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Journey to Success: Help me Get there. Negative to Breakeven to big $$$$$$$$ (35)

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I have wanted to start this thread for a few days now. I thought for a while about whether I wanted to post this and if it was just my ego keeping from doing it so I decided to put it all out there. The ultimate accountability.

This is my journey to stacks in the Facebook world of dating. (and possibly other offers)

Traffic Source: Facebook. I have a 2k/day account from a little advertising I did last year.
Offer: Dating Campaign on Peerfly promoting a US dating offer to men currently 40-50 YO.
Facebook targeting: males 40-50 US. With specific interests. Target is about 250k people.
Technology: Direct linking, tracking through Prosper on a Storm VPS server. All traffic goes to a Geo IP script first to determine country that is passed to Prosper for quality control. No cloaking only DMR (double meta refresh) through Prosper otherwise the ads are usually blocked, then sent directly to the offer page.

Stats:
Campaign Started: 01/11/2013
Revenue: $270
Ad spend: $264.71 (screenshot below)
ROI: 1.99%

So my biggest issue is that I am getting good CTRs on the ads that are getting traffic. Between .1-.5% depending on the ad and days. One mistake I know I made is putting too many ads in the same campaign. I have since changed to doing two ads per campaign and the second is just a duplicate. So I either need a lower CPC or higher conversion or both, but how?

I can't seem to get my CPC lower than $.30 even with a .3 CTR. But it seems if the CTRs stay high costs are slowly coming down. This is another reason I continue to run this campaign as CTRs seemed to stay consistent and are even actually increasing.
I am tracking CRs against the Peerfly stats and they are inline at about 6%.

If anyone can give me any tips as I feel a little stuck. I don't want to pause the campaign as I am at breakeven. Plus as an added benefit I am getting a little social proof from Peerfly that I can make them money. Even if that costs me a little I think it will pay off in the long run. Should I ask for a bump already?

How do I get this thing more profitable. Here are some screen shots and if there is anything else you guys would like to see I will put it up. It also seems to me, to get the higher CTRs you have to target more narrow but then you don't get as much traffic and can't scale, kind of a catch 22.

I also have a few things I would love your guys' support on. I want to be totally honest. My credit is shit, I had some real estate deals go bad last year and I lost a good chunk of my portfolio and now it's a mess. I have one $900 credit card left but that's all. I also have about $25k in cash I can leverage. So if anyone can give me suggestions on scaling as well as cash flow management I would really appreciate it. I know I will need it soon

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My stats for today:


Campaign Overall:


Earnings Report:


Also if anyone is interested in a mastermind or accountability group let me know. Only guys that are executing and actively running campaigns no tire kickers please. Group limited to 5 people with weekly Skype calls, maybe more often if people are interested.

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To me based on this shot it looks like I am being penalized for all of the non performing or slow ads in this campaign. Only 4 out of the 10 ads are getting any traffic. To test this I created another campaign with this same ad by itself. It has a .34 CTR and am now getting $.11 clicks.

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Well at the end of the day I didn't want to be at breakeven. So I started tweaking. Cut some loser ads, duplicated some of the winners and ran traffic. I think one of the big secrets behind Facebook approvals is your approval rating. I almost never have ads declined and it seems like that is helping me with faster approvals lately or maybe it is just luck. Also, I do everything from a Ukrainian IP which I am surprised hasn't created any problems for me because my address and account are based in the US. But now I don't want to use a proxy or anything because it is working now and don't want to change anything. I have already started working on getting other Facebook accounts if and when the ban comes. I also decided yesterday to try a little bit of Female demo traffic. It didn't work that well. It did convert much better than the men but the CTRs were very low and my CPC costs didn't come down. How much do I spend when testing? I spend $10 per ad. So for yesterday my final stats were:

Results for Jan 15th
Ad spend: $272.91
Revenue: $329.50
ROI: 20.74%

This includes a lot of testing new ads for a few different campaigns so can't complain about that. And actual revenue for this single offer is higher but that's too much work and I'm exhausted.




**** Also want to put this out there if anyone can give me suggestions. I need a creative way to manage cash flow so I can continue to grow. I never thought I would ramp up my spending this quickly but I can see easily spending 1-2k a day on ad spend in the near future.

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Concentrate on one network and talk to your AM about weekly or bi-weekly payments. Also, keep in mind that some advertisers reverse some leads at the end of the month (example PeopleMeet offers do so).

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Yup I am focusing on Peerfly. After 1k / week I can get weekly payments which I will hit today easily. But I want to duplicate this campaign internationally and they don't have offers that will work for this campaign so I have started testing some things on Click dealer. So far it's looking good. Will add those results here as well.

