Boomachucka's Wild West Follow Along Contest - Bank Penetration (21)

Alright, I have a follow-along in the actual follow-along section, and will update that when I'm less busy building new campaigns.

I'm thinking that participating in the contest would be a good idea. Why pass up an opportunity to get some extra work in? I see people are cleaning up over in the Mobile forum, and I'm tempted to head there... but I have a lot to learn in regards to that platform, so I'm going to save it until this contest is done.

Goals:
I'd like to reach a solid profit (min. $100/day) and really develop a good, consistent workflow for getting new landers and targets out while I'm testing to speed up the process of finding winners. The trouble I've had in the past has been my targeting and getting enough data consistently to make decisions.

Offer/Traffic/Vital Info:
Offer:RudeFinder Clean LP
Payout: $5.00 CPA
Traffic Sauce: Lead Impact- if crazy profits happen and I can get an account at TV, I'll roll this offer into their network as well.
Country: US and Canada. Running on the same campaigns in some cases, since this one is applicable internationally.
Bid/Budgets: Sadly, the current bid on LI for this area seems high at 0.025 and 0.028. I'll talk more about why and which ones cost more. Also, my budget is currently at $15 a day between 3 LP's, but I'll be adjusting that as well as my bids based on traffic.
Tracking: CPVLab, of course!



Landing Pages (to start):
LP1 - This will be (obviously) running on Craigslist and some other similar websites.


LP2 - Same targets as LP1


LP3 - Fully dynamic landing page. Calls out the site the user is visiting as well as their city, and I have it set up to rotate (and track, of course) 5 different images.


LP4 - This is dynamic as well, rotating between various pictures and titles ("Which one is..." ex, hung, top, bottom, hotter, etc).


LP5 - A rendition of the first lander I did. Slightly bigger pictures, and the color scheme is more like what they'll find on the offer page. I have another one in the pipe that totally rips RudeFinder's header as well, but I'd like to see how this does. I'll be replacing most of the LP2 and LP3's with this. The "Free Accounts" bit ticks down by 1-2 every 2-8 seconds.


LP6 -Similar to LP5, I'm taking RudeFinder's header and trying to build some continuity without stepping over the "pretty and ignored/ugly and clicked on" line. Same ticker as LP5.


LP7 -

Tuesday, July 17- Monday, July 23rd and Wrap Up
Vitals: Spend: $182.40 Conv: 0, P/L: ($182.70)
Follow Along Totals: Spend: $321 Conv: 2, P/L: ($311.10)

I didn't end up making nearly as many conversions as I was hoping for ($9.90 total. Cash money, yo.), but I guess I can't expect it to be that easy! Let's start with what I learned:

1. Simple- very simple- seems to work better. My very first LP performed the best, even compared to slight variations from it as well as the many completely different layouts I tried. Less text is better too- let people sell themselves on all the hot girls they're going to be having sex with rather than throw a bunch of words at them. I feel like it may be slightly opposite when targeting older demo's (35+).

2. For dating, people seem to want variety. I always got a higher CTR with the LP's that used some sort grid showing multiple girls on it. Using the same pictures but reducing their number, but retaining the same title and color scheme resulted in a quickly plummeting CTR.

3. Pictures of 'real girls' on, again, simple and relatively ugly layouts performed better than images of models/heavily modified pictures/etc. Also making things look good, as proven time and time again, seem to be perceived as more advertisement-esque. The LP with the red titles and the black and white picture did terrible, and there was a variation of it with a colored picture of a girl in a bikini which performed better (but still poorly, <3%).

4. Demographics. This is the area that I didn't spend enough time on in my research. Take more time to target effectively before throwing money at traffic willy-nilly, as I very much did in the earlier stages of this.

5. Check your gosh-darn links manually every time! Yes, I know it's simple. Yes, I know it's hard to make a mistake when doing something so simple. But when you do make a mistake, it's wasted money. After my first couple days of running traffic I realized that a link to one of my offers was broken. Check them- unless the second you'll save is more valuable than the potential loss in earnings or data!

