Hi Kirsty,

Been following u on twitter and this site for a while, and you certainly know your stuff! I have a number of great domains, and wish to turn them all into affiliate sites. However, I want to start on the most profitable one first.. so do you know, anywhere, where i can get a list of the potential income by affiliate sector at all??

i.e. music, gaming, news, lighting, etc etc .. i thought it would be easy to find, but it certainly isnt !

many thanks,

nigel

Hi Nigel,

Sorry to say that such a resource does not exist! Affiliates are notoriously cagey about such things and besides I think such numbers would be very difficult to accurately measure. The only thing I can suggest is to try to do a bit of research in a few different ways.

• Check out EPCs of merchants in the sectors you are thinking of working in on the main networks. These are of course averages and can be skewed by the presence of things such as incentive sites so it is important to have a really good look at any merchants you think could be decent performers and try to see how you think you will perform. Place yourself in the shoes of a consumer interested in your niche products. Would you buy from them? It may even pay to go as far as placing a few test orders to see who you really rate. After all, it’s a small investment compared to the time you will spend building your site!

• Don’t get distracted by considerations of product values when considering the performance of potential merchants. The main thing you are interested in is getting the most amount of profit from the least amount of clicks, thus making your progress towards a nice profit much quicker. Sometimes lower value products will convert better. I’ve found lots of affiliates get distracted by dreams of wild riches from selling thousands of high end products every month. Focus on conversions and how much you think every click through to a merchant can earn you.

• Check out the competition. One factor I’d consider if I had lots of domains to choose from would be which one I’d be able to get ranking most quickly. With that in mind I’d test a few key terms around each of my domains and see if there was lots of authority sites competing for positions. Also, if any of your domains are keyword based and might attract a good search volume I’d bump them towards the top of your priority list as you will rank them much more easily.

• If you really want to try and come up with a concrete figure I suggest you try to work out what EPC you would achieve sending traffic to the merchants you think you’d work with. Use a combination of the network figures and your own gut feeling, and then look at how much you’d earn from 1,000 visitors sent to them. You also could attempt to work out how much traffic your various sites would get using the monthly search data on a range of keywords from Google and a reasonable CTR based on top ten positions, but I really feel there are too many “what ifs” in this kind of analysis for an affiliate. However it might help you work out potential for growth and longer term profits that you can feed into your considerations.

Finally, my best suggestion for you is that you get at least a mini site up for each and every one of the domains you are considering developing. That way the ones you aren’t working on can be in the index and ageing. This will also allow you to keep an eye out for any link opportunities that may come up. This is advice I really also need to take myself, LOL.

Finally finally, all the above bits of advice are great. But really you shouldn’t spend too long on them or asking yourself lots of questions. Just do it as the clever people at Nike would say. Advice that Tiger Woods really took a step too far

Hahahaha – OK the title is a bit strong here but I was a bit pushed for space in terms of making it nice and succinct.  Also, that’s the turn of phrase I couldn’t get out of my head when I read the question so in true Kirsty “I’ve thought it so I absolutely have to say it now” style – I decided to let it out

A better way to put the question I asked would be “Ask Kirsty – Why Does Your Site Not Comform to the “Rules” of SEO and Yet Is Still Somehow Generating Heaps Plenty Traffic?”, but it wasn’t as catchy see?

Over to you Scott…

Hi Kirsty,

I just read your great post on getting to 50,000 visits…congrats!

The essence of your post intrigued me enough to do some research.

Though I have been around web page building for a decade, I am relavitely newto Internet/Affiliate Marketing, and when you mentioned about how to focus on the next niche, it started me thinking.

If many noobies are like myself, we learn SEO/SEM along the way, so by the time its time for the next niche project, there are changes to be made because of what has been learned (the good and the bad). It is funny that we tend to maybe
not do what made the previous site successful, though it may just be an attempt to do SEO/SEM better, not knowing the consequences.

