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Starting my Affiliate Journey with Horny Guys (7)

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I'm a little over a month into my affiliate marketing journey. This is really for crazy people. You all have some serious problems...

Just kidding ... but not so much...

But yes, it's a total roller coaster.

I've spent about $350 on testing, with an ROI of -76%, according to my tracker, but I think it's higher. So it's not too bad

This is what part of my tracker looks like:




I was promoting some sweeps offers and until a few days ago, and due to my AM's insistence, I started promoting mainstream and adult dating offers.

PD: About my title , for some reason, my sensual and non-sexual creatives, have more clicks than the dirty ones. Or maybe I don't talk so dirty or my geos don't talk so dirty, who knows.


In this vertical I' ve seen the most conversions. I finally had a campaign (which was not profitable) with 15 conversions... which was not very good. I spent about $72



I started testing creatives and creating several campaigns like crazy. At the end I was happy that I got several conversions by testing different things, but, ohhh surprise, when I started to sum up the spend from all the campaigns I' d created, I was over my original budget, which was $31.50


CPC: 0.24
Landings: 3
Offers: 1
Payout: $1.05

The same thing happened to me with the other offer I tested. I went over my budget to get the conversions, because to get the conversions, I need to test several creatives.

This is the latest offer I'm working on and I'd like to know where I screwed up, if that's the case


This is exactly what I did. I don't show you my creatives, not because I think they' re great and someone might copy them, naaa. But I shouldn't promote the campaign on that traffic source, so I'm not sure if I should show them ... can I? They can't track my titles? haha

Offer: Adult Dating
Payout: $0.70
Traffic sources: 3, but just 1 worked

What I did

BUDGET:
I set my budget using a formula that @twinaxe left in a post: "Number of landing pages x Number of offers x Average offer payout x 10 = Total Test budget".

STAGE 1:

CPC: $0.009

- I launched a campaign with 5 creatives, testing icons, titles, descriptions and different angles. I launched it at night and checked the numbers in the morning. I assumed that horny men might respond better at that time. And they did


STAGE 2

- After seeing the 5 conversions, I created a new campaign using the best creatives, BUT I created it on another traffic source.

Why? Because I'm running this campaign in PropellerAds, so every time I launch a campaign I have to change my links so they can approve it and I didn't want to touch the campaign that was working fairly ok. So I better create it in another traffic source (admaven), but I only had 2 conversions and not much traffic.

I know, I shouldn't use propeller for adult offers, but I already tried two other sources (admaven and evadav) and I didn't get enough traffic or conversions

"2ND CAMPAIGN">> CPC $0.009 : In addition to the other campaign (propeller) with the best creatives in the other traffic source, I created a new campaign with images and icons and tested other titles and descriptions.

It was running between 7 am and 4 pm, maybe it wasn't a good time, but it only had 1 conversion so I decided to STOP it because I was already over $4 spent.

"1ST CAMPAIGN": In the last 5 hours I had no conversions so I decided to set a time (7pm - 1am).

STAGE 3

"1ST CAMPAIGN": Started running again (only 4 of the 5 initial creatives were active).

"2ND CAMPAIGN": At this time it was already stopped, but 2 late conversions showed up.

"3RD CAMPAIGN">> CPC $0.013: This is a copy of "1ST CAMPAIGN" with the same 4 creatives, but with a higher CPC with and "high" and "medium" user activity.

"4TH CAMPAIGN" >> CPC $0.009: The best 3 creatives from the first campaign, but with large images. Additional 2 new creatives that worked in another offer I had tested.

Here I used: only the best lander of the first campaign, 2 new landers (used in another offer and that didn't have so bad numbers) and direct link.
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In summary >> "1ST CAMPAIGN" "3RD CAMPAIGN" "4TH CAMPAIGN": I let them run until 1 am.
ALL TIME

I checked my results this morning and had several late conversions.

I plan to run the campaigns again this night. At the moment, all of them are stopped.

My questions:

- Should I track my earnings on campaigns by day or globally? For example "1ST CAMPAIGN" was red the first day, green the second day and now it' s red again. The ROI isn't bad, but should I make my decisions based on the results from day by day or overall?


- I set a global budget for all these tests. I have a question about that. Should the budget be for the first campaign or for all the rest of the tests? Or should I calculate a new budget after checking that the offer has potential? Do I do it every time I launch a campaign?For example, in the "4TH CAMPAIGN" I tested 4 variants (3 landers and 1 direct link) but in the others, only 3 landings, should I calculate it based on that?


- At this stage, the campaign was neither bad nor good. Should I continue to invest money and test more creatives and landers? With a new budget?


- As for cutting placements, if a placement has 2 conversions, but multiplied by 2, the cost exceeds my payout, should I remove it?
I ask this because in my campaigns, I' ve never had a placement that makes more than 2 conversions, so if I cut the placements that - although they make conversions, multiplied by 2x, exceed my payout - I' d be left with only the placements that have no conversions (the bad ones? ).

- Nothing to do with the campaigns. But today I was looking for other offers to try, offers similar to this one. And those offers were already on my dashboard without me requesting them. Are they automatically added? Lol

I'm working only with ClickDealer, I've been very busy testing, so I haven't checked others networks, well, only Mobipium and Mobidea (but now they're only using smartlikns), and Mobipium doesn't have a lot of dating SOI offers.
A few weeks ago I had created an account on CrakRevenue, and yesterday I saw their offers, but they look very “adult” “niche", don't know the word, but I don't think I can sneak them into my campaigns (propeller), plus I think the more adult or and porn they are, the more budget. I am assuming



Thanks a lot!! I hope everything was comprehensible

BTW: I think I'd better be trying out dating offers for a while, they are more interesting than sweeps (I think you shouldn't choose a vertical because it's interesting , but because of the profits, but I'd still like to learn a bit more about this vertical).

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Hello

You really spent a lot of time on the tables, nicely done!

This depends on what kind of volume you run, if it's high enough, you can make decisions based even on a few hours of runtime. So let me put it this way, make decisions once you are sure you have enough data (statistically significant sample) to based these decisions on.

I set budgets per campaign OR per Ad/LP/Offer set I'm about to test.

If you think that the performance was good enough to build on, chose the best parts of the funnel and retest. Or keep the best parts and new ones for testing to see if you find something that performs better.

I'm not sure I understand this step... why are you multiplying by 2?

AMs can approve offers for affiliates even without them asking for it, maybe the one you have did it? Some offers also do not need approval, they are open for all by default.

It's a good idea to stick to some vertical for a while, jumping from one to the next won't help you.

In adult dating, the most important part is to have a good offer, the Ads and LPs come second. So I would suggest to test several offers to find some that perform on a solid level. Then you can focus on building a funnel that can convert them.

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Hi @matuloo
it's great to get your advice when it comes to dating

Thanks, I'm a graphic designer, so the visual is like a mental necessity

Obviously I must base that on the geo and the amount of traffic available at my traffic source, right?
It's complicated to analyze numbers when you don't know what's good or bad (aka. newbie)


For example, I was looking at the following numbers.




This would be my analysis of the data:


1) I got almost 40K more impressions in campaign two because my CPC was higher


2) Although I got 40K+ impressions, the amount of clicks is not much different.That means that my creatives are more eye-catching in campaign 1.


With less impressions I got 100 more clicks, but....


3) yes, more clicks, but 2 conversions less (probably too low number to determine anything)


3) The other metrics: spent less, earned less.


So, at this point, I wouldn't know how to choose one for sure. On the one hand, I have one that has more conversions, but needs more impressions to get clicks and on the other hand, less conversions but more clicks.


More clicks, more chances to show the offer and more chances to convert, right?


Campaign 1:
20k impressions >> 674 clicks >> 45 clicks on landing >> 5 conversions


Campaign 2:
68k impressions >> 586 clicks >>105 clicks on landing >> 7 conversions

I can create another campaign testing the higher CPC + the creatives with more clicks + landings with more clicks.


It would be a 5th campaign to test an offer with 43% ROI. Is this how it should be done?


My budget is not unlimited, the more I test, the more I spend and the less space (money and time) I have to test other offers

I'm not sure I understand this step... why are you multiplying by 2?

I think I read it in @vortex tutorial or somewhere else, that a good way to cut bad placements is to multiply their cost by 2x or 5x if you want to be aggressive, if the total is equal or higher than your payout, it should cut it.

then it doesn't make much sense to test many landings and creatives? I have tested about 40 creatives and adapted 15 landings: copy, colors and photos, according to the geo, for 4 offers

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@matuloo btw, so, isn't it such a bad idea to promote adult offers, like "sex chat rooms" (where a more sexual landing is perhaps necessary) in mainstream traffic sources? They always have good volume and I get conversions, but I know I shouldn't, because they don't accept such offers, but I get volume

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This can work, mainstream sources can convert well with adult offers, sometimes even better than pure adult sources. But in the end, those campaings will get rejected and you can lose the account. In other workds, if you start by breaking the rules, you need to accept the fact that you will be losing accounts and you will have to deal with all the crap that comes with blackhat approach. Financially it can work, but it's a hassle and not ethical... you make the decision

You cannot test everything at once, because as you said, you don't know yet what is good and what is bad. You simply have to chose one part of the funnel and focus on that first. And since the offer is the most important part, I would start with that. From the tests you have done so far, you should be able to select a few ads and landers that seem to be working better than the rest, so take those (or variations of those) and use them to find a solid set of offers.

You're right with your analysis, higher CPC gets a boost from the network, because it SHOULD mean revenue for them. Even though in your particular case, due to the much higher CTR, they actually got more $$$ per 1000 impressions in the campaign with lower CPC bid. It's quite possible that if you continued to run this, the campaign with lower CPC would start getting more traffic. Its never easy to tell how EXACTLY the algo will react, since the CTR changes in realtime.

One way or another, you're not after CTR, the actual profit is what matters. So if you were to pick from these two, campaign 2 would be the one to continue with. But yes, it's not really enough data, one more conversion in campaign one would change this.

Campaign 2 seems to be sending better clicks, so a better creative might help here.

Ok, this really depends on how aggressive you want to be. In theory, you should allow each placement to spend 1x of the payout, even 2x in some cases. If the placement spends 1x payout and you get a conversion, that means you broke even. Can you link me to the part where vortex mentions this? I think you might have misunderstood.

I understand, but that's how it works. The testing is not free, unfortunately.

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if you put it that way, that's an approach you should be able to afford. It can be worth it if your profits are high enough... I think. Which is not my case lol

you have chosen the right one . I let them run overnight, and campaign 2 got 10 more conversions, the other one, 0.
Now I do feel like I have enough data, so I'm going to test the best parts of my funnel, like you said, but using other sources of traffic

I've read so much that I don't know where I read that... I think it was here
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post410643

No doubt. I have tested 4 geos, MX, SG, KR and CL. The first two had conversions, but the cost of traffic was higher than the payout, so they didn't worked, but I used the best creatives of those campaigns in the other two geos and they were much better I'll start looking at it as an investment in data to get to know the vertical better.

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Yes, BH comes with extra costs and additional hassle Nothing for me either, I don't like to play cat& mouse.

Ok, so at least you know what campaign has more potential. Any particular reason why you want to move to a different traffic source? It's a good idea to stick with one until you learn it properly, jumping around from one thing to the next won't help you.

So this was what Amy posted: "I would suggest to cut zones at 2x-3x payout in loss,"

This means that you have to cut a zone once it has spend 2-3x payout and is negative. With a $0.50 offer, you should let the zone spend $1-1.5. The way you were calculating it was wrong as that would mean to cut at like $0.1 in spend, using the 5x rule. If you want to be aggressive, cut at 1x spend or earlier if the traffic looks bad ... extremely low CTR on the LP, for example.

And it really is an investment, it's not a loss per say. You're buying data, just as you need to buy the goods when opening a store

I would suggest to limit your testing to a more narrow audience... so pick 1 GEO, stick to 1 vertical and 1 source. This way you won't need that much $$$ for testing and you will learn the market better.

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