Considering PAID Adversiting

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

Good Morning,

I’m sure like most sites, paid advertisers at some point tried to contact you. We are in the process of making a big push and I’ve really been considering paid advertising.

A few questions I had would be…

  1. Is it worth it?
  2. What site do you believe would be best for our content? (I’ve posted a few pictures in this email, also can take a glance at site)
  3. What are a few ways to really get a bang for you buck? (EX: 2X the amount of clicks vs. what they have advertised on there site or email)

Any feedback from those experienced would be great. I have a new REALLY amazing tour page that will hopefully be debuted by August 1st, to better help convert traffic.

Thank You,

Landon
GayHoopla.com
http://gayhoopla.com/blog/

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#2

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

While I can only give my experience as an advertiser for adult products, if I were basing it on that I would say don’t bother with the advertising networks, especially ExoClick.

We had ads through ExoClick over the last couple of months and the results were appalling. Thousands of clicks through and not a single sale. Even through the law of averages and people ACCIDENTALLY buying we should have had AT LEAST ten sales, absolute bare minimum. Even if the ads had been terrible, even if the landing page had resulted in a 404, even if the user was deaf and blind and mentally challenged, we should have at least made a few sales.

We paid for targeted UK traffic, and we were getting gangs of clicks from the US. Watching our live stats we would see nothing for maybe half an hour, then every single ad clicked on one after the other, each landing page would light up with hits from a town in California for about a minute, then they would all miraculously vanish simultaneously.

In addition to that, when we asked for assistance we were fobbed off. We were basically told “you don’t spend 300K, you’re not worth it”.

The advice we did get was trash, they were telling us not to block a tube site that was deliberately tricking clickers, having our ads appearing over the videos a couple of seconds after page load. So, the user loads the page, they go to click play and hit our ad at just the right time.

ExoClick tried to tell us this was good, it gets us traffic. Yeah, it gets us completely useless traffic from people fooled into arriving on our site and then immediately bouncing back out again! This is what ExoClick thinks advertisers want; useless traffic fooled into coming to your site with no intention of buying.

So, after this little rant, I’m gonna say what I plan to tell everyone I can when I have the opportunity - avoid ExoClick like it’s an oozing wort on a ball sack.

#3

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

[QUOTE=GayHoopla;151582]

  1. Is it worth it?

  2. What site do you believe would be best for our content? (I’ve posted a few pictures in this email, also can take a glance at site)

  3. What are a few ways to really get a bang for you buck? (EX: 2X the amount of clicks vs. what they have advertised on there site or email)[/QUOTE]

  4. It is usually worth it, but it really depends a lot on your rebills rate. Most often if not in all cases you will not get your money back during the 1st month. That rarely happens. You get it back from rebills in the upcoming months. The advantage is once you have recovered your initial investment, you are into profit (unlike the affiliate model, you will no longer pay commission, everything you earn is yours). Consider advertising as a PPS model: It costs you $25 to get a member, afterwards you keep the rebills.

  5. It depends a lot, there is no perfect site. We had very good results with Squirt, good results with Gaydar, decent results with Queerclick & Gaydemon (advertising, not the affiliate traffic), average results with Gayromeo and so on. With another site we had great results with Queerclick but nothing with Gaydar. So it depends a lot, you have to test what works for you. With some of them you will fail and lose your money, with others you will win big. You also have to rotate them a lot, advertising on the same site forever will not give you the same results, after a while their traffic will become blind to your product. You also have to test the graphics, wording and call to actions a lot. So in short words it’s a game of constant testing and tweaking until you make profit - but you will make profit after you have enough data to know what works and what doesn’t. For example with Gaydemon.com we had two sets of almost identical banners, one of the sets converted around 1:140 (extremely well for banners) and the other was above 1:400. The only difference was the colour of the call to action button and the wording on it.

  6. Not sure if I understand your question but you will get discounts from most networks. Usually you need to buy something first. We had really great deals with Squirt and Queerclick but we’ve also spent a lot of cash to get them. So the more you spend, the better your rates will be. However most people will offer you a small discount to do a trial run. I suggest not spending too much initially but also don’t go to low or you won’t have enough reliable data to see what converts for you and what doesn’t.

#4

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

Like the others have said more or less, I think you have to hand pick the sites that will carry your ads. If you’re just buying an ad on one of those banner ad services, you’re just wasting your money. Even if you have some control over where your ad will display, i.e. jock sites or blogs only, your ad still might be getting impressions on lots of really shitty sites.

Don’t be lured in by “we have 29 gazillion page views per day” from from monstrously large tube sites, I have heard lots of complaints from sites seeing poor results … sure there’s lots of page views, but no one’s looking at or clicking banners.

It’s been three hours since you put up this post, I imagine your PM box is getting a few messages.

If there is some place where you’re thinking of buying an ad, don’t be afraid to put up a post here asking for anyone with experience with said service. It’s a good way of making sure you’re not handing your money over to a thief or just pissing it into the wind.

#5

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

I would echo this.
The only reason we went with ExoClick was because nothing else seemed to offer geo-targeted ads, and we can really only focus on UK traffic. It’s been impossibly difficult to find any affordable advertising methods that allow us to target only UK guys.

We would love to advertise on blogs, and I think that would probably result in some excellent converting traffic, but nothing we have found provides for UK targeting, so spending that money means far too much of it is going to be wasted on clicks from the US.

