Journey to $1500/day using media buys

[moneymaster]

Background

For 3 months now I’ve been studying the ins and outs of media buying since I’m new to this

It involved:

1) Reading books on copywriting and headlines - books that helped(still going through others):

· Tested Advertising Methods – John Caples

· How to write a good advertisement – victor Schwab

· My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising – Claude C. Hopkins

· Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

· Everybody Writes - Handley, Ann.

· Epic Content Marketing (Joe Pulizzi)

· Marketing 2014, 17th Edition


2) Spying on affiliates and checking the landing pages, banners being used in various verticals- using adbeat, WRW, also spying manually using my browser and different ips.

3) Practicing the copywriting, coming up with headlines and banners.

4) Forming a mastermind group with 2 friends who are also starting out in media buying

5) Saving funds for media buying from other my other online income generating projects.

6) Signed up on maxbounty, Peerfly

Traffic will be from Sitescout

Today (1st June 2015):

- Set up an account on Voluum for tracking - going through tutorials on how to set it up

- Got a dedicated server on Namecheap – trying to get my way around it

- Sent money to sitescout waiting for it to to be loaded.

I will be updating regularly on the progress

 

[servandosilva]

That's a really high goal but not impossible. Let's know how it goes.

 

[moneymaster]

Today activities (2nd June 2015)

Choosing an offer
- chose a biz ops/work at home offer

Research
- did research on the offer and saw what other advertisers are using in the niche
- downloaded some banners and landing pages
- took note of the sites they are advertising on

Setting up servers and domain
learned how to set up the dedicated server and domain, it is not easy but I believe its because I'm new to this.
another thing I will be doing later is benchmarking the server to see what load it can handle.

there's so much to do... but I will stay focused and determined.

 

[sanjaq]

Every day I read something new and become more motivated to DO something instead of reading/dreaming pointlessly. But until the time comes, I want to congratulate you, moneymaster, with all my heart! Be focused and may you have the inspiration to make the best decisions!
I will be following this thread!

 

[moneymaster]

That's a really high goal but not impossible. Let's know how it goes.

the goal is high but I believe it is achievable. I will keep this thread updated regularly and keep everyone updated

Every day I read something new and become more motivated to DO something instead of reading/dreaming pointlessly. But until the time comes, I want to congratulate you, moneymaster, with all my heart! Be focused and may you have the inspiration to make the best decisions!
I will be following this thread!

thanks mate I'm glad I've motivated you...this is one of my principles: take your time to understand whatever you are undertaking then take action and you'll succeed.

 

[Sage]

Every day I read something new and become more motivated to DO something instead of reading/dreaming pointlessly. But until the time comes, I want to congratulate you, moneymaster, with all my heart! Be focused and may you have the inspiration to make the best decisions!
I will be following this thread!

Sanjaq - I went through the EXACT same analysis/paralysis. You MUST set strict goals "WITH END DATES". Use an online stopwatch to complete small but meaningful tasks, say 30 dedicated minutes here and there. Close all other windows, emails, turn off cell phones, put headphones/earbuds on and listen to whatever type of music to help you FOCUS!

Once I started doing this, the NOISY world around me vanished and I could magically "FOCUS" on the task at hand.

Our world today is filled with too much NOISE! We must remember that our brain is a POWERFUL TOOL, if we learn to harness it, nothing is impossible.

~Sage

 

[moneymaster]

update on progress: (6th June 2015)

Banner Design
I have been able to design banners using gimp(free) and banner design studio.

I tried to improve on the banners that were being used by competitors and made some new designs of my own.
I used different angles in the headlines used on the banners. some points I considered in creating headlines on the banners
- arouse curiosity
- mention a benefit


Landing Page Design
The landing pages have been put together , I checked what competitors were using and tried to improve on their landers but I also included landers that were unique and not similar to what others where using.

Software used to make Landing pages
- adobe dreamweaver
- adobe muse

Hopefully the test run will be done this Wednesday after everything is checked and configured on voluum, affiliate network and sitescout. The campaign should be full steam on Thursday. I will also prepare some guides to help newbies in configuring voluum with affiliate network and traffic sources.

 

[andaralee]

I will follow your journey thread.. Good luck

 

[kerbeross]

Good luck! I haven't seen a good sitescout thread for ages now..

