03-31-2011, 12:09 PM
Setting Up PPV Campaigns
Default Setting Up PPV Campaigns
I thought I'd chime in with how I set up my campaigns. So far, every single campaign I've launched on the PPV networks I'm using has profited.
Whether you choose to use this method or not - that's up to you. It's not the only way (that's for sure), and it may not even be the best way. But, it's worked wonders for me.
You should know by now (or have heard) that URLs are key. Indeed, they are. You should be bidding on a wide variety of URLs. Before I get more into that, here are my steps:
1. I pick a offer/niche. When I do this, I usually go with a CPS offer. I haven't tested any CPA offers, yet. CPS has worked great for me and I haven't had time to test anything else. When I pick an offer, I usually pick something trendy that I know is going to get a lot of searches, and of course has the same offer, and other similar offers on other networks. That way, I can rotate the offers to find out which one converts best.
2. I build my list. This is a little bit complicated, but I find that it works great for me. Although, I have 2 different ways of building my keyword/URL list.
2a. First, I'll find out the most generic keyword or keyword phrase for what I'm about to promote. If I was going to promote Flycell, "ringtoness" is obviously the most generic. If I was going to promote a diet pill, "diet pills" is probably the most generic.
2b. Secondly, I'll enter in that generic phrase into Google's keyword tool. Most of you should have an AdWords account by now. If you don't, get one. You'll need it in the future anyways. After I enter it into the kw tool, I'll save the top results that include that generic term. Then I'll keep going deeper and finding more keywords. Very, very similar to how I would go about building a list for a PPC campaign, just without the AdGroup BS and super long-tail keywords...
2c. Now, if you have access to a scraper, use it. I start with entering the top 5 searched for keywords into the URL scraper. You'll get a crapload of duplicate URLs, but that's what excel is for. In the end, you should have a few thousand unique URLs.
3. I clean up my list. This includes removing duplicates, and BS URLs I could care less about. Obviously, you don't want to bid on Google.com. A lot of times scrapers will pick up the main domain rather than the full URL. So if Squidoo has a lens about ringtones, it might just show Squidoo.com - you obviously again don't want to bid on that. If I'm lazy, I'll just remove every single URL that doesn't contain a keyword related to the niche I'm promoting.
For those who don't have access to a scraper, just grab the URLs from the first two pages of Google, Yahoo and MSN. And, search the top 5 keywords. That should waste an hour of you time
After I clean up my list, I'll usually just throw the URLs and keywords into a new campaign. I always, always bid the highest. There's really no point in bidding lower than someone else. You want the bulk of the traffic. PPV isn't that fast, so it's important. I'd only bid less if the ROI is breaking even and I need to bid lower than my EPC.
Anyways, I also like to bid on variations of URLs, and order pages. Those convert pretty well. Here's some examples:
example.com
example.com/
example.com/index
example.com/index.html
The same goes for order pages. If they end in .php or something, remove the .php and bid on that as well.
Yes, I do get traffic to all those different variations, and yes, I have no idea why... Anyways, the point is, if 20 people are bidding on example.com and you're the only one bidding on example.com/ you may only get 5% of the views as the main domain without the " / " - but you pay 90% less than everyone else is. Same domain - lower price.
I treat PPV nearly the same as I would treat PPC. I test everything thoroughly. And, I don't test campaigns as a whole. You need to test on a keyword level. If you lose $20 on a campaign, you need to find out which URLs are not converting, and are draining your budget. I have a campaign right now with about 2,000+ URLs and 200+ keywords. The majority of the traffic comes from a few keywords, and a few domains. I haven't checked yet, but even though it's profiting very well, I'm sure some of the top traffic keywords/URLs are not converting at all and are just wasting money.
That being said, you need to weed out the bad URLs and Keywords. Depending on how much traffic I get, I usually like to spend at least 2x the payout of the offer. If the offer pays out $5 - it won't be that hard to figure out which ones are the losers. If it pays out $50 - it will take more time. But the point is, keep the traffic rolling.
You also want to make sure you're updating your bids. Some of these guys watch their bids like hawks, or use a script to auto-update the bid to be the highest. If you check your bids once a day, or once every other day - that's really not enough. You need the most traffic, and bidding the highest gets you that.
As I mentioned before, you need to rotate your offers. I made this mistake on my very first campaign. I only had 1 offer. Although I was profiting, when I started rotating, the better offer had about a 4x better EPC - which is enormous...
Also keep in mind that something that doesn't convert on one network, may convert on another. A great example is Zango vs. AdOn - Zango converts the worst (at least for me and others I've talked to) and everyone knows it. Don't ditch a campaign because it didn't convert on Zango. Go try it on other networks.
Also, take advantage of the auto-deposit feature. For some companies it's a 2% discount. Spend $20,000 a month? That's a nice $400 discount. How many views can you get for $400? A lot! How many conversions? A lot! It's worth it... In combination with a 2% cash back CC - it's even more...
I've heard a lot of people saying they launch campaigns day in and day out. I personally don't do that. I treat it more like a PPC campaign. I like to start with one campaign. Make it profitable, move on to the next. But, I'm one of the laziest people on earth, so that's probably part of the reason
Lastly, this is just the way I do things. If any of the Admin's recommend something else, go ahead and try/do it. What works for me may not work for others and, the same goes for them. Or, they both could work and it's a matter of personal preference.
Keypoints:
Track down to a keyword level. Make sure you know what keyword/network converted.
ROTATE. Find the best offer.
Make decisions based on a keyword level, not campaign level. Poopy campaigns have poopy keywords - get the pooper scooper and get 'em out of there...
