Grieve's Affiliate Marketing Journey into Success or Squalor. Most Likely Squalor.

I spent 5 months bleeding money on FB dating pisses me the fuck off if you do dating I would go international by international I don't mean canada australia UK or any other english speaking country. I you keep grinding you will find something that works.

month's 1-5 for me cost around 3-4k dollars and by the end of month 6 I made all of it back and had 3k dollars left over (yes i mean pure profit YTD, and I did it in like 6 days) shit does work just gotta be able to ignore the loses and keep learning.

I stopped dating though I couldn't figure it out but I wil start that shit back up eventually just to pissed at dating right now lol.
 


jonas33h said:
I spent 5 months bleeding money on FB dating pisses me the fuck off if you do dating I would go international by international I don't mean canada australia UK or any other english speaking country. I you keep grinding you will find something that works.

month's 1-5 for me cost around 3-4k dollars and by the end of month 6 I made all of it back and had 3k dollars left over (yes i mean pure profit YTD, and I did it in like 6 days) shit does work just gotta be able to ignore the loses and keep learning.

I stopped dating though I couldn't figure it out but I wil start that shit back up eventually just to pissed at dating right now lol.
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Yeah, I'm definitely looking into non-english speaking international countries. I'm basically looking for decent $ per lead, with low suggested bids on Facebook. A few countries fit the bill, although I'm basically shooting in the dark as to which country I'm going to pick. Debating two countries with the same language, but the offer is a mystery to me and I'm not sure if it'll convert. Worth a shot, right?! :P
 
10/17/11

In Vancouver for 2 weeks, but I'm continuing to work on my Facebook campaigns. I've picked up a dating campaign for Mexico/Puerto Rico, and I can honestly say this is the most unpleasant experience I've had submitting ads yet. Ads that were accepted within 5/6 submits in other countries (UK/US) are getting denied within the 3 minutes that I submit them. So far I'm on submission wave 10 or 11. I'm doing this all manually and it sucks. Oh well. That's the name of the game, right?

I'm unsure of this offer, seeing as I've never heard of it or seen it mentioned on wickedfire, but you won't know until you try, right? Another day PRAYING for my first profitable campaign. :)
 
10/19/11



..sigh. As I spent the last few days fighting to get my ads on Facebook accepted, the offer has now been paused on my network. Apparently the advertiser blew through their budget and won't be available again until November. I'm obviously not waiting until then. Back to square one.
 
Switched to an Italian dating offer. AM says that this offer is generally performing well internationally. Additionally, the suggested bids aren't as low as the last country I was doing... but they're still reasonable. Spending the rest of the night submitting and trying for approvals. Lets hope this offer doesn't crap out on me in the middle of everything.
 
10/20/11

Sigh, I honestly can't catch a break:

ybhW5.jpg



After my ads were sitting on pending all day, I get hit with denies + this message tonight. Why isn't this offer allowed on Facebook... even though it has a Facebook-approved app?! It is BeNaughty Italy, for those wondering. Back to the search for a good Facebook dating offer for non-english speaking international. If anyone has a suggestion, PLEASE PM me or skype me at georgek8911. I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.
 
That's a pretty good start. Like scheme, I have subscribed to this thread and following your updates, will let you know when I feel I can chime in with something constructive.
 
Triped said:
That's a pretty good start. Like scheme, I have subscribed to this thread and following your updates, will let you know when I feel I can chime in with something constructive.
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I really appreciate the support, thanks.




10/21/11


I decided I'm going to take a stronger approach with this journal and my next campaign. Rather than trying to remain super vague, I'm going to go a bit more in-depth with every single step of my next campaign. It has gotten to the point where no matter what guide I read, what advice I hear, I feel like I'm already implementing it in some way. As I've been saying for a while now, I can't help but feel like there's just one tiny thing that I'm not doing right.

I'm going to go more in depth with my bidding strategies, split testing strategies, and general approach with this next dating offer. I'll be supporting these with screenshots of my facebook dashboard, as well as my conversion/lead display page. Knowing that people are following along with this thread, I'm hoping that it means I'll receive some wisdom/insight that may end up leading me closer to cracking this puzzle (of which I will then be eternally grateful toward whomever that is..)

So, lets begin.

Where I'm at right now:

As always, I am pursuing Facebook dating. I've tried mostly with the US and UK so far, seeing no luck in either markets. Stable CTRs .1 and above did not exist, and this was after hundreds upon hundreds of image/title/copy variations. The suggested bids were also hurting. As per someone's suggestion in this thread, and through research of my own, I've decided to move on to non-english speaking countries.

I've chosen an app install, and it is for Italy. The suggested bids are much lower than US/UK/CA/AU, and hopefully it is a less saturated market. I'm currently waiting on my creative to be approved from the advertiser, but my plan is as follows:

1.) Split up my testing by age ranges. Minimum age is 25, so I'll be going with intervals of 5. Should I go lower than 5? Seems like a solid range, although I'm tempted to go down to 3 or 4 year intervals.
2.) Split testing all my images amongst these age ranges.
3.) My bidding will go as follows: 20% above minimum suggested bid, and if the CTR is above .1, I will lower as needed.

