Tag Archives: Conversions

What Offers Are Still Working?

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Since the rebill crash there has been a general sense of panic among affiliates.  It’s as if there was only one way to make money in the industry, and now that it’s practically dried up, everyone is scrambling.  Funny thing is, that’s absolutely untrue!  There were affiliate offers long before Acai Berries came on to the scene, and there will continue to be offers that make money.

Conversion Van

Official Vehicle of Affiliate Marketing: The Conversion Van

So what are some of the things that are making money still?  Here’s what I’m seeing do very well right now.

1. Education

As a vertical, EDU has had its ups and downs.  Right now is definitely an up.  Not only has it always been a strong performer on email, but lately social media marketers and PPV guys have been seeing the allure of getting paid $30+ for a lead (no credit card required).  There are many different flavors out there such as Criminal Justice, Nursing, Massage, Video Game Design, and Web Design.  This makes it easy to break down your campaigns and target people that will actually convert.

2. Dating

Dating is one of the oldest verticals there is in all of CPA marketing.  It will never go away.  Why?  Simple: people need companionship.  If you’ve read Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman, dating and companionship ties directly into one of the “Life Force 8”.  This means that it is hard-wired into our psyche to want it.  You don’t have to sell it to people, they already want it.  You just have to convince them that the site you are promoting is the best way for them to get it.

3. Gaming

Gaming can include a lot of different things such as downloads and Facebook apps.  There’s money in all of them.  The lead gen type offers and Facebook apps are great for social media traffic and PPV, and the download games are great for display and media buy traffic.  These offers have lower payouts, but they convert like crazy, especially the apps.  All the user has to do is press “Allow” and then you get credited.

4. Email and Zip Submits

Yes, they can scrub hard. And yes, the payouts are low.  But these things are still around for a reason: they work.  Ruck from Convert2Media has posted a couple of awesome tips about how to promote these for low bid prices and competition.  You may need to rotate a few to find some that will stay alive for longer, but trust me, they exist.  I’ve seen affiliates do 20,000 leads on one single email submit offer over 3 weeks with no scrub in sight.  For real.

These are just some examples to get you started.  There are many more offers and verticals out there that are alive and well.  Take some time to test out some new things you wouldn’t normally consider, like offers with lower payouts.  They may surprise you.

Day Parting & Campaign Caps with Zango

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Have you ever been testing out a new PPV campaign with a budget of $25 a day and found that it’s all used up before 5pm?  This is one area that PPC withGoogle AdWords has spoiled us: you can choose whether you want Standard or Accelerated ad spend, and with Standard it will evenly price out your clicks through out the day.  Most PPV networks do not do this.

Today I noticed that with Zango you can actually do day parting, which is choosing which hours of the day you want your ads to be displayed.  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend turning this on right away if you are testing a new campaign, but it certainly is handy if you are blowing through your daily budget without getting any conversions.  In many verticals, it is not until the evening hours that they really start converting.  People are home from work, kids are home from school, people are surfing the net without worrying about the boss looking over their shoulder.  Besides, it’s more likely that the home computer is where the AdWare client is installed anyway.

To do this in Zango, just login to your account, click on the campaign name you want to add day parting to and click Edit Campaign.  Right above the Save Changes button you will see a new link called Advanced Options.  Click this and it will pop up a window with all the different days of the week and hours of the day.  You can also turn specific days of the week off, like if you only wanted to run your ads during the weekend.

Along with day parting, there are also Campaign Caps on this menu.  This will let you set a daily budget for specific days which overrides the Campaign-level daily budget.  This is great if you are finding that certain days provide a large amount of conversions, and you want to crank up the ad spend to take advantage.

It may not seem like much, but little tools like this can really help you optimize your campaigns and squeeze every last bit of ROI out of your PPV traffic.

PPV Network Review: DirectCPV

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If you’ve read my other posts on PPV, you know I’m a fan of Media Traffic and their PPV network.  This is the place that 90% of the people I talk to start out with PPV.  That being said, there are other options out there.  A newer network that I heard about recently is DirectCPV.  Since I had a few people asking me about it, I decided to give it a test run to see how it stacks up to the other guys.

First of all, the interface may look familiar to you when you log in and setup a campaign.  This is due to the fact that DirectCPV is white labeling the CPView platform.  This does not mean that DirectCPV is the same thing as CPView, they have a different user base with the adware installed so it is a completely different network.

It is relatively simple to get a campaign set up with the interface, you put in your Landing Page url (affiliate link), give it a name, and then you add in at least one type of targeting (URL, keyword, or category).  I put in about 20 URLs from a quick Google search and decided to try out a couple keywords as well.  One thing to note here is that DirectCPV does not have anywhere near the number of adware users that some of the bigger networks have, so you might be a bit safer testing out new keywords here (keywords on the big networks can mean your whole budget gone in the blink of an eye).

I let it run for a few days and when I came back to check my stats (using Prosper202) I was pleasantly surprised that my campaign was profitable right off the bat.  It wasn’t a home run, but it did make money.  I decided to make a couple of minor tweaks at that point.  The first thing was checkout my Prosper202 to see what URLs were converting.  As is often the case, all the conversions were coming from one URL.  I noticed that some of them were coming from the Keyword that I had put in instead of the direct URL.  The problem with that is that the bid price for the Keyword was 0.08 (8 cents) and the bid for the direct URL was 0.01 (1 cent).  Simple fix there, I paused the Keyword and added the URL to my targeting.  After that the profits were decent.

The main gripe I have about the DirectCPV interface is that you have to click “Check Bid” on each URL individually to see if you are in 1st position.  Other networks have done this better, but you can take some of the hassle out of it by setting the bid mode to Auto and then setting it at 1st position.  This will automatically increase your bid if somebody is above you.  Also if you want to Geo Target your campaign, you have to do it after the campaign is setup, you can’t do it during the campaign creation.  This stumped me the first time.

Final word?  I like DirectCPV.  I think it’s worth a shot especially if you have a profitable campaign on another network that you are looking to expand.  It can also be good for testing out a new campaign to if it converts without blowing your budget since there is a smaller installed user base, there is less competition, and the bid prices start at 1 penny (at MT it is 1.5).  It doesn’t have as much traffic as the bigger guys, but from what I saw it can definitely be a good source to add to your repertoire.

If you signup through my affiliate link here you can get a $25 credit by using the promo code “BR25”.

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/5