5 Things I Hate About PPV

1. When People Press “Make My Bid Highest” on TrafficVance

Like I said in another post, this is the absolute dumbest thing you could ever do. Every time you hit that button on TrafficVance, you are raising the bid price by 5x higher of an increment than is necessary. There’s nothing worse than logging in to check my targets and seeing that I have been outbid by $0.005, because I know exactly what caused it. Stop the madness now!

2. Waiting for Ads To Be Approved

It can be very frustrating waiting for your ads to be approved by the PPV network, especially with Lead Impact. At least with TrafficVance or DirectCPV, if you are very impatient you can hit up your rep and tell them to approve it. With Lead Impact though, you are stuck waiting for up to 72 hours or longer. That makes me pull out my hair.

3. A Great Converting Target with Barely Any Traffic

There are lots of little gems out there in the world of PPV targets. Great URLs and Keywords that convert like white hot fire, with an ROI of over 1,000%. The only problem is they only get one or two views a day. There is absolutely no way on earth to fix this, but they are always there tantalizing you with the promise of ridiculous profits.

4. PPV Networks Don’t Allow Download Offers

Before you start jumping down my throat, yes I know that some PPV networks somewhere do allow some download offers. But my favorite ones still like to deny my favorite kind of download offers: the very profitable ones. So that leaves me either trying to run some lame download offer that maybe might work, or running with a lesser PPV network that maybe might work. It’s not worth the hassle.

5. Bid Prices Can Be Ludicrously High On Competitive Targets

It’s no secret that PPV isn’t the cheapest form of traffic on the planet. Even at the minimum bid of $0.01 per view on TrafficVance, you are still paying $10 CPM. That is a very high price in the world of display advertising. But when people start bidding $0.40 or more per view on a target, you are talking about a $400 CPM. That is insanity! That’s not to say that there aren’t some offers that could still be profitable at a bid of $0.40, it’s just that a lot of times these bids are driven up by people who are losing money hand over fist and have no idea what to do about it.

So there you have it! My list of 5 things I hate about PPV. Be sure to take these all with a grain of salt, because as I’m sure you know, I love PPV. It’s my favorite type of traffic and that’s not going to change anytime soon. But if I could have 5 wishes come true for Christmas, it would be to change these things.

TrafficVance Goes International (At Last!)

According to my good friend Grayson Gold, TrafficVance is finally serving international pops as of now! That includes all the major english speaking countries: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. They have been serving text links in these countries for a while now, but for those of us that are addicted to pops this is a massive announcement. Lead Impact had the edge internationally for a long time, but I guess all those GameVance installs you guys have been promoting have paid off.

trafficvance

Keep up the good work, and get those international campaigns up!

The Big 5 PPV Networks: A Comparison

A lot of people that are just getting into PPV ask me what PPV network they should use or what’s the difference between the different networks. I decided to put together a handy comparison chart here so you can see which one is the best for your particular situation.

PPV Network Comparison

PPV Network Comparison (Click to enlarge)

Right-Click here and “Save As” to download the chart!

Size Matters: PPV Landing Page Dimensions

As I’ve written about before, you need to get their attention in 4 seconds or less when you are doing PPV.  A huge part of this has to do with your landing page.  If you are direct linking, you need to pay special attention when selecting offers to make sure that the call to action and all the pertinent info is appearing in the viewable area of the pop-up browser window.  If it’s not, there is very little chance the users are going to scroll down just to see what the deal is.  If you are building landing pages, you have absolute control over the size and appearance of your page.  This is probably the #1 reason that people make landing pages for PPV, besides getting people more excited and getting them clicking.

One question I get all the time is how big to make your pages.  It’s common knowledge that the pop-ups generated by PPV software are an 800×600 window.  But does that mean that you should design an 800×600 page?  The answer is NO.  I grabbed screenshots of some actual pop-ups spawned on my two favorite PPV Networks, TrafficVance and Lead Impact.  I’ve diagrammed them below so that you can see exactly what is going on.

Lead Impact Pop-Up Window

Lead Impact Example

Click Image for Full Scale Version

TrafficVance Pop-Up Window

TrafficVance Example

Click Image for Full Scale Version

First we have the actual browser window, which is definitely 800×600.  However, that measures from the outside of the window.  The actual viewable area is much smaller.  As you can see below, the TrafficVance window has 35 more pixels of height to work with in the viewable area than the Lead Impact window does.  This is because of the extra space that the Hotbar toolbar takes up in the Lead Impact window.  Is it retarded that Lead Impact leaves the Hotbar app in the window that it pops?  Yes.  It’s the stupidest thing ever.  But that’s the way it is.  Weird thing is, when I took the screenshot, the Hotbar magically disappeared from the picture.  It just shows up as a blank toolbar.  Interesting…

Not only does TrafficVance have a larger true viewable area, the Adware Disclaimer is also a lot smaller.  It’s just in the bottom left corner of the screen instead of a big blue bar all the way across the bottom like Lead Impact has.  The other major factor to keep in mind when comparing these networks is that TrafficVance only pops a maximum of 4 windows per day.  On the other hand, Lead Impact will pop on almost every single website that you visit.  This gets really annoying, even for me while I was doing the testing.  I can’t imagine how people leave it installed on their computer all the time…

So there you have it.  I always find that when going into battle (and marketing is a battle), it helps to have the best intelligence you can.  Now you know exactly what dimensions to design your landing pages in, or to double check that your direct link offers fit into.

Pro Tip: If you want a really easy way to measure how large the landing page is for your affiliate offer, just download ScreenHunter Free and set it to “Rectangular Area” in the “Capture What” menu.  Then hit whatever key you setup to be your capture key (I use PrintScreen), a box will appear around your mouse that zooms in the detail.  Just click and drag to highlight the landing page and it will tell you the dimensions.  If you want to go ahead and capture the screenshot, just let go of the mouse button.  If you don’t want the screenshot, just right-click before you let go of the left mouse button.

Uber Pro Tip: ScreenHunter is only for PC users.  But Mac users don’t need it because they already have that same function built-in to OSX.  Just press Command + Shift + 4 then you will be able to use the same type of rectangular box to measure your page.

Instantly Increase Your ROI By 2%

I know what you are thinking.  A measly 2% increase?  What’s the point?  Ask anybody that is making six figures a month with Affiliate Marketing if they’d like an extra 2%.  Of course they would!  That’s an extra $2,000 in their pocket every month.  Sometimes in life it’s the little things that add up.

Possibly the most annoying post image ever

This trick only works with PPV.  And it only works with a couple of networks: Lead Impact and Media Traffic.  All you need to do is go to the Billing/Funding page in your account and switch on Automatic Funding.  This means that when your balance drops below a certain threshold, they will automatically charge a set amount to your credit card to refill your account.  For doing this, they will give you a free 2% bonus on the amount you deposited.

It’s free money, sweet and simple.  If you are worried about your card getting charged unexpectedly, just pause all your campaigns when you are getting near the threshold.  You can keep them on pause indefinitely until you are ready to run again.

PRO TIP: If you use a credit card that gives you cash back, you can get another 1% back for free on all of your traffic purchases on any network.