Top 3 Biggest PPV Campaign Mistakes

Many affiliates start running PPV campaigns after they have already done PPC campaigns for a while. One thing I see people doing is trying to apply the same logic and techniques to PPV campaigns that they would their PPC campaigns. While there are some universal practices that can be similar (picking a good offer, etc) there are a lot of differences. As a result, I see a lot of affiliates making some big mistakes when it comes to their PPV campaigns.  In this post I want to talk about some of the mistakes I see people making with their PPV campaigns.

Mistake  #1

Trying to calculate how much you will make by running ‘x' amount of campaigns or converting at ‘x' %. At one point in your affiliate marketing career you've probably said something like “Hmm…If I have these 2 campaigns going and they each make $20 a day…all I need is 50 more campaigns and I'll be doing great!” Don't worry, I've done (and still have to stop myself from doing) the same thing.

Solution

Trying to calculate things out like this never works out. Take the approach that every campaign producing a positive ROI is a good one, and keep cranking out campaigns. If you have a campaign with a positive ROI, that's great but make sure you don't spend all your time on this campaign. Split your time between scaling that campaign and adding new ones. I would not suggest trying to have 1-2 really large campaigns making all your income. You need to spread it out to as many campaigns as you can comfortably run. That way, if an offer gets pulled or a niche starts to not perform as well your income doesn't get hit as hard.

Mistake #2

One thing you have probably noticed about PPV Campaigns is that they can die off after a certain time. There are a couple reasons for this. First, we have to understand about frequency caps. On most PPV networks you have the ability to specify how often you ad is shown to each unique visitor. For example if you set your cap to 1/24, your ad will only be displayed to a unique visitor once every 24 hours. Meaning if I visit one of your URL targets several times in one day, I will only see your ad once. See the screenshot below from Traffic Vance:

Many affiliates make the mistake of setting their cap too frequent. If you are showing it every 24 hours, you will get more traffic right away but your campaign will die off sooner. Why? Simply because every visitor to your target is going to see your ad more often and just start closing it. They are only going to convert once right? So why keep showing them the same ad over and over.

Solution

What you need to do is set your caps closer to 72 hours- 1 week. I know that sounds kinda crazy but your campaigns will be much more stable. You also need to keep adding URL's at this time to keep up your conversions.

Mistake #3

Too much ‘set and forget'. With PPC campaigns there is always some tweaking involved but in PPV campaigns there is a lot more. Things like bidding wars, frequency caps, etc. all mean that we need to monitor and tweak our campaigns more often.

Solution

There are several things you need to do consistently to keep your PPV campaigns running profitable:

• Keep bidding into position 1 on converting URL targets. This might require you to log in and change your bids several times per day but it is a necessity.
• Keep adding new URL targets & Keywords. Unlike PPC where there are constantly new people searching for a keyword, we have a limited pool of people to draw from. Yes, people are downloading the software that serves these ads all the time but it is not enough to have a massive influx of new visitors each day. For this reason we need to constantly expand our targeting.
• Rotate your landing pages. Eventually your landing pages will stop being as effective once they have been viewed over and over. When you see a decline in conversions with no other explanation, it might be time to start rotating in different landing pages.

If you keep these things in mind, and realize that PPV campaigns need to have their own special strategy and way of maintaining, you will see success a lot faster!