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Direct Site Media Buy Case Study Follow Along...Alexa Rank 69 Site (29)

05-30-2011 08:24 PM #1 polarbacon (Moderator)
Direct Site Media Buy Case Study Follow Along...Alexa Rank 69 Site

Hello money stackers....


Just thought I would roll with a small case study on a site called reddit.com (alex rank 69)

They have there own self-serving platform...(free sign up)... http://reddit.com

I had seen a demo elsewhere and I wanted to give it a run for myself so here goes...

I did a series of videos for you all...dun't worry they are only 5 min each in length for those of us with ADHD....

But I tried to cover everything I could....soup to nuts if you will......but if you have more questions just ask in this thread....will answer what I can....


part 1

http://www.screencast.com/t/rH5iw37GKwF


part 2

http://www.screencast.com/t/cHzURaAm


part 3

http://www.screencast.com/t/9MjkD3yH6h1S


part 4

http://www.screencast.com/t/bsjcKLX8vA7p


part 5

http://www.screencast.com/t/DLbqoDfmc


25 min in all.....

as I get data I will post it here....

05-30-2011 09:12 PM #2 alex_b (Member)

Interesting, read about the reddit platform a while ago and someone did a public case study, I think it was some dog food product? He gave away some tips of how he turned a loser into a winner there but I can't remember it anymore. Not sure if it was on wickedfire but I think it was.

Didn't watch the videos yet but /subscribed so I don't forget about it. Thanks!

05-30-2011 09:23 PM #3 drooblez (Member)

Nice job man, be curious to know if those ads get approved and what kind of results they bring in. Keep us updated!

05-30-2011 10:59 PM #4 peraction (Member)

Well fuck it, I had done a case study series on one of my forums a few weeks ago about Reddit. Was trying to keep it small but since someone else did one and a lot more people know about it I might as well post it here for the hell of it in case it helps. At the moment, I've got it doing over five hundred a day net averaged out and that is with multiple campaigns and offer verticals, but its jumped around like crazy.

Frankly that is pretty shit money for such a huge site and it has been a pain in the ass optimizing this thing. As you can see in Polars vids, my comments will be similar, this was not built with the direct response or affiliate (same thing) marketer in mind so it's basically on you to figure out wtf you need to do to scale this thing.

I've been playing a lot with the daily bids trying to determine the increase if any in traffic vs spend. $30 should theoretically show your ad X % of times more than a $20 bid, but what is the cap to that if any? Can I spend $1000 a day and get two million views? And of course there is no day parting or freq cap either.

Ad Support is bullshit, one of my campaign managers has been emailing those bastards constantly, trying to get answers to these questions but they have yet to respond after weeks of spending money with them, so currently we're on our own to figure it out, which isn't unlike most traffic sources really.

As you can see in my vids, approvals are basically 100%, I could probably run an ad for meth and they would approve it at this point but if everyone starts running dirty presells and "questionable" offers I'm sure it will die off quick so don't be a muppet.

Also important to mention is that a good portion of my daily earnings are on pretty clean offers overall in verticals I didn't show in the vids since I didn't have those campaigns up yet, so don't just be thinking ecig and bizopp, those offers are barely converting for me right now because Reddit users are as I and Polar say in the vids, smarter, and the only reason I'm making any money on those less than quality offers is because the CPC breaks out so cheap. As more affiliates discover Reddit, the CPC's will jump as usual and make those verticals unprofitable anyway.

Anyway, here's the first few vids I put up on it last month and maybe I'll post the new ones here as well http://www.screencast.com/t/sl1wmqhRZ

05-31-2011 08:39 AM #5 Mr Green (Administrator)

Oh man sick posts guys! I'm gonna go through these videos tonight. Cheers polarbacon and peraction!

05-31-2011 02:27 PM #6 emonetized (Member)

That was a really great series of videos with some golden tips. I liked having the image pic looking AT your headline. It's makes sense but we sometimes forget some of the little things that can make a big difference.

Did they approve all of your ads?

05-31-2011 05:27 PM #7 peraction (Member)

Just as an update, I've tested just about everything besides porn and viagra and its all approved with the exception of one campaign one of my guys put up mistakenly with a redirect URL, lol.

So to be clear:

Scam offers, downloads, fake pages all cool.

