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How do you scale from $20k/day to $35k/day?
“I have a client that I have successfully scaled to $20k/day at $15 CPA. They want to go to $35k/day and I’m running out of options. They are strict on the $15 CPA cap.”
This is more or less how Elias Lazaris started his thread in the Facebook & Instagram Pro Ad Buyers Industry Group. He was scaling at $20k/day with proven audiences, and his client asked him to push for the extra $15k.
We found a very interesting answer by Andrew Foxwell in the comments. Here’s what he suggested:
- Open audiences: Break out wide demographics based on what’s performing. For example, worldwide, 18-24 F, 24-32 F breakouts by ad set. Segmenting by age and gender. In other words, you remove Interests and LLAs and let the algo do the work.
- Breaking out placements like Instagram Stories, Instagram Newsfeed, Facebook Newsfeed on their own.
- Making your bid window bigger.
- Trying new ad units: Sometimes a different ad unit such as Broadmatch DPA can have more potential for scaling.
Also, another tip contributed by Jessica Guedes in the comments was to break out the $15k bump in smaller increments along a timeline. A $15k scale doesn’t happen overnight, so setting smaller goals makes it more feasible and achievable.
It’s hard to give suggestions at this level of scale, and many of us would just be happy to know how Elias scaled to $20k/day… Anyway, some useful tips for the heavy scalers out there!
Instagram’s feeling the competition pressure?
Forecasts don’t always speak the truth, but this one from eMarketer is very interesting and unveils some real trends. According to the publication, Instagram’s US user growth rate dropped to single digits in 2019, down to just 6.7%. That’s the first time this has happened, and is down from 10.1% in 2018.
This downward trend is expected to continue in 2020, with growth predictions revised from 5.4% down to 4.5%. 2021 forecasts have been adjusted from 4.1% to 3.2% too.
The main factors?
- Older age groups are not joining the platform. This was anticipated.
- The increased competition from Snapchat seems to be stalling its growth track. The rise of TikTok among the younger age groups adds to the increasingly tough competition for Instagram.
Despite this, there is some positive news:
- In the USA, Instagram is still the second-most penetrated social media platform, and this won’t change soon according to eMarketer.
- Revenue continues to grow at high double-digit rates. It will rise from $9.45B in 2019 to $13.86B in 2020.
These look like some good signs. However, if user growth stalls but advertisers continue to grow, it will mean saturation and higher CPMs. We already know that to be true.
Well, this forecast shouldn’t influence your day-to-day plans, but it’s still something to keep an eye on.
SPONSORED
💥 Smash native ads in 2020 with this Zoom call designed to help ANYONE learn fast!
What do you do when the duopoly of FB and Google bans your ad accounts? You look for ad networks that actually want your ad budget and will welcome you with open arms, aka natives!
Why? Because they rival FB for reach, their targeting and audience building features are what you’re used to on FB and Google, their customer support doesn’t mindlessly ban your ad accounts and best of all… Nothing But Natives by Geekout EDU is dropping on January 14th.
James, along with Rita Sheredeko, Joe Burton and Losid Berberi have teamed up to show you LIVE how to handle this traffic source from scratch!
If you’re a seasoned media buyer on FB, Google or other platforms but want to expand – this is for you.
If you are new to media buying and want to start with one of the most stable traffic types – this is for you.
If you tested natives but never quite got the hang of it, you always feel like going in circles – this is for you.
This is a live Zoom call that will teach you:
- The types of ads that work for native
- How to organize and structure campaigns so you don’t lose your mind and make bad decisions
- The types of products that convert really well, and what offers tank (knowing this is half the battle when it comes to running your offers profitably)
- The strategy James uses to find the sweet spot bids
- … much more!
Access Nothing But Natives right away – Limited spots.
SEO
How to build an affiliate site and sell it for 18x ROI – the complete journey
Casey Ames shared his case study on how he built an affiliate site from scratch and turned it into a cash cow worth $97k.
The ROI? Over 18x, or an annualized 566%.
Let’s have a quick look at it.
The first thing he did was to start off with a well-researched expired domain that gave him a head start thanks to its backlink profile.
If possible, Casey recommends buying an existing website which is alive and ranks on page 2 or 3 for your set of keywords.
Casey got into the niche of soccer nutrition during his college days in 2015. He went against the popular opinion of choosing a topic that he already had interest and expertise in, instead opting for a niche that would make for a successful website.
This niche focused on a popular worldwide spot, and in some countries it’s the most popular sport. There’s a lot of gear to purchase, high ticket items and it was relatively easy to rank the website well on Google.
He then created a long list of potential articles focused on the gear used in the sport and used Ahrefs to figure out what specific keywords to target in the article.
The Big Mistake: Paying random writers without vetting their work.
Learning: Don’t spread yourself too thin and stay focused on one objective at a time.
The funny thing is that his site started to move up in the rankings for his keywords because Google couldn’t identify the quality of the content at that point. However, once you hit page one and start getting traffic, Google starts analyzing visitors’ behaviour and can tell if your content is poorly curated. This is what happened to his site due to poorly written content.
Eventually, he had to rewrite all the content himself. He spent 20+ hours writing his own content and came up with a Standard Operating Procedure for writing and publishing them as per the SEO standards.
By now, he was able to outsource the writing and link building part. The website started to pick up the pace and made $10k in 2017 and $27k in 2018.
Even after all that, things didn’t always go smoothly and Casey had a fair share of reasons for selling the site and pocketing a whoppingly ROI-positive lump sum.
It’s more of a lifecycle of an affiliate site rather than a technical SEO case study. Check out his entire journey here.
ROUNING UP THE STACK
- FACEBOOK ADS: Coming up with new creatives is a hard task. Jeff Minnichbach understands that, and he shared 10 creative types you can take inspiration from right now. Interestingly, he also shared how and when to use each one of them.
- MICROSOFT: After announcing the death of Standard text ads in 2020, Microsoft will let them live a little longer (until March 31st).
- PRIVACY: This Twitter account shared internal emails, plans and reports on how Cambridge Analytica used data for elections in Brazil, Malaysia, Bolton & Iran.
- FACEBOOK: The platform has updated its Privacy Checkup tool, which highlights how your personal data is being or can be used by Facebook. The update aims to make it easier for users to manage their privacy settings.
BRAIN TEASER
What 5 letter word typed in all capital letters can be read the same upside down?
You can find the solution by clicking here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
When 2FA isn’t enough
Have you ever seen an advert of a product you always wanted and wished you could actually meet the seller in real life before you make the purchase? You know… just to be safe.
You just don’t wanna let go of it, but you’re still concerned about the online credibility.
Well, if you live in Montreal you’ve hit the jackpot! Montreal is opening up the first-ever safe trading zone, where buyers and sellers can meet to complete the transaction.
It’s like an affiliate conference, or simply a supermarket for e-commerce owners and customers where they can meet in person, see the product and take it forward from there.
It’s actually located right inside the premise of a police station with video surveillance. A bit funny, but very understandable.
Too bad for those selling stuff that doesn’t fit “TOS or community standards”. Well, that’s just a nice way of referring to those “you know what we mean” kinda products.
This safe trading zone is the first of several that will be developed during the course of 2020.
For those of you there in the city and looking to flip an e-biz, maybe you buyers and sellers can meet up there and review the place for the community.
One thing we can say for certain is this: Meeting clients in person is not scalable at all!