The King is Back

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I know I left you guys in limbo for a while, and for that I apologize. I’ve had a LOT on my plate the past month or so. Hopefully the worst of it is past and I can start updating on the regular again.

Get comfortable because I’m going to hand down some life lessons real fast, and then we’re going to cover a campaign of mine that I just stopped running after 3+ months.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t let your entire income rest on one offer, one network, or one traffic source. Have contingencies in place. If that offer dies, that network fails to pay, or the traffic source goes to shit, what will you do? Besides freak out and bitch about not making any money, that is. Always have a backup plan – similar offers, the same offer on another network, a competitive traffic source. Whatever it takes to make sure you don’t experience downtime. Remember – time when your ads aren’t running is time when you make no money.

Write ads/make banners that appeal to your target audience – not to your sense of creative license. Don’t make banners that you think are pretty just to make pretty banners. Ugly banners sell. You know why? Because those ugly banners usually cover the only thing that’s important in an ad – what’s in it for the customer. They’ll tell you that you can lose weight with this product, or make money with this product, or find a date. No bullshit, not artistic statements – just the facts. And that’s why they work. The majority of the time when people ask me to critique their ads, the problem they’re having is as simple as the fact that they forget to point out what they’re giving the people in an easy-to-understand way. People don’t care about you or your product or your brand, they want to know what’s in it for them. Keep that in mind and watch your conversions rise.

If you’re just starting out, however, pick one vertical and one traffic source and keep trying until you turn a profit. Then expand outwards. Seriously. hit that vertical like it’s your red headed stepchild until you see a return. If you can find a stable offer in the vertical, stick with that one offer – it’ll make it easier for you, rather than jumping from offer to offer. Once you know the vertical and traffic it’s easy to expand laterally and make some real money.

On the topic of money – don’t be afraid of losing money. I say this a lot, but you’re not losing money, you’re buying data. And data helps you figure out how to make more money. If you freak out about every $20 you spend you’ll never get anywhere. I know it’s hard to part with your cash when you don’t see anything coming back to you, but once you get over that hill you’re more likely to succeed. Just keep telling yourself: “I ain’t never scurred.”

Now, the part you’ve all been waiting for: let’s take a look at one of my favorite, recently retired campaigns.

I’ve been running this for months on Plentyoffish, at a steady profit. Sometimes a small profit, sometimes a decent profit. I had to chase the offer from network to network as it popped up and went down. If I was lucky I could split it between several networks at once. Payouts went up and down. But in the end, it kept making me money.

That offer recently went dark on every network I’m on (rumors of non-payment by the advertiser, I don’t know for sure.) My loss is your gain. I’m going to give you the basic idea of the campaign, along with some sample banners and a peek at one of my landers. I’ll also be showing the full targeting info, my best banners and my other landers on the StackThatMoney forum – so if you’re not a member, get on that.

So, the basics: I wanted to build a long term campaign that I wouldn’t have to chase on a daily basis. I ran banners for this campaign for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time. My longest running banner hit literally 2 months of running damn near every day before I paused the campaign finally. The campaign revolves around the True.com dating offer. A lot of people say you can’t get True to convert on PoF (or at all) anymore – that’s far from true.

The basic idea behind the campaign was targeting black men and telling them they can meet white girls. Simple. It’s not a new idea, lots of people have done this in the past – what I’m trying to show here is that a “tired” idea using a “saturated” offer can make you money, if you actually try. I won’t go into the details for targeting, but I’ll make that available in the forum. What I will say is 95% of my traffic was in the US, as it seemed to convert better for me, and the highest converting age range was definitely early 20s.

Here’s a sampling of my older banners that, sadly, won’t get past the reviewers at PoF anymore. They have a strict 2 minimum, 3 maximum picture per frame on banner ads rule now.

(this last one was my #1 performer until they changed the rules about banners on PoF.)

I’m not posting these here for you to use (although I bet a bunch of people will) – it’s to prove a point. These banners are simple. Images, some text, that’s it. Basic text, too. You don’t need to get flashy to get clicks. Keep that in mind.

Below is a screenshot of my top landing page. It’s branded for the offer which increases conversion rates – also note that it makes use of the PoF tokens to insert the user’s details on page. That helps raise click through rates from lander to offer, in my experience.

Click for full sized screen shot.

Again, simple. Nothing fancy, simple call to action, and an image that’s directly related to the target demographic.

The main reason I’m posting this on my blog is to reinforce the fact that you can work with really simple landers and banners and still make money. You can work with offers, demographics and traffic sources that other people say are dead and still make money. Get out there, do some work and make some money.

Don’t forget that I’ll also be posting more landers and banners, along with my full targeting and some more data, on the StackThatMoney forum. If you’re not a member, you might want to sign up, and not just for my post. The Angry Russian just released an EPIC guide to promoting on mobile platforms – a serious game changer – and it’s free for all forum members. You can read more about that here.