这是AFFPLAYBOOK的站长的case study，是PPV的，挺不错的！

I’ve been asked for this quite a few times, so I wanted to share this little case study. This is kind of a ‘what goes through my mind’ when I’m optimizing case study.

The setup I used for this was the first PPV Campaign Building lesson. I stuck to that format so you could see exactly what I would do on a campaign. This was promoting a dating offer that paid $4.25. I direct linked but what I want to focus on here is the targets. I started with 100 targets, but am only reporting on 33 that got any significant traffic.

Check in #1 – Spend $25

Once I’ve built the campaign, I usually set my budget to $5-$10 and wait for it to get approved. The main reason I do this is just out of habit, but also to make sure:

1. Everything is tracking correctly
2. I didn’t accidentally let some target slip in (like google.com) or something I’m not aware would deplete my budget instantly

Sometimes I’ll check in once I see traffic coming in, and then raise my budget to usually $25/day+. If I’m busy with other stuff, I’ll just raise it the next time I check in on it.

After I spent around $25 it looked like this:
(* In the first few screenshots, Excel wasn’t using the decimal places in the income column)

My thoughts: “Im RICH!!!@#%!@$%^’. Ok I didn’t really think that. My thoughts are that I spent roughly $25 and made $9 back – I’m buying data right now, not losing money. I’ve only spent $5.86 (roughly) on my top target and I have 1 conversion on it. I don’t have enough data on anything to make any changes yet. On smaller payout offers like this, I’ll usually spend 2-3x the offer payout and if I have 0 conversions I’ll kill it. If I’ve spent 2-3x the payout but I have at least 1 conversion I will probably keep it running. Look at it this way:

Spending 3x the offer payout = $12.75
1 conversion for $4.25
Net loss: $-8.50

I could get 2 conversions in the next 50 clicks and be in good shape. So basically, I don’t like to get further behind that 2-3x the offer payout. More on this in a minute.

Check in #2 – Spend $50

It’s not that I don’t look at the campaign at all before spending $25 more, but I usually don’t have enough data to check in more often than that.

Thoughts:

I’m still running at a loss, but I haven’t spent enough on any 1 target to know if I can cut it. This is usually the point where people get frustrated or scared of losing money and quit. They end up pausing the campaign or changing everything around, which is a mistake. You have to be willing to test a campaign all the way to know if it will work or not. Don’t expect to be profitable at this stage, I very rarely am.

How do I know to keep going? Because I have some conversions. If I had 0 conversions at this point, I would probably kill it. Spending $50, even though it’s not a lot on any one single target, should be enough to at least have a conversion or 2.

Since I have conversions, but haven’t spent enough on any target to kill it, I’ll keep going.

Check in #3 – Spend $100

I fast forwarded to $100 only because I didn’t make any changes at $75.

Thoughts: I’m in the range of break-even so that’s a good sign. Had I only gotten another lead or two, this would be a completely different picture. What I’m looking for is consistent conversions. I don’t care so much about being profitable at this point, only seeing if the offer continues to convert and where I could optimize.

I’m going to cut keyword 6 because it’s close to 2x the payout without a conversion (the actual spend was more like $9.50). Keyword 4 is close to being cut. I have 1 conversion but I’m down about 2x the offer payout. I’ll let this run for a few more dollars, then give it the ax if I don’t have another conversion.

I haven’t done too much yet right? This is the exact point I wanted to get across in this case study. I see people being way too eager to cut things, like they have to be doing something all the time. In a lot of cases, like this campaign, all you really need to do is collect data at various spend points and make optimizations as they happen. Notice I’m not deleting half my targets and adding new ones, or testing 5 different LP’s. There’s a time and place to do things like that of course, but don’t be in a rush or do something ‘just to do it’. If you approach your campaigns this way, it should actually free up a lot of time to work on more campaigns. How often do you sit staring at a campaign you’ve spent $30 on, wondering what to do next?

At this point, I start to look at ways to optimize this like in these lessons:

http://www.affplaybook.com/forum/sho…e-Phase-Part-1

http://www.affplaybook.com/forum/sho…e-Phase-Part-2

Check in # 4 – Spend $153

Thoughts: I killed target 11. Targets 15-33 were some variations that didn’t look like they were going to get traffic so I paused them. I got a pay bump to $4.50 which helped me get profitable. Notice that even though I’ve spent $150, I still don’t have enough data to kill many targets.

It took me about $150 spend just to get profitable. Of course, not all campaigns are like this, and it’s important to note that just spending money isn’t going to make something magically work. Like I said, I would have cut this a long time ago if it wasn’t converting. Just for some context – maybe 1-10/20 campaigns will turn out like this. Most of them will be dud’s that I end up killing early on.

Hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions!