I was recently concentrating really heavily on one campaign and scaling it out as quickly as I could.  After a couple weeks and almost 200,000 leads later, the advertiser pulled the offer from the network because it wasn’t backing out for them.  They must really suck at monetization because they couldn’t get the traffic profitable in any country that I sent traffic from.  I hate when you find something that works extremely well for you and it is pulled pretty quickly from you or the network as a whole.  The story is they will be doing some optimization on their back end and it will return in the next couple weeks.  I’ve heard this story before, but my fingers are crossed!

So now that my revenue and especially profit have taken a nosedive, I need to find some more profitable campaigns.  To combat my low numbers, I’m challenging myself to create a new campaign every day for the entire month of February.  This doesn’t count scaling a campaign to another gender, more ages or another traffic source.  I’m talking about creating a completely new advertising campaign every single day.

I saw a blog post a day or two ago, but I can’t find it anymore, that gave me the inspiration for this post and idea.  Thank you to whomever you are!

If any of my readers are experiencing lower revenue and profit figures, I challenge you to do the same!  If you’re going to attempt it, leave a comment below and let me know!   I’ll keep you guys updated on my progress halfway through the month and once again at the end of the month.

Edit: The inspiration came from David from PPVPlaybook.com and he is doing his own 30 Day Challenge.

First things first… I need to get something off my chest because it’s been bugging me. Why are affiliate managers so adamant about setting up meetings at Affiliate Summit? I don’t get it. I’m a very punctual person, but with so much going on at Affiliate Summit it’s tough sticking to a schedule. Why don’t you let me make my rounds and when I stop by your booth we can talk business then? This method works very well for me. Why do affiliate managers setup meetings like this every hour or half hour?

Affiliate Summit West 2011 – Day One – Meet Market

I woke up super early and couldn’t go back to sleep. I decided to get some breakfast before hitting up the Meet Market. I hit up Denny’s and while I was about to order some takeout, I ran into Mike and his team from Firelead, so I decided to sit down and eat with them. Luckily for me, they were next in line for a table. Perfect timing!

As I was making my way down to the Meet Market , I ran into a number of people I have yet to meet face to face, but have talked to a time or two. Face time and networking are the two biggest things for me as an affiliate, especially at Affiliate Summit. After about a 30 minutes trying to get to the Meet Market, I finally made it. The room was jam packed full of people. We were packed in there like Sardines and it should definitely be addressed at the next conference. I did get to talk to Alonzo and Smaxor from Ads4Dough and they got me pretty excited about a couple offers they’re bringing on for me. I spent most of my time hanging out around the C2M guys, had a couple beers and talked to affiliates as they stopped by their booth.

Later that afternoon, Adsimilis had a little gathering in their Suite that included Ben from POF. I thought he was going to give out some tips, but I was mistaken. I was kinda bummed about that as I was looking to help contribute to the cause.

I was lucky enough to be invited to Ian Fernando‘s IANteract Dinner that he has at every conference he attends. This time it was sponsored by Executive Fortunes and was held in Switch at Encore. The dinner invitees included Tyler from Executive Fortunes and his partner, Rohail Rizvi, Ian Fernando, Eric Schechter, AdHustler, Ryan Gray, myself and another individual whose name I cannot remember. The theme of the restaurant was kinda corny with switching themes and walls, but the food was top notch.

After dinner, we headed on over to the 10th Anniversary Party for ShareASale at Tryst. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t in the mood to party hard that night, but it was definitely a good time. Finally, it was time for the Ads4Dough, Dough4Hoes party at the Spearmint Rhino. I skipped this party last year and regretted it. I’m glad I didn’t start drinking earlier that night, because that would’ve been a night full of debauchery. The plan was to hit up XS, but I decided to call it a night once I got back to the Wynn.

AdHustler made a number of great observations about the first day of Affiliate Summit that I suggest checking out.

Affiliate Summit West 2011 – Day Two – Exhibit Hall

I was glad I got a little shuteye the night before and made it to the keynote on time and ready to listen. This year’s keynote was delivered by none other than Dr. Direct, Drew Eric Whitman, the man who wrote Ca$hvertising. I bought his book awhile back, I just haven’t read it yet. He covered some material that was nothing short of amazing. I took some notes on my iPhone and will definitely be putting some of his suggestions to use this week. I’ve been told pretty much everything he covered was in his book, so I’ll be sure to read this book soon!

After the keynote I made my way down to the Exhibit Hall. I was pretty impressed that they were able to cool the room so it wasn’t so warm as usual. I was even chilly a few times. Again, if you saw me, you probably saw me chillin on the couches C2M provided. I did make my rounds too hey the guys at Revenue Ads to discuss this year’s Oklahoma Meetup, NDemand Affiliates and the AKMG Girls.

Towards the end of the Exhibit Hall I went up to XY7‘s suite to catch the first quarter of the BCS National Championship game and to take delivery of my iPad that I won. Thanks Kevin!