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try AdSimilis for international dating

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You'll need a referral to get in.

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Yup already applied and spoke to Sean. He said he would let me know, and spamalot on STM said he talked to him and gave me a reference. But I don't know when it will happen and I received a rejection email earlier today So for now I will go with Click Dealer as they have a fair amount of international offers. My AM is also very helpful and always gets back to me, unlike Luke at Peerfly who hasn't returned my emails and Skype messages in a week.

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More challenges on the cash flow front. Luckily I got my $307 Facebook charge to clear today but barely, tomorrow is going to be interesting. Yesterday I made a $2k transfer into my account from another account and now they have put the funds on hold for 6 days. They say this is always a possibility which I know but this has never happened in the previous six transfers I have made. So..... now I know Facebook will charge me for today's ad spend sometime tomorrow (probably in about 16-18 hours) and I have to figure out how to get money in an account. And it's not like I can just run to the bank and take care of it. I am in Ukraine and my accounts and money are all in the US. So hopefully I can get my sister or dad to do a wire to my checking account that is linked to my Facebook account and all will be well. If not everything will come to a grinding halt for a bit. But I really want to see what happens this weekend as dating is supposed to be even better. Could be a huge weekend for me. But if things go like they are going now I will need between $1,000-1500 just to get through the weekend. Stay tuned...

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Dno't forget there was ASW these last days. Things must be pretty hectic

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January 16th

Ad spend: $307
Revenue: $332.25 + 40.50 = $372.75
ROI: +21.4%

I have two shots here because I was running traffic to two affiliate networks. I really wanted to do everything with one but Peerfly doesn't really have any good international dating offers to match the one I was already running. Why didn't I pick a different offer? Because if I can just duplicate the same ads, pics, interests in a different location it should do well. Well it did ok. I chose to use Click Dealer as I already had an account with them. This is also with some bad test campaigns I should have cut sooner and not let run so much and would have been a much higher ROI. Cutting the losers faster is key. I am also still trying to fix the mess from the first campaign I ran with all of the ads in a single campaign, that was a huge mistake. I had an ad in there running at .4 CTR but because of all the others it still had a $.34 CPC. All of these tiny details are the difference between losing and breakeven. Then a few more tiny details, the difference between breakeven and big profits.

Peerfly

Click Dealer


And yea still having major problems with figuring out my cash flow situation.

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Here is a shot I took mid day to show how crazy the CTR and CPC costs can be. You can see the top one is very expensive for such a high CTR but this is because of the other loser ads in the same campaign.



And I have a large bill coming from Facebook tomorrow and still trying to figure out how I will pay it. Today was an extremely interesting day and a lot of new stuff. Not sure exactly where the numbers are yet back will post tomorrow.

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I haven't forgotten but it's bad business. If he is busy with ASW someone else should be taking care of his clients. This makes me not want to work with them anymore.

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1/17

Ad spend: $512.20
Revenue: $603.95
Profit: $91.75
ROI: +17.9%

Today went ok I was working on duplicating my US dating campaign in another country. So I decided to try the UK, this was also with a new network and a completely different offer but still in dating. I burned $30 on another UK dating campaign because all my clicks were not redirected to the right offer. I use a geo redirect script and they all went to a US lander. Would have made a little difference. Also when I went to sleep I was up $150 on $350 in ad spend or a ROI of +41%. Not sure exactly what happened but nothing I can do about it now. It's difficult to be in this business and feel like you have to babysit these campaigns every minute of the day so something doesn't blow up. I'm sure it will get easier and less hands on later but for now I am tied to the computer.

FB spend


Peerfly

CD


And the rest is from A4D but I'm too tired so maybe will post it later. Also something that is very important that I didn't realize. Most aff networks quote their conversions only based on Unique clicks as well as their EPC #s. And in the PPC game we pay for gross clicks. So You are expecting a 8% unique click conversion which in reality is much lower if you calculate based on gross or raw clicks......

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1/18

Ad Spend: $510.10
Revenue:
CD $303.75
Peerfly $230.25
A4D $30
Total Revenue: $564
Net Profit: $53.90
ROI: +10.56%

A little bit of a disappointing day, things seem to start off good and then get worse as the day goes on. I may need to look at doing some day parting but then if I do that I lose a large amount of the traffic. On the other hand if the traffic is not profitable it isn't really worth anything and I am just burning money. I stopped ad spend earlier on Friday because I knew that I was going to be well over $500. It seems like no matter what, Facebook finds a way to spend more and more money every day. But unfortunately I'm not making more money. In the big picture 10.5% ROI in one day is great but from an income perspective it's not working for me and definitely not from a cash-flow perspective. I think my ads are getting stale. I have some very small demos in the UK and they are converting decent and the CTRs are huge but still not getting the low CPCs I need for a high ROI. So now today back to testing again and tweaking. This is a never ending cycle.

