Don't give up and good luck. PPC dating isn't going to be easy but if you can make it work everything else will just be a lot easier.
Grieve's Affiliate Marketing Journey into Success or Squalor. Most Likely Squalor.
- Thread starter grieve
- Start date
9/14/2011
Doing a new dating app install on Facebook. Title/copy is all set, as well as a batch of pictures that I'll be testing tonight. This app install is a bit different... as it accepts 18+ traffic as opposed to the previous 25+. This gives me more than DOUBLE the target audience to work with.
Pros:
- Bigger demographic equals more longevity of my campaign. More people to expose my ad to, more willing clicks.
- High demographic gives huge potential for scaling up, given that all goes well. I'm just making an assumption here, but that seems to make sense. Right?
Cons:
- I've tried niche demo (60k people), and CPCs were ridiculous, but it was also more targeted so my conversion % was pretty decent. My CPC still sucked, so no profit. But with such a gigantic untargeted demo to begin with, it is intimidating.
- 9 million demo. Fucking. Insane. The number alone is a bit shaky to deal with. My own personal assumptions are that the 18-24 won't even click on the damn thing (even though they're the horniest..) but I'm not letting my own preconceived notions make judgments that my traffic should be making instead.
- With such a gigantic demo receiving impressions, my chance of finding a high CTR ad tonight seems slim. 9 million is a lot of people, and being so broad it leaves a lot of room for wasted impressions.
Strategy:
I'm going to stick with the 9 million demographic, no matter how damn intimidating it is. I'm going to go from there, based on tonight's data, and filter out age ranges according to data via the nifty demographic tool Facebook has. As bad as I want my precious .1% CTR goal to be reached tonight.. I just don't see it happening without a bit more targeting. Don't really know where to begin yet with that, yet.
Note: I have to thank wiredniko once again, because it was after typing all of this that I realize what a valuable tool a personal journal can be when it comes to this stuff. At the beginning of this post, I was still stressing over the 9 mil demographic. By the end of the post, I already knew that it was likely what I had to do. I'm set on it.
Doing a new dating app install on Facebook. Title/copy is all set, as well as a batch of pictures that I'll be testing tonight. This app install is a bit different... as it accepts 18+ traffic as opposed to the previous 25+. This gives me more than DOUBLE the target audience to work with.
Pros:
- Bigger demographic equals more longevity of my campaign. More people to expose my ad to, more willing clicks.
- High demographic gives huge potential for scaling up, given that all goes well. I'm just making an assumption here, but that seems to make sense. Right?
Cons:
- I've tried niche demo (60k people), and CPCs were ridiculous, but it was also more targeted so my conversion % was pretty decent. My CPC still sucked, so no profit. But with such a gigantic untargeted demo to begin with, it is intimidating.
- 9 million demo. Fucking. Insane. The number alone is a bit shaky to deal with. My own personal assumptions are that the 18-24 won't even click on the damn thing (even though they're the horniest..) but I'm not letting my own preconceived notions make judgments that my traffic should be making instead.
- With such a gigantic demo receiving impressions, my chance of finding a high CTR ad tonight seems slim. 9 million is a lot of people, and being so broad it leaves a lot of room for wasted impressions.
Strategy:
I'm going to stick with the 9 million demographic, no matter how damn intimidating it is. I'm going to go from there, based on tonight's data, and filter out age ranges according to data via the nifty demographic tool Facebook has. As bad as I want my precious .1% CTR goal to be reached tonight.. I just don't see it happening without a bit more targeting. Don't really know where to begin yet with that, yet.
Note: I have to thank wiredniko once again, because it was after typing all of this that I realize what a valuable tool a personal journal can be when it comes to this stuff. At the beginning of this post, I was still stressing over the 9 mil demographic. By the end of the post, I already knew that it was likely what I had to do. I'm set on it.
I'm going to agree with secretagentdad
Couple things that i want to point out.
PROS:
Dating is a 'starter' niche because you'll likely see SOME conversions before you get discouraged and move on to another niche that you'll make real money with.
AMs can be a good source of information on what offers to run if they are a good AM or if you have a good relationship with them.
CONS:
Some AMs are going to tell you to run traffic that will make THEM money.
If AMs were really that great at Affiliate marketing, they'd be an affiliate marketer.
