grieve

I've read a bit of WiredNiko's journal, and it seems to be a pretty decent way to catalog your own progress/thoughts. I'm about a week or two into my own adventures of internet marketing, more specifically, Affiliate Marketing through Facebook advertising.

For starters, I guess I'll introduce myself to any brave souls willing to wade through all of my newbness and read along. My name is George, 21, and I'm from the Chicago-area (random suburb 5 minutes outside of it.) Like a lot of kids my age, I was basically raised by the internet. Got my first computer at 5... obsessively online posting/browsing/gaming ever since. Past couple of years I've been utterly confused as to what I want to do with my life. Even though I knew I loved the internet, I was pretty clueless as to how people make a living off of it. The extent of my knowledge of making money off the internet was : Think of some godly, kick-ass idea that no one else has, make a website out of it, SIT BACK AND WATCH THE CA$$$$$HHHHH ROLL IN!!!!
Sure, a few people have done that, but as we all know now - there are millions of other ways to make money online. I was in school for Political Science, but I'm taking a break this semester to do a bit of "soul searching."

Once I discovered Affiliate Marketing/Internet Marketing in general via Nickycake's newbie guide (luv u nicky ~~~<3), it felt like the entire world opened up to me. I love the internet, and being able to make a living off of something involving the internet was a gigantic dream to me (and it still is.) The one thing I have always had going for me is my obsessive desire for success, no matter what it is. If I want to complete something, or if I set some goal for something - I can't think about anything else until I do it. Sports (GO FUTBOL), work, gaming, you name it. To give an example that all basement-dwelling nerds such as myself can identify with - anyone play Starcraft 2? When it first released, I was a complete scrub. Played a bit of SC1 on dial-up back when I was 12 years old, got raped by some Korean, and quit... for a very long time. As soon as SC2 released, I decided that I wanted to get good at it. I started out as bottom of the barrel bronze, not knowing what the fuck I was doing. 2 months later of 10-hours-a-day gaming? High-level Diamond (back when Masters/GM didn't exist.) This type of extreme fervor basically applies to every single aspect of my life. I try, try, and try, until I do. I realize I'm rambling along a bit, and I don't want to seem too much like a pre-teen spilling their guts on their livejournal, so I'll try and cut this short.

Basically, I've chosen Facebook as my "learning" platform for affiliate marketing. My girlfriend and I are working on this together, although she's a bit busy with work/school, so she just tries to help when she can. I was told by my AM that the easiest newb-friendly vertical is dating, so that's what I've chosen. I plan on going pretty in-depth with my day-by-day strategy because :


1. It seems like it would be smart to be able to try and track my thought process as the days go along, and

2. I'm pretty lost at the moment. My girlfriend (we'll call her Grievette... okay, maybe not) and I are pretty much scratching our heads at this point wondering what else we can do. We've got decent conversion rates, decent epc, but we can't get our CPC down to profitable levels for the life of us. CTR is a bitch.


If anyone has gotten this far into my first post - thanks. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate anyone that posts with some constructive criticism. I can't sleep, eat, or work without thinking about marketing, CTR, and CPC. I've spent months reading, researching, and learning this business, and as of 8/28,11, I finally sacked up and started doing it. I want to make this work more than anything else I've ever done in my life. Thanks for reading.

grieve

8/28/11

After enough research, I decided August 28th was going to be the day I'd start. I decided on a Jewish dating offer, rather niche, but in my mind I figure that the more targeted the demographic, the better my conversion will be. Little did I realize, small demographics make the suggested bid fucking retarded. Following some advice I saw posted on wickedfire, I decide to start bidding at .10, and going up accordingly until I start receiving impressions at a rate I'm comfortable with. At this point, I'm only looking for images that are licensed for commercial use...so needless to say, my images suck. Some of them are professional looking, and the “real” looking pictures aren't that great either. Some not smiling, etc. Another big mistake, looking back, is that I'm targeting males and females. My interests are very specific, but I broaden my demographic stupidly in other ways such as targeting both genders, and not clicking “specific age range.” As expected on day one, problems all around. I spend 35 dollars, with 48 clicks total spread across 30-40 ads. CTRs range from miserable to less miserable. .03 to .058 at best. I consider this a very successful day, because I'm starting to familiarize myself with the Facebook advertising platform. I come out of this day thinking that perhaps I didn't raise my bids fast enough, so I decide that the next day I'm going to instead be much quicker with raising my bids.

