SiteScout - Media Buying: Good Starting Place? | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

11 years ago

Originally Posted by PRBandit

Hello,

What would you guys say about signing up for Sitescout?

I am a member of EWANetwork and they have some pretty nice car insurance leads.

$500 is the minimum which If i can't get a ROI I REALLY dont want to lose it all. So what I was going to do was SPEND $100 in my campaign/testing.
Then if I see that I just keep losing money I'd refund my budget at a 15% service fee.

Getting back $340.

I am planning on advertising on a few of the news sites. Using industry standard landing pages and Banners. I am hoping to get a good ROI.

A few of the placements I looked at average out to be around $0.70 CPM.
So with my $100 Id get 140,000 Impressions.

Here are the stats I am hoping to get at the LEAST
CTR: 0.3% OR .003
Clicks: 420
CPC: $0.23
LP CTR: 30% OR .3
Offer Hits: 126
Conversion Rate 30%
Conversions: 37
CPL: $4-6
$148 - $222

I am going to be using Visual Website Optimizer

Are any of these expectations WAYY OFF?
Or do you think it is possible with the information I gave you?

I really don't want to lose a bunch of money and get nothin out of it.

* Please no one come here and post some BS comment like "You just got to try it out", "You will have to work hard to make sure you get good CVR"

* Looking for advice from successful media buyers. NOT coaches looking to share their Signature link

EDIT: Title says good starting place? I am not completely new to CPA. I have some experience with PPV and have worked with Incentive.

Sitescout is way too much for a newbie to start at.

I suggest you start at BuySellAds and BlogAds. Learn to study the sites BEFORE you buy them. Take 2-3 days and just study what kinds of ads appear on the site, the landing pages, etc. Then craft your offer in the same vein and buy an Ad.

BuySellAds has placements for as cheap as $20-30. BlogAds I believe starts at $20 as well, but most good placements start at around $50. Still much cheaper to get your feet wet and no 15% service fee.

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PRBandit

11 years ago

Thanks for the response.
That is what I was afraid of. Ill look into them and see what I can find out.

Thanks

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chintz24

11 years ago

I would suggest you to look at a more simpler model rather than sitescout.
If you are not confident about it, why risk it?

Look at buysellads, Or for you I would suggest going through Google and contacting individual owners to set up advertising.
Nothing can beat that!

Also site scout could burn your budget! Don't start out with it

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williamrs

11 years ago

SiteScout is a nice place to buy ad spaces, but it does require a good investment, so if you're a bit short on money I think it can be wise to follow Cash37's advice.

Also, I think it's nice to set goals, but trying to predict the exact numbers of a campaign before even running it can be a tough task. So, before you determine which should be your CTR, CPC, EPC, etc try to conduct a small test and see what you get. Then, based on your data, decide on what numbers you need to reach to make your campaign profitable.

W

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TheProsperousMarketer

11 years ago

I too am looking at Sitescout after getting several recommendations from trusted sources. I guess the $500 opt in can be a bot daunting to some but you gotta start somewhere with media buys! It does seem to take a lot of the research element out of the whole media buying process..No longer can we depend on SEO alone!

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Dr SiteScout

11 years ago

The $500 minimum was originally put in place because we felt that the nature of display advertising required a sufficient budget to collect enough data with which to optimize your campaigns. We still believe this to be true, but with some of our newer campaign strategies - like retargeting or contextual targeting - such a large budget isn't necessary to get started. In fact, we plan on drastically reducing our minimum deposit in the near future.

The campaign strategies mentioned above (retargeting and contextual targeting) also tend to deliver impressions at a slower pace. For that reason, I highly recommend it as a campaign strategy for marketers getting started with us. Simply create a run-of-network campaign, upload your banners, and choose one main category from the contextual targeting menu. If you add too many categories, the targeting will be too narrow and you won't bid on or win many impressions. Beginners should also utilize our campaign controls that prevent budgets from getting spent too quickly. The main one is "even delivery" of daily budgets (checkbox below the budget field in the Campaign Basics tab).

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3 replies

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zorlon 11 years ago

Originally Posted by Dr SiteScout

we plan on drastically reducing our minimum deposit in the near future.

still $500 initial deposit.
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davidyair 11 years ago

to dr. sitescout;
have you have drastically reduced the entry fees yet, and if so, what are they now?
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Snow_Predator 9 years ago

Originally Posted by Dr SiteScout

In fact, we plan on drastically reducing our minimum deposit in the near future.

