Newbie 40 Day Challenge - 1st Run with PPV & LeadImpact (24)
So I'm going through and doing the 40 day newbie challenge and I decided to head off towards PPV land. I've done a lot of FB ads for my cigar site so I felt comfortable with that. However after talking to my AM @ NeverBlue I decided against running stuff on FB b/c of the cost ( I didn't feel like running stuff outside of the US right now I'll venture into that at some point).
Day 1:
I've gone through set up CPVLab deposited money on LI I have my LPs set up and ready to go. I submitted my campaign to LI and I just got the denial email saying
"-Due to previous complaints- this offer is not allowed to run in our network."
Obviously this is the first hurdle I have to get over. Is there any way around this? I'm running a $1.30 email submit for a $500 gift card. I figured that was pretty typical. I'm just curious. So I'm thinking of scraping this campaign and trying another one. It didn't take long to build this out. I'm just anxious to get some traffic going to see results.
I just emailed the LI team to get further clarification on the issue. In the meanwhile I'm going to look at the offers my AM sent over earlier and pick something from there to get up and running as well.
Hope you all enjoy this. I'm excited for the ride.
Day 3 Update -
I started my first campaign and let it run for a two days. I had talked to my AM and she said this was a good zip submit that wasn't over saturated yet. I sent 325 visits with no conversions and spent $13. Not so good. The targeting was fairly accurate I believe, but I was just direct linking so maybe that was the issue? Either way I didn't get any conversions on it so I went a head and paused the campaign for now and I'm setting up 3 others for the moment.
I'm starting with direct linking to most of these offers. Once I get a couple of conversions then I'll start building landing pages for them. At least thats my plan right now. Any one have any other suggestions for that?
Here are the stats total for Campaign 1
Siz,
Nice to see you taking action. It will be difficult for you to be able to accumulate any real data without doing more than direct linking. My recommendation would be to at least make 1 landing page. You can find some great video tutorials from Tijn on the forum. Once you have that, you can then diagnose if its the page that is having issues converting, URLs or a combination of both. Hope this makes sense!
A
Originally Posted by sizdaddy
I started my first campaign and let it run for a two days. I had talked to my AM and she said this was a good zip submit that wasn't over saturated yet. I sent 325 visits with no conversions and spent $13. Not so good. The targeting was fairly accurate I believe, but I was just direct linking so maybe that was the issue? Either way I didn't get any conversions on it so I went a head and paused the campaign for now and I'm setting up 3 others for the moment.
I'm starting with direct linking to most of these offers. Once I get a couple of conversions then I'll start building landing pages for them. At least thats my plan right now. Any one have any other suggestions for that?
Here are the stats total for Campaign 1
great start, although not profitable in terms of money -- it's good to get going and to start learning.
i have no idea why your direct linking didn't work yet. perhaps it is a crappy, slow offer page? (you can test the loading time of any web site here: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/)
Keep it up!
I think its just a shit offer. The landing page looks blah to me. My AM suggested it to me, but I'm gonna email her today and give her a piece of my mind about that offer. I wanna know if other people are seeing conversions or if they just want to drive traffic to it.
Originally Posted by bakaleto
jmedia,
I've thought about building pages, but I like to see if I can get some quick conversions from direct linking before I take the time to create LP's. It's just a quick way to test the offer to see if anyone is even interested in it. This first one seems like a bust so far. So I've paused it. I launched 3 others this morning just waiting on LI to approve them. Hopefully I"ll get some conversions rolling through soon. At least 1 
Siz,
The other thing I am curious is how you determined the bid price. I am typically bidding much lower and still able to receive high ranking. This may be a way to mitigate some initial testing costs.
A
I'm typically bidding the default LI bid. $.015. I seem to be staying at the top for the most part.
Day 4 Update 8/21/12
Still some learning curve pains right now. I got my 1st conversion according to NB yesterday, although it didn't fire in CPVlab which is kind of confusing. I went to check with my offer from NB and realized it was supposed to convert when a user chooses a state, but on the page I was getting, whenever I put in a zip code it went to the offer page and I tried to choose a state and then it would go to a Flog with ads everywhere. I contacted my AM and she's contacted the advertiser b/c she got the same thing.