grieve

8/29/11


Day 2, much of the foolish mistakes from day 1 persist, although I learn on some. I stop targeting males and females generally, although I do continue to market to women seperately. Single women images for the men, couple pictures for the women. I start instead at 1.20 cpc for my ads, since I notice that it is generally where I started receiving impressions from the night before. Images are still too professional looking. 76 dollars spent, 62 clicks. Decent conversion rate, but my CTR is terrible. Ranges from about .03 to .06. CPC never goes below 94 cents.

grieve

9/1/11

After speaking to my AM, we realize that “real pics” are the way to go, with cleavage if possible. Along with this, I am told to always bid suggested, so I do. Really scary for me, considering the lead is around 4 dollars, and with anything but a PHENOMENAL conversion rate, it is going to be impossible to make a profit. I decide to try it out, just to see what kind of cpc facebook will be charging me. Ends up being around 1.82 actual CPC, although I cut tonight's campaign short because family issues come up.

grieve

9/5/11

After doing more research, I discover that giving yourself a bigger budget will give you more impressions right off the bat, giving your ads lots of exposure. I've also learned by myself at this point to wait for 5k to 10k impressions MAX to judge on whether or not an ad has any chances of having a “good” CTR, although at this point I am far too lenient. Ads with .07 CTR or above at 10k impressions I let run, and it of course ends up costing me money as the CTR either stays at a bad .076 or tanks further down. I put up a lot of ads this day, and remain at suggested bid, which is a whopping 4 to 4.75. Again, it doesn't feel right, but I've seen “bid suggested” suggested by a LOT of people. CPC's range from 1.50 to 2.00. CTR is at .094 for one ad, but falls to .07 within an hour. I spend 142 dollars on this day, although I don't feel bad about it at all considering a.) it takes a good sum of money to learn what you're doing in this business and b.) I feel like I've learned a lot this night.

grieve

9/6/11

I don't do any marketing this day, but I speak with 2 Affiliate Managers which both suggest a very strong course change, given my recent progress with the Jewish dating niche offer. They're shocked to find out that suggested bids go from 4.20 to as high as 10 or 11 dollars. This is most likely because of how small and targeted my demographic is, and although they don't suggest this often, they suggest that I switch up campaigns to a more generalized dating site, with an FB app install. Higher demo, but lower cpc, and higher conversion rate typically. I'm not one to give up on things, but I completely see where they're coming from, and I make the switch. By now, I've done lots of testing with the right images, including using borders, trying to get cleavage in, etc, so I think I know how to properly split test images at this point, although I have yet to receive a single consistent CTR of .1 or above, with any image. I decide to spend the next 2 or 3 days planning out this new campaign, and using the fake facebook account I've created to see what other facebook app installers are doing in their campaigns.

grieve

9/9/11

My first truly disappointing day of marketing. I make a gigantic mistake by having my budget immediately set to 200 dollars, especially with such a gigantic demographic. I bid suggested, which is still relatively high, in the 3 dollar range. Within 20 minutes, I get raped. Spend 162 dollars, and I don't even get to see any of the stats due to the facebook advertising platform lag. One second I'm at 0 dollars spent, the next refresh I'm at 162 dollars spent. I was tracking clicks on prosper/report section of my network, but I was hoping to track CTR as the night went on. I pause the campaigns, seeing as how CTR is .07 or below on all images, and call it a night, a bit frustrated, but no less determined to make it work. Up until this night, I considered every night a success, not based on financial gains, but because I would learn something new every night. This was the first night I considered a failure, because it was just something that should have clicked in my head. 200 dollar budget, gigantic demo, high suggested bid = money DRAIN. It should have clicked in my head. Not all is lost though, because I figured out that I need to fucking THINK before I do.