Here are the last LP's I tested over these several days. All of them had a poor CTR- About 1.5-3% each, and there are a couple random variations I haven't posted (they didn't do any better, srs). Examples of what not to do, I suppose!














Here is the random-countdown Javascript code I used on a couple LP's, as I'm sure it will come in handy for some of you:

var count = 40;
var timer = setInterval(function() { 
	count -= Math.floor(Math.random()*3); document.getElementById('seconds').innerHTML = count;
	if( count <= 0) { count = 0; clearInterval(timer); document.getElementById('seconds').innerHTML = --timer; } },
(2000+Math.floor(Math.random() * 1000)));

//Place with: <span id="seconds">40</span>
//If the client browser is broken or whatnot, it will then still show 40.

Lol "bank penetration" made me question what would be in your thread. Nice set up mate.

boomachucka, glad to see you got in on this!!! Good luck man, I'll look for you on skype later.

Good luck man!

Updated post with a new LP. I'll post back tomorrow or Saturday depending on how things are going.

Kind of concerned about the lack of conversions, but I feel like I need way more data/spend before I can expect any- even so, not sure how my ROI's going to look if that's what I do.

Also an AM suggested I try throwing in some BBW pictures. I lol'd, but why not try it?

Really like your landing pages. Good job on those.

Rude Finder is quite an unreliable offer. It's tough to make any judgment call when your stats tomorrow could be completely different to what they were yesterday. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on though. Good luck!

Originally Posted by Finch

Really like your landing pages. Good job on those.

Rude Finder is quite an unreliable offer. It's tough to make any judgment call when your stats tomorrow could be completely different to what they were yesterday. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on though. Good luck!

Originally Posted by Finch

Really like your landing pages. Good job on those.

Rude Finder is quite an unreliable offer. It's tough to make any judgment call when your stats tomorrow could be completely different to what they were yesterday. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on though. Good luck!

It's weird, my CTR has been dropping like a rock over the course of the day. Don't know what's up with that.

Anyway, more updates tomorrow.

I think it would be a good idea to just post my updates in a reply as well as updating the second post there. Easier for everyone to see what's going on.


Thursday July 12, Friday July 13
Vitals: Spend: $49.87, Conv: 0, P/L: ($49.87)
Landing Page Performance


Notes
LP1: I made a dynamic version of LP1 since it seemed to be doing well, so I wanted to test it on targets other than Craigslist. It's literally the exact same as LP1, except it calls out the user's site instead of being locked to CL in the title. Magically, it performs much worse than the original, however that could be a factor of the targets it's being sent to (Do note that it doesn't seem to perform well on Craigslist either). Still, this layout is the clear winner here, which I find strange because... well, there isn't much to it. No buttons, no strong call-to-action. Also, all of the [mod]'s are just minor differences in copy.

LP2: Didn't do as well as I hoped, but it got a couple clicks. I thought this layout looked promising, which led to LP3's layout as well.

LP3: Terrible. At best, half as many clickthroughs as my original LP1. Maybe there's too much text? I thought this one would blow the first out of the water for sure. I tested 5 different pictures of girls, so I doubt that it's that bit- maybe people just like to click on smaller, low-res thumbnails.

LP4: Targeting Criagslist m4m links. Fewer clicks than I thought but traffic is low and it's early.

I'm not sure what to do with these other than make up a few new landers based on my original layout, but there isn't really much that I can do with it. I find it surprising that even after about 91 total clicks, I haven't had a single conversion. I've heard from several people that this offer is unreliable, but if it was being shaved it wouldn't be that bad- makes me worry that my tracking isn't set up properly or whatnot, or maybe my LP's should reflect the offer's LP a little more. Or should I dump this offer altogether and focus on another one? Do you think this is enough data to make that decision?

Completed
1. Build a Male-targeted Lander.
2. Got tons of targets to test LP3.
3. Tested all landers and their variations.
Action Plan
Saturday, July 14:
1. Make two new landers based on my original LP1
2. Modify LP3 and it's layout. Less text/comparison, more girls. Different borders on pictures/etc for all LP's. See what happens.

