Inconsistent earnings, why?

[murphy25890]

Hello,

I am a long time lurker and first time poster to this top notch forum. To make a long story very short, I have recently sold my offline company and have re-invested a portion of the proceeds into IM. My first few months were nothing short of a bloodletting, with mid $XX,XXX thrown away for testing and honing, it was sickening. Well, I have sharpened my PPC and media buying skills to finally yield a low $X,XXX daily profit. I am currently promoting in the XXXXX arena and pushing a variety of products with fair success.

My question? Why the massive inconsistencies in daily conversion rates with EXACTLY the same traffic? Why is it that the advertisers pages go down for no explained reasons? Why does my conversion fluctuate up to 50% with the same traffic on some days? Please tell me that this business is not this dis-honest. Where are my conversions being lost? The Advertiser? The Network? The tracking system? Are they being scrubbed, stolen or just not calculated on some days. I have busted my ass and I am really starting to smell some dis-honest crap in this industry. Don't get me wrong. I am pleased with the ROI, just very, very confused.

Help me keep the faith, please!

Cheers and thanks,

David

[Chris Lockwood]

Originally Posted by murphy25890

My question? Why the massive inconsistencies in daily conversion rates with EXACTLY the same traffic? Why is it that the advertisers pages go down for no explained reasons? Why does my conversion fluctuate up to 50% with the same traffic on some days? Please tell me that this business is not this dis-honest. Where are my conversions being lost? The Advertiser? The Network? The tracking system? Are they being scrubbed, stolen or just not calculated on some days. I have busted my ass and I am really starting to smell some dis-honest crap in this industry. Don't get me wrong. I am pleased with the ROI, just very, very confused.

Conversion rates don't always stay constant, even on your own site with traffic from the same source. Remember, traffic is a bunch of individuals, so 100 visitors on Monday is not really the "same" traffic as 100 visitors on another day. The only way to get "exactly the same" traffic is to get those same people back, but even that is not the same since they would have already seen the sales message.

Everything varies over time- conversion, CTR, refund rates, etc.

Web pages go down for many reasons- if you have your own sites and have never experienced this, eventually you will.

Sure it's always possible something shady is going on, but even a 50% variation is not necessarily proof of that. If they wanted to cheat you, it would seem easier for them to just not count a certain fraction of your sales.

Is this all one product or site you are promoting, or is it happening on multiple sites?

[murphy25890]

Hi Chris,

I am selling 2 products across 3 networks. Two networks running the exact same offer, will have huge differences in results. What is a normal fluctuation range of conversions?

David

[chris_surfrider]

Could be the order process if they're using different checkout systems on each network.

Is CJ.com one of the networks?

If it is, you should be aware that they're currently facing a class-action lawsuit regarding commission theft.

If one network runs higher conversions for the same product consistently, then drop the other one.

-Chris

[murphy25890]

Thanks Guys.

Should I consistently run the same offers across multiple networks to spread out my risk or does this just increase the amount of possible mistakes? I am running with Advaliant, Eadvertising, Never blue and Ads4Dough.

David