SmileyCentral. Yay or Nay?

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Spades

Spades

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Mar 19, 2007
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I noticed the niche has been pretty competitive for longer than I can remember with a few very consistent landing pages up. I figured these guys have gotta be banking so why not give it a shot. I threw together a few landing pages and threw $100 at it to see if it would stick.

$100 - 344 clicks - 5 conversions - $12.75 - Loss of $87.25

Now I know someones going to say that this data is not large enough to prove anything, but I beg to differ. Shit, Neverblues network avg of .17 EPC is over 4 times higher than the .04 EPC on this test.

My landing page wasn't identical to theirs but pretty damn similar in style, content, and call to action. So what's the deal? Anybody had any luck with SmileyCentral? Margins large or small? (I'm guessing the latter.) I bet most of the volume they receive comes from high traffic myspace sites or other similar hard to monetize niches.

I'm sure a few of the smiley pages belong to you guys, sorry if I'm stepping on toes or putting the niche out there. It's not really a secret as just about every network pushes them.
 


Spades said:
I noticed the niche has been pretty competitive for longer than I can remember with a few very consistent landing pages up. I figured these guys have gotta be banking so why not give it a shot. I threw together a few landing pages and threw $100 at it to see if it would stick.

$100 - 344 clicks - 5 conversions - $12.75 - Loss of $87.25

Now I know someones going to say that this data is not large enough to prove anything, but I beg to differ. Shit, Neverblues network avg of .17 EPC is over 4 times higher than the .04 EPC on this test.

My landing page wasn't identical to theirs but pretty damn similar in style, content, and call to action. So what's the deal? Anybody had any luck with SmileyCentral? Margins large or small? (I'm guessing the latter.) I bet most of the volume they receive comes from high traffic myspace sites or other similar hard to monetize niches.

I'm sure a few of the smiley pages belong to you guys, sorry if I'm stepping on toes or putting the niche out there. It's not really a secret as just about every network pushes them.
Click to expand...


Mistake #1: you paid .30 per click. I run one of SmileyCentral's products and pay < $0.07 a click.

Mistake #2: your pitiful ecpc screams that you were marketing to the wrong audience.

SmileyCentral also just upped their CPA on most of their products, and tons of new affiliates have entered the space, which has made competition fierce.

I used to think SmileyCentral was shit, too. But you can definitely profit with their stuff.
 
Thanks for the info invisible. That's exactly it though, I was paying 30 cents a click because they were 100% targeted keywords (users actually looking for smileys.) I was under the impression that if the other players could go high, I could. Obviously minimum bids come into play but it wasn't adwords so their probably wasn't a huge difference there (maybe 5 cents or so.)

To be honest, I'm starting to think that the niche might be saturated with users that either have the smileycentral toolbar or are starting to ignore the branding. IAC has been pushing it for years now, maybe they're giving it one last push with the higher CPA and they're planning on re-branding? Would be a smart tactic in my opinion.

ps. are you getting the 7 cent clicks from adwords? or other sources? No worries if you wouldn't like to answer.
 
Spades said:
Thanks for the info invisible. That's exactly it though, I was paying 30 cents a click because they were 100% targeted keywords (users actually looking for smileys.) I was under the impression that if the other players could go high, I could. Obviously minimum bids come into play but it wasn't adwords so their probably wasn't a huge difference there (maybe 5 cents or so.)

To be honest, I'm starting to think that the niche might be saturated with users that either have the smileycentral toolbar or are starting to ignore the branding. IAC has been pushing it for years now, maybe they're giving it one last push with the higher CPA and they're planning on re-branding? Would be a smart tactic in my opinion.

ps. are you getting the 7 cent clicks from adwords? or other sources? No worries if you wouldn't like to answer.
Click to expand...

i agree with the re-branding. they need a completely new name.

my understanding is that every Fall the CPA goes up a bit as it is apparently the "in-season" for their products.
 
Spades said:
I was under the impression that if the other players could go high, I could.
Click to expand...

You're assuming they are at the same payout level. If they are big players and have been promoting for a while their payout could be at least double or more and can outbid anyone else.
 
pocketrockets said:
You're assuming they are at the same payout level. If they are big players and have been promoting for a while their payout could be at least double or more and can outbid anyone else.
Click to expand...

Right, but double?? I don't think it would feasible for IAC to be paying in excess of $5.00 per toolbar install never the less the network to profit at the same time. All of the affiliates I checked out were pushing through 2 particular networks (and I work with both.) I'm sure some of them are getting ~ $3.50 or so.

Even with double the payout it would have been a non profitable campaign. Maybe the market really is THAT saturated and they're scrubbing current users?

Thanks for the input guys. I figured its always good to put failures and shit like this out there... get people talking and minds working.
 
Props for posting this. My only advice is that you can profit in any market but it will take some time depending on how competitive it is. I highly doubt you would want to promote smiley central long term if you don't have a cheap means of promoting it.
 
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