Life Lessons after 4 years as a CPA advertiser

One more question!

mont7071 said:
#2 - The Numberz (Affiliates)
Biggest mistakes I see here are 1) that the the affiliate split tests between different offers/networks first, instead of of dialing in their own ad copy/lander/squeeze page first, they do it in reverse order. Moral of the story, you have to have your own game tight first before you start jumping from offer to offer over a buck higher CPA payout and start split-testing competing offers.
Click to expand...

Other people say that they tend to splittest their offers first. just because to see if the offers convert better than one another. because even if you have flying/beautiful ads/LPs etc if the offer doesn't convert then it won't matter. what do you think???
 


bizkiller said:
One more question!



Other people say that they tend to splittest their offers first. just because to see if the offers convert better than one another. because even if you have flying/beautiful ads/LPs etc if the offer doesn't convert then it won't matter. what do you think???
Click to expand...


A lot do actually, which is why I think it's the most common "mistake" I see. Some disagree and think that is better, my opinion is just that, my opinion, but I think its problematic, here's why.

As an affiliate, there are dozens of variables, each of which can independently cause your campaign to fail. Scrubbing network, scrubbing Advertiser, poor quality ROS banner traffic, rising bid prices, broken tracking links, etc. Many of those are completely out of your control, you can do everything right and that still wont help you if a network misconfigures your redirect link to send all your US diet traffic to a Romanian screensaver offer. Since any of these things *could* ruin an offer, I tend to focus on ones that I have control over as an affiliate; things that are 100% my responsibility, before looking for broken links in the chain controlled by 3rd-parties. Until you know, and correct, those things you are responsible for, its hard to figure out which 3rd-party variables are wrecking your early-retirement plan.

So, (Switching hats back to my role as an Advertiser/Offer owner), Periodically I will have a Network running one of my offers hit me up and say "dude, our super-pub in the ringtone space just ran a $5k test on your (non-ringtone) offer, and he says it sucked, and your offer sucks, fix it". Now, if I am not sure if my stuff is locked-down tight, I might panic cuz I really want their traffic, and scramble around pulling levers, twisting dials, and looking for gremlins in my system. However, if I know my stuff is done correct, and that dozens of other pubs are making a good ROI on it that same day that his test did poorly, then I can pinpoint the problem as being on the new super-pub's side.

Invariably, if I'm able to dig up the "super-pubs" landers, I often find he has the wrong product name, or his CSS is breaking in IE, his coupon codes are from the wrong offer, or something screwy on his side. On the other hand, if his traffic does poorly on my Offer the same days other pubs traffic also does poorly on my Offer, then I know I better check out my own game first.

Likewise on the reverse, if you are an affiliate jumping from offer to offer and seeing no success on any of them, but you know its a big niche that others do well on, maybe its not just that you have bad luck in picking offers, maybe something on your side is the problem, and that campaigns you dismissed as bad and shitty Offers/Advertisers were actually failing because your stuff wasn't dialed in right, and you could have been making money the whole time instead of bouncing around desperately looking for that one "right" offer when the Offer wasn't the problem.

Just my .02 cents, I still know guys that insist on switching Offers first, then their own stuff, it comes down to preference on believing what is more important, things you control vs things others control.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bizkiller
mont7071 said:
A lot do actually, which is why I think it's the most common "mistake" I see. Some disagree and think that is better, my opinion is just that, my opinion, but I think its problematic, here's why.

As an affiliate, there are dozens of variables, each of which can independently cause your campaign to fail. Scrubbing network, scrubbing Advertiser, poor quality ROS banner traffic, rising bid prices, broken tracking links, etc. Many of those are completely out of your control, you can do everything right and that still wont help you if a network misconfigures your redirect link to send all your US diet traffic to a Romanian screensaver offer. Since any of these things *could* ruin an offer, I tend to focus on ones that I have control over as an affiliate; things that are 100% my responsibility, before looking for broken links in the chain controlled by 3rd-parties. Until you know, and correct, those things you are responsible for, its hard to figure out which 3rd-party variables are wrecking your early-retirement plan.

So, (Switching hats back to my role as an Advertiser/Offer owner), Periodically I will have a Network running one of my offers hit me up and say "dude, our super-pub in the ringtone space just ran a $5k test on your (non-ringtone) offer, and he says it sucked, and your offer sucks, fix it". Now, if I am not sure if my stuff is locked-down tight, I might panic cuz I really want their traffic, and scramble around pulling levers, twisting dials, and looking for gremlins in my system. However, if I know my stuff is done correct, and that dozens of other pubs are making a good ROI on it that same day that his test did poorly, then I can pinpoint the problem as being on the new super-pub's side.

Invariably, if I'm able to dig up the "super-pubs" landers, I often find he has the wrong product name, or his CSS is breaking in IE, his coupon codes are from the wrong offer, or something screwy on his side. On the other hand, if his traffic does poorly on my Offer the same days other pubs traffic also does poorly on my Offer, then I know I better check out my own game first.

