Facebook Ads Affiliates needed for unique new business.

darbsllim

darbsllim

New member
Mar 28, 2008
692
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London, Ontario
Hey guys, I started a new company last month, we're ready to start acquiring users now.

The company is coinwhale.com - we are like groupon for Facebook Games. We still have some design and stuff to do, but we are ready to launch and build it out as we go.

I'm looking to work closely with some affiliates who are well versed in fb ads to drive lots of users to sign up for CoinWhale.

Because of the business model, I know we can get some really high CTR rates, and I know we can convert our free users into paying users.

Here's one of the plans I had for advertising on Facebook to get really high ctr rates.

1) Create landing pages for the site modelled after specific games - ie a farm themed lp, a mafia themed lp, a pets themed lp, a racing themed lp, zombies, vampires, etc etc.

2) Create ads targeting fans of specific games. If the target was fans of farmville, the ad would be a familiar farmville picture with "get 90% off" written on it, or something in that vein.

the ad copy would say something like

Get 50% - 90% off Farmville Cash!
If you are still paying full value for FarmVille Cash, you need to join CoinWhale. We give you discounts of up to 90% off your favorite facebook games! Join Free today!

3) I work out a special relationship with some affiliates who want to take on this project.

I'm willing to give away all of my profits to affiliates for the first 6 months, and setup a recurring sale deal for a special rate on recurring sales afterwards to give a residual income stream to the affiliate.

I'm trying to blow this thing up and get a million users in the next month or 2...and I think WF is probably the right place to start.

Brad
 


why not test this internally then give me some concrete info regarding your average revenue per visitor. you seem intelligent enough. if the backend/ recurring sale quotient excites me enough, i'd defietely be interested in something like this
 
MistorToker said:
why not test this internally then give me some concrete info regarding your average revenue per visitor. you seem intelligent enough. if the backend/ recurring sale quotient excites me enough, i'd defietely be interested in something like this
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Well I was thinking about testing this ad strategy but I haven't for a couple of reasons.

1) I'm so busy trying to build the plane mid flight and get apps on board to run the deals that I haven't had time to test fb ads.

2) I KNOW there are much smarter people than me here that would be able to do a much better job than me advertising to get users.


More info on money:

We will sell bundles of fb currency. We keep 40% and the apps get 60% to split (3 apps get 20% each)

Of that 40% I'm willing to basically give it all to the affiliates for the initial sale, and then give a lot for recurring sales for like 6 -12 months.

Bundles will sell for about $20 each, so that's $8 per initial purchase.

The group deal model has been proven to work, so while I don't have direct numbers for visitors to sales yet - I know that we will have really high conversion rates - I can sell a whole lot of these when we get users on the list.

Heck if the right person comes to us we might even be open to doing that arrangement PLUS giving a small percent of the company...we think we are building a product which we can sell in 4-5 months for 8 figures.
 
darbsllim said:
Heck if the right person comes to us we might even be open to doing that arrangement PLUS giving a small percent of the company...we think we are building a product which we can sell in 4-5 months for 8 figures.
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If you're building something worth "8 figures" in 4-5 months, why give any of it away to anyone. Do as others have said, buy internal traffic, test it yourself, then release it to affiliates if you want, but you taking no risk upfront in either marketing/selling the thing and then being so fast to offer equity has me questioning your valuation (which is in all honesty probably based off some made up numbers with as you've seemed to have stated no sales). You don't have many if any sales, you don't have any steam right now, you don't have many users, what makes you think in 4-5 months you'll be able to flip this for 10 million plus.....

P.s. how are you willing to take a 0 percent margin for 6 months if you intend to sell the company in 4-5... There are so many problems with everything you posted regarding financials here..

Sorry to rant like that, but some peoples valuations on their own companies need to be looked at.

My two cents - get some cash (raise it if your business has the potential that you say it does), slap it into marketing or hire someone to do it for you and prove your model before asking affiliates to take 100% of the risk.
 