Redirects....GTFO

05-31-2011 05:31 PM #8 polarbacon (Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by emonetized View Post
That was a really great series of videos with some golden tips. I liked having the image pic looking AT your headline. It's makes sense but we sometimes forget some of the little things that can make a big difference.

Did they approve all of your ads?
Yes everything got approved as of today.....

05-31-2011 05:34 PM #9 clickez (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by peraction View Post
Well fuck it, I had done a case study series on one of my forums a few weeks ago about Reddit. Was trying to keep it small but since someone else did one and a lot more people know about it I might as well post it here for the hell of it in case it helps. At the moment, I've got it doing over five hundred a day net averaged out and that is with multiple campaigns and offer verticals, but its jumped around like crazy.

Frankly that is pretty shit money for such a huge site and it has been a pain in the ass optimizing this thing. As you can see in Polars vids, my comments will be similar, this was not built with the direct response or affiliate (same thing) marketer in mind so it's basically on you to figure out wtf you need to do to scale this thing.

I've been playing a lot with the daily bids trying to determine the increase if any in traffic vs spend. $30 should theoretically show your ad X % of times more than a $20 bid, but what is the cap to that if any? Can I spend $1000 a day and get two million views? And of course there is no day parting or freq cap either.

Ad Support is bullshit, one of my campaign managers has been emailing those bastards constantly, trying to get answers to these questions but they have yet to respond after weeks of spending money with them, so currently we're on our own to figure it out, which isn't unlike most traffic sources really.

As you can see in my vids, approvals are basically 100%, I could probably run an ad for meth and they would approve it at this point but if everyone starts running dirty presells and "questionable" offers I'm sure it will die off quick so don't be a muppet.

Also important to mention is that a good portion of my daily earnings are on pretty clean offers overall in verticals I didn't show in the vids since I didn't have those campaigns up yet, so don't just be thinking ecig and bizopp, those offers are barely converting for me right now because Reddit users are as I and Polar say in the vids, smarter, and the only reason I'm making any money on those less than quality offers is because the CPC breaks out so cheap. As more affiliates discover Reddit, the CPC's will jump as usual and make those verticals unprofitable anyway.

Anyway, here's the first few vids I put up on it last month and maybe I'll post the new ones here as well http://www.screencast.com/t/sl1wmqhRZ
First, thank you for the detailed case study and outing a new traffic source. Did you ever determine what the relationship was between increased traffic vs. increased bids?

05-31-2011 08:00 PM #10 ppchound (Member)

Many thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on Reddit polarbacon. I look forward to the update to see how the traffic pans out. Hopefuly in your favor!

05-31-2011 09:46 PM #11 steezy (Member)

awesome. I love reddit

06-01-2011 08:48 AM #12 mdreier (Member)

Can you target by country?

06-01-2011 11:09 AM #13 polarbacon (Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by mdreier View Post
Can you target by country?
not that I can find....its really a odd platform

06-01-2011 07:04 PM #14 wildfing (Member)

Nice, @Peraction - How did your further tests pan out, still doubleish profits? Also did you notice increase with traffic when you upped the daily limit?

06-05-2011 12:12 AM #15 canopus (Member)

Any update on this? I'm a big fan of Reddit and am really interested in hearing the results of your test!

06-05-2011 12:47 AM #16 polarbacon (Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by canopus View Post
Any update on this? I'm a big fan of Reddit and am really interested in hearing the results of your test!
yes will have an update tomorrow as it took a few days for the first round of tests to finish....

06-05-2011 01:44 AM #17 lifepow (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by polarbacon View Post
yes will have an update tomorrow as it took a few days for the first round of tests to finish....
Oh man can't wait to see the results...

06-05-2011 02:26 AM #18 mediumpie (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by polarbacon View Post
not that I can find....its really a odd platform
Really weird.. lol

06-06-2011 01:25 AM #19 polarbacon (Moderator)

Ok reddit update.....

camps have finished and so far nothing overly promising................................

BUT (you knew there was a but coming)...

traffic is cheap....and I am gonna do a few more tests before I write it off entirely.....


just the hard numbers so far $100 spent $6.40 in rev sooo a $93.60 loss....