You need to be lucky, good, or have a large budget for split testing to make money in dating on FB. YMMV
DISCLAIMER:
I don't do FB ads anymore because of the time and budget I have (making all those creatives to split test... bleh). I had a couple winners in other niches but would now rather do SEO.
YOUR DATA is the best data.
The information you learn because you're DOING will be worth more than any $$$ you might make (or lose).
Couple things that i want to point out.
PROS:
Dating is a 'starter' niche because you'll likely see SOME conversions before you get discouraged and move on to another niche that you'll make real money with.
AMs can be a good source of information on what offers to run if they are a good AM or if you have a good relationship with them.
CONS:
Some AMs are going to tell you to run traffic that will make THEM money.
If AMs were really that great at Affiliate marketing, they'd be an affiliate marketer.
You need to be lucky, good, or have a large budget for split testing to make money in dating on FB. YMMV
DISCLAIMER:
I don't do FB ads anymore because of the time and budget I have (making all those creatives to split test... bleh). I had a couple winners in other niches but would now rather do SEO.
YOUR DATA is the best data.
The information you learn because you're DOING will be worth more than any $$$ you might make (or lose).
I have indeed been seeing plenty of conversions, at a comfortable % and epc...my only issue is getting a good enough CTR to lower my CPC. I think that's where the big budget part comes in, because it probably takes a bit of money to figure that part out. As I spend more and more money, it of course becomes tempting to find some "easier" way of making a profit. As it stands, though, I still feel like I can figure out dating. An alternative vertical/traffic source would be cool to look into, but
HOLY FUCK
I just checked my suggested bids for my newest batch...
0.78 - 1.34 USD
IT IS FUCKING WORKING. BE BACK LATER
HOLY FUCK
I just checked my suggested bids for my newest batch...
0.78 - 1.34 USD
IT IS FUCKING WORKING. BE BACK LATER
9/15/2011
Ran some ads tonight, only to discover how big of a hurdle dealing with a big demographic really is going to be! Spent about 40 dollars (not much) to test 15 or so ads, (all I had time for tonight) and my CTR was pretty miserable on most. Nothing above .052, but that's to be expected - 15 images aren't shit. I'm wondering though...with general targetting:
18-50, english speakers - 9 million demographic.
This is basically where I'm supposed to start out with these general dating sites, right? Start broad, and narrow down? What I'm wondering is, though - With such a broad demographic, is it possible to hit a .1 ctr? I'm thinking about setting my standards for a "good" ad lower than .1 ctr, and taking it and split testing it further amongst age groups of 6. (18-24, 25-31, etc) and seeing how it goes from there. I'm not sure how successful of a strategy that could be..and I'm also not sure if I should lower my standards of a good ad with a 9 mil demographic. Got a lot of thinking to do.
Ran some ads tonight, only to discover how big of a hurdle dealing with a big demographic really is going to be! Spent about 40 dollars (not much) to test 15 or so ads, (all I had time for tonight) and my CTR was pretty miserable on most. Nothing above .052, but that's to be expected - 15 images aren't shit. I'm wondering though...with general targetting:
18-50, english speakers - 9 million demographic.
This is basically where I'm supposed to start out with these general dating sites, right? Start broad, and narrow down? What I'm wondering is, though - With such a broad demographic, is it possible to hit a .1 ctr? I'm thinking about setting my standards for a "good" ad lower than .1 ctr, and taking it and split testing it further amongst age groups of 6. (18-24, 25-31, etc) and seeing how it goes from there. I'm not sure how successful of a strategy that could be..and I'm also not sure if I should lower my standards of a good ad with a 9 mil demographic. Got a lot of thinking to do.
Also, one more thing I forgot to mention. I noticed this offer is a facebook install, but it doesn't convert on "install." It converts after creating your profile inside of the Facebook install. My conversion rate was absolutely TERRIBLE tonight, and I think that may be a contributing factor.
Yeah, I figured as much. Damn. I have no idea where to even begin with such a broad dating site. My only idea so far is splitting all my ads into multiple copies with different age ranges. I have a feeling theres a lot more to it than age ranges though. I need to really think about this, because right now i'm drawing complete blanks in terms of things I can put in precise interests and likes.