Likewise on the reverse, if you are an affiliate jumping from offer to offer and seeing no success on any of them, but you know its a big niche that others do well on, maybe its not just that you have bad luck in picking offers, maybe something on your side is the problem, and that campaigns you dismissed as bad and shitty Offers/Advertisers were actually failing because your stuff wasn't dialed in right, and you could have been making money the whole time instead of bouncing around desperately looking for that one "right" offer when the Offer wasn't the problem.

Just my .02 cents, I still know guys that insist on switching Offers first, then their own stuff, it comes down to preference on believing what is more important, things you control vs things others control.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, So i guess it all comes down to picking an offer thats been proven to perform well for others. then you could do Your stuff -> offers.

but if the offers haven't been proven.

Offers -> your stuff.

???

Thanks for the reply! REPPPPPPPED
 
I would like to add that you should be extremely careful when selecting a merchant account. It's without a doubt one of the least regulated and shadiest group of scam artists around.

We had to sue one processor after they fabricated a story about our "risk profile" and attempted to keep all of our funds that we hadn't withdrawn yet citing an early termination fee. Have a lawyer experienced in the space to go over the contractual agreement carefully and look for little gems like 'liquidated damages'. Liquidated damages allow a processor to force you to pay for the loss of the contract with means you could be on the hook for for 5 or 6 figures or more as an early termination fee. Sounds reasonable right? Remember contacts are meant to be negotiated and if they refuse to budge, shop elsewhere.
 
Mont, does what your talking about here apply for international offers as well or is this just for domestic US offers with our processing ftc rules?
 
These changes apply to int'l as well as domestic, but Visa/MC have more liberal rules on a lot of their overseas-issued MIDs/merchant accounts, mainly because they are still growing their business there, while they can afford to be hard-asses in the US because the industry is mature here.

FTC issues really only affect offers being run in the US, although other first-world countries (e.g. EU) have similar, and in some cases, even more strict rules.

While this thread wasn't meant to be a "how to avoid paying the piper", obviously much of what I've said could be used to make a "less-legit" offer run longer than it might otherwise run, but you are still going to run into problems eventually if your offer/approach is shady. Circumventing the "gotchas" can work for a while, and even give an offer a chance to last long enough to be cleaned up and run more legit, but you still have to realize that if your offer is bad, a day of reckoning is going to come.

To pick on Force Factor a bit, they are now a "big brand"; they are all over GNC, they have name-brand athletes as spokespeople, their T&C and terms are all pretty straight-forward and transparent. Anyone who remembers (or promoted) their offers when they first started may remember it wasn't always the case; the things they did early (hidden terms, misleading return/cancellation procedures, flog-style promotion used all the time) would be considered shady by today's standards, but they saw the writing on the wall and changed how they did business, and that's why they were able to grow into what they are now. The same is true for any smaller CPA offer just getting started, there is going to be a ceiling that you run into, where you can't grow anymore because you have to stay in the shadows, if you aren't running things legit. Adapt or perish, its only going to get harder.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
I'm far from an expert in this area, but I'm pretty sure you should be keeping your list warm by mailing them something. Mail them articles on dieting and exercise or a list of diet tips you jacked from other sites, or whatever, just mail them something to keep your list warm so that when you decide to monetize the list they're more likely to respond.
Click to expand...

Yea I've been told this quite often, going to setup an auto responder sequence so my list doesn't stale out. What I'd really like to find out is how valuable an actual warm female (US) diet list is. Right now the only reason I'm running my own offer is because I'm building a list this way.

To be honest, it's a hell of a lot more trouble running your own offer than just being an affiliate for someone else. Sure the roi is a little bit higher but if it weren't for the fact that I'm getting a long term list than I wouldn't be running my own stuff at all. Maybe I'm just not seeing the lifetime value of customers yet.

Also, after handling my own customer service for awhile and actually speaking to the people I sell to, I've really decided that I want to have quality products with quality ingredients. If Mont or anyone else has any suggestions for a private label company that actually delivers real quality ingredients (the one I'm using now is in the US and is a pretty big one but I still don't know what the quality of the ingredients are) I'm open to suggestions. I don't want to derail this thread though so send me a PM if you want.
 
It would take me a day to give this information the thorough examination it deserves. thank you for this info
 
Excellent info.

I was wondering if you know the kind of chargeback rate that is normal on a diet CPS rather than rebill?
 
nickster said:
Excellent info.

I was wondering if you know the kind of chargeback rate that is normal on a diet CPS rather than rebill?
Click to expand...


Nutra itself is known for having a higher-than average chargeback, diet is a subset with a higher one even within Nutra. If you add in the aspect of continuity, you have the Triple-Crown of an offer that is just about guaranteed to have a super-high chargeback rate, its one of the primary reasons I've never done diet as a free trial (only straight-sale); the deck is already stacked against it.