Take for instance lingeriebrands.co.uk…per the SEO ‘experts’ point of view, your home page is not properly configured- you have 302 META keywords (the ‘experts’ say you should be limited to 25 max), no META description, only 1 external link, no H1 titles, limited content per keyword throughout the site, and yet your site does extremely well.

I’m kind of analytical, which can be a negative at times…of your site’s 302 KWs, 202 rank in the top 100, 59 are on the first page of Google UK, and 9 are in first position, and your site has a PR2 ranking.

So what is it then that has made the site successful?

You have 658 backlinks, and looks like you have used a variety of tactics, including backlinking from many of your other sites, and other created blog sites.

May I inquire if you presently use or had subscriped to a backlinking service?

Another plus here is probably the 2,100+ pages of content and age of your site.

So if this was my niche site, I would be confused, based on SEO/SEM guidance I have read, etc.

I am curious how you would focus on your next project, knowing the above. Maybe the secret formula, however, is…

Proper niche research
Take ACTION!
Add content, continuously
Be PATIENT

Hahahaha – great question Scott!

I used to be a full time SEO consultant and spent lots of time doing titles, meta keywords, and descriptions with mathematical precision. Keyword densities were calculated as were things like volume of link text, headers etc etc etc. To my annoyance lots of people who were ignoring these “rules” seemed to be doing really well.

In the end I concluded that I could keep up my knowledge of all the exact intricacies of SEO or I could adopt a new and more basic set of rules that would allow me to “just get on with it” in terms of providing quality content and concentrating upon the broader spectrum of things an affiliate has to be good at to run a successful business.

* Add good quality content, and lots of it.
* Make it natural but still write it with half an eye on using lots of different descriptive terms around the products I’m writing about and remembering the content is supposed to be on a certain theme.
* Make sure I don’t overstuff keywords (I’ve done this by accident at times when concentrating too hard on page design and things like Adwords QS).
* Create good page structures both for SEO and the user. By focusing on the user I can maximise the amount of traffic I get through to merchant (around 80% for that site).
* As for all the meta stuff… I’ve not found much benefit to spending time on it any more. Google largely ignores it and I’ve found if I have good, compelling prose on my pages the description displayed by Google is A-OK anyhow.

As for why my site is successful, I think it is simply because I’ve put a lot of effort into good page structure, decent navigation (it could be better on that site TBH) and targeting lots of relevant traffic. I think you can have all the analysis and precise SEO in the world, but there is never a substitute for good content.

Do I use a backlinking service? Yes, I use Content Now (Note to self: I must start invoicing them for the links I give them on this blog). I’ve also started to get a fair few good quality “spontaneous links” from sites (which again goes back to decent content). I think your analysis of the secret formula is dead on. Particularly the “be patient” bit. It’s taken the site 2 years to get to the stage its currently at and its frequently gone through long periods of non growth regardless of the content I’ve been adding. Lots of people get discouraged when that happens but perseverance pays off and you tend to see a reward for your content efforts in the end.

Hope this helps

P.S.  I’d like to thank Scott for all the facts and figures in that question.  I think it was one of the most thoroughly researched questions I have ever gotten since the blog started.

This is a question I answered a while ago and then forgot to publish when my parents were here (note to self, use the Wordpress scheduling tool!). Someone needed help making their cake tin site a little more sweet and I was glad to help!

Hi Kirsty,

Am an avid follower of your blog and thought I would drop you a quick message to ask for some feedback on a website that we have. www.caketins.org.uk is the website and I’m looking for your feedback on how well you feel the site works?

We are getting a steady stream of visitors now the site has been live for around 5 months.

Most days we make a sale so I’m just looking for hints and tips on where you think we could improve, especially around increasing conversion?

That is a pretty nice looking site, so well done on putting it together. A sale a day is steady progress as well.

I think there are probably a few more things you could do to polish your offering and improve the performance of the visitors that you are getting as well as attracting in more. I’ll try to create a list here for you to action!

Overall structure of pages – I think this could be better. There’s an awful lot of text floating around and not enough in the way of images that will immediately show your visitors that you have some pretty darned attractive cake tins to sell them.

Calls to action – I think these could be improved dramatically. Get some nice looking graphic buttons or include a big bold link with Shop Now >> or More Info >> If you do use a link, make it bigger and bolder than the surrounding text. People don’t read internet pages properly so you really need to hold their hand when herding them through to the merchant.

Traffic Funnelling – When I clicked on your side menu (which is quite nicely done and visual) I expected to immediately see some more cake tins. However I was instead presented with a series of hard to see text links requiring me to drill down 3 levels. I believe you’re probably still working on this section right now, however I think you’d be hard pressed to keep people’s interest after the first page, so this needs some work. I suggest no more than 2 clicks within the site before you are ushering them on to the merchant.

The actual menu structure you’ve created for your shopping sections makes a lot of sense, so well done there. However I’d add some more unique content to try and get in some additional traffic around these areas. Write at least a couple of hundred words for each section and team them up with the nice images and calls to action mentioned above.

The Home Page – needs to immediately offer some great product options and have a nice strong structure. Create some nice offers and buying options that visitors will immediately see. The homepage should be showing the best selling products that you know a lot of people are interested in buying, or be showcasing top site sections.

Navigation – It would be great if you are able to offer people a shop-like navigation either on your top or one of your side bars. People do look around for these and they can help make your site look a lot more polished.

Hi Kirsty

I’ve been reading your blog pretty much since the start of 2009 when, encouraged by Smingle’s a4u posts, I started my first affiliate sites. One of my sites, which I started before the summer, is the one entered above, for 8 ft trampolines with enclosures. I did my research, found it gets a reasonable amount of exact searches, it’s a fairly large item making delivery a sensible option, the .co.uk domain was available and the competition weak.

It started well, and climbed to near the top of page 1 for the main search term in Google. It generated a few sales through Amazon until about 4 weeks after launch it suddenly dropped. It now ranks about page 4 or 5 for its main term, yet ranks better for some of the secondary pages.

Would you be able to have a look and see what you think please?

I have my concerns that it is over-optimised and Google has penalised me for being a thin affiliate site. I didn’t intend updating it really, as the market for trampoline is just for a few months over the summer. It still ranks #1 in Yahoo, and it gets 10-20 UVs a day from which I get the occasional sale, but more than anything I want to learn what I have done wrong so I don’t make the same mistake again!

Thanks

Tom

Website: http://www.8fttrampolinewithenclosure.co.uk

I don’t think you have over optimised this site at all, I reckon you need to put a bit of time into some link building for this site. I also think you need to add a small amount of content on a regular basis.

You do usually see a site getting an initial boost in the rankings when it is first launched. It then “Settles” into the index. Sometimes in a less competitive area it’ll gradually bubble its way back to the top. I’ve had domains do this and take anything from a few months to a year. Clearly though, its desirable to get some results quicker than that!

If you do a little work on getting some links in you should see an improvement. Also, sites that are updated regularly will often be able to achieve better rankings not to mention the all important benefit of some additional organic traffic. It would take you ten minutes a day just to add a quick post of a couple hundred words. I don’t think that’s too much of an additional drain on time to get the site you worked so hard to prepare into the SERPS and doing what you wanted it to do!

I know you said it is a limited market, but I think it is important for me to highlight that very few affiliate sites created on a “chuck it up and leave it” basis will reach their full potential.

I believe that by not putting the time and effort into a little “follow up” promotion lots of affiliates are effectively penalising themselves.  Google doesn’t want to rank sites that people put up and then leave to do their thing, they want fresh relevant content.  If we as affiliates don’t provide it our sites will often fail to reach their full potential.

An interesting and very to the point question from Dave who is struggling with his new affiliate site!!

As in the title, I’m really pap at affiliate marketing, I just don’t get it.