As far as the ads are concerned.....I will get into that after the next test or 2 is done....its a tough bunch over there at reddit.....

example of some of the comments from one ad I ran.....(these can be turned off....but sometime feedback is good esp if you have no clue whats gonna work)


[–]ItsAlwaysSunnyIP 15 points 3 days ago
He made 1.7 million by fooling a bunch of fools into buying his shitty book/dvd/bs.
permalinkreportreply
[–]this_isnt_me 3 points 3 days ago
That's an up vote!
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]tville218 10 points 3 days ago
This guy looks full of shit.
permalinkreportreply
[–]tfaal 1 point 3 days ago
I don't know man, look at all the money in the banner over that page. A man doesn't have that many dollar bills in his site design unless he means business.
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]tville218 1 point 3 days ago
itsalwayssunnyIP is right fools not just fools but damn fools.
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]ifeelstabby 8 points 3 days ago
This is why you always pay extra to disable comments.
permalinkreportreply
[–]projhex 1 point 3 days ago
I was wondering about the shitty ads that you couldn't comment on. I honestly don't think there should even be a tier for no comments, it would keep the total and utter shit like this ad off of Reddit.
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]helotac 5 points 3 days ago
"403 - Error Invalid Country" ಠ_ಠ
permalinkreportreply
[–]tville218 1 point 3 days ago
Your not missing much.
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]goobervision 1 point 3 days ago
Personally I thought that was harsh, as far as I know England is a valid country.
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]picsnap 5 points 3 days ago
"Use this one weird tip-discovered by a mom- that stockbrokers don't want you to know!"
permalinkreportreply
[–]kloober 5 points 3 days ago
One weird tip of a flat income
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]chewbracca 1 point 3 days ago
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 at 8:00 PM Central Time, 9:00 PM Eastern Time Call In: 1-712-338-8100 Access Code: 222361 followed by # sign
--- Who's gonna call in? I KNOW I AM
permalinkreportreply
[–]chewbracca 1 point 3 days ago
AWW FUCK ME, I'm the only participant in the conference. I CAN'T WAIT!!!
permalinkparentreportreply
[–]yoyokng1 2 points 2 days ago
I would tell you guys the secret, but I don't have enough money left to buy his third DVD.
permalinkreportreply

so as you can see...they are smarter than the average bear......

but that doesn't mean they can't be sold.....just means that we may have to raise the IQ of the ads abit to make something work.....

should have some more results for you later this week.......and hopefully a full breakdown.....

I didn't do one here just because i didn't want to skew the results of the current test.....in case you all wanted to go out and blow up reddit.....

06-16-2011 01:15 AM #20 tijn (Moderator)



Reddit users outraged!
http://www.reddit.com/tb/i0dj9

Is this u dan?

06-16-2011 01:19 AM #21 canopus (Member)

I just saw this post on Reddit hahahahah! tijn beat me to the punch! This is great!

06-17-2011 02:14 PM #22 ranaroussi ()

It's interesting to see that reddit ads get indexed by google!

After looking at your video I went to google and searched for "Electronic Cigarette Reviewed" and your reddit ad came up on google's 1st serp ;-)

06-18-2011 10:33 PM #23 Mr Green (Administrator)

Sorry I'm confused you made $6 rev from a biz opp rebill??

06-20-2011 08:41 AM #24 disciple (Member)

Thanks for the case-studies Polar & Peraction

So... is the platform a CPM model or CPC?

06-22-2011 03:03 PM #25 affiliatebiz (Member)

So... is the platform a CPM model or CPC?
It's a flat-rate ad platform.

07-06-2011 03:35 AM #26 canopus (Member)

Did anything ever come of this case study? Besides what's posted?

07-06-2011 06:35 AM #27 ianz63 (Member)

wow, this gave me some ideas. Think about this: Reddit users are primed to interact/communicate so make something of that on your lander - I'm testing soon, so I don't know anythng yet could be bs on my part

07-09-2011 07:07 PM #28 ppchound (Member)

What I like about STM is that the guys tell it like it REALLY is. They are not afraid to show campaigns that have bombed. That way we all learn from the experience.
I've grown tired of watching tutorials by 'gurus' who show stuff like "I set this up in 5 minutes. Went to take a piss and my account had another $2,000,000 in it when I got back" bullshit.

02-28-2012 10:07 AM #29 tijn (Moderator)



Here is some other great info about marketing on reddit from kissmetrics:

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/reddit-marketing-guide/

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