Then I had dinner with the Revenue Ads team, at Les Artistes Steakhouse in the Paris, and a few of their other business partners. Thankfully the dinner was amazing because I missed every play of the second half of the football game except for the final field goal. What a game!

Now, it was time to get in. The moment I was waiting for… The Affiliate Ball, sponsored by Profit Kings Media with Three 6 Mafia performing. I’ve been listening to these guys since 1998 and was ecstatic that they would be on stage. I’ve gotta thank Yousif from PKM for hooking up the bottle service that night. Good lookin out boss! Me and my boy Shane Dollas were hollarin at every girl in the club that night and was tryin to get Sarah Peachez to come back to the crib (Chris Brown voice).

Then I tried like hell to get into XS, but they were hating on my New Balance shoes and it was already close to 3am so I called it a night.

Affiliate Summit West 2011 – Day Three – Exhibit Hall

Made it to the conference late, walked around the Exhibit Hall and it was noticeably less packed that day as it seems a lot of people were leaving that day.

Since we were on the west coast, you know I had to hit up In ‘n Out Burger. I just happened to notice that Brittany from AKMG was also trying to hit up that joint and we grabbed AdHustler on our way out. Man, I love that place.

We tried to hold a Newbie Meetup for newbies at the Wynn sports book, but nobody showed that didn’t already know what they were doing, so I kinda just bailed on those guys. Sorry fellas!

I was tired from the night before and didn’t feel like going out, so I stayed gambling at the Wynn for a few hours. Won a few bucks playing War and Roulette. I narrowly missed one of my favorite football players, Sam Bradford playing craps just 30 yards away from me. I was pretty disappointed about that.

Conclusion

All in all, it was a great conference and I did take away a handful of things I’m already putting in action. However, I do think I’m going to skip a few conferences as I’m getting pretty burned out on conferences. Until next time…

If any of my readers haven’t already met me in person, I encourage you to hollar at me at Affiliate Summit.  Regardless of where I am or who I’m with, don’t be shy.  Just come introduce yourself!  I’d love to meet all of you.

Also, I post this before every conference.  If you haven’t read this, please do!  It’s some of the best advice I’ve ever read in regards to attending any affiliate conference.

Affiliate Tradeshow Floor Tips by Smaxor

Bevo Media is already well-known in the affiliate industry for creating some stiff competition for the Tracking202 team when they released their own PPC tracking platform.  Earlier this week, the Bevo Media team officially launched PPVSpy and it has been deemed an industry changing product.  That last sentence is especially true for advertisers heavily involved with this kind of traffic.

The release of PPVSpy coincidentally comes right about the time I wanna tackle this kind of traffic.  I’ve had some success from one campaign in the past, but it was luck if you ask me.  I’m hoping PPVSpy can help me diversify my income stream.

What I wanna do for my fellow affiliates is break this tool down, let you know exactly what PPVSpy does, give my thoughts about it and let you make your own opinion.

Search – this feature allows for you to search through the countless number of landers, offers and niches that PPVSpy has found

1. Popups – this appears to be a collection of the landers that PPVSpy suggests is being used.  You can then dig further to find out what other landers are being used and what domains are being targeted
2. Offers – do you wanna know what other affiliates are using as landers on a particular offer or what their targets are?   I just found out.
3. Niches – are you wanting to break into another niche? Find out what landers are being used and what domains are being targeted right now!

View Pops – any time your mouse scrolls over a lander a menu will pop up with three links under the view pops section.  The links available are below.

1. Campaign – do you want to know specifically what landers are being used on this particular campaign? Click here.
2. Niche – PPVSpy will show you every lander being used in this niche.
3. Offer – every lander being used on this offer will be at the click of your mouse

View Targets – my favorite part, let’s see what everybody is targeting to make monies!  PPVSpy even gives you targets in domain.com format!

1. Campaign – want a list of every domain that is begin targeted in this campaign?  You got it.
2. Niche – do you want an even larger list of domains being targeted within this entire niche?  You’ve got that too.
3. Offer – again, every domain that is being targeted by this offer is made available to you, instantly.

As someone who has only briefly dabbled in PPV and wants to jump back into the game full force I find that this tool is excellent for launching new campaigns.  You can use the targets for each campaign and offer and add those immediately to your PPV campaign.  Matter of fact, one of the campaigns I’m starting with the help of this tool is going to be a PPV case study which I will be posting about in the near future.  If you really want to go all out you can take those targets it gave you and plug them into your favorite keyword tool and see what keywords you can also throw into your targets.

I can already tell you right now that PPVSpy has already saved me a ton of time by allowing me to setup campaigns and enter targets very quickly.  I like to setup generic campaigns, get some traffic, see how they perform, optimize and scale accordingly.  Normally, I would have to break out a scraper and scrape thousands of URL’s and then dig through that data to determine if it the site had relevant information.  Instead I have 500 targets that I was able to scan and see that these domains matched what I want to target within a matter of just a couple minutes.  I’m already sold on this tool, just because it’s taken out the biggest headache for me already, setting the initial targets.

