't be a good idea to test on those spots? I'm not using a spy tool btw.

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Try reloading about 5 to 10 times, if you see anything, that's okay. If not, may be they are using day parting option. Try to use new ip address, after doing all these and you don't find any dating ads, may be no one is interested to advertise dating offers there.

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To be honest I don't think there is an adult site with any sort of traffic that wouldn't have at least some adult dating ads on each placement.

I am definitely wary though of placements that don't have any or very few bidders, especially if it's on a med-large site.

It's more likely than not that you found a shit placement than a hidden gem.

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As jabong mentioned above, pretty much all adult spots have some dating ads in rotation, if you don't see any it's likely a targeting problem. In other words, the ad server identified your connection as a VPN and is showing you filler/fallback ads. It's also possible that there is some direct advertiser running some stuff in the spot on a flat deal or the ad network itself is running/testing something.

Assuming that it's not a targeting problem or any of the above mentioned, then it's quite possible dating is not working well in the current spot and chances are pretty low it would work there for you. It could be a poor spot with lots of bots, or its a geo where there are no solid dating offers available to the public at the moment.

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I am not a good reader. I cannot read anything continuously for more than 15 minutes. It took multiple breaks if I want to read something important. But believe me, I have read above thread in only one go. And actually I find this thread is one of the best informative threads on STM forum. Today I learnt a lot and all thanks to our mentor Matej and of-course Jaong

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Sometimes it's really hard to follow the whole thread, the info can get kinda mixed up But I'm glad you were able to crunch this one and learn from it! Hopefully it will help you with your campaigns... and as always, I'm just a question away

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So much value in this follow along
Ask more questions OP, I want to absorb knaawledge.

Btw I also find it hard to make TJ work. I do make money it, but its by finding underpriced spots. My ROI is crazy in TJ right now, I spent around $200 and make like $400 but its only because I know a few underpriced spots.

I recommend going Exo or TS, and that too in Premium/Ron spots. Those are my goto if my funnel sucks, because by cutting placements you can make a profit, however tiny it is.

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Hey guys, so in the past month or so I was able to get a camp green, but the offer got pulled...

So.... since then I've been launching new campaigns and retesting... retesting.....

And seems like my results have gotten shittier and shittier... to where in the last day I spent $50 and made 1 $3.00 SOI conversion...lol....

I launched a campaign a week before Thanksgiving, and was showing some promise (-30% to -40% ROI) off the bat... for a few days....

Then in this last week pretty much tanked to (-80 to -90% ROI) through this week...

I think one of my the things I'm not doing right is not spending enough? I'm spending around $25/day on campaigns in CA.

I know this is not ideal, so I usually wait at least a few days till I look at the data... as the daily fluctuations vary pretty widely.

But would you say that it is better to spend $250 in a single day to test than wait 10 days spending $25/day to test?

Like is the data "more accurate" if you do all your testing in a shorter time period?

And if you DO need to spend 100's to test/day ideally....

How much $$$ does it take to get good at media buying adult?

I know the answer is "it depends" but like...... generally speaking for someone of average - above average intelligence lol.

Cause I feel like you're not careful, you can blow through $$$$ quick testing in AM.

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You're not going to learn anything spending $25/day. To answer your question, I'd rather spend $250/day rather than $25/day over ten days.

You get the same amount of data, but one is quicker than the other, and time is money.

I think in adult there is going to be an $ amount that you're going to have to invest in your "education". Depending on what talents you have, that number is going to vary obviously.

I don't think you can really learn by "playing it safe", since you only get better with experience, and experience costs $$$. You need to make mistakes to grow and learn.

A lot of this in my opinion is learning about where/what to run, as well as the optimization process, and this can only be learned by running a lot of campaigns.

You say you had a "green" campaign before, but what if that was a total fluke? Only way you'll find out is by running hundreds more.

Also part of being successful in adult is getting the best payouts, and you only get that through volume. So if you're spending $25/day it aint gonna cut it.

Adult is hard enough as it is with good payouts, you'll never make it with a shit street payout lol.

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Thank you brother!

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