One small step for me, a giant leap for my Life!

[MinionBanana]

First of all, I would certainly wish for the above sentence, which is the subject title, holds true for me in time to come. Let me just introduce a little of myself, I am just an average dude, holding a day job in a commodities trading firm, living an average life. I actually had a short stint working in an internet marketing solutions company back in 2009, selling ad spaces in MSN, Friendster etc to Advertisers. But I never heard of or came into contact with the topic of Affiliate Marketing and how someone is able to make money online through CPA.

By chance, I came to know of this whole CPA affiliate marketing saga through a seminar earlier this year 2015 and decided straight away on the spot that I am going to put serious effort into trying to make this work. It has always been my dream since young to start a business and own something I could call my own and to me, CPA represents one of the lowest (if not the lowest) barrier to entry, costs to start your business with potential you can only dream of. Let me cite an example, I have a friend who quit his job to start a bakery shop. He incurred sunken costs to buy the machineries, look out for and secure a shop lot and sign a 2 years rental lease (usually min 2 years). However, 3 months into the venture, business is bad and the rental is killing him and he has to call it quits, sell of the machineries and got someone to take over the rental remaining lease and he lost $60K in that 3 months. What I am trying to say is there's risk in everything we do, what more better in CPA that we can set the cut-loss amount in every campaigns we run.

It has been almost 42 days now since I invested my 1st dollar $$ into running my campaigns. I would like to pen this online so it can serve as my journal as I embark on this journey, thinking that it would be quite an interesting read in future. By putting on record, it would also motivates me tremendously into making this work for me and hopefully become a successful affiliate. I would hope to share the things I am doing now feel free to feedback, suggest my mistake if I am doing anything wrong. If I am doing it correctly, it would be good to share. I would wish there's more right than wrong.

So let's start:
Tracking software I am using: CPVLab
Traffic Source: MediaTraffic, 50onRed, LeadImpact, TrafficVance
( I have tested the above sources and familiarise myself with their platforms, will stick to this 4 for now due to cashflow issue and also I think the above 4 should be sufficient enough for a start. Many more one can branch out to in future when you have found that Gold Mine campaign)
CPA Network: W4, Maxbounty

As the old saying goes, Sex Sells...I have decided to select a dating offer, it is a premium dating club for beautiful people. Ran 2 campaigns, one targeting France and another Germany.
After selecting the offer, I went on to do my research and found a list of similar dating websites and compile a list of 10 URLs with alexa ranking less than 400K. One set of 10 URLs for France and one set of 10 URLs for Germany. After setting up the campaign in LeadImpact, I realized the bids for the URLs is at the minimum of 0.01 (I am the only one bidding for this URL, nobody else is, is this a sign that it is not a profitable URL?) -> at this stage I do not know until I have test it.
After 1600 views for France and 1400 views for Germany with no conversions, I paused both campaigns as it has hit my campaign budget. See my picture below:

I have adopted similar method and ran campaigns for other dating offers like for
- russian & ukraine dating
- senior people dating
also did not generate good results.
Hmm...seems like there's more to work on it as I seriously think dating offers would have better results than this. So I must be missing something big time...

All right...that's about it folks for my first post.

 

[comegetbravo]

Have you split tested the offer on any other network?
What type of ad are you using? pop, redirect, domain, banner....?

 

[MinionBanana]

hi comegetbravo,

I am using Direct Linking, Pops.
I tried the Senior dating in TV and the premium club dating (DE, FR) and Russian dating in LI.
Quite surprising results to turn out like this, still thinking what is missing in the equation.

 

[seeqer]

hi comegetbravo,

I am using Direct Linking, Pops.
I tried the Senior dating in TV and the premium club dating (DE, FR) and Russian dating in LI.
Quite surprising results to turn out like this, still thinking what is missing in the equation.

I do not know if the conversion you want is sale or email but here is something that almost worked on me and I am a guy who is REALLY cynical about dating and dating site.

The landing page is a page that contains tricks or advices to increase the chance of finding a mate. Also it could tell a few good reasons as to why this site could be better ... like girls that like games for gamer people or activities that senior women do that senior man are looking for.

Go in Facebook groups for seniors or gamers or forums for seniors and gamers and see what they are looking for and what kind of problem they have. Then go look at the search engine in the dating website if there are options that can help the guy find someone that does that activity they want.

Just dating is to broad. We all get rejected and it sucks. What you need is to give thrust that this could work because the kind of woman that person is looking for is right there.

You can then use the keyword of that activity to target male looking for that kind of woman and with an ad that talks about that activity such as ... are you looking for a women who like to be a Sith Sorcereress? (Star wars the old republic). Alot of guys that are gamers are looking for a girlfriend that is a gamer.

Currently my income sucks but when it gets better if I fall on one of these advertising (they are very rare), the odds that I subscribe to that dating site has increased.

Since most advertisers that I saw do not do this, you have an edge on your competitor. You simply target the type of games that are popular among men and women.

**** EDITED TO ADD ****

You can also target the type of outdoor or indoor activities that are popular among man and women of a particular age bracket. Among seniors, I know some like scrabble. Also I read in the newspaper today that they are women that like modified cars!!! My mind is blown!!

The trick is to find a dating site where you have these options and enough women that are into these things. Take some time but you should get more fish this way.

**** EDITED ANOTHER TIME TO ADD ***

Do not forget to put on the landing page pictures of attractive women of different body type for that age bracket. Someone they could realistically find love with.

 

[MinionBanana]

hi Seeqer,

thanks for the insightful posts. I guess you are right, generally running ads on similar dating sites might not be tempting enough to lure those visitors who are going to that site they are already a member with.
Let me try out next time.