I don't know current numbers, but one of the largest ISOs once told me that the average chargeback rate for their clients in Nutra was nearly 7% (yes, I know that is an incredible number) and that was years ago before continuity really took off and made the rates presumably worse. It was also before Visa/MC did their "1%" CB threshold too, so I'm sure there was a correlation. I think diet has a higher rate than even bizopp, which is why so many of the big processors wont board any new nutra offers, even straight-sale ones.

For my own stuff in diet straight-sale, I average about a 0.3% CB rate or lower, but I'm kind of an outlier on that. We have a 60 day money back guarantee, and will refund for just about any reason, plus have 24/7 phone support and rapid-response email customer care, so that helps keep it down. Most guys I know in the space seem to hover around the 1% rate.
 
nickster said:
Cool. And with your simple refund policy what kind of refund rate do you see?
Click to expand...


It's usually right around 3.5%, customers like the idea of a MBG more than they actually take advantage of it. My non-diet customers have always been about half of that, but the overweight ones tend to be a little more in search of a "magic bullet" and are more likely to make no other lifestyle changes, or have unreasonable expectations, and then blame the product and return it. It's still well worth it though, we get way more add'l biz up-front because customers see the MBG than we lose in profits from returns.

Interestingly enough, the more customers spend, the less likely they are to return for refund. I've tested this across 15 diff product lines, and people that order the cheapest/smallest are always much more likely to return than the ones that spend more. Every time we have raised prices on any of our product lines, our return rate has gone down
 
mont7071 said:
It's usually right around 3.5%, customers like the idea of a MBG more than they actually take advantage of it. My non-diet customers have always been about half of that, but the overweight ones tend to be a little more in search of a "magic bullet" and are more likely to make no other lifestyle changes, or have unreasonable expectations, and then blame the product and return it. It's still well worth it though, we get way more add'l biz up-front because customers see the MBG than we lose in profits from returns.

Interestingly enough, the more customers spend, the less likely they are to return for refund. I've tested this across 15 diff product lines, and people that order the cheapest/smallest are always much more likely to return than the ones that spend more. Every time we have raised prices on any of our product lines, our return rate has gone down
Click to expand...

Right there, this is one of the most interesting things I have read on this forum.

My wife used to work in antique stores and she would tell me about her old sales techniques and theories. One of them was that if you price things too low people are more suspicious of the item and less likely to buy it. So sometimes if something was NOT selling, they would RAISE the price significantly and it would suddenly sell. Not exactly the same thing but the psychology of price is interesting.
 
Great thread so far.

What about chargebacks and Paypal? Do the same CB rules apply to Paypal as well (below 1% and you're fine)? Do they differentiate between legit chargebacks (customer didn't receive the product) and false chargebacks e.g. customer received the product (you provided PP with the tracking numbers) but he is unhappy with the product and decides to open a dispute without you giving any money-back guarantee.

I heard that Paypal likes to freeze your money or forces you to build huge security reserves. Did that happen to you yet?
 
mont7071 said:
Didn't say they were, hence the "/" between RTB and Remnant, as well as between brokers/sellers. To clarify my sentence, These are all general categories of traffic sources for CPA offers, the few examples I listed happen to be mainly remnant fixed-CPM sellers. All of these types of traffic sources, plus others like FB ads, are going to work basically the same way for purposes of this discussion.

For those that care, examples of RTB traffic sources are EngageBDR, OpenX, Sitescout, etc. Principles are still the same, just different way of "slicing and pricing" the traffic.
Click to expand...

What is the difference between RTB and Remnant traffic?

Doesn't RTB platforms buy Remnant traffic from exchanges?
 
Ibanez | Jan said:
Great thread so far.

What about chargebacks and Paypal? Do the same CB rules apply to Paypal as well (below 1% and you're fine)? Do they differentiate between legit chargebacks (customer didn't receive the product) and false chargebacks e.g. customer received the product (you provided PP with the tracking numbers) but he is unhappy with the product and decides to open a dispute without you giving any money-back guarantee.

I heard that Paypal likes to freeze your money or forces you to build huge security reserves. Did that happen to you yet?
Click to expand...

I don't dare take Paypal on anything CPA-related, their cancellation rules override anything you can put in place, and your concerns about them freezing funds randomly have happened to most merchants I know, even on straight-sale. I prefer to only deal with people that have a credit card.

mediaaff said:
What is the difference between RTB and Remnant traffic?

Doesn't RTB platforms buy Remnant traffic from exchanges?
Click to expand...

Yes, which is why I group them together, RTB is mainly just a different way to bill for the traffic to the ultimate buyer, it often is from the same sources that you could buy remnant from at CPM rates. If you are good with your data, you can often buy the "same" traffic cheaper and more targeted on an RTB exchange vs a typical CPM buy.
 
mont7071 said:
If you are good with your data, you can often buy the "same" traffic cheaper and more targeted on an RTB exchange vs a typical CPM buy.
Click to expand...

When you say typical CPM buy do you mean buying on a network that doesn't operate as an RTB or do you mean buying direct from a site for a set CPM rate?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom