How James van Elswyk Picks Winning Offers and Manages Mega Millions on Taboola & Outbrain

Rich Ad Poor Ad

GUEST BIO:

The founder of Purple Leads, Purple Ad Lab, and Geek Out Education, native advertising expert James Van Elswyk is a digital marketer with 8 years of experience specializing in marketing, media buying, and growth optimization. His agency focuses on media buys across sites like RevContent, Outbrain, and Taboola for the solar and finance sectors, currently spending over $2M/monthon ads. Using his expert analytical and management skills, van Elwyk provides companies with highly-qualified leads, helps extend the reach of their marketing campaigns, and optimizes their internal and external communications – driving millions of dollars in profits.

TAKEAWAYS

Discover his step-by-step “secret sauce” process for optimizing campaigns internally at a much lower cost.

How to pick the best offers by ignoring margins and focusing on this metric instead.

Why targeting ESL audiences in the US using their native language pays out big time.

What to look at to know when to let an offer go -- before you really get in trouble

How to get paid upfront -- and why you should never get stuck floating cash for a client.

RESOURCES/CONTACT:

(James Van Elswyk Facebook)

(Purple Leads Facebook)

(Purple Leads Website)

(Purple Leads Linkedin)

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1 (00:00):

In this episode with James van Elswick, we dive into how he picks winning offers. How much is he willing to actually lose, to test out an offer and open up a new traffic source? Plus, we dive into how he's actually able to negotiate pre payment when it comes to running affiliate offers. It's an amazing episode. Plus you learn about how he's managing tens of millions of dollars on native, uh, networks like Taboola and Outbrain with symphony agency. And we also dive into the amazing events that he's running with, uh, geek out education, enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 (00:34):

You gotta have a sticking point and you cannot become emotional with it, which is what I'm doing right now. You gotta be a lot more rational and you got to consistently pull all-time stats and not daily stats because losing a hundred dollars a day or $300 a day or $500 a day, whatever your tolerance is, it doesn't seem like that bad. [inaudible]

Speaker 1 (01:02):

To the rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich ed. Poor ed podcast is your host sack Johnson. I'm with the one and only DC. Dylan Carpenter. You excited. Hey Dylan. Yeah, man. I'm pumped

Speaker 2 (01:40):

Sneak peak earlier, but I'm kind of get out already.

Speaker 1 (01:44):

Shoot. I feel like dealing. This is like a Dylan is so giddy about today's guests. It's just like, it feels like a little school girl. I am. I just love the grin on Dylan's face about, uh, I feel like we've, uh, Dylan's wanted them on for a while. So, uh, just enjoy doing we'll let you be, uh, just a listener, just so excited. I love it, man. I mean, it's all, it's all super legit because these guests, uh, has really brought in like, gosh, managed tens of millions in media, outside of Google. And, uh, really his expertise is in Legion and a native. He runs an agency symphony agency, which really specializes in native and also, uh, more notably in our community is the co-founder of geek-out education, which runs, uh, some of the most, I would say intense masterminds workshops, Hangouts. I don't even know what you'd call, uh, what they do, but it's so unique in this space. And I think it's, uh, honestly probably the most high level, uh, and elite, um, media-buying education that exists on the market today. And so, yeah, I'm pretty pumped down on today's guest. So without further ado, let's get James on the show, James,

Speaker 2 (03:05):

How you doing? Hello? And thank you for a Dillon. I appreciate your giddiness. That's always a nice welcome once a month, giddy and also the intro, Matt. I really appreciate the, your perception of the geek outs. So that really, uh, that's great. Thank you for having me on to chat with you guys.

Speaker 1 (03:21):

Yeah, man. It's, uh, it's pretty cool. We, you know, we haven't really had anybody on the show that, um, has as much experience in lead gen as you, as well as a, so much emphasis, a focus on native, you know, we've had a ton of Facebook ad buyers and Google ad buyers on the show. So I feel like this'll be, uh, definitely fun, uh, to, to dive in.

Speaker 2 (03:44):

Yeah. I mean, uh, obviously I've always been a big Facebook buyer as well, but just there was so much, there's still so much turmoil all the time that I just didn't feel comfortable with Facebook as a vendor, you know, like as a partner in my business when you're just going to randomly ban me and stuff like that. So we had already been big on natives and then we just focus moving back into it because it's more stable. So I love it over there.

Speaker 1 (04:08):

That's awesome, man. And you guys are managing a pretty, pretty hefty chunk of change in media right now on the agency side, I would say maybe post Q4, you might be hitting 25, 30 million.

Speaker 2 (