Running A Campaign On A Low Budget!

[sncollins89]

For starters I would like to say I'm pretty new in the media buying scene. I'm working with an adult affiliate network. I've tested 2 out of many ad networks out there, one is Juicy Ads which I'm pretty happy with them since I have the ability to run I frames with them It allows me to target my Geo's nicely. My main issue is that I'm on a smaller budget and I'm not getting the amount of traffic I would like to, in order to really get some good figures to try and start expanding from there.

I decided to start a campaign on PlugRush which honestly I'm not very impressed with the quality of sites they provide to place your ads on, most of the sites are extremely saturated with ads and no real content, just links to another site. When running my campaign with them I did not choose plugs, I went with there banner ads as I felt that plugs would not really work well for what I was looking to do.

So today I gave one of the higher quality ad networks a call, spoke with them and I'm in the middle of getting my account verified. I'm pretty excited and nervous at the same time. There bid structure is set on CPM as opposed to Juicy (7-day rentals) and PlugRush who is CPC. Now as I said I'm not on a huge budget roughly 20 dollars a day If that. I'm trying to figure out what would be the best method as to collecting some of my data to find out whats working and expand from there with such a small budget. I'll be promoting PPL DOI thought about doing a pay-site but I heard conversion rates were low with that, so I'm a little scared.

I've read a lot of articles and forums but they all refer to working on a larger budget (spending 1k a day). Something along the lines of starting off with 2 offers, 20 banners, and 2 landers. Run the campaign for a day and then optimize (lose money), Run campaign for 1/2 day then optimize(lose money), then start making a profit and keep optimizing from there.

I understand that I will probably lose money the first couple days as that's the name of the game until I tweak enough to make a profit, but how should I budget it? I was thinking along the lines of bidding a little lower then the first couple top bidders, Trying to only run at peak times of the day where I can sit down and monitor my traffic, and pause the campaign when I'm away. Or should I just let it runs its course for the first day gather my data and try and go from there?

Also since I'm working with smaller numbers I was thinking of sticking with one offer, 5 Ads, and 2 Landers? Would just like some outside input on this matter and get some outside thoughts.

My landers are going to be the default landers that are provided by my Aff network, I have already created a couple of my own ads even though I'm no Photoshop guru. Then I will also throw in a couple Banners provided by Aff Net. Also I figured sticking to one country and one site (high quality traffic) and one ad position. Gather all my data and try and tweak it, then once that is optimized start working on a new offer to promote and restart the cycle.

Outside thoughts, advice, pointers, and constructive criticism is welcome, as I said I have only got my toes wet so don't go to hard on me.

 

[bretonel]

You seem to be on the right path Divide you money in say 16 parts and do 16 little campaigns and see what works and what doesn't and tweak along the way.
Good luck

 

[sncollins89]

I'm having pretty good luck so far, all my ads are at a ctr of .23 to .35 so from what I've read in the past that's a pretty decent number. Also I'm getting a conversion rate of about 1:65 which also from what I've read is a good conversion rate for the adult niche a little bit more tweaking and I should start actually making a decent profit

 

[Adsplosion]

I'm having pretty good luck so far, all my ads are at a ctr of .23 to .35 so from what I've read in the past that's a pretty decent number. Also I'm getting a conversion rate of about 1:65 which also from what I've read is a good conversion rate for the adult niche a little bit more tweaking and I should start actually making a decent profit

Those are good stats. Keep experimenting and you will get there!

 

[sncollins89]

yeah today my CTR actually went up but my Conversion rate went down a decent amount, Thinking to switching to another offer. Doing cam offer PPL, was thinking about trying Dating PPL as a lot of people have said they have had some decent luck with it. It just seems my landers are not doing to hot, and im not getting huge number for traffic today i'll be ending with 600ish.


as far as running on a low budget I think my plan is working pretty well... one big mistake I made was not enough information in my Tracker, so it was getting confusing as to which lander was converting better as well as where the hit originally came from. It was pretty messy, but I guess im still learning on how to optimize my trackers and what really works for me!

So to any new people reading this! Make sure before you submit your campaign for approval, your trackers all follow a simple format and that its going to tell you the ad clicked on, the site it was coming from, as well as the GEO, and what lander was used. Makes your life A LOT EASIER!!


all my campaigns so far have either lost me money, or made me a little bit and as of right now it has worked out to be about even. It is so surprising with each and every campaign that you run you learn something new every time. I think my next camp everything should work out smoother and should turn a decent ROI.

 

[Mutikasa]

so you are dong this on juicy ads? You bought ad spot for a week?

 

[sncollins89]

I'm using juicy and Tj having pretty decent resaults. PR was garbage traffic in mho.

 

[mobidea team]

Try exoclick -- a lot of geo/device/operator targeting possibilities. Also it worth to let your campaigns to run a bit to collect stats. If traffic is heavy then 3-4 days are enough. If traffic is weak you can allow up to 1 or 2 weeks for stats collection. There is substantial chance of making a mistake (e.g. cutting profitable traffic source) if you optimize every day or too frequently.

Good luck with your media buying!

Regards,
Mobidea Team
http://academy.mobidea.com

 

[Mutikasa]

Did you spy before decided what to do?

 

[sncollins89]

when do u mean spy? Like check out other ads that are running on the sites I'm promoting on? If that is the case then yeah i checked them out. I'm not paying for any services though, but i did find a nice free tool that tells you where the traffic is mainly coming from what the pages top keywords are and some of the ways that site is promoting.


the tool is called similarweb for those of you who are interested in checking it out.

 

[kakaboy]

Rule number one - very few aff nets AMs know their job. Heck if they knew what they were doing and seeing all the revenue their Affs do I assume they'd go and become media buyers. So, trusting in banners and landers (do u mean pre sell landers or offer landers?) is mostly pointless.

Regarding budget - more spend = more data in less time. If you spend $20/day running a $5 CPL offer it's gonna take you a while to get data.
You'll fall intro the trap of 99% of lowbudget affs.
You'll have a 100% ROI day with $25 spend and $50 rev only to be followed by $20 spend and 0 rev.
Yes, you can still take $100 and turn them into 1k today, but's much harder and rare.
Decide that ur IM is a biz, a biz like vvery other biz. Profit is grown and u gotta invest first (in data in media buying case) in order to see a profit.

Remember, easy comes easy goes. Getting to 5k profit a day in a week also means u can go back to $100 profit the next day if u just arbitrage clicks and have no edge whether in owning offers, mailing list or a large budget where u can spend 1m a month and do 10% margin. Doing 100k rev with 10k spend sounds like a dream, but it's unstable as fuck. Highly profitable is rarely sustainable.

Good luck