"Near future?" Nearly been 3 years, and still no word.
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mraudi

11 years ago

$500 minimum is still a lot for beginners, I wouldn't use you guys but I can't speak for others.

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ChrisBa 11 years ago

Originally Posted by mraudi

$500 minimum is still a lot for beginners, I wouldn't use you guys but I can't speak for others.

I agree, sitescout isn't really for beginners IMO.. it's more for people who are already making money in affiliate marketing but want to start getting their feet wet with media buys..
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zorlon

11 years ago

Let's assume I take sitescout for a test drive, that's $500 to deposit and say I spend $100 (just a short test), then $60 ($400 left * 15%) forked over to them as 'administrative fee' if i choose to withdraw my money.

In other words ~$60 fee just to take a trial of the service.

Unacceptable.

Either lower the deposit or lower the administrative fee in case of withdrawal, at least during an initial grace 'test drive' period.

Thanks

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pacelattin

11 years ago

Can I recommend watching the below?

Why Display Media Buying Fails - Ted Dhanik of EngageBDR - YouTube

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pacelattin

11 years ago

Why Display Media Buying Fails - Ted Dhanik of EngageBDR - YouTube

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1 reply

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zorlon 11 years ago

Originally Posted by pacelattin

Why Display Media Buying Fails - Ted Dhanik of EngageBDR - YouTube

Well I just watched the youtube ad you posted.

Here's a full, accurate recap of the video: "People, you don't know how to buy media, there's all kind of aspects you don't know and that's why you fail. Listen to ME, I have all the secrets. Looking forward to you reaching out to me".
- Thanks
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pacelattin

11 years ago

I hope you are aware EWA is out of business?

Originally Posted by PRBandit

Hello,

What would you guys say about signing up for Sitescout?

I am a member of EWANetwork and they have some pretty nice car insurance leads.

$500 is the minimum which If i can't get a ROI I REALLY dont want to lose it all. So what I was going to do was SPEND $100 in my campaign/testing.
Then if I see that I just keep losing money I'd refund my budget at a 15% service fee.

Getting back $340.

I am planning on advertising on a few of the news sites. Using industry standard landing pages and Banners. I am hoping to get a good ROI.

A few of the placements I looked at average out to be around $0.70 CPM.
So with my $100 Id get 140,000 Impressions.

Here are the stats I am hoping to get at the LEAST
CTR: 0.3% OR .003
Clicks: 420
CPC: $0.23
LP CTR: 30% OR .3
Offer Hits: 126
Conversion Rate 30%
Conversions: 37
CPL: $4-6
$148 - $222

I am going to be using Visual Website Optimizer

Are any of these expectations WAYY OFF?
Or do you think it is possible with the information I gave you?

I really don't want to lose a bunch of money and get nothin out of it.

* Please no one come here and post some BS comment like "You just got to try it out", "You will have to work hard to make sure you get good CVR"

* Looking for advice from successful media buyers. NOT coaches looking to share their Signature link

EDIT: Title says good starting place? I am not completely new to CPA. I have some experience with PPV and have worked with Incentive.

Thanks

Signature

Pace Lattin | Performance Marketing Insider | Pace Lattin

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gamlin

11 years ago

Zorlon, you are going to go far in this industry! Telling Site Scout how to run their site. LOL I've lost $500 in 3 hrs testing stuff online. Ohhh booohoo! If you don't want to lose money, you can keep working your day job

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1 reply

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zorlon

11 years ago

Originally Posted by gamlin

Zorlon, you are going to go far in this industry! Telling Site Scout how to run their site. LOL I've lost $500 in 3 hrs testing stuff online. Ohhh booohoo! If you don't want to lose money, you can keep working your day job

I'm in 'this' industry for a decade. Yeah you need to lose money to make money often times but one thing you don't need to do is tell a service "I like your high fees, it makes me feel that I'm real business-man by forking money over to you. Paying you more makes me feel that I'm not a newbie like other guys on Warrior".

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Greedy

11 years ago

It is really hard to just throw expectations out and questimate how much you'll be making.

It is fun, everyone does it, but it is rarely how things turn out.

You need to get your feet wet, and see what happens.