If you want to talk more about why the valuation is so high, I'd be happy to talk via pm about my previous experience with this niche, the momentum and contacts we have behind us, etc.

Here's 2 quick reasons for wanting to bring someone in.

-I can't move as fast as I want to if I'm focused on actually doing the advertising.
-I do want to 'test it internally' but I want to bring in a super affiliate to be the internal tester.
-I want to keep the costs as low as possibe for the first 6 months.

Like Henry Ford said, "I am not the smartest, but I surround myself with competent people."

He didn't need to know everything about automobiles, but he surrounded himself with the people that did.

I've always been the kind of person who would rather work on something with a team of smart people rather than try to keep all equity and run everything by myself.

And I've also found that when people have a vested interest in the company, they are much more productive.

regarding 0 percent margin - there will be more users than just the ones the affiliates bring in, so we'll make profits on those users - and besides, this is Facebook we're talking about, the money is just pouring into Facebook companies, there are more factors at play in this arena than how much profit a company is bringing in.

mattaw said:
If you're building something worth "8 figures" in 4-5 months, why give any of it away to anyone. Do as others have said, buy internal traffic, test it yourself, then release it to affiliates if you want, but you taking no risk upfront in either marketing/selling the thing and then being so fast to offer equity has me questioning your valuation (which is in all honesty probably based off some made up numbers with as you've seemed to have stated no sales). You don't have many if any sales, you don't have any steam right now, you don't have many users, what makes you think in 4-5 months you'll be able to flip this for 10 million plus.....

P.s. how are you willing to take a 0 percent margin for 6 months if you intend to sell the company in 4-5... There are so many problems with everything you posted regarding financials here..

Sorry to rant like that, but some peoples valuations on their own companies need to be looked at.

My two cents - get some cash (raise it if your business has the potential that you say it does), slap it into marketing or hire someone to do it for you and prove your model before asking affiliates to take 100% of the risk.
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I don't think you're understanding that you have no solid conversion data to base it off of. I for one wouldn't go out on a limb and pay to give you test data, that just doesn't make sense for me.

Your valuation still doesn't make sense, yes people are investing in facebook companies, people are investing in all sorts of companies, but most of these have sales or momentum, you right now have an idea, so its insane to put that high a valuation on your idea. You're saying our future valuation in around 120-150 days will be 8 figures. That's quite a statement, and you have no numbers to back that up. I get you have experience in this business, and that's great, but right now you have a new company with no sales, and for a bit of equity your asking for someone to take all the financial risk of running your company from a marketing standpoint for you. You may have contacts and momentum but until they turn into physical revenue for you, their value is hard to decide. Its like an intent to purchase order, its not really worth much until they actually buy something from you.

How do you expect your affiliate to optimize a campaign for you that isn't optimized at all on the back end (if I misread, I apologize, but the way I'm reading it right now is you have had no traffic/sales or minimal traffic/sales), and give you all that data for you to play with. I've worked with new offers and companies and optimized with them, and each time, it just ends up being that I paid for their testing that they should have paid for in the first place.

By the way, I hope you prove me wrong and the thing is worth that much, but I'm just pointing out what I see.
 
Here is my input as an affiliate that does considerable volume with Games on Facebook.

You want affiliates to be able to target "buying mode" visitors to your offer. Now, I wouldn't be able to do that with any keyword targeting. For a Farmville "Groupon", the best I can do is target the keyword Farmville and then disclose the price or savings in my ad.

Awhile doing so, obviously my ad has to be for 18+; because the majority of the <18 population doesn't have a credit card. So now I have to compete on a more expensive demo. Lastly, you want affiliates to be able to convert a free player to a buying customer for an $8 payout. At a generous 5% conversion rate, that is a 40c EPC.

If in my farmville ad I say "Save 90% on Farmville. Only pay $20 instead of $100". My CTR will definitely be low, because again, a huge majority of the population of gamers are not willing to pay for in-game currency. Low CTR = High CPC. An expected CPC of 60-70c. If I have an ad that doesn't list the price, and is just there to attract Farmville players, then I'll have a high CTR cause of my keyword targeting, but the conversion rate will be less than 1%.