grieve

9/10/11

I learn a lot of new things, thanks to some friendly posts on wickedfire. I learn that suggested bids are inflated as all hell on Facebook, and that Facebook is basically taking advantage of newbies like me and making bank. Fair enough, even Facebook has to hustle. Two things are an ENORMOUS help to me this night, these two posts:

NEW Facebook Ads

and

Facebook Bid Lowering Strategies: How To Get Cheaper Clicks | Scotch & Sales

I also decide to try putting up 15 images at a time as opposed to 40 or 50, especially considering I'm new, its a lot of information to process, and I'm trying to extend my budget throughout the night so I can learn as much as possible per every dollar I'm spending. I run a few ads this night, starting at around 1.20 cpc bid, and I'm spending around .60c to 1 dollar per click. After 35 or so clicks, I don't have a single conversion, so I suspect Saturday is either a terrible night to run dating offers (much to my surprise) or something else is up. Perhaps my title? Copy? No clue. CTRs are below average as always, .07 and below. Spent 28 dollars before I decided to investigate things on Monday and discuss with my AM.

grieve

9/11/11

I have work all day today, so no chance to run any campaigns. My girlfriend runs a few ads for half an hour or so on her own, spends around 25 dollars, CTRs suck, and bids are about the same as the day before. Same issue, around 30 clicks, and not a single conversion. Is something up, or am I just not giving the ads enough time? This is where I leave this journal off for today. I'm utterly perplexed as to what the issue is. I figured that I maybe fucked up pixel tracking which is making my ads not track the conversions properly, but on 9/9/11 I was tracking sales just fine. Could something have gone wrong overnight with it, or am I just being too cautious?

At this point, I'm pretty confused about everything. I'm debating changing up my copy, and of course trying 15 or so fresh ads at a time for tonight, but I've had absolutely zero luck with a decent CTR after testing hundreds of images over the course of my “career,” and it feels odd to just keep blindly trying to get my CPCs down to profitable levels. Especially with this recent trend the past 2 days where we've had 60 to 70 clicks and not a single sale on a $1.40 lead. For this campaign to be profitable, I'm going to need to get my clicks down to really cheap levels, 30 to 20 cents, and seeing as how I haven't even seen below 70 cents at this point, it is definitely going to be though. I'm craving a profit more than ever. Going to discuss things with my AM tomorrow morning, and see where I'll go from there.



Total money spent: $471
Money made: $75 dollars

grieve

Something I've noticed after posting these journals - I've grown to be a little insecure about where I'm at right now. With how much money I've spent, am I supposed to know more than this? I know its all relative, and everyone is different, but I can't help but feel like everyone else probably knew way more about what they were doing at the 400 dollar point. I'm not going to let it shake my confidence, though. I need as few distractions as possible.

grieve

9/12/11

After speaking with my AM, and reading a few recommended case studies, I decided that I'm going to rework my title, and tweak my copy. Image is what catches people, but it really is amazing how much influence the ad's text has over conversion rates. Tonight, I plan on submitting brand new images, along with my reworked title/copy combo. I've lost a lot of money so far, but I feel it, somewhere deep down inside, that I can make this work. This isn't a business for pussies. Will post an update later tonight.

Scheme

Keep grinding, I am watching your thread and will help where I can along the way.

__________________

wiredniko

I am glad I inspired you

Keep going.

__________________
Twitter is gay but follow me anyway http://www.twitter.com/wiredniko

grieve

9/12/11 - Part 2


I've re-done my title and copy completely, incorporating elements that I believe can increase my CTR and Conversion. At this point, that seems a bit optimistic, but I refuse to give up. After learning so much today, I was a bit hesitant to start up another day of my offer so quickly(FB app install, dating site, 1.40 per install) but my girlfriend gave me the ol' "SACK UP AND DO IT PUSSY, WHAT IS WAITING A DAY GOING TO DO?!?"

I love that woman.


Will post later, hopefully with some positive results.


