2. 2
Introduction
Welcome to POF 1000. This is a guide intended for
anyone interested in using the Plenty of Fish ad platform.
I have compiled these strategies and sources so that you
may incorporate them in your online campaigns. I am no
guru nor do I claim to know it all. The following are
simply practices that I use in my own personal
campaigns. Experiment, be creative, adapt what you
learn and make it work for you.
Along with this guide I have started a video blog at
blog.pofangler.com. There you will have access to
complete video walk-throughs for this guide, along with
bonus content and tips. All FREE!
I have developed a piece of software to help you even
further with your POF campaigns.
Check it out: POFAngler.com
I wish you the best of success.
Enjoy
-Adam Tyrrell
3. 3
Let’s get Started!
Whether you are a newbie internet marketer or a well-
seasoned guru at some point you have or will have
interest in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a
time saver for online money generation. No product
creation, no dealing with customers, and no pesky refund
processing. You just have to link the customer with the
seller and then the seller pays you commission! Simple
right?!?!
Well it sounds easy, but for many new marketers this can
be a daunting process. In this e-book I am going to show
you in detail exactly how you can make a powerful
affiliate marketing campaign with my favorite traffic
source, Plenty of Fish.
4. 4
Finding an Offer
Your first step in creating your campaign is to find an
offer or product that you would like to promote. To do
this sign up to a CPA network such as Above All Offers or
Max Bounty. These CPA networks have a large variety of
offers to choose from. With so many offers to choose
from how do you find the right one?
First take in to consideration your traffic source. In this
guide we will be using POF so let’s examine the traffic
that POF receives. POF is a dating site which people can
join for free. The majority of the people on there are
looking for dates, love or anything in between. This
means that when a user visits POF they are in what I like
to call “date mode.” They are on POF scouring for Mr.
Right or Ms. Right. So what if we offered them an
opportunity to do just that! Doesn’t it make sense that
person on a dating site is interested in finding a date?
I think so!
Now that we have analyzed the users on POF lets pick an
offer. We want to select an offer that fulfills the users
want, has a decent payout, and requires small amount of
5. 5
input from the user. The last thing we want is an offer
that makes a user jump through hoops to sign up. Be
sure to find out the point of conversion for the offer,
meaning what does the user have to do in order for you
to get paid? The less the user has to do the higher the
conversion rate (typically).
So in our case I would look for a dating offer that has a
payout of around $3.00 or higher and converts on the
first or second page. Maybe depending on if the payout
is high enough I will consider a 3rd
page submit.
I bet you want an example :)
6. 6
Now by all means feel free to try other kinds of offers
other than dating offers. They also convert! I would
however recommend starting with dating offers. You will
see the highest conversions with these if you are a
beginner.
Selecting an Angle
This is the step which most POF newcomers miss. Doing
this not at all or inaccurately can hinder your success, so
no pressure!
I’ll walk you through it no worries ;)
So what do I mean by selecting an angle? I am talking
about how you are going to promote this dating offer to
the users on POF. You want to target a specific group of
people with a specific need. If those things line up you
are gold.
7. 7
Example time:
Let’s say we are promoting the Black People Meet offer
from Above All Offers.
Ok let’s narrow down our target.
The offer only wants Men and Women above 30 to sign
up so we must keep that in mind. Now targeting all men
and women is very broad and generic. It will get difficult
to make that work. So we want to target a specific group
of people woman.
Here are some ideas:
Women that are Christian
Women with gray hair
Women that smoke
Women with tattoos
And it goes on and on. I am sure you get the idea now.
Brainstorm on a piece of paper or in your computer’s
notepad and come up with a 4-5 angles you would like to
test.
8. 8
Creating a Landing Page
Once we have selected our angles it is time we need to
make a landing page. A landing page is a web page which
the user will visit when they click your ad on POF.
Landing pages are not necessarily required but I do
recommend them. The job of the landing page is to pre-
sell the offer. You will do this by relating your angle with
the offer. Amplify why this offer meets that person’s
needs.
For your landing page you will probably want to purchase
a domain name for it. Here is why; many times I have had
people visit my landing page and click through. They did
not sign up. Then later they either remembered my
domain name or saw it in their history and came back
and signed up. Again this has happened a ton! If you
don’t have a domain name you may be missing money.
Additionally it gives your landing page a little more
credibility.
Below are some examples of landing pages:
http://www.marketingshow.com/the-ultimate-list-of-
free-landing-page-templates/
9. 9
http://www.leadpages.net/template-giveaway/
Check out blog.pofangler.com for more ideas for landing
pages.
Now if you do not know how to build a web page there
are many templates out there. You can even use
WordPress to build a landing page. Alternatively you can
hire someone to create landing pages for you for a low
price.
You want fresh images for your landing pages. So I have
complied some sources for you to check out. I must warn
you I do not own any rights to any of these sources nor
do I own any rights to any of the photos from these
sources.
Search Royalty Free Images
http://search.creativecommons.org/
http://compfight.com/
http://www.everystockphoto.com/
http://freerangestock.com/index.php
http://www.sxc.hu/
http://www.gettyimages.com/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://openphoto.net/
10. 10
http://www.stockvault.net/
http://www.freemediagoo.com/
Other Great Image Sources
http://hotornot.com/
http://mgid.com/mg4217.html < every time you refresh you get new images.
http://pinterest.com
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.tumblr.com/
http://badoo.com
http://facebook.com
http://myspace.com
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/
http://www.bing.com/images/
https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi
Alternatively you can purchase images. This will keep away legal headaches.
http://www.istockphoto.com/
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/search/buy/
http://depositphotos.com/
http://www.dreamstime.com/
11. 11
Elements of a Landing Page
Here is your check list when building a landing page:
Captivating title
Tell them how the offer or product fulfills their need
Nice design and images
Call to Action! (tell them to sign up or purchase)
Creating an Ad
Ok now that we have our beautiful landing page in place
we need to create our ad creative. Now the POF ad
platform offers 2 types of ads when you first start out.
