Lessons with DirectCPV, My Traffic Stopped – Answered!

With continuing with the tips I picked up in Jonathan Volk’s FREE Affiliate Marketing Guide I have still been trying my luck at CPV advertising. It is really funny how each week I read AffBuzz and Volk’s Friday affiliate interviews and everyone who is anyone says “stop reading this trash and go do it!” After about a week of working with DirectCPV I was able to see some results. It wasn’t necessarily the readings that I’ve done that has helped me but just the experience of jumping in and figuring things out. You’ve already seen What Not To Do on my blog lol. That was something that I only learned by making the mistake myself and watching my own metrics.

This week I scaled DirectCPV up a bit and began testing different targets, different landers, and finally saw some good results. I found an offer that was turning some conversions and decided to run with it. After a few days of tweaking, getting the non concverting targets out and what not I successfully had two days in the green. Mind you one day I grossed like $20 while spending $16, but hey a green day is a green day! However I definitely noticed some wierd things through out the week and was very excited to see how traffic changed on the weekend. Unfortunately it looks like my weekend was a no go.

Saturday morning I woke up and saw I had 4 leads already (this was about a 200% ROI at the time).  A little bit later I checked and had 7 leads, still looking good! Then as I obsessively checked my AzoogleAds app on my iPhone (MOST AMAZING APP EVER!) I didn’t notice any views as all or leads. I was quite frustrated to say the least. But I watched this happen on Friday when I blew through about 400 views before I got a single click through to my Azoogle offer from my lander, so it wasn’t that out of the norm for this campaign. Later that night I was at a poker game and still saw nothing. When I got home I saw I had zero impressions on my DirectCPV since I left. Something was up….but it was 3am so I figured I would sleep on it.

Now here it is Sunday morning and I am still turning zero impressions. So playing around my DirectCPV account I notice what my left over limit is, $49.99. I had originally deposited a $100 and used coupon I found online for a $50 bonus. Right about now I am thinking, ‘Ugh they probably have some sort of the money isn’t good until after 180 days crap or something.’ Still feeling frustrated I tried giving them a call but they aren’t open on the weekends. I browse around their website and notice an area called Billing Period Cap under the My Account tab. (Please note I am aware that the screenshots show the navigation slightly messed up. This happens to me in FireFox sometimes, not a big deal.)

I promptly go to that and notice that hey, it says $100.00 and I hit that really early on Saturday. WELL SHIT! This is obviously the problem, so I promptly change this to a higher number for now ($150) and apply it. It says it can take up to 48 hours to go into effect. So it looks liek I missed the weekend completely, and Saturday started so strong to!

Some people are probably thinking “If you can assign a daily cap why the hell would there be a billing cap?!?” Now I don’t really know the answer to this but when I was first signing up I was doing a bit of research about the PPV scene and saw a lot of people complaining that DirectCPV was auto charging their credit cards. So from the sounds of it this was a procedure put in place so people’s account don’t get over charged like they had been in the passed. I guess it must work if its still there, right?

So sorry for the long rant everyone but I wanted to share my frustrations with you, if you are going to be doing some advertising with them just be aware this option is there. I know it really set me back a week from fine tuning a campaign and I would love it if my experiences could save you some time.