Facebook + Dating (what a concept!) (44)
So after ranting a bit in this thread and getting some good advice and then being inspired by wannabe's Facebook/dating follow along, I decided to start my own Facebook dating offers follow along.
I think my biggest weakness in affiliate marketing is keeping up with it. It's not that my campaigns fail, it's more like they fade away. So hopefully people here will keep pushing me if I get lazy.
My AM suggested I try Date.com in the US. It pays $5.60/lead for adults 30+. However, it's a two page submit and it's US only. Am I better off looking for an easier submit and focusing outside of the US?
I'm going to do direct linking. Set up a campaign targeting single men 30+ in the US interested in women. Set daily budget to $40 and cpc bid to the max recommended of $1.78.
I uploaded 68 different ads. (btw, haven't used FB since they added the Power Editor. Holy crap, I'm lovin' bulk upload!) Each has a different image but the same headline and body. I'm trying to determine which images get me the best CTR. My plan is to keep the top 5 in terms of CTR, pause the rest and then make new ads using those five images but new ad copy.
I'll try and post results every couple of days. Wish me luck!
Looking forward to hearing how it goes!
I've run Date.com and ChristianMatchmaker.com (same advertiser) successfully a while back and it converted for me.
One suggestion - That offer page is really generic so make sure your campaign has a good angle with your ad and possibly a lander if you build one. The good thing about it being a bit generic is you can be creative with your angle.
All the best, looking forward for updates too.
1/19/13:
Spend: $40
Revenue: $5.60
Loss: $34.40
Not surprised that I had a loss my first day. I'm glad I got at least ONE conversion so I know the offer can convert.
I uploaded about 68 ads but only 23 were approved. One was denied due to the image (it had a green dot in it as if that girl was "online") and the rest are still pending review. Should I have kept the campaign paused until all were approved? Because I went through my whole budget before every ad had a chance to get through. Was 68 images too much to start with anyway?
I paused everything that was approved except for the top 5 ads in terms of CTR. My best had a 0.19% CTR but that just had a 484 reach and one click so not really conclusive. #2 had 11 clicks and a 0.079% CTR so that is a bit more data.
I took the top 5 CTR images and added and red border and uploaded those as new ads with the same ad copy. So I guess I'll see what tomorrow brings. I'll be waiting on these 5 new ads to be approved, plus the other 44 that haven't been looked at yet.
soundengine: I agree about the offer page being generic. I'll try and come up with an idea for an angle or a landing page. Thanks.
Originally Posted by wiggywack
Yes you should keep your campaigns paused until all ads are approved, this way they all have an equal shot.
weird that the one with green dot got dissaproved, sure it wasnt the girl? I have used green dots with no probs.
Same - uploaded a whole load today with green dots and they were fine. Didn't seem to help the CTR though.
starrmikeh - Good call on the number of ads per campaign. I've also paused the campaign until all ads have been approved or denied so they all get an equal shot. Pending ads will still get reviewed even if the campaign is paused, right?
philwilrgm and andy1750 - I thought the dot thing was weird, too, but the disapproval message said, "Images may not portray nonexistent functionality, including but not limited to play buttons that suggest video capability and close buttons that do not close." If it's the girl, they usually say, "Images may not be overly sexual, imply nudity, show excessive amounts of skin or cleavage, or focus unnecessarily on body parts." It's probably one of those situations where it depends on the reviewer. If I uploaded it again, it would probably get approved.
I have an idea to make this more niche focused. I'm worried that just targeting all single men 30+ in the US with a generic ad won't be enough. But I'll have to build a landing page. Stay tuned.
This could give you some motivation
I am having test campaigns from two days and yesterday 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.
Think If a Newbie making this much in three days... How much you should ??
The US is a really tough nut to crack if you're direct linking to a street payout.
You have to think, where is your value coming from? There's almost zero barrier to entry.
I don't recommend starting with US dating, but if that's the way you're going, take a specific angle for a smaller niche (using keywords, colleges etc) and funnel the traffic through to a landing page. Then sell the hell out of it.
1/20/13:
Spend: $28.84
Revenue: $0
Loss: $28.84
Yesterday I mentioned that I paused the generic Date.com campaign to wait until all ads were approved. They're approved now, but based on some feedback in this thread from Finch and soundengine, I think I need some sort of angle in my ad copy and/or targeting and/or landing page.
dinesh1625 - Are you targeting the US or another country? And is it a niche site or just a generic dating site?
