BobDolemite

I've spent about $1000 on PPV so far and I just can't seem to turn a profit. Many campaigns that were complete failures. Right now I have a couple of campaigns that have converting targets but once all is said and done, I'm still losing money (but close to breaking even).

Some of the things I think I'm doing wrong but I'm not sure what to do:

1. Targeting homepages and URLs that are not very highly targeted. The problem is that I am getting my conversions on those top-level URLs, and I'm getting next to no traffic on my highly targeted URLs. What I might do is grab all the links one level deeper from the homepage and hope that I will find a target that's giving me a better ROI. I would like to try using a scraper program to get highly targeted URLs, but for some campaigns (like the ones I'm running now) I just don't know what people would be looking for beyond what I'm already targeting.

2. Using somewhat broad keywords. But again, these broad keywords are converting for me and the longer tails are getting next to no impressions. In fact, I have one broad keyword that's my most consistent performer. Of course, I wish I could improve its ROI, but I don't know how to make that keyword more targeted. I have medium tails that got a single conversion somewhat early on, so its ROI looks great. But because it only has that one conversion and it gets so few impressions, it's hard to establish whether it was a fluke or a winner. Meanwhile, it's just eating up my budget (individually, they don't cost much, but when you have several of them, they really add up). How long do you guys keep these ones running before giving them the boot?

3. Only using popup creatives and direct linking. I haven't really put much focus on doing actual landing pages (I did do a couple, but they failed miserably). I can design banners but coding is probably one of my biggest weaknesses (which is why I favor PPV over PPC at this point). Moreover, I'm not really rotating the offers within the same vertical as some people suggest. I did it for one campaign (dating) so far and got zero conversions.

4. Using a Mac. Seriously, there are so many useful tools out there that are only available for PC. I tried using Parallels but its performance has been terrible. I think I need to get a PC...

Please help! I need to stop bleeding money and hopefully actually make money.

J Bold

It can be frustrating but it all comes down to testing. Merely dump the URLs that are not performing, and only you can decide at what spend to dump them. If you have URLs that are converting, then just keep them, especially if they are giving you profit. Just dump what doesn't work and keep what works. It is no piece of cake but it just takes patience and testing and more testing. Also, I would suggest joining at least 2 networks and test your campaigns on two networks. What works on one does not work well on another. Best of luck.

talkingsmith

Sorry you have spent so much, I spent about 300, and i saw many conversion. I just haven't make profit cuz of the low pay rate.

Maybe you can try differnt offer?

For the coding part, I can help you a bit if you PM me

gabibeowulf

a big problem lies in #3 .. direct linking .. it will just not work.

You need a good converting landing page. It's like going to war without guns.

I think there are some good LP sold as WSOs .. Brad Goose has a nice package .. and another 20 or so LP package ..

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XRevJosh

yes i totally agree you cannot direct link the offer. you need to have a presell page to grab the users attention.

TE2

Oh darn... I guess I will have to stop all of the those successful campaigns that I have set up with direct linking. Including a few that are producing ROI's in the neighborhood of 3000% and above.

All sarcasm aside, direct linking works but you have to pick offers that have the right LP characteristics for the CPV network you are using.

Regards,

John

BobDolemite

Hi talkingsmith, I would shoot you a PM but the forum software won't let me. I am seeing conversions (although still not as many as I would like to see), but I'm just not turning a profit.

If I may ask, would you recommend homepages and higher level URLs or just highly targeted URLs?

BobDolemite

WOW! 3000%! That's incredible! Well, I don't do too much direct linking because 1. many of the offer page have video/audio and pops that disqualify it from the CPV network, and 2. most do not have the critical information inside the popup resolution. Instead, I do creative pops that act as banners and then I link that to the offer page. Any tips on which type of offers work for direct linking?

BobDolemite

Thanks, I will definitely have to check those out. I can't code myself out of a paper bag, so I think it's time I bite the bullet and just buy some LPs.

James Sorelly

Right! direct Linking is dead! that´s the life guys!

TE2

Direct linking is not the issue. It's also not the offer type that is the issue. It is the landing page you are providing.

Note: (I am assuming you are running offers in the verticals suitable for CPV traffic: ie. gaming, dating, weight loss, etc...

You need to pick offers that have LP's that minimally show the complete headline in the pop window and it needs to be a headline that gets clicked. How to determine? The easiest way is ask your AM which ones are working best. Don't be shy - ask them!

Regards,

John

ps - A bigger issue may be the targets you selected. Most likely that is the reason.

BobDolemite

Hey John, I really appreciate your advice. I did try asking my AMs (even specifying adware traffic) but all of them just point to the ones with the highest EPC.

I agree that my method of finding targets is definitely an issue. Any suggestions on this?

TE2

Two points to make:

1. Ask them specifically for a copy their "Top Offers" list. Ask every month.

2. The method I use to pick targets is too complex and too secret to share here. I plan to share it in a paid product in the future. I could repeat some of the known methods here but I really don't want to regurgitate someone elses stuff.

Regards,

John

dropship

What I usually do to create some fast landing pages is grab a flashy banner from the offer, then make your own big heading or text above the banner to grab their attention. All of this needs to fit in the pop-up window size your networks shows.

You don't need to spend a lot of time on LP's, as your goal in PPV is to grab the users attention, then they move onto the sales or pre-sell page with better attention. :-)

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joshrodrigue

You really can make direct linking work like said before if you find a good target lp that lies with the audience of the cpv network. I find that only short form submits only fall in this category.
For free trial offers and cps offers you really do need to build a presell page in order to get conversions.

Visit my blog at www.JoshRodrigue.com
And You can follow me on Twitter

BobDolemite

TE2, thanks and I understand.

dropship, to clarify, are you suggesting to just make an attractive banner creative that links to the actual offer page? Or do you recommend a pre-sell landing page?

joshrodrigue, and others that are saying a presell landing page are necessary, do you even build the presell lander for your testing phase? Or do you just build it after seeing some conversions with direct linking or banner -> offer page?

Right now I'm preparing a free trial campaign. I'm going to split test creative banners and rotate several offers in the same vertical. I understand this is a common strategy and I assume building a proper lander for all of them isn't really feasible. Does that sound about right? And how many banner creatives should I be split testing at one time? Is 6 too many?

ian rowe

I understand what you are saying I have just spent $250 dollars and made $175,maybe i need to sell higher priced products....

redstapler

Just thought I'd add a few things,

1. Try out a smaller cpv advertising network along with any other ones that you're using. If you test out a few keywords / direct linking at a lower cost, you'll be able to determine what works for your product. (CPV advertising is not huge yet, so there are a lot of networks that are offering really low bid rates)

2. I once wrote an article on how to decide which keywords/direct links are the best, i'm not sure if this is the most successful way.. but it's something. Basically, you can go to google or another search engine and just type in things related to your website/product. For example, cell phones. So if you type in cell phones, you can see the meta tags/descriptions for the top ranking pages. If you start making lists of the words/direct links, you can test them out on the smaller cpv advertising network.

Good luck, $1000 is a hard thing to lose!

dropship

Just a simple HTML page with a banner is all I start with and if it's successful, then I move onto a pre-sell page.

**WSO** - How to Make $250 Per Day With CPA Offers (ONLY $9.97 - Act FAST!)

BobDolemite

dropship, gotcha, thanks!

One thing that's really bothering me is my inability to check the competition because I'm not in the US. Is there any way I can do this? I tried free web-based proxies, but they don't work. I tried dropping some free proxy IPs in my browser, but they don't seem to work either. How do you non-US folks do this?

gabibeowulf

if you wanna test out and see the competition you need to have the adware installed on your pc. And also you should be in US. It's about your computer's IP not the browser's proxy.

You need to run the adware on a virtual machine on your pc and modify the virtual machine's IP address to match an US ip.