I've been wracking my brain since last night trying to figure out a way to narrow down my demographic through any way aside from ages. I've thought of a few different things, but I feel like they all exclude a lot of potential clickers. Age is my only bet so far.
9/17/2011
Planning on doing some extensive split testing tonight. I've taken a good chunk of images and I'm split testing them amongst age groups of six. (18-24, 25-31, so on.) Spent the last two days seeing if there were any other other ways I could narrow down my target market... probably requires even more research. I found some pretty detailed demo-researching that OKCupid does, but nothing that I can really grab onto and take advantage of through Facebook's targeting system. I really think/hope the key to finding "my traffic" will be through the age ranges. I'm going to let all the numbers do the talking, but I can't help but think that the people clicking on my ad are NOT 18-24 mostly, even though they're the demographic getting most of the impressions, which in turn leads to much lower CTR. Lets hope I can come up with some good numbers tonight, I'm more desperate than ever to get my first profitable campaign running.
Planning on doing some extensive split testing tonight. I've taken a good chunk of images and I'm split testing them amongst age groups of six. (18-24, 25-31, so on.) Spent the last two days seeing if there were any other other ways I could narrow down my target market... probably requires even more research. I found some pretty detailed demo-researching that OKCupid does, but nothing that I can really grab onto and take advantage of through Facebook's targeting system. I really think/hope the key to finding "my traffic" will be through the age ranges. I'm going to let all the numbers do the talking, but I can't help but think that the people clicking on my ad are NOT 18-24 mostly, even though they're the demographic getting most of the impressions, which in turn leads to much lower CTR. Lets hope I can come up with some good numbers tonight, I'm more desperate than ever to get my first profitable campaign running.
9/18/11
Trying something new out tonight. Going to be running one ad per demographic at a time. Setting my budget at 3.50 for example, and getting 1 ad up targeting 18-24. Letting that run out the budget, at my CPC and budget I'm hoping it gives me around 5-10k views, which should be a decent judge on performance. I have two images tonight, but split up between 6 age ranges. (18-24, 25-31, and so on). It makes me a little nervous testing with only two ads, but it seems like a decent idea of mine that could work? My theory behind it is that I've lost a lot of stupid money, testing 40 ads at once, broad targeting, so I'll lose a lot of money on one ad that'll get 30k impressions, a decent amount of clicks, but retaining a shit CTR..therefore being a waste of money. With this strategy, I'm testing age demographics, but at a controlled rate. By giving each ad a specific budget, I'm making the most of testing each ad, while minimizing costs. Might work in theory...right?
Trying something new out tonight. Going to be running one ad per demographic at a time. Setting my budget at 3.50 for example, and getting 1 ad up targeting 18-24. Letting that run out the budget, at my CPC and budget I'm hoping it gives me around 5-10k views, which should be a decent judge on performance. I have two images tonight, but split up between 6 age ranges. (18-24, 25-31, and so on). It makes me a little nervous testing with only two ads, but it seems like a decent idea of mine that could work? My theory behind it is that I've lost a lot of stupid money, testing 40 ads at once, broad targeting, so I'll lose a lot of money on one ad that'll get 30k impressions, a decent amount of clicks, but retaining a shit CTR..therefore being a waste of money. With this strategy, I'm testing age demographics, but at a controlled rate. By giving each ad a specific budget, I'm making the most of testing each ad, while minimizing costs. Might work in theory...right?
9/18/11- Part 2
Well, well, well..
Interesting night. Spent 25 dollars today trying out my strategy. As I said earlier, my strategy tonight was taking two images that performed semi-well on broad targeting on a 9 mil demo, and split both into age ranges. Found one specific age range that gave me .09% (although this lowered to .08 by the end of the night) CTR on 2 different images. I don't think this is a coincidence, and I think I've hit my target age. Currently at .40 EPC, which...I think is pretty damn decent? Especially for a FB app install? Next major move - lowering CTR, in turn lowering CPC. Two random images both getting a near .1 CTR is giving me high hopes for tomorrow. Armed with a good age range, I'm hitting tomorrow night with 40-50 images, all targeted to that age range, in search of a .1+ consistent CTR. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
I can't believe how obsessed I've gotten with success. As I hit my target age range tonight, I was excitedly pacing back and forth waiting for stats to update. Heart was racing, started feeling light-headed, the works. I KNEW I wasn't going to profit or anything close tonight, but I knew that I had reached my first milestone - narrowing my demographic by good old fashioned DATA. I felt extremely accomplished. I'm going into tomorrow with high hopes, but I'm trying not to get overly optimistic. Gotta stay completely clear-headed. Clearheaded = clear, logical decisions - and that's what I'm trying to stick to throughout this entire process. Wish me luck, everyone.