I've got some ideas for an angle. Question: what type of risk to I run from the affiliate network/offer/FTC if I make claims about a dating site that aren't true. Like just something stupid such as "This site as more redheads than any other dating site!" Is the FTC going to come after me for that? Is the affiliate network going to care? I feel like diet pills are one thing, but a free dating site... I dunno.
MaxBounty as some niche offers such as AsianBeauties.com, ChristianMatchmaker.com and Jewcier.com. I'm thinking about trying a direct offer for those because the niche is already there. But I think Date.com is too broad and generic without a landing page angle (which I'm working on).
Lessons learned so far:
- There's riches in niches. You need to go after a niche with a landing page or having a dating offer that's a niche in and of itself. Or both!
- When you build a new campaign, start it off paused until all your ad copy has been approved. Then activate it so all ads get an even shot.
- Don't start with 68 ads in a campaign. Start with something smaller. (I think I'll try 30 on my next campaign)
More to come...
Originally Posted by wiggywack
So I paused the Date.com stuff until I can figure out some angle and make a landing page. In the meantime, today I uploaded a bunch of ads for ChristianMatchmaker. Since this is already a niche, I'm hoping it means that I can just direct link and still be profitable. I uploaded about 25 ads and spread them across 5 campaigns, each set at a $1 max CPC and a $20/day budget. This way, I don't have to worry about one ad taking off and hogging all the impressions.
Ads are uploaded and the campaigns are paused. Once the ads get approved, I'll unpause the campaigns and off we go!
The ads for Christian Matchmaker were approved yesterday and I set the campaigns to active. The day isn't over yet, but here's where I am so far:
1/23/13-1/24/13
Spend: $92.56
Revenue: $0
Loss: $92.56
That's right, a big fat goose egg in revenue! I have 188 visits and still no conversions. At this point, do I say there must be something wrong with the offer and pause it?
As I mentioned in my last post, I set up 5 campaigns, each with 4-5 ads in it. It's amazing to me how different the spend is in each campaign. Here's the yesterday and today:
And within the campaigns, impressions were distributed really unevenly:
I have no ad with a 0.1% CTR or better. The best I have is an ad with 31,985 impressions and 51 clicks for a CTR of 0.084%. Getting a $0.69 CPC on that. Here's that ad:
There's another ad with 0.07% and is only $0.57 per click. I've paused off anything with a CTR worse than 0.07%. But that's still a poor CTR. And no conversions!
I'm going to upload some new ads with slightly revised copy. Instead of "Faithful Men Wanted" in the headline, I'm going to try "Christian Men Wanted". And I'll just use the images of the 4 ads that had the best CTR.
Suggestions welcome!
haha that will never get you over 0.1+
Men like tits... Search on STM.. you will find 7k images thread etc.. download all of them...try images with tits... I only use STM images.. Got 0.60 ctr.. I am very lazy to scrape images... Not lazy bro 
.. I didn't start full campaigns.. Still learning.. Check out my latest thread...you can see 0.5 ctr screen shot.
I can't spill out image what I am using please don't mind.. All are US campaigns..
What offer are you running in the US that is more than marginally profitable with 21 cent clicks?
I am testing all the offers right now.. No conversions till now..
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread.......cr-0-d-lol
Update: just 2 conversions... after hell of clicks... still campaign stands on green
Will see Hope I can find one profitable campaign to blow tomorrow...
Just an Update on CTR went up:.. 0.5 to 0.7 ... I won't kill this campaigns.. I will keep alive for whole budget today
Another Update :
.... click on image :P
End of the day to motivate you even Higher
Who's follow along is this? 
dinesh1625 - I'm glad you're having success getting your cleavage pictures approved. Mine always get denied.
I've paused all Christian Matchmaker campaigns because after 255 clicks, I still have zero conversions on that offer. At that rate, even if I can get 3 cent clicks like dinesh (which I can't) I still wouldn't be profitable.
I'm going to go back to one of the more generic dating offers, but I'm going to try and find some type of angle and build a landing page around it. I'll also try getting more risqué images approved.
Stay tuned.
