Acai Flog on Adsonar

you guys are crying like a bunch of babies.... it is painful to the ears...

Roundabout you raise a great point, why does it matter?

Lets see what folks have to say about this.
 


I've lurked here for quite some time. I never post because I see what happens to people who post questions. I finally do, and bam, everybody is pissed. I outed the landing page without reading the rules. Then I fixed it and people are still pissed. Such a clicky group here, its sad really. I typically don't do forums, I just do work. Ventured out of my comfort zone into the acai arena and figured I'd try to get feedback. And I did get a couple of good answers. Thanks for that. The rest is what it is. I always copy a landing page I like, and try to duplicate everything so I have a baseline to work from before doing all of my own edits. I've done that for 8 years. I have no doubt I'll figure out the acai/health niche on my own eventually.

I netted a little over a million last year doing PPC and lead gen. Not trying to brag, because I know thats not near as much as a lot of people here, but I'm just trying to establish that I'm not some random jackoff. I'm trying to learn more every day and expand into other arenas. I guess I should trust my instincts and ask questions in other forums, as the majority here doesn't seem keen to really help one another. Funny thing is, I've received private messages from some nice folks.

I think this forum could be so much more if the reputation for bashing was toned down a bit, but whatevs. I guess that's what makes it unique. The IM forum where many times the most helpful post is "fuck off". Good times.

Netting a million in a year is good. You wouldn't do that if you didn't know this industry. But I am a little surprised that you let the heightened levels of testosterone in this forum get under your skin. Take it upon yourself to raise the level of discussion in the forum. You'll get back more than you give. PM me if you want to chat sometime.
 
I don't ever post on WF or read it normally. Only started recently to read up on all the FTC and AG crap that is going down (and that will come in the near future). All I can say as far as my credentials is that I'm usually always in the top 3 in spend for Adsonar Advertisers. So here's my answer to your question...

1. You never made money because you copied the person exactly. I can't tell you how many times I've copied an lp, ran the same ad copy as the other person, and in the end I went with something different whether it be ad copy, tweaks to the landing page, etc. to make it work because what I copied didn't work.

2. Adsonar is like chasing a dangling carrot. Just as soon as you figure out a creative that works, it stops working as well. So you probably saw these ads, assumed the person was making money with them. In all reality he might have been losing money on them, but he knows the placement is ultimately profitable once he finds a creative that sticks because he's been working it for awhile.

The problem with adsonar is that its always got a bunch of noobs willing to lose money and everyone rips everyone's lps and what you get is a saturated market and duplicate ads everywhere...even the pros like me deal with crap profit margins while this occurs. Additionally, ad copy goes in and out of fashion very quickly when every page load on an AOL site is "Acai Berry Side Effects." Which leads me to my next point...

3. You could have entered the market at the wrong time when bid prices were inflated. Right now that's occuring bc there is News Site 1...and New Site 2...and News Site 3...and well 10 other "news television sites" running trying to make a living reporting on the acai berry.

A few more pieces of advice for you and whoever reads this post:

-Don't let an Adsonar Rep optimize you account. They aren't any good at it. If you are my ad rep and you are reading this, I'm sorry, but you suck at optimizing my account.

-Realize that on these networks like Adsonar and Pulse, you have some people willing to lose money to ultimately make money. I've seen people drop 30-100k fighting over just a couple of placements...myself included...

-Copying is good, but split testing is better. Most great affiliates don't spend the time to split test thoroughly enough...I can usually take any popular highly run LP and up conversions by 10-15% by just doing a few split tests.

Well I hope this answers your question.
 
if you're idea of a 'quality discussion' on wickedfire is outing other people's landing pages and sharing their traffic source information than I feel sorry for you.

doing this shit fucks up the original affiliate's campaign - this douche bag posts this, then 3 (or 30) other guys go to Adsonar and look for the site, copy it and try it. All of this will damage the original guys campaign in some way shape or form.

unless you have come up with an original idea, had it ripped 1000x, causing it to be ruined and banned everywhere you will not get where I'm coming from.

the OP should be banned, and banned hard.
yep. +rep
 
Nice post Matt but the truth is, the bigger the splash, the quicker the sharks come after you. My question is how many cease and desist letters have you received? Or better yet is the FTC up your ass like some sort of anal dwelling worm?
 
I don't ever post on WF or read it normally. Only started recently to read up on all the FTC and AG crap that is going down (and that will come in the near future). All I can say as far as my credentials is that I'm usually always in the top 3 in spend for Adsonar Advertisers. So here's my answer to your question...

1. You never made money because you copied the person exactly. I can't tell you how many times I've copied an lp, ran the same ad copy as the other person, and in the end I went with something different whether it be ad copy, tweaks to the landing page, etc. to make it work because what I copied didn't work.

2. Adsonar is like chasing a dangling carrot. Just as soon as you figure out a creative that works, it stops working as well. So you probably saw these ads, assumed the person was making money with them. In all reality he might have been losing money on them, but he knows the placement is ultimately profitable once he finds a creative that sticks because he's been working it for awhile.

The problem with adsonar is that its always got a bunch of noobs willing to lose money and everyone rips everyone's lps and what you get is a saturated market and duplicate ads everywhere...even the pros like me deal with crap profit margins while this occurs. Additionally, ad copy goes in and out of fashion very quickly when every page load on an AOL site is "Acai Berry Side Effects." Which leads me to my next point...