Saturday July 14
Vitals: Spend: $27.50 Conv: 1, P/L: ($22.60)
Landing Page Performance


Notes
LP1: Again, it did fairly well. CTR on the CL targets was up around 7%, and as you can see here was a solid 5.5%. This is also the only LP to give me a conversion so far.

LP2/LP3: Both have been dropped from further testing.

LP4 (M4M): about a 3.25% CTR. Very low traffic- I think I will drop this for now and focus on M4W offers, I can always come back to gay traffic.

LP5: This one did well. CTR averaged to about 7.07% between the three header copies - I've switched the second (lowest performing) header option to something else, we'll see how it does tonight. I'm going to be using this as a baseline for LP6's performance.

LP6: Didn't do as well as I'd hoped considering I went for similar branding. I've added a border, a button to click through with, as well as a 'disclaimer' that the free accounts are a limited time offer. I'll know more about how this does tonight.

Other notes:
I decided to only post the results from the Dating site targets since there's more data, therefore it's closer to statistical significance. The other two targets (CL m4m/w4m) didn't have enough data to warrant adding everything together. I'm still concerned about the lack of conversions though, as I've spent a 'fair' amount on the offer and while I'm getting the hang of bringing up my CTR (I think, we'll see...), I would think that I should have seen a couple more conversions by now.

Completed
1. Two new landers based on LP1 (LP5 and LP6)
Action Plan
Sunday, July 15:
1. Modify LP5's poorest performing header.
2. Modify LP6 to see if adding a button, border, changing the pictures, and changing the headline will change CTR's at all.

I've also been thinking of taking a similar approach to what Maynzie (I think) did in one of his campaigns for health products - doing up either an email submit and giving people a free dating guide, or building a site to use as a pre-sell page before forwarding people along to the offer. Of course, offering a free online dating guide on there as well- laden with affiliate links.

I'm not sure if it's worth the effort yet though. I'd like to get to the point where I can get some sustainable testing money coming in first.

So I just took a look at the RudeFinder offer on another network. Apparently there is a 9-field submit required to actually get the conversion- I wonder if the 5 on the first page count towards that, or if it's other fields inside the offer on top of those?

Hmm.

CTR is super low today. Thus far (between the data I've posted here and some minor spend I haven't posted), I've spent over $100 on traffic to this offer. Any opinion on whether I should continue to push for it? Maybe next I'll try some different targeting.

Sunday, July 15-Monday, July 16
Vitals: Spend: $61.13 Conv: 1, P/L: ($56.23)
Landing Page Performance


Notes
LP1: Continues to have the highest CTR of all of my landers, even the ones that have a similar template to it. Built a new LP (LP7) using some of the ideas from it.

LP5: CTR was initally very high but has quickly and consistently dropped, now hovering around an average of 3.5%-ish. The differences in copy don't really seem to make much of a difference, because where one may perform poorly on the same targets one day, it performs better than the others on the next. No consistency at all.

LP6: Going to drop LP6. Very poor CTR on this one between the three sets of targets.

Other notes:
I started a new campaign in LI using internal targets for many of the dating sites and then imploded the URL's, however I ended up getting all of my traffic from the same places as before (since they were in both campaigns). Overall I think the issue is with my angle- I uploaded a new LP (LP7) to try something a little different, but I still don't think it's different *enough*. Maybe next I'll try targeting users looking at online dating guides and that sort of thing.

Also note that I didn't include the dating targets from July 16th by accident, however the data is basically the same with the exception of 1 conversion. If somebody super-duper wants to see it I'll post it up.

New LP7:



Completed
1. New Targets, New Landers
Action Plan
Tuesday, July 17:
1. Modify LP5's poorest performing header.
2. Modify LP6 to see if adding a button, border, changing the pictures, and changing the headline will change CTR's at all.

