Rep at a native ad buying network says I need to spend more to see results, true or false?

[SweetTooth]

I bought $200 worth of ads from a native ad buying network and when I asked for a refund for the rest of my deposit, a rep from the network gave me a call. He asked me why I was asking for a refund and I told him it was because I got no conversions. (I'm promoting clickbank affiliate offers). He said that $200 wasn't enough and that he was willing to help me. He says I need to spend atleast a minimum of $150 a day to start seeing conversions for my offer. Now I'm new to affiliate marketing and media buying, but does any of this ring true? Do I have to spend a minimum of $150 a day on native ads to start getting conversions on a <$50 offer?

 

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[AndrewNC]

I bought $200 worth of ads from a native ad buying network and when I asked for a refund for the rest of my deposit, a rep from the network gave me a call. He asked me why I was asking for a refund and I told him it was because I got no conversions. (I'm promoting clickbank affiliate offers). He said that $200 wasn't enough and that he was willing to help me. He says I need to spend atleast a minimum of $150 a day to start seeing conversions for my offer. Now I'm new to affiliate marketing and media buying, but does any of this ring true? Do I have to spend a minimum of $150 a day on native ads to start getting conversions on a <$50 offer?

He speaks the truth. I've seen people spend $2,000-$5,000 to see if a campaign is worth it or not.

Some people get conversions right away. Others, it takes thousands of dollars, and then they start making great profits from the campaign.

There's no set rule, but in my personal view of things - $200 is not enough, and paid traffic will take some money to learn.

 

[JamesSJ]

It's true. How many clicks did you get?

Have a read of this article - http://fourhourworkweek.com/2011/11/02/the-truth-about-abs-mike-geary/

This bit is quite interesting...


What are some common mistakes when buying media/traffic?

The most common mistake is not letting enough traffic flow to see true trends. Some people shut down their campaigns after only a couple hundred clicks thinking that it won’t be profitable, but they haven’t let it run long enough to see for sure. For example, a newbie might shut down their campaign after only 500 clicks and 1 sale. But what if they would have made 3 sales in the next 500 clicks, for a total of 4 sales in 1,000 clicks? Data can be pretty variable when you’re still under 1,000 clicks. I generally test an ad for at least a couple thousand clicks. However, keep in mind that I deal mostly with the fitness and nutrition niches and they require high volumes of clicks to see true data.

Another big mistake is not split testing enough variations of ads. Many advertisers give up on losing campaigns after testing only a couple ad creatives. However, I’ve found that simple modifications — such as a one word variation in a headline or a slightly different image or background color — can be the difference between a losing campaign and a profitable campaign. In some instances, I’ve used the exact same ad text combined with slightly different pictures and seen DOUBLE the click-through rate (CTR).

The last mistake is also very common: most advertisers aren’t willing to lose money to find what works. I EXPECT to lose money the first time I test a campaign. Then I tweak the ad copy, offer, etc. based on our testing results, and we see if we can restart the campaign a second time and make it profitable based on what we learned [i.e. what lost the least money, etc.] For example, if I do a $10,000 traffic buy test on a new website that we haven’t worked with before, we’ll usually only make back maybe $6,000 to $7,000 for a net loss of about $3,000. But we also usually learn that one of our ad variations performed MUCH better than the others, and we can work with that specific ad from that point forward and possibly negotiate lower rates. Sometimes we find that the numbers are too far off to work in the future, so we just decide to cut all ties with that particular website and not buy traffic from them again if they can’t offer lower rates.

 

[Mike39]

General rule is 3x offer payout, but that is more of a target when you are already experienced and generally know what will work and what wont. And even then often times that isn't enough.

Why are you asking for a refund on your deposit? Just because you've spent $200 doesn't mean the network sucks. You may just need to try better ads, better landing pages, more relevant placements, etc.

You need to spend enough to enough to get relevant data. 10 clicks to an offer in 1 day w/o a conversion doesn't mean the offer sucks. 300 clicks to an offer w/o a conversion in a day (assuming you prequalify the visitor enough), the offer probably sucks. Same for landing pages if you are running any. Ideally you want to hit statistical significance with your data, there are free tools on the interwebs to tell you when you've hit that.