Hopefully optimistic for a big change to get to that next level. I keep testing, keep tweaking. The great thing is I can consistently get very high CTRs but it doesn't seem to be enough to get the cheap clicks. I thought that's all it took? There is something I am missing. Also it's tough with day parting because I am in Ukraine, running traffic in the US, UK, CA, and AU. Tough to manage everything. I can't imagine how I would stay organized with another traffic source or two or another couple affiliate offers. Something I don't think people talk about much in this business is outsourcing work, or how to really leverage others. Because really at this point this is just a job and I haven't had a job since 2008

Peerfly

FB Ad spend

Click Dealer

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You're off to a very good start mate, if you're not losing money (looks like you're even earning some) then it's just a matter of time and testing/tweaking before you blow up your ROI% !

One advice I can give you is to work closely with your affiliate manager, and let them know you have the high spend account and the budget to blow it up if it backs up, they will help you improve your CR% and sometimes get you on private offers with vip payouts etc ...

Best of luck mate !



Mehdi

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Thanks man I really appreciate the encouragement. Now I am trying to make some sense of what is going on with Facebook. I have an offer that has an EPC of about $.3 and now I feel like I am forced to pause ads that have CPCs higher than .3 to maintain breakeven. But it's crazy to me that I am pausing an ad with a .4 CTR that is delivering $.32 CPC and this is in the UK.

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You should try landing pages, you can easily double your EPCs, if you check the screenshots in the follow alongs on STM you can see $1+ EPC are achievable.



Mehdi

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Mehdi - do you use landing pages for FB apps or just for normal offers?

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you are doing great. Ask your AM for a bump on your offer.

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Thank you and already got bumps Every little bit counts.

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1/19

Ad Spend: $422.94
CD $135.00
Peerfly $287.75
A4D $25
Total Revenue: $447.75
Net Profit: $24.81
ROI: +5.54%

Today was a ton of work for very little money. I was really trying to control my ad spend but it was still high and not a good ROI. I was trying to match the ad CPC to what was performing on an EPC basis. If the ads weren't at or below my EPC for the previous 3 days I would pause the campaigns. Does anyone have any suggestions for day parting for dating? I have been looking at the data and seems like they are performing late night the best but not sure it justifies pausing? Spending $400 to make $20 isn't really acceptable.

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Today every thing gone well for me. I don't know why you cpc is too high for such high ctr. I didn't start full pledge campaign as I don't know have cc. I am having test campaigns from two days and today I got 117% ROI. I didn't use tracking tools, I didn't use spy tool,no landing pages and even I don't know how to use them.... Just prepared text for my ad whatever that came into my mind ... But credit goes to STM friends and my AM ellie on click dealer. I will start my full pledged campaigns from next week.

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Dinesh,

That's seriously awesome bro. No tracking tools, No spy tools, No landing pages and yet 117% ROI - WOW !!! I see a super affiliate in the making.

Btw, I am from India as well. So as they say - "Sahi hai Dost"

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Awesome ROI! Will you have a follow along for your full campaign?

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I will start follow along after getting my cc.. Present I don't have one... Just I used my friend's cc for test campaign

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Update: Still same ads...reached frequency 5....lost $40 on testing new offers... zero conversions....even though ROI:102% (over all)....feeling sleepy...good night






I will delete this campaigns tomorrow or I will make some changes.... it's already 4am here.. bye bye bye bye ....

Once again thanks to STM friends and My AM ellie

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dinesh: what country are you targeting?

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This is fantastic man. You went after it and took action rather than having everything perfect. Most people say, I will run traffic after I do this, or I will create ads when I have this ready, or when this is perfect. The reality is nothing is ever ready or perfect. Take action, make shit happen, and adjust to improve. Thanks for sharing.

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wow! nice stats!

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Hey Naesm,

Nice stats.

What ad network is the best to promote diet products? Do you have any specific recomendations?

Thanks

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None of them honestly But they are kind of a necessary evil IMO. I tried a few direct advertisers, the problem for me was that I was limited by the few offers they had. I do know that there are some very big nutra advertisers that own many different offers and in different geos, I just never found them. The networks that focus on diet also tend to be more on the shady side and that's saying a lot for affiliate networks. I have tested over a dozen networks for diet.

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Ping me on Skype I got a contact with a guy who owns some diet offers (I vouch for him) if you're interested in trying out some new offers.

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Hey guys,

I can recommend Ads Direct and Jumbleberry for diet offers. I also know a few direct guys, but can't 100% vouch for them.

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