Edit: And a big thank you to Scheme and wiredniko, I really appreciate it.

grieve

9/12/11 - Part 3

Received a notification today that my Facebook daily spend limit has been increased to 2000.00. Lol. It is my DREAM to be spending that much a day on Facebook profitably. I know if I keep at it, I will be at that point eventually. That can't come soon enough.

Was planning on putting up ads tonight, but of course Facebook took about 4-5 hours to approve my ads, while disapproving 4-5 images that have already been approved before. Typical Facebook!

Included a prompt in my title, to get the user to click on my ad, as well as expanding upon that in the copy in hopes of improving my conversion %. I'm being super-strict on images - "real looking," smiling, doesn't obscure the girl's face in any way, etc. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I'm DYING for my first profit.

grieve

9/13/11


Gigantic roadblock today. Put up my ads as planned, all of them got denied, citing improper content or however way they phrase it. I had made a title change to the group that got accepted last night, so I figured that it was the issue. Resubmitted this batch, but with the title of the batch that got initially accepted. Ads were again disapproved, received this e-mail shortly after:

"Hi,

We've noticed that you are currently running Facebook Ads that violate our Terms of Use or Advertising Guidelines, despite having been previously warned to stop running such ads.

We do not allow ads for dating aggregate services, such as LoveScanner.

You'll need to delete any ads that do not comply with our policies within 24 hours. Failure to do so will result in your accounts being permanently disabled and the termination of all account management services. If you have questions about ad content that may violate our guidelines, feel free to reply to this email. We appreciate your cooperation.

Thanks,

The Facebook Ads Team"



In summation:

"-_______-"



Fuck. That. Back to the drawing board? Picking up another FB dating APP from Peerfly, looks solid, and it doesn't seem to be an aggregate site. Waiting for approval, and I'll hopefully be running some stuff tomorrow night. Really eager to get back into this, and really eager to make a profit. I really hope Facebook deems this offer "acceptable," as I'm pretty sure that was another strike against my account. Would hate to get it banned, but I know it's not the end of the world.

secretagentdad

STOP DOING FACEBOOK DATING ADS!!!!

Its the mistake that every single one of these journal threads seems to make.

Find a niche to start out with. Don't jump right into one of the most competitive ppc fields you can possibly find.

~~End rant

__________________
Exact Match Domains Done Right
http://EMDLISTS.com

grieve

Any suggestions from your own experience? As soon as I jumped into this I was told by a few reliable people that Dating is one of the best for beginners because its relatively easy to figure out. Considering that I'm struggling for the time being even getting my CTR/CPC down to manageable levels... do you have any better suggestions?

secretagentdad

Try something other then dating. The ppc I didnt lose money on was the vistaprint free business cards offer, I dunno if thats open still though.

Look for a none major traffic source where you dont have to compete tooth and nail with a bunch of big pubs. Buy sell ads or one of the b run ad networks is a great way to get a ton of really cheap impressions to learn on.


* I don't run much ppc, and lost money 3 out of 5 times. Was just tired of reading dating journals.

__________________
Exact Match Domains Done Right
http://EMDLISTS.com

grieve

I appreciate your input, thanks. I think I might try and research some alternative, cheap traffic sources for a bit, in addition to different verticals. Mostly though, I think I'm still going to focus on Facebook/Dating, because I truly feel like I can make it work. Maybe I'm just being naive? Probably. Its hard to just switch verticals so quickly, especially in the beginning, because I feel like I'm finally starting to establish a foundation of "What works" in my head in regard to Facebook and Dating.

Izaya

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.

__________________

Looking for High Quality PR5 Blogposts?

grieve

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.

Hav3n

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).

__________________

Follow along as I build an Authority MFA

grieve

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

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

aeisn

You'll never hit a good enough CTR to get your bids down targeting as broadly as you are. And you will never be profitable on a $4 dating install when you're paying $0.75 a click because your CTR is so low. You need to rethink how you're targeting users.

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

grieve

As I go into the higher age ranges (38-45, etc) demographic drops, and as expected, suggested bid increases. Do I stick to bids that were giving me impressions last night with a larger demographic, or do I increase my bids? Time will tell..

grieve

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.

grieve

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?