Couple basic things to help you see better results:

1) Make sure the offer is currently being run by other affiliates, just because it's on Clickbank doesn't mean it will sell well

2) Not sure if you did or not, but make sure you run for more than 1 day (Mondays for example may just be slow for one reason or another)

3) If you're on a limited budget like $200, test something with a smaller payout. You shouldn't have to spend as much to see conversions come in

 

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[SweetTooth]

General rule is 3x offer payout, but that is more of a target when you are already experienced and generally know what will work and what wont. And even then often times that isn't enough.

Why are you asking for a refund on your deposit? Just because you've spent $200 doesn't mean the network sucks. You may just need to try better ads, better landing pages, more relevant placements, etc.

You need to spend enough to enough to get relevant data. 10 clicks to an offer in 1 day w/o a conversion doesn't mean the offer sucks. 300 clicks to an offer w/o a conversion in a day (assuming you prequalify the visitor enough), the offer probably sucks. Same for landing pages if you are running any. Ideally you want to hit statistical significance with your data, there are free tools on the interwebs to tell you when you've hit that.

Couple basic things to help you see better results:

1) Make sure the offer is currently being run by other affiliates, just because it's on Clickbank doesn't mean it will sell well

2) Not sure if you did or not, but make sure you run for more than 1 day (Mondays for example may just be slow for one reason or another)

3) If you're on a limited budget like $200, test something with a smaller payout. You shouldn't have to spend as much to see conversions come in

I spent double to quadruple the payout of the offer. But the rep said I have to wait for the ad software to optimize - to find the most profitable sites that get the most clicks for my ads, and thats why I have to spend so much money first. Any thought on that? My first offer was a diabetes solution and the payout was roughly $50-$80 and I spent $130 on ads. My second offer was weight loss with a $10-$20 payout and I spent $50 on ads. I didn't receive any conversions.

It's true. How many clicks did you get?

Have a read of this article - http://fourhourworkweek.com/2011/11/02/the-truth-about-abs-mike-geary/

This bit is quite interesting...


What are some common mistakes when buying media/traffic?

The most common mistake is not letting enough traffic flow to see true trends. Some people shut down their campaigns after only a couple hundred clicks thinking that it won’t be profitable, but they haven’t let it run long enough to see for sure. For example, a newbie might shut down their campaign after only 500 clicks and 1 sale. But what if they would have made 3 sales in the next 500 clicks, for a total of 4 sales in 1,000 clicks? Data can be pretty variable when you’re still under 1,000 clicks. I generally test an ad for at least a couple thousand clicks. However, keep in mind that I deal mostly with the fitness and nutrition niches and they require high volumes of clicks to see true data.

Another big mistake is not split testing enough variations of ads. Many advertisers give up on losing campaigns after testing only a couple ad creatives. However, I’ve found that simple modifications — such as a one word variation in a headline or a slightly different image or background color — can be the difference between a losing campaign and a profitable campaign. In some instances, I’ve used the exact same ad text combined with slightly different pictures and seen DOUBLE the click-through rate (CTR).

The last mistake is also very common: most advertisers aren’t willing to lose money to find what works. I EXPECT to lose money the first time I test a campaign. Then I tweak the ad copy, offer, etc. based on our testing results, and we see if we can restart the campaign a second time and make it profitable based on what we learned [i.e. what lost the least money, etc.] For example, if I do a $10,000 traffic buy test on a new website that we haven’t worked with before, we’ll usually only make back maybe $6,000 to $7,000 for a net loss of about $3,000. But we also usually learn that one of our ad variations performed MUCH better than the others, and we can work with that specific ad from that point forward and possibly negotiate lower rates. Sometimes we find that the numbers are too far off to work in the future, so we just decide to cut all ties with that particular website and not buy traffic from them again if they can’t offer lower rates.

Great article, thank you for posting. To answer your question I don't remember the exact number of clicks offhand, but I was paying $0.63 per click. My first campaign ran $130 the first day. So 103/0.63 = 206 clicks. The second campaign was $50 at the same cpc so 50/0.63 = 79 clicks.

 

[nebuer]

If you're new to affiliate marketing you shouldn't be learning it on high payout offers like this.

The higher the payout - the more you're going to have to spend/lose in order to get actionable data. Even when you have actionable data and lost money, a vast majority of the time that's going to say "this just doesnt work - try something else".

Learn the fundamentals by pushing CPA offers in the $0-6 payout range. It'll be a lot cheaper education.