Well, well, well..
Interesting night. Spent 25 dollars today trying out my strategy. As I said earlier, my strategy tonight was taking two images that performed semi-well on broad targeting on a 9 mil demo, and split both into age ranges. Found one specific age range that gave me .09% (although this lowered to .08 by the end of the night) CTR on 2 different images. I don't think this is a coincidence, and I think I've hit my target age. Currently at .40 EPC, which...I think is pretty damn decent? Especially for a FB app install? Next major move - lowering CTR, in turn lowering CPC. Two random images both getting a near .1 CTR is giving me high hopes for tomorrow. Armed with a good age range, I'm hitting tomorrow night with 40-50 images, all targeted to that age range, in search of a .1+ consistent CTR. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
I can't believe how obsessed I've gotten with success. As I hit my target age range tonight, I was excitedly pacing back and forth waiting for stats to update. Heart was racing, started feeling light-headed, the works. I KNEW I wasn't going to profit or anything close tonight, but I knew that I had reached my first milestone - narrowing my demographic by good old fashioned DATA. I felt extremely accomplished. I'm going into tomorrow with high hopes, but I'm trying not to get overly optimistic. Gotta stay completely clear-headed. Clearheaded = clear, logical decisions - and that's what I'm trying to stick to throughout this entire process. Wish me luck, everyone.
9/20/2011
Internet was down for the past 2 days..hustle was put to a complete halt because of that. (Had work as well, made it impossible to park my ass at some coffee shop/library and run stuff.) Tonight I'm mainly just submitting 50 or so ads for testing this specific age range that I've chosen.
Interesting to note, an AD of mine that had performance between .08 to .1 a few days ago, was just re-ran for 30 minutes or so and showed a .02 CTR
Why such a drastic drop? With only 10k impressions representing both days, I'm guessing its just dumb luck.
Internet was down for the past 2 days..hustle was put to a complete halt because of that. (Had work as well, made it impossible to park my ass at some coffee shop/library and run stuff.) Tonight I'm mainly just submitting 50 or so ads for testing this specific age range that I've chosen.
Interesting to note, an AD of mine that had performance between .08 to .1 a few days ago, was just re-ran for 30 minutes or so and showed a .02 CTR
Why such a drastic drop? With only 10k impressions representing both days, I'm guessing its just dumb luck.1) Yes. You need to split test ages. Or any other thing you can think of. Target race. Target geographically. Interests.
2) Typically Ads burn out quickly on facebook. Basically you'll see a pretty consistent drop in CTR until it becomes unprofitable. Also depending on the time of day. The day of the week. The time of year. Your CTR will be dependent upon all of this.
Don't give up. Man up.
2) Typically Ads burn out quickly on facebook. Basically you'll see a pretty consistent drop in CTR until it becomes unprofitable. Also depending on the time of day. The day of the week. The time of year. Your CTR will be dependent upon all of this.
Don't give up. Man up.
Thanks for the advice. I've been thinking about race/state(or city)/interests, but i'm hitting a complete blank when it comes to Facebook. With Facebook, it seems really difficult to track the type of person clicking on your ad. Through the demographics tool, I can see what % of each age-range/state are seeing my ad, but what does that really tell me? If Alabama is seeing 2% of my impressions, how am I supposed to know whether or not that 2% is a good target to have or not? Without being able to choose a race, how can I narrow down and target only, say, white people?
I've got a lot of thinking to do. Last night was pretty sucky on CTR, targeting my chosen age range. I didn't see any ads with a CTR above .06, and the CPC is still insane. With my current CPC, it seems like I will have to devote a large chunk of money just to find an ad over .1% I know once I find that ad, I'll be able to take advantage of the lower CPC. At the same time though, my conversion last night was 29 clicks, with 1 lead, and its a FB App install...which makes it a bit discouraging.