Also, here are the targets I've been seeing the most traffic on:

.pof.com/
match.com
.fling.com/
.match.com/
cupid.com
.okcupid.com/
datehookup.com
.datehookup.com/
.zoosk.com/
pof.com/basicsearch.aspx
okcupid.com
.fling.com
yahoo.match.com/
.match.com
singlesnet.com
.datehookup.com
yahoo.match.com
.girlsdateforfree.com/
pof.com/friends.aspx
.eharmony.com/
.onlinebootycall.com/
.singlesnet.com/
match.com/dating
.pof.com
.zoosk.com
.zoosk
adoos.com
eharmony.com
.singlesnet.com/?
mingle2.com
.eharmony.ca/
.datingbetter.com/
.date.com/
lavalife.ca/010/member
.meetmarketadventures.com/
mingle2.com/
.oneplusyou.com/

Tuesday, July 17- Monday, July 23rd and Wrap Up
Vitals: Spend: $182.40 Conv: 0, P/L: ($182.70)
Follow Along Totals: Spend: $321 Conv: 2, P/L: ($311.10)


I didn't end up making nearly as many conversions as I was hoping for ($9.90 total. Cash money, yo.), but I guess I can't expect it to be that easy! Let's start with what I learned:

1. Simple- very simple- seems to work better. My very first LP performed the best, even compared to slight variations from it as well as the many completely different layouts I tried. Less text is better too- let people sell themselves on all the hot girls they're going to be having sex with rather than throw a bunch of words at them. I feel like it may be slightly opposite when targeting older demo's (35+).

2. For dating, people seem to want variety. I always got a higher CTR with the LP's that used some sort grid showing multiple girls on it. Using the same pictures but reducing their number, but retaining the same title and color scheme resulted in a quickly plummeting CTR.

3. Pictures of 'real girls' on, again, simple and relatively ugly layouts performed better than images of models/heavily modified pictures/etc. Also making things look good, as proven time and time again, seem to be perceived as more advertisement-esque. The LP with the red titles and the black and white picture did terrible, and there was a variation of it with a colored picture of a girl in a bikini which performed better (but still poorly, <3%).

4. Demographics. This is the area that I didn't spend enough time on in my research. Take more time to target effectively before throwing money at traffic willy-nilly, as I very much did in the earlier stages of this.

5. Check your gosh-darn links manually every time! Yes, I know it's simple. Yes, I know it's hard to make a mistake when doing something so simple. But when you do make a mistake, it's wasted money. After my first couple days of running traffic I realized that a link to one of my offers was broken. Check them- unless the second you'll save is more valuable than the potential loss in earnings or data!

Here are the last LP's I tested over these several days. All of them had a poor CTR- About 1.5-3% each, and there are a couple random variations I haven't posted (they didn't do any better, srs). Examples of what not to do, I suppose!














Here is the random-countdown Javascript code I used on a couple LP's, as I'm sure it will come in handy for some of you:

var count = 40;
var timer = setInterval(function() { 
	count -= Math.floor(Math.random()*3); document.getElementById('seconds').innerHTML = count;
	if( count <= 0) { count = 0; clearInterval(timer); document.getElementById('seconds').innerHTML = --timer; } },
(2000+Math.floor(Math.random() * 1000)));

//Place with: <span id="seconds">40</span>
//If the client browser is broken or whatnot, it will then still show 40.

I can't express how much I hate this offer + JHU and others from the advertiser. Everyone else is spot on about how unreliable it is.

Hah, yep. That's what I've heard.

To be honest I started split testing it with other offers about halfway through the contest, but I didn't do much better with them so I know I have a lot to work on.

I think something that you determined was to completely change up the angle of attack + the offer. Lots of similar style landing pages, all that didnt work.

Very much so. Something I need to learn is to get more creative and lock down specific psychographics to go after with my landers.

JHU and RF work with Media Buying In My experience. Make such landers and Use them in JuicyAds. With PPV I doubt the offer works!
Change targets to something more saucy, where they actually dont find anything real! As in change targets from Craigslist as people do find real people on CL.
Change from PoF as people also find women there.
Use those White Label Sites as targets!

I am also in the learning stage in PPV but I these are just my thoughts. I may be wrong though.
The Mods could let me know here