This will be the last post for this case study.
The performance of the campaign for the past week was horrible, and I have lost quite abit on this campaign just trying to optimize it, only to realize the bad conversions were due to a factor I couldn’t control.
The campaign started getting profitable again immediately after Christmas so I guess all I can say is that this niche doesn’t convert well at all during Christmas.
Here’s a screenshot of my stats for the past 2 days.
Profits are small, but you can see how these add up as you find more and more profitable campaigns.
My goal is to hit a consistent $200 per day with CPA in the first month of 2010, so I probably need to uncover at least 20 more profitable campaigns like this one.
That said, I realize that I’ve provided really little value in this case study because I’ve revealed so little about my campaign.
In the spirit of giving, I’ve decided to reveal more about the campaign, whilst not giving away everything.
Here we go.
It’s a dating offer.
DUH.
Newer affiliates might be surprised that dating offers actually “still work”.
But yes they do and they work really well if you take care of the smaller details properly.
I’ve learnt a bunch from this campaign, and here are some tips that will probably help you out when you decide to tackle this niche too.
1. Target males ONLY. Females are a whole different ball game.
2. Turn off your campaigns during office hours. They click, but they generally don’t sign up at work.
3. Don’t promote dating offers over Christmas. This hurt me big time. Does this theory apply only during Christmas or for other holidays as well? I’ll let you know when I find out.
4. Track like a maniac, track whatever you can. This cost me big time. It took me almost a hundred bucks in the hole to realize I needed to find the highest converting combination of adcopy and creative.
Now all I’m testing are 2 adcopies with 2 creatives, and constantly deleting the “losing” ones and adding new ones to “compete” with the winner.
Same thing you do for Google Adwords.
I’m going to be testing out some PPV traffic sources for the next couple weeks – I’m relatively new at this but I’ve got a mentor helping me out so hopefully this accelerates my hitting $200 a day by alot.
I might consider doing a PPV case study and even giving away ALL the details of the campaign (after I stop running it, of course) just so you guys get to really peep behind the scenes and hopefully connect the dots.
As I look back, I’m not really satisfied with the amount of value I provided in this series but I really want to protect this campaign, so I hope you guys will understand.
I now know why so few bloggers actually do real LIVE case studies!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
oh, man, you are the rare person in this field – real frank info, not the gotcha salesmanship, unlike all “gurus” out there. Thank you for that, will be following you religiously.
I don’t sound like a guru because I’m not one at all.
Glad the post helped!