Hahaha don't play on old accounts with this type of images...You will risk your account
The strategy of focusing on more of a niche audience on Facebook and then using a landing page before sending them on to Date.com is showing potential:
Spend: $85.21
Revenue: $22.40
Loss: $62.81
Still loosing money, but at least I have 4 conversions from 133 clicks instead of zero after 257 clicks like I saw with Christian Matchmaker. Here's how my funnel looks like right now:
219,823 impressions
0.06% CTR
133 clicks to landing page
14.3% of visitors click through to offer page
19 clicks to offer page
21.1% conversion rate
4 conversions
I need to boost the CTR on my ads. I do have multiple ads with a CTR over 0.1%. So I've paused anything worse than 0.07% and I'm going to give the rest of the ads more time to bake. Then I'll keep uploading more ads with new pictures and borders around the pictures and stuff like that, I guess.
I thought all ads had been approved by the time I unpaused the campaigns, but I see that I just had some approved this morning. So I'm still seeing the lopsided impressions, even though I only have 5 ads per campaign.
At this rate, I'll need to get my CPCs below 17 cents to be profitable. Seems tough, but it might be possible.
Originally Posted by wiggywack
Originally Posted by pokersensei
This is after 1.2k clicks on same ad copy
That is amazing. How many clicks/day are you able to get at that price? I am doing broad targeting and pretty decent volume.
Really enjoying the follow along Dinesh, keep up the good work!
Originally Posted by thomasbhm
Originally Posted by pokersensei
Originally Posted by dinesh1625
Originally Posted by pokersensei
Wiggy,
Don't spend so much testing! You should know after a fraction of that ad spend whether it's working or not.
If you're not getting a CTR of 0.15% or above you are never going to get profitable. If it's not working try something else.
Lots of failed campaigns with small adspend = learning.
Small number of failed campaigns with huge loss = achieving nothing
Andy
pokersensei: What's your strategy for reducing bids? When I started the campaigns, I was bidding high at $1 just to get volume. The lowest CPCs I was getting were around $0.35. If I want to get down to $0.10 like you, should I lower my bids? Or just keep uploading ads to try and get a higher CTR which should lower the CPCs naturally?
andy1750: I'm trying to figure out how to spend less and still get a meaningful amount of data. So if I upload 30 ads, don't I need AT LEAST 2-3 clicks per ad to know if the ad is good or not? If I'm getting an average of 50 cent CPCs in the beginning, that's $45. (30 ads x 3 clicks x 50 cent CPC) Or does the volume of impressions and clicks not matter at all? Do you just look for whatever has the lowest CPC or highest conversion rate and pause everything else?
Also, when you say try something else, do you mean uploading new pictures, new ad copy or just trying a completely new offer?
Hey wiggywack... I think it helps to pause your ads that have a good CTR after 25-75 clicks and wait until the next day to re-activate them. That will give facebook a chance to review and lower your CPC. I was just reading an article about this:
http://scotchandsales.com/facebook-b...heaper-clicks/
I don't know if it's still a relevant technique. Maybe others can comment.
Here's how the strategy of focusing on more of a niche audience on Facebook and then using a landing page before sending them on to Date.com worked out.
1/26/13-1/29/13
535,941 Impressions
384 Clicks
0.072% CTR
$186.50 Spent
$0.49 CPC
10 conversions
$56 in revenue
Loss: $130.50
I was pausing the lowest performing ads each day. Today, I was left with two remaining ads. The best had a 0.106% "lifetime" CTR. The other had a 0.101% which was giving me 32 cent clicks. I decided to pause when I realized my EPCs were 11 cents. Trying to get that ad below 11 cents seemed impossible.
I've been reading other threads about Facebook dating campaigns, campaign setup, bid strategies and ad recommendations. I'm hoping those things, along with my new landing page strategy, will spell success soon.
I'll be relaunching a new campaign shortly. Stay tuned.
Originally Posted by andy1750
Copy ones that you know are working to start off with (Spy tool...) This won't be profitable - I've never managed to duplicate the success of a campaign I copied from a Spy tool. I don't know why.
See which ones work the best, think about it and understand why they are working.
Then find your own, better images.
I never split test more that 5 images at a time. When I started they were all completely different. Now I know exactly what works for me. I may trawl through 250+ images and only pick 2 to test.
It's more productive split testing demos than hundreds of images. I never split test more that 5 at a time.
Becomes a lot cheaper to test when you have an offer that's working.