I'll be honest and say that you won't have too many people contacting you to push this offer without YOU having data. You want us to incur the advertising expense to provide you with vital data.
 
Matt - yeah you're right, I'm not saying this is an 8 figure business right now, I'm saying we think we're building something that will be worth an 8 figure buyout in the near future.

Mattaw & mgrunin - I'm not so much saying that I want you to take the financial work - I'm more saying I want a brilliant marketer to come into the fold to work his or her magic.

I'm open to working out a deal where we cover some of the advertising costs, or heck even all of the advertising costs - but in that scenario the affiliate commission would be lower.

I see your point about getting the data, and if that's what it takes to make people comfortable to come on board and promote this, then we'll get some data real quick.
 
It always amazes me how many business owners have unrealistic expectations for the growth of their company and want someone else to take all the risk.

8 figure sale in 4-5 months when your application isn't even finished and you have no sales data? When you come off with unrealistic shit like this, no one will take you seriously.
 
jlknauff said:
It always amazes me how many business owners have unrealistic expectations for the growth of their company and want someone else to take all the risk.

8 figure sale in 4-5 months when your application isn't even finished and you have no sales data? When you come off with unrealistic shit like this, no one will take you seriously.
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It's realistic. The founders and our partners/advisors have generated 9 figures in revenue with Facebook focused companies (games/ad networks) in the last 3 years.
 
darbsllim said:
It's realistic. The founders and our partners/advisors have generated 9 figures in revenue with Facebook focused companies (games/ad networks) in the last 3 years.
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Now rev and profit are two different things, especially if we're talking at networks, where your going to have a high revenue number but profit is very different after paying publishers, tech costs, employees and so forth. Also, thats great that they've done it before, but have you?

Also, because you do something once doesn't mean you'll do it again, and I bet for almost all of them, they didn't say my business is going to be worth 8 figures in 120-150 days... they worked on building something up and maxed out its potential. Just saying...


Back to the topic though, if your willing to cover ad costs, why not sure hire someone internal to do it for you?
 
mattaw said:
Now rev and profit are two different things, especially if we're talking at networks, where your going to have a high revenue number but profit is very different after paying publishers, tech costs, employees and so forth. Also, thats great that they've done it before, but have you?

Also, because you do something once doesn't mean you'll do it again, and I bet for almost all of them, they didn't say my business is going to be worth 8 figures in 120-150 days... they worked on building something up and maxed out its potential. Just saying...


Back to the topic though, if your willing to cover ad costs, why not sure hire someone internal to do it for you?
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Dude all I know is that I'm excited about this, and we have the skill and talent to make it happen.

and re: your question, that is kinda what I'm trying to do here. I've already had a couple great affiliates contact me and I think we're gonna work out a nice mutually beneficial deal.
 
Just keeping you guys posted on this. We launched our first deal Tuesday, we haven't done any paid advertising, and we've sold ~120 deals so far, with 1 day to go.

We got ~450 signups, so I guess that's a 25% conversion rate from signup to sale

Analytics says in that time we had about 1800 visits to the site.


So 1800 visits, 450 signups, 120 sales

are those numbers any good if I was advertising?
 
darbsllim said:
Just keeping you guys posted on this. We launched our first deal Tuesday, we haven't done any paid advertising, and we've sold ~120 deals so far, with 1 day to go.

We got ~450 signups, so I guess that's a 25% conversion rate from signup to sale

Analytics says in that time we had about 1800 visits to the site.


So 1800 visits, 450 signups, 120 sales

are those numbers any good if I was advertising?
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Proof?
 
You only really need 1 person full-time to run FB ads. But a fucking good person. Find him, make a deal. You can even get someone qualified for $80K/year salary. Especially if you look overseas. And I wouldn't put your whole model on the blast so much. Watch out for competition.
 
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