So my first round of testing will look like this:

Age range: 25-30, 31-36, 37-42, 43-50 (I increased the range on this one a bit because its a much smaller demographic to work with.)

Amongst these age ranges, I will have the same 10-15 images tested.


Any comments/concerns from the followers of this journal will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, guys.


Edit: Also to mention, I will be using CPC as opposed to CPM.
 
On second thought, after reading the EWA network guide regarding international bidding, I'm tempted to start out with CPM, seeing as how it cuts my suggested bids in half. I have no experience with CPM, though.
 
10/22/2011


Today was my first day officially running a non-english speaking dating app install. I ended up switching countries again, to one with lower suggested bids. Anyway, so I ran some ads, and...

IT WAS HUGE! I'm overreacting a bit because I'm just excited to have a damn ad (or in this case.. adS ;) ) with a consistent .1 CTR or above. I had a bit of a slip up today, without realizing that I needed to adjust for the foreign timezones in order to run during "prime time," but I was still able to get my ads up around 10 pm target-country time. I spent all day yesterday sitting on pending ads, and I was merely "testing the waters" to see if the offer was acceptable to Facebook, so that means I only got to test 4 ads today. Same image for all 4, but the age ranges were split up. My 25-30 age range was also split up amongst CPC and CPM bidding just for testing purposes, and the CPM performed TERRIBLY. The CPC ads on the other hand.... performed quite well across the board :) :) :) !!!

25-30 CPC ad started out strong at .177, and held that for nearly 15k impressions! Needless to say I was extremely excited, and as it got really late in the country(midnight) CTR dropped to .115 CTR, but this was over 65k impressions, so I am still PUMPED. Screenshot coming up, and my analysis following after:

PLeGW.jpg



When all was said and done, I ended up with these stats regarding epc/convers:

Conversion rate: 6.5%
EPC: .09


Now, I haven't made a profit yet, but I made about 1/3rd back on what I spent. Which is...way better than I was doing in US/UK, to say the least. The CTRs are strong, and I believe they'll continue to be so through continued testing. From what I've read/heard, it takes a bit for Facebook's suggested bids to properly reflect based off my CTR, so when I'm looking at my ads tomorrow, I should be seeing even lower suggesteds, no? My suggested bids have dropped about 60%, but with an epc of .09, I obviously need them even lower ;P

I still have plenty of images to test, considering today was hardly a "split test". I know my conversion rate should probably be higher, but that comes along with split testing, right? Different images/titles will convert better than others? EPC should increase along with that... but, it doesn't seem too bad, right? I don't have a "standard" conversion/epc rate that I'm trying to hit, because I honestly don't know what is considered a "good" conversion/epc rate in foreign countries. If anyone has any suggestions or advice based on what they're seeing from me, please speak up! Contact me either through this thread, PM, or skype (georgek8911.) Many thanks to anyone following along, and I hope to hear from some of you. I'm coming closer to making this work, I can feel it!
 
10/23/11

Well...


Today, things went even better than yesterday :) Not much to say, I'll let the screenshot speak for itself:

mcaki.png


Each of those is the same image, but for a different age-range. Performing well across the board. My goal is, of course, around .4 CTR for my "winning" ads. I have a few more images to test. After that... optimization?
 
Go go go go go!

Once your CPC's drop from your higher CTR's, you'll have a positive ROI! Shoot for the moon!
 
Game plan for the week: Getting those troublesome images approved (which probably means they'll be worth it and do well), and learn how to use prosper to its full potential. I feel like I'm definitely not taking full advantage of it, and I may be getting away with it now since I'm still at newbie/non-profitable status... but in the long run it will lose me money, I'm sure. By the end of this week, I want to be much better with it.


Thanks for the encouragement :)
 
Fuck me, but I still can't make heads or tails out of your diary here.

So HOW MUCH did you spend and HOW MUCH did you make or lose?

::emp::
 
emp said:
Fuck me, but I still can't make heads or tails out of your diary here.

So HOW MUCH did you spend and HOW MUCH did you make or lose?

::emp::
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Sorry, I fell behind a bit with tracking my spending in this thread. I've spent about 700 so far, and made back around 250. That is over all the campaigns i've tried, and the majority of that loss was over my forst 2 campaigns. With this new campaign over the past 2 days, i've made 45 and spent 80. By far the best return i've seen yet, and that is just from split testing. With optimization, i'm hopefully going to start seeing some profit!
 
AceB7 said:
Awesome!! I've sunk slightly more cash then you and slowly seeing a return now but its slow nail biting stuff!
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Yeah, it gets more and more intense the closer you get to potentially making your first profit. I find that working in the dating-niche also gets you plenty of naysayers who tell you to quit while you're ahead because dating is oversaturated, more trouble than its worth, etc. I honestly feel like I'm making huge steps towards profiting, and I feel like it WILL be in fact worth it in the end. I love a challenge. That's not so wrong, is it?
 
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