Going into it tonight, I want to be targeting the age range I've been using, along with race... although the real trouble is figuring out HOW to do this. Sure, I can try interests like "water polo" and white-people shit like that, but I'm obviously excluding plenty of white people who don't like water polo. Fuuuuuck. So frustrating. Gotta keep trying, though.
To figure out some geographic targeting I know I can take an ad and split it up into a bunch of cities or states, and see which states/cities are performing best for me, right? But to me, that seems like I'm just spreading myself too thin for testing, no? 1 image, split up amongst 50 different states or cities, but I have no guarantee that the image is even GOOD. So...lets say I take 50 images and split them up 50 times each...yeah, you get my point.
I'm trying to stay organized with everything, and I envisioned taking this as a step-by-step process..but at this point I'm a bit flustered and overwhelmed.
Here's how I pictured it going:
Step 1: Narrow down age ranges. Test a series of ads across different age ranges at 6-age intervals. Find best performing age interval, move on to step 2.
Step 2: With best performing age interval, split test images across this interval. Take best performing images (ideally, .1 CTR and higher) and move to step 3.
Step 3: Ads at this point already have a low CPC (ideally .20c, or even lower) so split testing past this point is optimization. Switch up title, copy, add a border to image, test out variables like that.
I KNOW that isn't the whole picture, but from my understanding I thought ages would be more key than anything. Now that I'm learning there's even more to it, it seems to throw my process completely off, to the point where I don't even know what to do tonight.
I'm trying to stay organized with everything, and I envisioned taking this as a step-by-step process..but at this point I'm a bit flustered and overwhelmed.
Here's how I pictured it going:
Step 1: Narrow down age ranges. Test a series of ads across different age ranges at 6-age intervals. Find best performing age interval, move on to step 2.
Step 2: With best performing age interval, split test images across this interval. Take best performing images (ideally, .1 CTR and higher) and move to step 3.
Step 3: Ads at this point already have a low CPC (ideally .20c, or even lower) so split testing past this point is optimization. Switch up title, copy, add a border to image, test out variables like that.
I KNOW that isn't the whole picture, but from my understanding I thought ages would be more key than anything. Now that I'm learning there's even more to it, it seems to throw my process completely off, to the point where I don't even know what to do tonight.
One more thing. I might have a problem with not letting my ads run long enough. Looking at my ad history for every single ad I've ever tested on this account, the most clicks a single ad of mine has received from testing is 13 clicks (25k impressions.) The most impressions I've received are 25k impressions, but the average seems to be around 7k. My general judgment is waiting until 5k to 10k to make judgments on ads before pausing them. If an ad has a barely below .1 ctr at that point, I let it run further. If its way below, I pause it indefinitely. Seems sensible... but is that a part of my error?
I can't help but feel like I'm just missing some key point in all of this to make it all "click" finally.
I can't help but feel like I'm just missing some key point in all of this to make it all "click" finally.
9/21/11
Had a bit of a revelation today, thanks in part largely to my girlfriend. I realized I'm over-complicating my brainstorming when it comes to things I can use to narrow down my target audience. I don't know if anyone else has suffered from this before, but I'll elaborate on it further in case any other fellow newbies are silently following along to this thread and might have had the same issue that I did.
I realized today that the "ideal traffic" in my mind, was every single potential user on Facebook who would click and convert on the offer I was promoting. When I would look at the 9 million demographic of single males in the U.S. who were between 18 and 50, I saw it as "How can I get every single person of that 9 million who is willing to click in my ad, within my targeting?"
This is not the way to go about things. At least... at first. I discovered today, that 9 million was too prevalent of a number in how I was thinking about things. I'm not trying to find a way to encapsulate every single click from that 9 million. I'm trying to create my OWN demographic within that 9 million. I'll be missing out on plenty of people who WOULD click on my ad, but by creating my own mini-demographic within the 9 million, I'm creating a group of people, who, through precise interest targeting, would be more likely to click on the ad. I was too stuck on making sure I wasn't missing out on "potential clickers" before. That's not the point of this. The point of targeting is to nail down a group of people who WILL click on the ad. Not all potential people.... just a profitable portion of them that I can "quarantine" in a way from the rest, through predetermined likes/interests.