We even looked at teaming up with a membership site willing to add us to a UK mailing list for one shot just to see what would happen (even offering their members a discount!) but no business we contacted seem interested in any cross-promotion at all.

I’d like that. Anything that actually works for us and is affordable would be welcomed. We’re willing to try almost anything within reason. We need to target UK traffic somehow and nothing we’ve tried seems to be cutting it.

#6

Paid advertising in Adult is a waste of cash, truly, I’m being very sincere. You are much better off with affiliate ads and generating traffic organically.

Most adult ad networks are either owned by big content networks that use it to push their own brands and just use paid advertisers as filler or they are pushing junk traffic to your placements to fulfill your buy requirements. Rarely will you ever see a profit from a banner ad buy. Additionally they are usually staffed by people that know very little about advertising and can’t really help you.

A paid blog entry on a site like queerclick can be profitable as it’s more contextual, article based and not a banner ad but still be careful. In general if it’s a banner slot don’t buy it, convince the site to run it as an affiliate ad instead.

I worked in mainstream online advertising for years working for big brands like AOL and Newsweek. Ads in mainstream perform very differently from those in Adult.

The best results you will see in advertising are from the work you out in yourself to market your brand. It’s just not possible to “buy” anything worthwhile.

IMHO

#7

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

Why would you do that? We do the exact opposite.

Why would I want to pay 50% for ever when I can get a member via advertising and cash in on all those rebills?

Couldn’t disagree more.


Don’t mind the perfect ratio, it was for our American shop, shops have better ratios than membership sites.

Above is a banner campaign, we got our money back after 210 joins and ~ 35 rebills.

Afterwards we made profit with ~ 400 rebills. If it were an affiliate campaign, I would have paid 50% for those rebills and continue to pay. For ever. These rebills keep going, I made profit a long time ago and continue to make profit.

Yes it 100% is. You will lose some money until you realize what is best for your product, but once you do that you will make profit. And then you can ‘buy’ lots of advertising that is worthwile.

#8

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

Such great responses…

Not sure if this has now made my decision even harder :help:

Just to give you all further information - I’ve considered JUB,FLESHBOT,TRAFFIC JUNKY, MANHUNT

I’ve always had great results and relationships with the QueerClick Staff

Landon
GayHoopla.com

#9

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

Tried Traffic Junky and got nothing at all from it, not one sale from hundreds of clicks.

Again, I don’t know if it’s going to be different for a membership site, but I don’t see how it could be. Tube traffic is trash in my opinion. They’re there because they want to jerk off over free porn, these are the people LEAST likely to be willing to pay for a membership for anything.

Then you’ve also got the issue of these tube sites attracting thousands of teenagers, not men with credit cards. Sure, you can mitigate this by picking subjects older men might be more interested in, or timing the ads to appear later at night, but you’re still going to get a lot of clicks from guys who are completely unable or completely unwilling to pay.

I can understand Andrei’s stance on this, he’s talking about blogs and communities, not ads on sites where guys are jacking off for free. They’re there to be engaged and involved, they’re not just there to knock one out for nothing.

We’re going to be changing our marketing plan next month and looking for partnerships with sites, and communities to advertise with instead of wasting money on tubes and networks. They just aren’t worth the money.

Our challenge is going to be geo targeting that to UK surfers.

#10

Conran: sounds like you have a better plan now. I also advertised with Traffic Junky a while back and the results were worthless. I wanted to give them a chance just to see if I was wrong but no.

Additionally their ad code is totally screwed up and their customer service was awful. I knew more about their product than they did.

You “might” get ok results if you dump thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into a banner run but it’s way too risky and your mileage will definitely vary. That’s something I don’t think it worth the gamble.

Best bets are blog posts on sites with real traffic ala QueerClick and sites that are targeted to the content you sell. Target target target. As much as possible.

#11

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

[QUOTE=GayHoopla;151605]Such great responses…

Not sure if this has now made my decision even harder :help:

Just to give you all further information - I’ve considered JUB,FLESHBOT,TRAFFIC JUNKY, MANHUNT

I’ve always had great results and relationships with the QueerClick Staff

Landon
GayHoopla.com[/QUOTE]

Can you ask for a smaller test run before spending too much?

#12

Out of that list I might consider Manhunt. Def not fleshbot or TJ.

#13

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

I’d say no to TJ. Manhunt is expensive, we made profit with them several times but one time it took 8 months before we went into profit.

I have no idea about JUB, I sent them several emails and got no answer. I want to spend some money with them but they seem to be rich or something, otherwise I can’t understand getting no replies what-so-ever.

No idea about Fleshbot either.

I would consider these if I were you: Manhunt, Adam4Adam, Squirt, Recon, Gaydemon, Gaydar, Gayromeo, QueerMeNow (via Gay Adult Blogads network).

Cheers!
Andrei

#14

Re: Considering PAID Adversiting

Our results with Traffic Junky are the same as above, but we do get good results with Manhunt, GayRomeo, OMGblog and some others. It seems though just to be a process of trial and error… Ask them if you can do a trial run first (they will all want to sell you large packages right up front promising to manage the campaign until it sees results, the only trouble is that sometimes it never does) and then just see what works best for you. Paid postings on QueerClick have also done well for us…