Cheers,
Andy
Okay, so I just uploaded some new ads/campaigns with a slightly different ad copy/landing page angle. Here's what I did:
1. Created a new landing page
2. Went through a bunch of images and selected 5 pictures to use for this first batch
3. Flipped all images horizontally to get past any type of FB tagging
4. Uploaded 4 of the same ad to each campaign. So in the end, I had five campaigns, each with 4 duplicate ads for a total of 20 ads (but only 5 unique)
5. Targeted Men 35+ in US, all broad categories. Is there a limit to the number of targets you can enter? Because when I was typing them in, it said I was targeting about 2 million people. But then when I exported to a bulk sheet, added some ads and campaigns, and reuploaded, it went down to 1.2 million. I think that's because I had too many targets and some got cut off in the download of the bulk sheet.
6. Suggested bid range was $0.63-$1.88. Put $1.50.
Uploaded everything as paused. Waiting for everything to be approved so I can unease all at once. Stay tuned!
You're demo's way too broad!
For US focus on young, middle aged or old. The should be driven by the demos of your offer.
Different age like different images. use campaigns with age ranges of just 5 years.
Start off niche.
Cheers,
Andy
The ads got approved yesterday and so I activated the campaigns. Each of the 5 campaigns had a $10/day budget, so at the end of the day they had gone through their entire budget. I went into each campaign and only kept the best performing ad active.
Today, I've spent about $16 so far. Here's where we are:
144,211 impressions
74 clicks
0.051% CTR
$65.94 spent
$0.89 CPC
0 leads/sign ups
Loss: $65.94
My best performing ad has a 0.122% CTR and a $0.79 CPC with 8 clicks. So I'm pausing everything else. But even that one ad's performance isn't that great, so maybe I pause that too? Or wait to see if it improves? Or lower my bid?
In the meantime, I could launch new ads with new images and see how they perform. Maybe also take andy1750's advice and focus on Men 30-40 instead of Men 30+? (although I've heard differing opinions on broad age targeting vs niche age targeting when you first launch.
I'm frustrated that I've gotten no leads from Date.com. These ads and the landing page are targeted slightly different than one I was doing before, but not too much. Before I had a 17% CTR on the landing page and now I have a 14% CTR. So people are still clicking through to the offer, but they're not converting once they click through. I notice that Date.com is now using a different landing page than they were before, so maybe that's it.
My AM has been encouraging me to try EchoDate.com, which has a $4 payout instead of a $5.60 payout. Maybe that means it converts better. But a $4 payout for a US campaign seems low. The EPCs they're claiming are more than double that of Date.com, but I know reported EPCs can be deceiving.
Here's what I'll do:
- Keep running that one ad with a 0.122% CTR
- Update my landing page to send traffic to EchoDate.com instead of Date.com
- Create new ads that have the same headline/body, but use new images. Maybe take that best performing ad I had and update the image with a purple border or something.
- On the new ads, target Men 25-35 instead of just Men 30+
How much did u have to spend to get this? and what was country?
Originally Posted by dinesh1625
I am having test campaigns from two days and yesterday 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.
Think If a Newbie making this much in three days... How much you should ??
Originally Posted by wiggywack
Originally Posted by godspeed
Still waiting on my next batch of ads to get approved.
You need to find an offer that converts. Something that will help cover the costs of your testing. Pick your best performing ad and test 3 or 4 different offers to see what's working.
I tried Date.com a long time ago and the conversion rate sucked - REALLY badly. Ask your AM for their highest volume offers and ask what the network EPC is. No AM has ever recommended date.com to me. Don't rely on the network EPC - if you're direct linking on FB your EPC is likely to be lower - anything up to 70% lower.
The low payout offers often convert the best when direct linked if that's what you're doing. They higher payout offers require more of a presell as the sign-up process is longer.
And by the way, stay the hell away from mature female demo - I'm finding it impossible to get CTRs above 0.15% and the CPC is crazy!
Stick with the better known dating offers for FB - it's not like POF where they've seen all the dating sites a gazillion times over.
Cheers,
Andy
Well, that sucked. Launched new campaigns today as I detailed in my previous message and my best CTR is 0.072% after spending almost $50.
202,735 Impressions
62 Clicks
0.031% CTR
$43.17 Spent
$0.70 CPC
0 conversions
I dunno, maybe Facebook dating is not my thing.
Love them uber high CTRs!
Keep it up!!!
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