If PPVSpy and its features look enticing to you, I definitely suggest giving it a try.  Some of you newer affiliates, be warned, the pricing for PPV Spy is $385/month or a $999 lifetime membership fee.  PPVSpy won’t be available indefinitely, as there are only 1000 licenses available.  So if you miss out and change your mind later, you’ll be out of luck.  If you’re on the fence, at least check it out for a month to determine if you wanna purchase a lifetime membership.

I do see some room for expansion for those of you that get in it now.  As far as I could tell nothing more than domain.com was used in letting you know what was being targeted and no keyword targeting information is available.  I’m not sure how either would be implemented, but I’m not good with that kinda stuff.  I did notice that some pops and targets for a campaign seemed to match the same pops and targets for an offer.  This may just be because they’re still gather more data or, maybe only one person is running that particular offer.

Another nice feature of PPVSpy that I haven’t mentioned yet is if you want to know specifically what is being popped on a URL you can suggest it be checked by PPVSpy and they’ll do the rest of the work for you.

What are you waiting for?  Get PPVSpy today!

First off, I must apologize to everybody for my post a couple months ago about dayparting on Facebook. I saw the new campaign lifetime feature on Facebook and mistook it for day parting. I hurriedly made a post and then realized my mistake. So, if you came to my blog hoping for dayparting, I’m sorry for leading everybody on. I just got super excited and wanted to be the first to blog about it.

I also must tell you I was quite pissed because I had done a lot of testing for this particular case study to see how CPC compared to CPM and right in the middle of my testing Facebook started displaying a fourth advertisement, so I had to throw that data away.

When I originally started advertising on Facebook all I did was bid CPC as there was less risk and bid prices were cheap. I stuck with that method for months and never tried CPM. Shortly after ASE 2009 I moved over to only CPM bidding and never looked back. Earlier this year I moved onto other traffic sources and quit paying attention to Facebook. Here recently I’ve gotten back into advertising on Facebook. I noticed the suggested bid prices for CPC and CPM were both outrageous. I did remember a big hoopla from Facebook earlier this year during my exodus about how you should bid CPC for better positions and all that. The last 4-6 weeks I’ve been noticing some people suggesting bidding CPC for best results. I never really saw any definitive information or statistics backing either side so I decided to turn this into a case study.

There are two main bidding types when advertising.  They are known as CPC or cost per click and CPM or cost per thousand impressions.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each type.  Below is a synopsis of both bidding types.  Choose what you feel is appropriate for your particular campaign or do a split test to see what does best for your needs.

Cost Per Click – CPC

When you choose the CPC bid type, you’ll be charged every time someone clicks on your ad.  This option is less risky, especially if you’re entering a new niche and aren’t sure how well your ads and especially images will perform.  I’ve found if you can get a high enough CTR, preferably below your EPC, you can bid this type and should be able to see some longevity with your campaign.

Cost Per Impressions – CPM

When you choose the CPM bid type, you’ll be charged for every one thousand impressions your ad receives.  This is an especially good option if you’re a branding advertiser. If you’ve been advertising in your niche and know what kind of ad copy and images work well, this may be your preferred bid type.  A general rule of thumb is if you can get a CTR above 0.10%, choose this bid type because your CPC will be cheaper this way.  You’ll want the highest possible CTR when bidding CPM.  The higher your CTR, the cheaper your CPC will be.  However, when bidding CPM, you will need to constantly monitor your ads to make sure your CPC is still below your EPC.

The stats for each campaign is below.  I’m not going to reveal the actual campaigns and exact targeting because these are two of my super stable campaigns that have done very well for me in the past and continue to do so.  However, I will tell you that that Campaigns 1-4 are a niche US dating offer and Campaign 5 is a broad dating offer in Canada. I ran the same set of ads in each campaign and I bid the highest CPC and CPM suggested by Facebook.

Conclusion
As you can see from the results, CPC was the way to go in each test except for one.  I’ve done countless other CPC versus CPM tests and 95% of the time CPC comes out on top.  I know the bids are extremely high, but just try it out.  With CPC, you’ll notice your CTR is way higher and conversions are typically better.  Bidding CPC will also be beneficial to you because your target demographic will be less prone to banner blindness. CPC bidding will add longevity to your campaigns, while you will need to continually monitor your CPM campaigns.  I’m not sure why conversions are better. I didn’t check my Prosper202 logs to see if most of my CPC traffic came from Facebook or if it was application traffic. Because of these results, I do believe that CPC ads are placed in the top 1 or 2 spots and that CPM traffic goes mostly to the bottom spots. There is a CTR apex where it will be more beneficial to run CPM instead of CPC, but I haven’t yet figured that out because you’ll need to also factor in CPC and EPC for each ad.