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BobDolemite

Yes, the problem is that I don't have a US IP. How do I do this? I'm on a Mac and I use Parallels to run Windows XP where I have the adware installed.

bbrock32

@gabibeowulf

How do you modify the virtual machine's ip on vmware to match a us ip? I would really like to see the popups on my pc .

gbd

I'm sure there's great money to be made with the direct linking approach, but it makes more sense to use a landing page where you're warming your otherwise cold prospects to what you've got. In sales, a cold prospect is arguably the hardest to move. They're 'frozen' in place. Thaw them out with 'benefits' - 'what's in it for them' - 'why should they bother'. If you know your audience better than they know themselves, it's just a matter of solving their problem with your product. These are people not unlike yourself. Think about what would motivate you to respond.

God I hate it when my cat thinks outside the box.

BobDolemite

This is driving me crazy. I found a working US IP that got me a couple of pops, but after that it just stopped. And I'm checking on targets that I know are active (including mine). Is this normal?

talkingsmith

Man you are creative

o2richesmoney

Me too. I lost 1k already and still trying to get one that will stink but never found one yet. Really need help too. anyone can help please PM me. I am willing to pay and share what I know too.

BobDolemite

Hey man, maybe we can try to help each other out. I'll PM you as soon as the forum lets me.

dealmaker007

IMO whatever you do, test in increments. Let the campaign run for a set time, then deactivate it until you are ready to test something else.

And if you know they tend to send you a lot of traffic, just let it run for 30 minutes to an hour or something, then deactivate it and go back and look at your stats and try to figure out what you need to change.

Do not leave your campaign running all day while you are away. That is a surefire way to get robbed blind. When the fraud happens you won't be there to stop it!

IMO with the network you are using, landing page/offer/etc. is likely not as big a problem as the system or quality of traffic. Even the best landing page and offer cannot convert fraudulent traffic. Something is fishy with them.

o2richesmoney

yes I will PM you too. need 11 more post to go

smaxor

Sounds like you need better AM's.

Personally I like presell pages. Just cause I can control the sale more.

Smaxor
CEO, Ads4Dough
Aim: ads4dough

Join My CPA Network http://www.ads4dough.com

Robyn8243

One common mistake people make when setting up PPV/CPV campaigns is not taking into
account the demographics of the people who are willing to have adware installed on their computers. You need to keep this in mind when choosing your offers.

A lot of people learn about PPV through courses that refer to "stealing" traffic from Google or the traffic that your competition worked so hard to get. You can only get access to a small subset of this traffic, a group who visits your target url AND is willing to put up with IMHO annoying distractions in order to get something for Free. Generally speaking the demographic is less affluent than your typical visitor to the same website, and more willing to be inconvenienced in order to save money or get something for free.

Knowing the demographics of whatever network you are using, and knowing what they are getting in exchange for agreeing to be subjected to advertisements needs to be part of the process of choosing offers.

Also, you will find that the same target urls can have an outstanding ROI on one network and can lose money on another, so you really need to test and track everything.

Robyn

PPV Affiliate

I totally agree with this. I would really stress that you need to find out what types of sites your target demographic is visiting. So if you are promoting a scholarship offer don't just go out and bid on a bunch of scholarship sites/keywords...that's what everyone else is doing. You need to find ALL the other sites that demographic is likely to visit. You are going to find a lot cheaper traffic this way. I know it doesn't sound like it would be as 'targeted' but if you get this right it really is.

TheScalper

That sounds like "the real point" in PPV success. At the moment I'm only advertising on URLs which I scraped from the major search engines. I'm gathering each time a huge list of urls (3k+) but with them you got the problem:
Either there is a really huge competition around these targets so that bidding is not profitable on most targets OR you just get no traffic....


I think going for demography related sites is the way to go - not just keyword/url advertising.

PPV Affiliate

Definitely! Using sites like Quantcast is really the key. Find out what other types of sites your target demographic is visiting.

dropship

It's also easy to work with your account manager at each PPV network as they will provide you with the top sites on their network and also keyword targets that are getting good traffic which you can then match to your niche.

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