I’m obviously doing something seriously wrong since I have a few sites that just don’t seem to generate any sales at all, so I wondered if you might be able to tell me where I’m going wrong.

The Insurance Groups site is a good example – it’s now 4th/5th in Google for the main term, commissions are great, but I make zero sales, just a few adsense clicks.

What should I do to make it work better?

Many Thanks!

Website: www.insurancegroups.org.uk

Well, there are a number of thing that probably aren’t helping your cause much!

1. The niche you’ve chosen – You have clearly worked hard on creating lots of content and pages for this site. I don’t want to belittle your effort there, the way you have approached it and created all the different site sections for different types of insurance is absolutely dead on, so well done there. BUT (and you totally knew that was coming, didn’t ya?!) this is an extremely competitive area.

Your pages targeting things like “Motor Cycle Insurance” simply have no chance of ranking for their search terms, you’re up against too many other sites. Taking that as our example, you have no less than 27,100,000 competitors. Given that people very rarely go past the top 10 results – 20 if you are lucky, perhaps the issue here is that you’ve set the bar a wee bit too high for yourself?

2. Your page structure / calls to action – is very poor. Although you’ve jammed the pages with good content, I just can’t see anything there that would compel your visitors to click on a link. Looking at your page, the strongest call to action on there is most definitely provided by those Adwords links. I see you have 4 insurance company choices on your motorbike pages, but those just fade into the background with all the other links you have placed on the page.

If you want to continue with insurance I suggest you take a good look around at how successful sites structure their sales pages. This might perhaps help you come up with an alternative design.

However, I would also strongly suggest that you dip a toe into some other niche waters to help you learn about affiliate marketing. Of course I am biased because I don’t do insurance, but I think if you go for a smaller niche you might find traffic and sales much easier to get which will keep you motivated and help you learn about what works.

Amazon’s recent commission changes have somewhat crushed Greg’s affiliate plans!

I started off in AM with a website running through the Amazon Associates programme, I was able to build an income from this one site upto a peak of £2,200 profit in May & £2,300 in June of this year, solely using PPC for traffic. All was going really well and I was improving my PPC knowledge and optimising the site well. Then Amazon decided to cut it’s % referral rates and drop their direct link bonus (2.5%). This effectively wiped out my profit margin on my PPC campaigns, and has left me struggling to gain an income from the site. I was very aware that ‘all my eggs were in one basket’ and was working hard to branch out to other sites in the Summer.

So far my new sites have failed to bring in any profits, they are based around PPC traffic again, as I felt utilizing my skills in this area would be the best bet. The sites convert traffic well, but it’s the high CPC that’s preventing me from creating any kind of profits. The markets I have entered are very competitive, and I’m struggling to find any profitable long tail search terms, so my question is, how do you find profitable long tail keywords in an already competitive market?

Or would I be better off forgetting these sites and focusing on a smaller niche?
Did I just hit beginners luck with my first site?!

Thanks,
Greg

Well, I think the first thing I need to tell you is that making that kind of money isn’t really to do with beginners luck. You clearly found a group of products that really worked for you and fell victim to the eggs in one basket syndrome that’s bitten most affiliates on the bahookie at one stage or another.

You’ve obviously been working hard on that site, and one answer to the issue you’ve had with Amazon cutting their commissions and effectively wiping out your profit margins is to introduce some nice free SEO traffic into your promotional mix. Your site looks really great, so you clearly know how to put a decent offering together. I think it’s worth giving the site due diligence, adding some nice content, and seeing what can be done with it. It’s certainly a great domain.