Thanks

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gamlin

11 years ago

To the person who started this thread prepare to lose your $500 and a lot more on pretty much any method.

Thanks

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Martyfl

11 years ago

The amount of money one might lose needs to be kept in some context.

This is about starting a business, a real business. You need to spend some money on startup for a good vps, some tracking software, possible some sort of "spy" tool. But after all is said and done, you will be spending perhaps a few hundred a month.

Now you have to "buy data" to find out what works. You will get better and better at it over time. Let us say for argument sake that you prepared yourself by learning how to use the tracking software, went through a decent course on media buying and know how to create landing pages and banners (or have someone who will do it for you).

Now you put $2,000 in your ad bank. You find some ad sources, study the demographics, find the right offers, build ads and landing pages.

You run through your money in a few weeks (days, who knows). It does not mean that you had no conversions. But after all is said and done, the 2 grand is gone. But you are left with a lot of data of what you might have done right and what you have done wrong.

Keep in mind, you opened up a media buying business that could make you a "full time" income. You spent a few thousand to open up your business. What other businesses could you have started with equal potential for less money?

Want to buy a franchise? Open a store? Advertise in the newspaper, yellow pages, etc. You will spend many times this amount.

Media buying is not an expensive business to get into. It just seems so after working free traffic or cheap second tier search engines.

But, once you do learn, and you will eventually learn (maybe after $2,000 or maybe after $10,000), you will have a real business.

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CClassHosting

11 years ago

I feel sorry for anyone who will take that advice of getting their feet wet using buysellads.
Buysellads has bad reviews on Warrior Forum and elsewhere.

Most of the views on buysellads are fake and you get super low click through rate as a result of that. Even the high click through rates on some sites are fake. After a while they will get tired of clicking on your ad, once you ordered it a second time. Stay away from buysellads

Here is some advice by Perry Belcher for those who dont have much money to get started... on how to generate the starting capital.

Perry also suggests using SiteScout to make dollars from quarters.. its a 5 mt vid worth the watch.

Perry Belcher and Casey Eberhart chat: 5 minutes...

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Snatch

9 years ago

Thanks for that, guy is f**ng genius, more said in this 5min vid than many 5h courses out there. If you haven't studied Perry's and Ryan's stuff you better start paying attention, to me is more than enough that he recommends Sitescout, rather than read all the reviews in the world about it. BTW I have watched this video a year ago or so, just don't remember that he mentioned about sitescout.

Originally Posted by CClassHosting

I feel sorry for anyone who will take that advice of getting their feet wet using buysellads.
Buysellads has bad reviews on Warrior Forum and elsewhere.

Most of the views on buysellads are fake and you get super low click through rate as a result of that. Even the high click through rates on some sites are fake. After a while they will get tired of clicking on your ad, once you ordered it a second time. Stay away from buysellads

Here is some advice by Perry Belcher for those who dont have much money to get started... on how to generate the starting capital.

Perry also suggests using SiteScout to make dollars from quarters.. its a 5 mt vid worth the watch.

Perry Belcher and Casey Eberhart chat: 5 minutes of pure Digital Marketing GOLD! - YouTube

Thanks

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KingMedia

10 years ago

Not tried SiteScout - still a $500 buy in.

Hard to say how media buying is going to work - too many variables to consider. Just because a site converts great on organic search traffic does not mean it will with paid advertising.

That is where all the "test" data comes in (landing pages, colors, fonts, lead capture, etc).

$500 is a test - if you break even, you're on to something and need to analyze which ads converted the most (not always what one would assume).

SiteScout's traffic sources seem to be good legit sites (other than bot-like 7search traffic), but you need to pull in that visitor to your world and convince them to perform an action.

Other comments are correct, $2k is the minimum budget just for testing - once you find the ads that hit, blow em out.

Thanks
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Irn7997 10 years ago

Hey king media why not try lead impact min payment is $200 but you can set cpc and niche country keyword website ect ect I spent $200 got around 800 leads
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- NEBULOUS 10 years ago
  
  we plan on drastically reducing our minimum deposit in the near future.
  
  This would be good to allow us poboys to get a chance at testing the traffic. Sitescout is a superior media buying platform from what I have seen, so why not offer small deposits. you would get a hell of lot more smaller buyers testing your traffic.
  
  I deposited 500, tested some traffic, got some 1 cent clicks, but then some personal drama meant I had to request it all back. If it was smaller I wouldnt have. Why not lower the deposit and say no refunds?
  
  Thanks
  
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- jeorgehome 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Irn7997
  
  Hey king media why not try lead impact min payment is $200 but you can set cpc and niche country keyword website ect ect I spent $200 got around 800 leads
  
  Just for telling you that the min is become now $1000 not $200, they modified the deposit.
  
  Thanks
  
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nocturnal911

9 years ago

Sitescout is way too much for newbies. I had days where i lost $$$ in few minutes. If you choose ron means, your budget will get burned in few minutes. Or if you would like to choose sitewide targeting means, there will be thousands of sites to choose from, so you just need a min budget of $1000 for testing.

But personally for me, the sites that i wanted to advertise on, they never accepted my landers, so i never got impressions from those sites. So i has to choose ron traffic, and in RON, out thousands of thousands of sites, i had received 1-10 impressions on each site and never got a single click and ended up burning $1k.

You need to have good amount of budget to test this. But also, i had days where i bid upto $15 and got CTR around 1.5% and earned decent amount of money.

So decided yourself.

Good luck!!

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truebluesf

Banned 9 years ago

So my question is: What RTB budget would work for you? If you need access to RTBs like Appnexus, that requires so much more ($20K a month for the first 3 months)

Thanks
1 reply

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Zahara

9 years ago

Originally Posted by truebluesf

So my question is: What RTB budget would work for you? If you need access to RTBs like Appnexus, that requires so much more ($20K a month for the first 3 months)

Mostly all have access to the same RTB inventory and exchanges, so the difference you might find in CPM is the margin your DSP would take, not the cost of the underlying media. Some charge up to 120% so the differences can be quite large.. Of course there are also differences in ROI because of the way these DSPs ALGORITHMS are setup , so their fee might be higher (and so the CPMs) but because they buy smarter they get you better results. In all cases I would do a few test campaigns with different providers to see what works for you!

here is a list of the ones i use and tried and plan to try,, feel free to add and comment should anyone know more out there

I avoid the big boys du to the overhead % margins they need to extract from the advertisers,

Bidable (was a great free access DSP until last month ( no new news and no longer accessible)
Choozle ( access fee $99 true self serve platform, great targeting , retargeting features and bid win prices)
exactdrive( free access account, true self serve platform, great targeting , retargeting features and bid win prices)
bluagile (free access account, true self serve platform, great targeting , retargeting features and bid win prices)
LiquidRTB ( free access account, true self serve platform, great targeting , retargeting features and bid win prices)
acuityads ( other then the $300 accès fée and aggressive sales teams always trying to make you tap up your budgets good targeting features and bid win prices)
Chango ( was a great DSP until RUBICON acquired them, now their bid fees seems to on par with big boys so i left)

have yet to try

stackadapt
rtb-media
criteo
audiencescience

Overall buying over RTB has been a game changer for us, so I'm more than happy to share the joys.

Thanks

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drschool

9 years ago

I use Sitescout as well as Bing, Adwords, and a buttload of mobile traffic ones like Airpush. I would say, start with mobile traffic and Bing, then get your feet wet with Adwords and if you're comfortable with how things are going, then you can give Sitescout a shot. It depends on the campaign, but usually my cheapest traffic is with mobile traffic, then Bing, then Sitescout, then Adwords.

Thanks

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Mark Norman

9 years ago

I did test on sitescout in May-June, spent approximately 450$, brought 17000 clicks and only 1 lead was created. I tried to do affiliation for one company with using of their banners and landing pages. Now I am busy with another work and don't have time to continue with that affiliation. I created my own audiences, used the existing, divided by time, countries. I used make money online idea, brought clicks from news and gambling sites. As result I don't understand how I could bring so huge traffic and get no conversions. I know the banners are good and landing pages too. People clicked on the banners and I used many campaigns divided by countries and banners and landing pages.
I don't understand where the problem was and what I did wrong. .
Does anybody can suggest me something?

Thanks

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FXdarling

9 years ago

I would not recommend sitescout for beginners. I burned my wings over there. They have very tricky settings and some of them may easily cancel your previous settings and run your campaign out without caps and targeting you thought you have set up. I had this experience with them and I must say they treat you as if it is my problem, not theirs.

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SiteScout - Media Buying: Good Starting Place?

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