I also set up 3 campaigns yesterday through LI and they went live for all of about 10 mins when I got an email from LI saying I categorized the LP's incorrectly and they were pausing them. So I had to reply to that email and have them re-categorize them because apparently you can't do that through your account which sucks. I created another campaign this morning. I categorized the LP correctly so hopefully it will go live soon. A lot of waiting on LI which is kinda a pain in the ass. Does anyone out there have a way to speed up the approval process?
Siz,
Good to see you are moving forward. I am experiencing the same delay with LI. I would curious to see what other's experience is.
A
Originally Posted by sizdaddy
Day 5 Update 8/22/12
Spent this morning creating some new landers for 1 campaign. I Took the base image and added some text and put some callout text above and below the image. 0 clicks on my LPs so far, so thats kinda of disheartening. I added more targets in as well, but the main traffic is coming from a few main targets. I would like at least 1 conversion today to kinda keep my hopes up. But I know thats asking a lot. I have a feeling most of the traffic on LI is bored to death with these ads. So I'm going to work on some different landers maybe some ones that aren't as pretty as the current ones. I'm reading all I can on Lander advice in here.
Still lots of learning curve obviously, just figuring out CPVlab and the system. This morning I thought my redirects weren't working, but soon I realized that I was clicking the 'test link' and that the redirects don't work through the test link so I went and copied the link and pasted it and all the redirects worked perfectly then. Here's and update of my data from today. The campaign with 260 views and 6 clicks are my new LPs. So obv I need some work on those. Everything else is direct linking hence the 100% CTR...
Day 6 Update 8/23/12
Starting to get some traction. Last night after sitting on my porch and relaxing with a cigar. I came in to see that I got another conversion with a new campaign that I started that afternoon. Then this morning I wake up and see another conversion from that same campaign. That's really the lifeblood I needed. I went 1 whole day w/o a conversion on any of my campaigns and I know I shouldn't get dishearten but I did. So this pumped me back up. Even though I'm still at a -ROI, at least I'm getting conversions and I can work with that.
While I was smoking my cigar I went back and read the 40 Day challenge and a lot of things are making more sense and becoming more clear especially after you get a few days under your belt. I'm really excited about my progress so far. I set up 3 more campaigns this morning. Just picking random email / zip submits and testing them out. I'm still direct linking them to see if I can get any conversions on the w/o a Lander then I'm going to build landers for ones that get a couple of conversions.
Here's an update on stats from today:
Here's from the last 7 Days:
Slowly but surely I'm getting the hang of it.
Awesome! You are a beast! Maybe it's the cigar!
A
Originally Posted by sizdaddy
Starting to get some traction. Last night after sitting on my porch and relaxing with a cigar. I came in to see that I got another conversion with a new campaign that I started that afternoon. Then this morning I wake up and see another conversion from that same campaign. That's really the lifeblood I needed. I went 1 whole day w/o a conversion on any of my campaigns and I know I shouldn't get dishearten but I did. So this pumped me back up. Even though I'm still at a -ROI, at least I'm getting conversions and I can work with that.
While I was smoking my cigar I went back and read the 40 Day challenge and a lot of things are making more sense and becoming more clear especially after you get a few days under your belt. I'm really excited about my progress so far. I set up 3 more campaigns this morning. Just picking random email / zip submits and testing them out. I'm still direct linking them to see if I can get any conversions on the w/o a Lander then I'm going to build landers for ones that get a couple of conversions.
Here's an update on stats from today:
Here's from the last 7 Days:
Slowly but surely I'm getting the hang of it.
Day 7 Update 8/24/12
Stats from yesterday:
I feel good about the revenue generated yesterday of $3.90. 3 conversions is exciting. Today I'm going to focus on optimizing the campaigns that are working, and making some tweaks to ones that aren't. I set up one new campaign today. I didn't have time to set up 3 this morning. So 1 will have to do. I'm going to go through all the targets that I have and do the breakdown and eliminate ones that aren't getting any traffic and try to find reasonable substitutions for them. I'm also going to work on creating some new landers for all the campaigns this weekend since I'll actually have time to code and design.