Again with your other sites, if they are converting well but you can’t get the traffic cheaply enough I do believe the answer to making them work is to add in some organic traffic to help that PPC budget go a little further. Read this recent article by Nadeem Azam to see just how effective SEO traffic can be in revolutionising your affiliate campaigns: -

http://www.azam.info/combine-seo-ppc-marketing-dominate-search-engine-rankings/

That all said, SEO is not the entire solution to your revenue stream woes. I have loads of landing page sites that do great from PPC traffic alone. One thing you might do is have a think about what might be selling well this Christmas and give some of those things a push using some landing pages. Keep an eye out in the press for “buzz products” you see being spoken about and keep an eye on GMTV and This Morning. If they mention a product as being ace, it can pay you nice dividends to get a PPC landing page up as quickly as possible. I recently saw a massive sales spike on a site of mine because a product had been featured on a Channel 4 show about embarrassing illnesses. I’ve also capitalised on TV shows such as Gok Wan’s How to Look Good Naked in the past.

I can’t really give you more specific niche advice than that (sorry!), finding and making money from new areas can seem like a near impossible Zen art at times… but spending time keeping on chipping away and trying new things is so worthwhile.

A quick trawl through my inbound search terms has revealed that lots of people come here with questions.  Not a surprise given the nature of the blog but I thought it might be nice if I answered a few questions here that started with a frustrated search for greater affiliate knowledge on Google and ended on my blog which may or may not have provided an answer!

Now given that I’m a normally lovely girl, I don’t like to be too blunt with all the nice people who e-mail me questions. However this format gives me the opportunity to do some of the plain talking I’m known for at times…

site:http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk “i earn” – how many times do I have to say I’m not bloody well telling youse!  Lets define it as “plenty”

affiliate how to find a christmas niche – Hmmm… maybe try just about anything that’s a gift?  Christmas is one of the only times of the year where you seriously should not struggle for a niche.  If a merchant doesn’t perform then, it is very likely they never will (unless travel related!)

a4u expo 2009 win a ticket – Enter Kierons comp right here>> Entries close 28th September so get yer damned well skates on!

how to calculate potential affiliate earnings? *sigh* I know lots of people really want to know this but the answer genuinely is between £0 and £1,000,000,000,000 – it all depends on your ability and how much work you’ll end up putting in.  End of story.

affiliate niche guns – I think you should remove caffeine from your diet.  And possibly seek counselling.

affiliate marketing is it a rip off? Well, it does sound too good to be true sometimes   But it is a real and bonafide way to make money.  However if someone is saying “Make $$$$ via affiliate marketing by giving me $$” then yeah, that is a scam 99% of the time!

google affiliate slap seo? Google doesn’t slap affiliate sites just for being affiliate sites.  Saying your site has been slapped for being an affiliate offering is merely an excuse for a lack of unique content, poor seo techniques, and use of blackhat tactics that would get any site slapped (unwitting or otherwise).  Google doesn’t hate affiliates – it hates sites that don’t add value!  It  of irritates me that this seems to often be aired as an excuse for a site not working out. If your site doesn’t work out the only person you should be looking at as the reason is yourself.

why doesn’t google like affiliate marketers? It’s only the ones who don’t try hard enough Google doesn’t like.  See above.

can i use free wordpress blog to do affiliate marketing? You sure can, that’s the beauty of Wordpress.

can you do ppc for affilate sites? Yes, but for the love of God make sure you know what you are doing first!

have you been paid by tradedoubler september 2009? Yes, I was.  It was even on time this month.  They didn’t feel like answering my important support query re: future payments now that I’m moving my company to Australia though so next month might be a different kettle of fish.

how long into google penalty do you ditch a domain name Not until you understand exactly what it was you got penalised for in the first place.  Else it’ll happen again, see?

i hate online marketing - We don’t like you either, now bugger right off!

kirsty’s undies – Oi!!  What have I said about these kind of queries you disgusting rotter?!?!

max bramwell single – I dunno, why don’t you look it up on Facebook you scary internet stalker, LOL.

why is my ppc not converting – either you are rubbish, or the merchant is rubbish. Or both.

website dropped 200 places in google – That’s looking pretty ominous matey… Maybe think back to any content stuffing or naughty link tactics from recent weeks.

how do i know if i’ve triggered a google filter? See above.

google penalty recovery time – about as long as it takes you to work out exactly what you did wrong, fix it to Google’s satisfaction, plus anything from a few days to a few weeks.  Oh, and you have to do all that without anyone really being able to tell you what you did wrong in the first place.  Good eh?

what can i buy kirsty? Awww…. a new set of gardening gloves would be awesome.  Wouldn’t mind a Mercedes SLK either.