 

[hughjasle]

I try and stay away from offering free advice to noobs anymore as very very few actually listen.

BUT so much conflicting good/bad advice even in just this thread - it drives me crazy.

For you specifically, your spend of $200 is so insignificant at this point that you can't make hardly any decisions. Spending $80-200 a day can get you profitable, but it will take you spending that amount for weeks.

But your issue is that you are BRAND NEW to those markets. You have no idea if the offer you are pushing is good, you have no idea if the landing pages you have (if you are even using them) are any good, and no idea if your actual ads are any good. Add those unknown variables to the 1000's of site placements you just most likely ran to and you have literally 1000's of variables to test.

If you don't have the time and money to put into making this work on native - I will echo @nebuer and say go for the small payout offers. Even better, do the small payout stuff and move from native networks to mobile networks.

It's the same idea but your CPC will be a penny or less. You can test the same amount of variables with much less.

Also - get on an actual network. Not clickbank. Get yourself an account admin at the network, befriend them. Let them tell you what is working and where. Then go out - SPY on what others are doing and grab their ads and LP's. Boom you just crossed off LOADS of variables.

 

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[Imgal]

Came here to say exactly what @hughjasle and @nebuer have said. If you're new to the industry and don't have deep pockets to throw on testing then I'd seriously recommend on going for some much smaller offers. Paid advertising is always going to be a gamble. Sure, the tighter your targeting is the better you're doing, but the colour of the sky, the day of the week and whether the national football team of a country you're targeting won or lost their big game can suddenly turn a great run into a terrible one.

Gamble only as much as you can and start small. It's the lessons of the from the good and bad results from the small tests that will get you where you want to be. Betting huge amounts at the beginning might get you some big wins and I've seen it happen for many people.. but then 75% of them ended up losing just as big and coming really unstuck as they'd never planned for it.

 

[SweetTooth]

I try and stay away from offering free advice to noobs anymore as very very few actually listen.

BUT so much conflicting good/bad advice even in just this thread - it drives me crazy.

For you specifically, your spend of $200 is so insignificant at this point that you can't make hardly any decisions. Spending $80-200 a day can get you profitable, but it will take you spending that amount for weeks.

But your issue is that you are BRAND NEW to those markets. You have no idea if the offer you are pushing is good, you have no idea if the landing pages you have (if you are even using them) are any good, and no idea if your actual ads are any good. Add those unknown variables to the 1000's of site placements you just most likely ran to and you have literally 1000's of variables to test.

If you don't have the time and money to put into making this work on native - I will echo @nebuer and say go for the small payout offers. Even better, do the small payout stuff and move from native networks to mobile networks.

It's the same idea but your CPC will be a penny or less. You can test the same amount of variables with much less.

Also - get on an actual network. Not clickbank. Get yourself an account admin at the network, befriend them. Let them tell you what is working and where. Then go out - SPY on what others are doing and grab their ads and LP's. Boom you just crossed off LOADS of variables.

I was just reading your thread a few days ago on how you're going from affiliate marketing to ecommerce. Great thread and thanks for posting! To reply to your post, I was using whatrunswhere.com and using the exact ads, landing page, and ad networks that showed to be working.

 

[SweetTooth]

I was just reading your thread a few days ago on how you're going from affiliate marketing to ecommerce. Great thread and thanks for posting! To reply to your post, I was using whatrunswhere.com and using the exact ads, landing page, and ad networks that showed to be working.

Also, the ad network rep seemed like he really wanted to help me. He said he would give me the blacklist that other affiliates pushing diabetes offers while spending $6k-$8k a day were using.

 

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[Imgal]

Also, the ad network rep seemed like he really wanted to help me. He said he would give me the blacklist that other affiliates pushing diabetes offers while spending $6k-$8k a day were using.

Sounds like a great rep to have. Worth seeing if he has any advice on the best offers to push to get you started and earning as quickly as possible.

 

[hughjasle]

I was using whatrunswhere.com and using the exact ads, landing page

Just know that the ads/lp's that you find via spy tools are often out of date. That and straight copying ads never works as well as coming up with your own content so it will usually be harder/take longer to get profitable than running your own custom angles for ads/pages.

But just starting out, that is perfect and exactly what you should be doing. Hopefully you were/are testing multiple different pages and ads to see the difference in each. Once you get it profitable you can get an idea of what works and start testing your own changes.