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

Hav3n

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.

__________________

Follow along as I build an Authority MFA

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

grieve

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.

Nutella

The only dating ads that were profitable for me were run on Friday and Saturday nights. Why? Because people want to go on dates... on Friday and Saturday nights.

Keep on testing new things. Once you get familiar with the Facebook ad platform, start marketing yourself as a PPC consultant. IMO - there's much more money to be with doctors and dentists than $1.60 CPA dating ads.

Hell, you can make money in whatever niche. Just keep on testing.

Tupac out.

Sulphur

If you're targeting by race or interest, can that be done using the picture you run with the ad?

grieve

I've definitely suspected the same in regard to Friday/Saturday being the most likely to run something profitable, but I've been trying not to restrict myself to only running on those days. Using my fake fb account I've noticed two things -

1.) There are 5-6 ads that I recognize that have been running NONSTOP for the past 2-3 weeks. My account is virtually a blank slate - age 25, male, single, no likes/interests, graduated from high school/college.

2.) The same ads are running at virtually any time of day based on when I've checked, and any time of the week.

Now, it is pretty safe to assume that these ads are profitable, considering how long they've been running. The question is, how the FUCK are these people able to run such broad ads at any time of day, any time of the week, and get even half-decent CTRs? Am I missing something? I STILL have yet to run an ad for an extended period of time that has anything above a .07 CTR. How do people do that? I am completely lost.

secretagentdad

Pay bumps.

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cougarclaws

Keep in mind they may be running directly with the advertiser (cutting out the network middle man) or the campaigns you are seeing could be the advertiser running it in-house.

edit: it could also be a network running the campaign

grieve

Well, damn. When I first started marketing, specifically on Facebook, all I heard was to try out dating first. Now, it seems like the common theme is to get the fuck out of dating and try another niche. I'd like to stick with Facebook though. I really need to think long and hard about this. I'm definitely open to suggestions from you guys, and I'd also like to say that I really appreciate all the help/input thus far.

secretagentdad

fuck facebook
fuck dating

You need a smaller offer and a smaller platform. All you have now is a big boy pool filled with big boys getting payed more then you hence there ability to drive costs so high you have next to 0 chance of making monies.

__________________
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grieve

By smaller offer, I'm assuming you mean either a less competitive vertical, or a smaller niche? Or probably both? Interesting... any suggestions for what you would consider a smaller platform?

secretagentdad

I dont know jack shit about ppc. Never made anything but chump change.

buysellads.com and NOT dating.
Thats about it.

__________________
Exact Match Domains Done Right
http://EMDLISTS.com

grieve

9/26/11


After my last post talking about low CTR... I continued to run my dating offer on Facebook, only to be met with more low CTRs and terrible conversions. Along with the knowledge that a lot of the dating offers are run by gigantic budgets and direct advertisement, I'm starting to think Facebook may not be the place for my first profit. At 618 dollars spent, and 130 dollars made, I consider it a valuable learning experience. I'm not giving up entirely on Facebook, but starting today I've been familiarizing myself with the MSN Adcenter/Google Adwords advertising platform.

Also, spoke to an old high school friend yesterday that I found out is "in the biz." We had a long discussion where he highly recommended mobile AM, and suggested that I get the fuck out of Facebook. Again, I'd like to "learn" Facebook, and I absolutely HATE to be a quitter. But am I being too damn stubborn with Facebook? I hate giving up on shit, and I like pushing toward something until I succed... but again, am I being blind to the fact that Facebook dating is not the place to go if I want to start being "profitable.?" Am I ignoring good, genuine advice, out of sheer stubbornness? I'm trying not to RUSH into anything - meaning either dropping out of Facebook and pursuing a new platform, or continuing to stubbornly tweak and dump money into something that isn't showing any potential.


And...through all of the bullshit going on in my head, I know that there are those people who are going to tell me "KEEP GOING, DON'T BE A PUSSY" in regard to my consideration of dropping Facebook dating for now. Or is that just my stubbornness again? Fuck.

Decisions, decisions.