Default Setting Up PPV Campaigns
I thought I'd chime in with how I set up my campaigns. So far, every single campaign I've launched on the PPV networks I'm using has profited.
Whether you choose to use this method or not - that's up to you. It's not the only way (that's for sure), and it may not even be the best way. But, it's worked wonders for me.
You should know by now (or have heard) that URLs are key. Indeed, they are. You should be bidding on a wide variety of URLs. Before I get more into that, here are my steps:
1. I pick a offer/niche. When I do this, I usually go with a CPS offer. I haven't tested any CPA offers, yet. CPS has worked great for me and I haven't had time to test anything else. When I pick an offer, I usually pick something trendy that I know is going to get a lot of searches, and of course has the same offer, and other similar offers on other networks. That way, I can rotate the offers to find out which one converts best.
2. I build my list. This is a little bit complicated, but I find that it works great for me. Although, I have 2 different ways of building my keyword/URL list.
2a. First, I'll find out the most generic keyword or keyword phrase for what I'm about to promote. If I was going to promote Flycell, "ringtoness" is obviously the most generic. If I was going to promote a diet pill, "diet pills" is probably the most generic.
2b. Secondly, I'll enter in that generic phrase into Google's keyword tool. Most of you should have an AdWords account by now. If you don't, get one. You'll need it in the future anyways. After I enter it into the kw tool, I'll save the top results that include that generic term. Then I'll keep going deeper and finding more keywords. Very, very similar to how I would go about building a list for a PPC campaign, just without the AdGroup BS and super long-tail keywords...
2c. Now, if you have access to a scraper, use it. I start with entering the top 5 searched for keywords into the URL scraper. You'll get a crapload of duplicate URLs, but that's what excel is for. In the end, you should have a few thousand unique URLs.
3. I clean up my list. This includes removing duplicates, and BS URLs I could care less about. Obviously, you don't want to bid on Google.com. A lot of times scrapers will pick up the main domain rather than the full URL. So if Squidoo has a lens about ringtones, it might just show Squidoo.com - you obviously again don't want to bid on that. If I'm lazy, I'll just remove every single URL that doesn't contain a keyword related to the niche I'm promoting.
For those who don't have access to a scraper, just grab the URLs from the first two pages of Google, Yahoo and MSN. And, search the top 5 keywords. That should waste an hour of you time
After I clean up my list, I'll usually just throw the URLs and keywords into a new campaign. I always, always bid the highest. There's really no point in bidding lower than someone else. You want the bulk of the traffic. PPV isn't that fast, so it's important. I'd only bid less if the ROI is breaking even and I need to bid lower than my EPC.
Anyways, I also like to bid on variations of URLs, and order pages. Those convert pretty well. Here's some examples:
example.com
example.com/
example.com/index
example.com/index.html
The same goes for order pages. If they end in .php or something, remove the .php and bid on that as well.
Yes, I do get traffic to all those different variations, and yes, I have no idea why... Anyways, the point is, if 20 people are bidding on example.com and you're the only one bidding on example.com/ you may only get 5% of the views as the main domain without the " / " - but you pay 90% less than everyone else is. Same domain - lower price.
I treat PPV nearly the same as I would treat PPC. I test everything thoroughly. And, I don't test campaigns as a whole. You need to test on a keyword level. If you lose $20 on a campaign, you need to find out which URLs are not converting, and are draining your budget. I have a campaign right now with about 2,000+ URLs and 200+ keywords. The majority of the traffic comes from a few keywords, and a few domains. I haven't checked yet, but even though it's profiting very well, I'm sure some of the top traffic keywords/URLs are not converting at all and are just wasting money.
That being said, you need to weed out the bad URLs and Keywords. Depending on how much traffic I get, I usually like to spend at least 2x the payout of the offer. If the offer pays out $5 - it won't be that hard to figure out which ones are the losers. If it pays out $50 - it will take more time. But the point is, keep the traffic rolling.
You also want to make sure you're updating your bids. Some of these guys watch their bids like hawks, or use a script to auto-update the bid to be the highest. If you check your bids once a day, or once every other day - that's really not enough. You need the most traffic, and bidding the highest gets you that.
As I mentioned before, you need to rotate your offers. I made this mistake on my very first campaign. I only had 1 offer. Although I was profiting, when I started rotating, the better offer had about a 4x better EPC - which is enormous...
Also keep in mind that something that doesn't convert on one network, may convert on another. A great example is Zango vs. AdOn - Zango converts the worst (at least for me and others I've talked to) and everyone knows it. Don't ditch a campaign because it didn't convert on Zango. Go try it on other networks.
Also, take advantage of the auto-deposit feature. For some companies it's a 2% discount. Spend $20,000 a month? That's a nice $400 discount. How many views can you get for $400? A lot! How many conversions? A lot! It's worth it... In combination with a 2% cash back CC - it's even more...
I've heard a lot of people saying they launch campaigns day in and day out. I personally don't do that. I treat it more like a PPC campaign. I like to start with one campaign. Make it profitable, move on to the next. But, I'm one of the laziest people on earth, so that's probably part of the reason
Lastly, this is just the way I do things. If any of the Admin's recommend something else, go ahead and try/do it. What works for me may not work for others and, the same goes for them. Or, they both could work and it's a matter of personal preference.
Keypoints:
Track down to a keyword level. Make sure you know what keyword/network converted.
ROTATE. Find the best offer.
Make decisions based on a keyword level, not campaign level. Poopy campaigns have poopy keywords - get the pooper scooper and get 'em out of there...