3. You could have entered the market at the wrong time when bid prices were inflated. Right now that's occuring bc there is News Site 1...and New Site 2...and News Site 3...and well 10 other "news television sites" running trying to make a living reporting on the acai berry.

A few more pieces of advice for you and whoever reads this post:

-Don't let an Adsonar Rep optimize you account. They aren't any good at it. If you are my ad rep and you are reading this, I'm sorry, but you suck at optimizing my account.

-Realize that on these networks like Adsonar and Pulse, you have some people willing to lose money to ultimately make money. I've seen people drop 30-100k fighting over just a couple of placements...myself included...

-Copying is good, but split testing is better. Most great affiliates don't spend the time to split test thoroughly enough...I can usually take any popular highly run LP and up conversions by 10-15% by just doing a few split tests.

Well I hope this answers your question.

Thanks Matt... finally a valuable post.

Another thing I noticed about AdSonar is the number one guy sits pretty with a higher then usual bid because he only pays a penny more then the next guy. Yes there is ways around this but I feel like if you get a good foothold on a new placement you got a leg up over the competition (no pun intended).
 
Yeah i totally agree man.

I've been lurking here since Jan. and I visit almost everyday and, from what I see the forums are getting worse and worse, especially the affiliate marketing section. I mean, people say "I've learnt a lot here since I found this forum thanks wf!" "big thanks to all wf members, I would be nowhere without your help" "Don't join xxx ppc learning site, you can learn more here"...etc...
I was like WTF?! Most of the threads in the affiliate marketing section in the last few months are worthless. People ask questions here and they get bashed, and other members post replies with sarcasm, post the dickroll link..

im thinking people doing that intentionally just to decrease competition haha
 
He may be a retard, but he's not violating any rules here. For all you know, he could have just made up all of those numbers and results to get some attention. Who knows. As for the affiliates that will run over to AdSonar and copy the campaign, those are the affiliates who are in it for the short term and will fail, quicker too being that the campaign supposedly failed for the op (who would run there and copy a failed campaign for kicks?!).

Its a forum. People here share information, openly. Can't handle that? Leave and join an unregulated industry, there are lots to choose from.

You guys have it really good here, so quit the cry baby bullshit. I personally don't think outting landing pages is such a horrible offense. Its bound to get seen and copied anyway with the amount of retards this industry has attracted in the last year, so don't get all whiney about it. I swear, this industry went from creative as hell to retard central with a serious decline in creativity, its nuts.

On a side note.. we all copy landing pages. I have. I know all of you have as well. Its true, anyone who denies it and has promoted any form of continuity offer in the diet, bizopp, teeth whitening, grants, mobile or whatever else is LYING if they say they don't. Some just copy blatantly while a few else just take idea snippets, but overall its the same fucking approach. So lets stop pretending to be righteous and just stick to your own campaigns and agendas.
 
I personally don't think outting landing pages is such a horrible offense. Its bound to get seen and copied anyway with the amount of retards this industry has attracted in the last year, so don't get all whiney about it.
So why do you have a rule in place against outing landing pages? serious question
 
^ if someone were to ever out any of my landing pages, i'll hunt them down at some summit and beat the shit out of them. a couple hundred dollars is a small expense for the amount of pleasure that would bring. :)
 
^ if someone were to ever out any of my landing pages, i'll hunt them down at some summit and beat the shit out of them. a couple hundred dollars is a small expense for the amount of pleasure that would bring. :)
As well you should.

The first thing I will do is send a C&D and if they don't comply we'll get more serious.
^ Edit: This is when I find a copy of my page.
 
So why do you have a rule in place against outing landing pages? serious question

Majority rule vote amongst the mods. I was fine with it in the beginning, but its getting kinda gay now.

Its really up to that specific mod, whether or not they want to heavily enforce it or not is their call. Some of us do, and some don't. But for members to keep going with the whole "outting lp = ban" is getting so old and silly, especially when they themselves copy lp's and campaigns and sit here pretending they don't? Puh-leeeease mothafuckas!

We don't copy lp's anymore because we have a whole in-house design team. And we accept the fact that our lp's and campaigns get jacked. Its how things are. Its when people steal it and make no changes to any of it or don't be creative and use snippets of the campaign and just go forward with the whole thing that I can understand people getting pissed off about. Although recently some of the lp's of ours that were stolen, the retard forgot to remove some of our links so we got a bunch of free leads off him. Which happens quite often these days it seems.
 
it would be better if people just put a screen shot of the LP in question with no URL. I don't think anyone wants 200 people from wickedfire clicking their links and screwing around with their page LP. Just my opinion.

And yea, if someone jacks your LP just accept it and keep pressing on. It's gonna happen regardless so who cares.
 
it would be better if people just put a screen shot of the LP in question with no URL. I don't think anyone wants 200 people from wickedfire clicking their links and screwing around with their page LP. Just my opinion.

And yea, if someone jacks your LP just accept it and keep pressing on. It's gonna happen regardless so who cares.

Yah but I'd still rather have one asshole who's browsing the internets then have it be in an average semi-popular thread with 1000+ views.