 

[TrafficBroker]

yesh.. you read all those books?

 

[hypefree]

Good luck - subscribed !

 

[moneymaster]

I will follow your journey thread.. Good luck

thanks

Good luck! I haven't seen a good sitescout thread for ages now..

thanks, sitescout has a lot of desktop traffic... I chose it since this is what I'm targeting and there is room for scaling.

yesh.. you read all those books?

I've read 3 of them and intend to read all of them as I continue with my journey...since I have to start testing, I will also re-read others as one reading is not enough to completely understand and digest the material. If you've had a peek at them they have great info especially when it comes to copywriting.

 

[moneymaster]

Progress Update: June 11th, 2015

After I had set up everything on maxbounty, voluum , and sitescout .. I ran a $50 test to see I had set up everything correctly before I embark on running the campaign daily.

The test:
Amount= $50
Traffic = RON Sitescout
Offerpayout = $2.6
Bid = $0.1 cpm

Variables:
banners = 12
landing pages = 6
also put some of the traffic to be direct linked to the offer.
offers= 1

Results On:
Voluum
banner impressions: 352,808
banner clicks: 1,989
banner CTR: 0.56%

landing page clicks: 52
landing page CTR: 2.6%

conversions: 0

Cost: $35.28
Profit - $35.28

Sitescout
Impressions won: 473,682
banner clicks: 2,076
Total Spend: $47.22
banner ctr: 0.44%


Objective: the objective of this small test was to confirm that i had configured my links and tracking correctly since it was my first time using some of this tools, I can happily say the configuration was done properly but there is always room for improvement

What I found out
some of the sites I got traffic from are not real sites I even suspect I got a lot of bot traffic, I wonder why sitescout has listed them....

example of a bad listing
I got like 353 banner impressions from this site(kingdomcomputing.com) and 35 banner clicks ..10% ctr!! and the site does not even exist.

it is listed on sitescout to be receiving 719,031 daily impressions

all I have to say one has to be careful on site selection on sitescout some sites are not genuine and provide bot traffic

Next course of action
next time I run the campaigns I will run on sites that competitors were running the offer and others of similar demographics

Tracking question
There seems to be discrepancy btn impressions shown on voluum and sitescout... why is this? anyone who has an idea pls let me know.

 

[HereComesTheMoney]

thanks for the journey. yes, anyone with an idea?

subscribed!

 

[moneymaster]

Progress Update: June 15th, 2015

Stopped Campaign since I had no conversions after running the campaign for 4 continuous days: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday

spent around $70 on those 4 days

Site Selection/ Audience/ Demographics
did more research and found out that site selection on sitescout is very important... if you are not careful the traffic you will get will be of low quality.

I also discovered that some networks on sitescout are better than others and I will stick with one network that I found to give me realistic results.

Bidding
After doing more research I came up with another bidding strategy since I was being outbid....being outbid in sitescout results in you receiving poor traffic or no traffic in some instances


I will also tweak banners and landers and hopefully with this new knowledge I will get my first conversion

 

[mrbrown725838]

How has it been progressing so far

 

[moneymaster]

Progress Update: June 19th 2015

19 days into my media buy journey and no single conversion.... I know I will crack this nut soon just as I have in other fields.
okay back to the data: run a campaign yesterday on super targetted collection of sites but no conversion also not receiving traffic....

I bid 3cpm on sites with average 1 cpm but not winning significant traffic...today I will bid 5 cpm and see what happens.
so far i'm in negative roi territory, anyone with some thoughts on this pls feel free to chip in so I can get that first conversion and I will be good to go

 

[game333]

That is soooo bad.
Did you block the source, and pre-sale your destination lander within your banner?
Flash, gif, disturbing banner. Did you split test these modules?

 

[moneymaster]

That is soooo bad.
Did you block the source, and pre-sale your destination lander within your banner?
Flash, gif, disturbing banner. Did you split test these modules?

Thanks for you input but would you pls clarify what you mean by source.

as for banners ...yes I am preselling my lander with my banner

currently I'm using only using gifs and static jpg banners

 

[game333]

By blocking the source, I did mean when you advertise on Media Buying.
You will get a list of domain where your banner exists.
And certain domain or position do not work well, so just block those that get really low CTR after 10,000 impression.