What Am I Doing Wrong?

[StaringDog]

First of all, this forum is pretty amazing. You guys that dole out help and advice - you are generous souls and new IMers like me really appreciate it that you take the time to read and post.

I've been reading for a few weeks here and decided to post finally. I'm the kind of person that hates to ask for help for fear of sounding silly or whiny, but I'm at my wit's end. I'll try to be as descriptive as possible here , but the fatigue and frustration are beginning to wear. It's late and I'd like to post this before I go to bed.

I've been running various CPA offers for about 3 months with very limited success. I've been using paid traffic sources and at best have been breaking even, but mostly I am seeing losses consistently. I'm not sure what I need to do to succeed at this. I'm working my butt off - morning to midnight, so it's not like I'm not willing to put the work in.

Here are my experiences in list form. Any and all ideas, hints and corrective slaps are welcomed.

POF - Running dating offers. It seems that I get a campaign showing a BIT of profit, I get all excited thinking that I've finally GOT it... and then it DIES. DEAD. Change up graphics - still dead, more or less. Change offers - still not great. I'm, at best, eeking out a couple of dollars a day or breaking even on there and am wondering if there are too many big dogs in that pond or...? I finally have some ads that have good CTRs after much testing though. Everyone says to find a marketing slant and that works best with POF, but I find that if I get really specific, I get little traffic and just a couple of clicks a day. The clicks I do get convert, but the volume is BAD. What am I missing with POF?

Facebook - Terrible results. Start a campaign, get a couple of conversions right off the bat and then... DEAD. Test, test, test - still poor clicks. Maybe Facebook is not my friend. I can't seem to get good results there and have spent enough money trying.

7Search - I've run about 30 different campaigns to test the waters. Lost money, of course - I realize that I'm getting data - but it seems that even with tweaking keywords, blocking bad traffic, using landing pages, direct linking etc. on the odd good day I can earn a couple of bucks, tops.

Clicksor, LeadImpact, AdOn, etc - I've run lots of campaigns, same dismal results - poor conversion rates for pretty much all the offers I've tested.

Media buys - Got a bit of banner space. Again - dismal results.

Tracking is an ongoing problem. I run prosper and CANNOT get it to report conversions. It tracks keywords and looks like it may be tracking conversions as clicks. I have yet to see green on the sucker. I've talked to my AMs about the pixel, etc. and got them placed, but if it's obvious to anyone reading this as to where the problem is please let me know.

So then, am I trying too many traffic sources? Are there some that would yield better results or am I just not using them optimally? Or... is it just me?

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and for your help.

 

[Andy Haskins]

Firstly, welcome to the forum it's great to have you on board. Never be afraid to come and ask for help, that's what this community is here to do!

You certainly aren't afraid of trying which is a brilliant attitude to have in this industry, too many people think it's a get rich overnight thing and when they don't see success after their first campaign they disappear. You also look like you've picked up some good knowledge with regards to certain aspects such as blocking the bad traffic etc so you've certainly built the foundations.

When I started out I found it much easier to master one source of traffic before moving on to anything else, is there any you are particularly keen on? I'll run through my thoughts on a few of the above anyway to see if I can provide any insight:

POF - "Too many big dogs", not a chance. There is plenty of traffic to go around and we all get a share of the eyeballs if we do it right. Advertising on POF is always going to bring lower figures that somewhere like Facebook but there is still a lot you can do with the traffic.

1) When you say you change up the graphics, are you utilising a system where you keep rotating your graphics and constantly testing? Don't start chucking out the lowest performing, keeping only the best performing running.

2) It can be just as worth while to keep things a little broader but you need to make sure you have killer ads to keep a top CTR, this way you have more volume to work with.

3) If you finally have some good CTRs, as mentioned above start creating variants of these ads and putting them in to rotation to keeps things fresh.

Facebook - Many ways to go with this and it will all depend what sort of offer you are running. When you say you get poor clicks, do you mean in terms of volume due to laser targeting, quality of traffic etc?

The rest - Not my strongest points so I'm going to leave this down for someone else's valuable comments

Tracking - Not experienced this problem myself and only thing I could think is that you have given the wrong format to the network but they would have told you this if you have already spoken to them about. Anyone else have any clues? I'd be intrigued to see what the issue is. Can't imagine not being able to see those $ rack up

I will stick around and keep throwing my 2 cents at you, just keep positive about it all as you are certainly heading in the right direction.

Andy

 

[StaringDog]

Thanks for your response, Dru - much appreciated.

I do rotate my POF graphics. Do you find that some days or even time of day convert differently? It seems that one day will be pretty good with conversions and then the next will be in the crapper for the same ads and offer. I can't seem to make heads or tails of it. I've read that you get better quality traffic with higher bids, and I think I have found this to be true, but this is where I see my ROI go south and I can't seem to find that sweet spot of good responding traffic without spending too much.

You say, "Don't start chucking out the lowest performing, keeping only the best performing running." I'm not quite sure what this means. Are you saying that I shouldn't get rid of the lowest performing? Please explain

With Facebook, I get poor CTRs and the CTRs I do get don't convert. I've tried dating and gaming offers mostly. To people who are successful on this platform - I test about 10 images at a time. Is this enough or do I need to go bigger? My best CTR was 0.180 but they're all over the place mostly.

Again, thanks, thanks, thanks.