Today's Stats:
I started a new car insurance campaign today and it's already eaten up the $5 test budget. So I'm going to pause it and address the issues with it.
I'm trying to find a good optimization thread on here. If anyone has a shortcut to a great thread about campaign optimization I'd really appreciate it if you posted below.
Found a good deal about optimization in the 40 day challenge... So I'll be cranking through that stuff tonight.
Day 10 8/27/12 Update
I didn't get to update much this weekend like I wanted to. My iMac kept crashing on me and it was incredibly frustrating trying to work on landers. So what I did do, is pause all the campaigns that had not generated a conversion. I've been consistently getting at least 1 conversion / day from one of my campaigns. Which is great, but I've gotta work on the landers right now I'm D/Ling. So tonight I'm going to create new landers for this campaign and try to figure out a way to add more targets in and maybe bump the budget to $10 / day since I'm getting fairly steady traffic.
I'm also going to pick 3 new campaigns and launch those w/ Direct Linking tonight.
Stats from Last 7 Days:
As you can I've spent around $70 and only made $12. My first goal is generate $10 / in revenue per day. So I've hit $12 total, now it's time to get that bumped up.
Day 10 Part 2 Update
I got around to create landers for a couple of campaigns. Let me know what you guys think. I'm trying to write better headlines. Hopefully these will get some clicks and convert. All advice is welcomed
&
Hopefully these can generate some more conversions. Right now the campaigns that are converting are spending just a little more than they are generating. So I created landers for that. Hopefully that will drive the ROI up. Although its not quite spending its daily limit so I"m gonna pick out some more targets that hopefully drive some traffic to the ads and we'll see some conversions.
I'm gonna look at a couple of more offers that have a bit higher payout to try and make up some expenses and maybe get lucky with a couple of conversions to make up for the spend.
Great landers. Keep up the good work!
Sizzy,
Sweet landers! Let's catch up!
A
Day 11 8/28/12
Created one new campaign this morning for a financial offer. The payout is nice, around $40, so I know I'll need a bigger testing budget for these camps, but I'm just trying to venture out and try some new things. Hopefully the campaign gets approved by LI and I'll start to see some traffic pushing through. I just discovered the pop-up previewer in Affexpert so the landers I've created look good b/c I made them in a 800x600 frame, but all the rest of the direct linking stuff looks like shit. Even though all my conversions have some through DL's and not landers. I guess I need to work on creating better landers and spend my time on that.
Almost made it into the black yesterday :
Still trying to hit my goal of $10 in revenue. Gotta keep pumping at that. I've got some lander ideas in my head just need to create them in photoshop.
Still generating some revenue, but not profit yet. Im still trying to get in the habit of launching 3 new campaigns a day. Still struggling to find offers to push and where to target them. I've got a couple of campaigns are seeing steady conversions so I'm focusing on those and trying to expand the targets and create better landing pages, but for some reason the direct linking works the best.
Stats from yesterday :
Stats so far from Today:
My one campaign that is driving most of the revenue is doing well, I added a couple of new targets that ate up a lot of the budget today or else it might have been profitable!
Edit:: Turns out I'm an idiot and forgot to add the code for Landing pages from CPV lab to track clicks. This whole time I thought I wasn't getting clicks on my LPs. Maybe I wasn't, but I don't know either. So I'm fixing that right now. Hopefully have some good LP data soon!
Great follow along man! Keep it up 
Day 13 8/30/12
So yesterday I generated $7.50 in revenue, but I spent close to $20 doing it. This morning I spent some time optmizing my targets and trying to get some others in there that could send traffic that would possibly convert. I'm starting to see some click through on my Landers now that I implemented the correct code... Each day is a learning day. I've gotta stick with trying to launch 3 campaigns a day. I feel like the hardest part is scaling once you find some successful keywords. I've been playing in Ad Planner trying to find demographic info, but they've released a new version and now only show sites that are opted into the Google Display Network. So here are the stats from yesterday:
This is the best follow along I've read so far. Most detailed and the author hasn't disappeared. lol
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