There are the text based ads and the 310 x 110 banner
ads.
When choosing between the two types keep this in mind.
Text based ads can feature dynamic content such as
switch the number in the ad to the age of the user.
Banner ads typically grab more attention though. You can
customize anything on a banner ad as long as it adheres
to the POF guidelines:
https://ads.pof.com/ui/documentation/Guidelines.aspx?
view=advertising
12. 12
Because of this banner ads on POF almost always
outperform text ads. So in this guide we are going to
focus on them.
When making a banner ad you can use programs such as
paint or photoshop. Or you can use software that does
this all for you called POF Angler . Here are the basic
elements of a banner ad:
Title (ask a question or make a bold statement)
Body text
Call to action (Sign up, join now, etc.)
Picture (must grab attention)
Background color (test different variations of colors
to find one that works the best)
Boarder (optional)
Here are some solid examples of 310x110 ads. Use the
basic principles to develop your own.
Want to automatically created banners and upload
them? Check this out!
13. 13
Create a Campaign
Bidding
Alright, so we have our ad creative made now we need to
create a campaign. The first section you may have some
question about is the bidding section. I typically prefer to
start bidding lower and then gradually increasing my bid
as the campaign develops.
The lowest bid you may select is $0.16 CPM or cost per
1000 impressions. So start there and let your ads run for
12 – 24 hours. If you are not seeing the volume you
would like to see jump your bid up 5 – 10 cents. Continue
to do so until you see desired results. Remember give it
time. The last thing you want to do is bid yourself out of
a profit. Impatience can be detrimental here! A gradual
approach will ensure that you don’t spend more than
what is necessary.
14. 14
Delivery
For testing purposes it will be important that you set the
delivery parameters. When first testing and offer I like to
set the Max Spend for the day approximately 4 times the
payout of the offer. In the picture below you will see the
Value of the offer is $3 therefore the Max Daily Spend is
$12. In addition I have had great results from setting the
frequency cap to 3 per day. This means that the same
person will only be shown your ad up to 3 times per day.
Targeting
When setting up the targeting for a campaign it is
imperative that you do research on your offer to find out
who exactly is interested in the niche or site. You can use
tools such as Quantcast and Follow.net to determine
things such as age, gender, income and much more. Use
the information you find using these tools and plug them
into your targeting.
A couple things to be aware of,
15. 15
If you do not set the browser target option in the
targeting section, you will receive traffic from all
browsers. This can severely hinder your campaign so
make sure you set those browsers!
Second, make sure you pinpoint your target. If you are
running dating offers be sure to target singles that are
looking for the opposite sex or same sex depending on
your offer.
Spend time thinking this through because the success of
the entire campaign rests on this. Now you may ask how
do I know what the best targets are for my offer? This
leads me to my next point.
16. 16
Testing
You need to perform split tests. There are several ways
to split test but here is how I do it.
First I create a batch of ad creatives, around 20 or so. I
then create 3-5 campaigns with the same ads with one
variable slightly different. For example I may make
campaigns for the age groups 18- 25, 26 – 35, ad 36- 45. I
can then see what group performs best. You can do this
with any piece of the targeting!
Also, you can split test your actual creatives. Change a
color, title or picture. It is up to you. Keep testing until
the results are satisfying.
It is important to note that you do not want to change
multiple things in a split test, because how will you know
what variables actually made the difference?!?!
17. 17
The Wait
Now once you submit your ads you will probably have to
wait about 24 hours before your campaigns start
running. Take this time to double check that everything is
how you want you campaign to be. Last thing you want
to do is run a mistake!
What to do Once Ads are Running
Let your ads run for a bit. You want each of your
creatives to receive at least 2,500 impressions before you
determine if it is a loser. However, if you are on a tight
budget 1,500 will do. Once and ad has reached 2,500
impressions I evaluate the ad. Look at the CTR. If it is
lower than 0.1% you may want to pause it. At 0.1% CTR
you are essentially paying whatever you are bidding per
click. The CTR gets more people to your landing page for
less money.
Next you will want to track how many people are clicking
to the offer from your landing page. Here I would aim for
at least 50% of the visitors to my landing page.
After that look for conversions. Does your landing page
properly sell the offer? If you are in the profit you are on
18. 18
to something and it is time to look for ways to increase
that profit. If you are not, determine what element is
failing. Is it the ad or landing page?
Tactics
So you have a winning campaign now and you want to
increase volume and make even more money!
Raise bid
You can simply raise your bid and get more traffic. More
volume = more money! Increase your bids in increments
of 5 or 10 cents.
Duplicate campaign
Another way to expand volume is to duplicate a winning
campaign. Make several copies of the same campaign
and the likelihood that your ads will be drawn from the
random order is much higher. Make sure that if you
make changes to one of the duplicates you make the
changes to all.
19. 19
Split test with different variables
Continue to test even though you found a winner. You
may be able to refine your campaign or create new ones
for even more volume.
Create more campaigns
Once you have found working princes apply them to
different offers. Remember they do not have to be dating
offers.
Pay Bump
Once you are pushing volume ask your affiliate manager
for a pay bump. Sometimes there is some wiggle room in
the payouts.