And with that, I have one ad at .240 CTR tonight, and another at .127, based on my new way of targeting people. They're still in their infancy stages though, so we'll see how they do through some more testing. Good night everyone.
Had a bit of a revelation today, thanks in part largely to my girlfriend. I realized I'm over-complicating my brainstorming when it comes to things I can use to narrow down my target audience. I don't know if anyone else has suffered from this before, but I'll elaborate on it further in case any other fellow newbies are silently following along to this thread and might have had the same issue that I did.
I realized today that the "ideal traffic" in my mind, was every single potential user on Facebook who would click and convert on the offer I was promoting. When I would look at the 9 million demographic of single males in the U.S. who were between 18 and 50, I saw it as "How can I get every single person of that 9 million who is willing to click in my ad, within my targeting?"
This is not the way to go about things. At least... at first. I discovered today, that 9 million was too prevalent of a number in how I was thinking about things. I'm not trying to find a way to encapsulate every single click from that 9 million. I'm trying to create my OWN demographic within that 9 million. I'll be missing out on plenty of people who WOULD click on my ad, but by creating my own mini-demographic within the 9 million, I'm creating a group of people, who, through precise interest targeting, would be more likely to click on the ad. I was too stuck on making sure I wasn't missing out on "potential clickers" before. That's not the point of this. The point of targeting is to nail down a group of people who WILL click on the ad. Not all potential people.... just a profitable portion of them that I can "quarantine" in a way from the rest, through predetermined likes/interests.
And with that, I have one ad at .240 CTR tonight, and another at .127, based on my new way of targeting people. They're still in their infancy stages though, so we'll see how they do through some more testing. Good night everyone.
9/23/11
Facebook has been an emotional roller coaster for me. Just 2 nights ago (as you can tell from my previous post) I went to sleep, optimistic as hell, expecting to at least see some sort of progress from my "revelation." After getting 2 ads with a .24 CTR and .127, I went into the next night not only running those two, but split testing the .24 CTR ad with 5 different titles, in order to see if any of them would perform better. Not only did my two "good" ads go down the shitter, but my new ads performed terrible as well with only 1 sale in 37 clicks. In the hundreds of images I've tested over 3 campaigns, I have yet to get one with over a .08% consistent CTR. It sucks to know that you're doing SOMETHING wrong, no matter how hard you try. I need to re-evaluate my process.
Another thing I need to work on is my networking in this business. It would be great to have fellow affiliate marketers that I could consider "friends" and discuss strategies with each other, etc. I'm normally a social butterfly and forum/skype/aim-whore, but I've been so damn consumed with making Facebook WORK that I have barely bothered with any of it. Not that that's a bad thing.
I've found two guides today that I plan on reading, which will hopefully help me rethink everything. Whenever I'm not working, I have been doing NOTHING but affiliate marketing. I KNOW this will pay off with enough dedication. I'll spare everyone of the sappy bullshit, but this is my dream. I can say with complete confidence that my first profitable campaign is going to be one of the proudest moments of my life.
Facebook has been an emotional roller coaster for me. Just 2 nights ago (as you can tell from my previous post) I went to sleep, optimistic as hell, expecting to at least see some sort of progress from my "revelation." After getting 2 ads with a .24 CTR and .127, I went into the next night not only running those two, but split testing the .24 CTR ad with 5 different titles, in order to see if any of them would perform better. Not only did my two "good" ads go down the shitter, but my new ads performed terrible as well with only 1 sale in 37 clicks. In the hundreds of images I've tested over 3 campaigns, I have yet to get one with over a .08% consistent CTR. It sucks to know that you're doing SOMETHING wrong, no matter how hard you try. I need to re-evaluate my process.
Another thing I need to work on is my networking in this business. It would be great to have fellow affiliate marketers that I could consider "friends" and discuss strategies with each other, etc. I'm normally a social butterfly and forum/skype/aim-whore, but I've been so damn consumed with making Facebook WORK that I have barely bothered with any of it. Not that that's a bad thing.
I've found two guides today that I plan on reading, which will hopefully help me rethink everything. Whenever I'm not working, I have been doing NOTHING but affiliate marketing. I KNOW this will pay off with enough dedication. I'll spare everyone of the sappy bullshit, but this is my dream. I can say with complete confidence that my first profitable campaign is going to be one of the proudest moments of my life.