Well, I feel much better for that!  I may even be able to attempt assisting Duncan at re-oiling our back deck in a little while.  Work though?  I’ll answer that with another question: -

will working less help me relieve my stress?

YES - now I’m off to tend my garden and get all thoughts of affiliate marketing out of my head for a few hours

An interesting question from Matt Re: how to organise the different promotional stages of a site!

Hi Kirsty,

I’ve been beavering away building a site and now I have been rummaging
around on the internet thinking about the best way to start promoting a new site.
From what I have read it seems there are 2 distinct approaches – PPC and
SERPS traffic.

Since you seem to be one of the few that uses both I was
wondering how you decide which to focus on during the lifecycle of a site?
From my (newbie) perspective it would seem that PPC initially then shift
focus to the SEO/linkbuilding is the way to go…is this how you approach it?

Many thanks,
Matt

Well, the reason I moved into SEO was that I was sick of having to churn
and burn my PPC domains because my affiliate content was too thin and
kept getting slapped by Google. I sat down and worked out what I
thought the landing page algo would need to keep my pages up there long
term. I realised that it’d be hard work, but that as I was going to
write lots of unique content and provide good information resources
anyhow I might as well go for SEO and PPC traffic at the same time.

So in answer to your question, I always try for both right from the
start. The PPC gets things kicked off whilst I’m getting inbound links
and the search engines are doing their stuff. I also use SEO data to
feed new keywords into my PPC campaigns and PPC data to direct my
content strategy as that tends to reveal very quickly “where the money
is at”. Usually SEO traffic turns up quite quickly too, it doesn’t take
you more than 4 to 6 weeks to bring in 20% of your traffic in this way
which if you have targeted things properly makes a huge difference to
your profit margins.

I had an e-mail from the lovely Nicola recently following up a previous plea for help with a note to let me know how she was going and to ask me to take a look at her new site and give her some thoughts.

Hi Kirsty

Well since I first emailed you I have got my first AM site up and running.  www.babychamtrainers.co.uk it has been up since 21st August
and I have made my first sale with a massive commision of 88pence, but still was very excited to see a sale and I’ve got to start
somewhere (won’t be giving up the day job just yet though).

I’m spending around £1.50 – £2.50 a day on ppc which seems to keep me at the top of google most of the time.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Nicola

Hi Nicola,

That’s a really good niche site to hone your skills on for a first  effort.  I think too many people try to do a massive website about lots  of products and that ultimately slows down the learning process.

And congratulations on that first sale – it’s a bit of a buzz eh?!

I think you need to make your home page look a bit more like a merchant  product page, I think the “click to see products” text will increase the  number of people who land on the site and then leave immediately.

Here’s an example of a product landing page I’ve recently completed: -

http://www.personalisedgiftsuk.com/personalised-football-books/celtic-football-club-book/

(site is not quite finished yet, but you get the idea!)

I use pages like that a lot of the time and they have an excellent click  through rate.  I’m not suggesting that you have to come up with  something like that to make your site work – but a little bit of HTML  popped into the Wordpress framework can go a very long way!  If you can  work at getting good “calls to action” on your page that will encourage  people to click through to the merchant that will also help.  A nice  product picture, linked through to merchant with a bit of link text  beside or underneath that says Browse More Babycham Trainers >> will  also work.

Alternatively, Easy Content Units look great and can create a nice  professional looking product area.

http://www.easycontentunits.com/

I’d also start doing some posts about some of the product lines you’re  covering, describe what they are and why you think people would want to  buy them.  I tend to do this in my blog post titles and it works really  well for getting in free traffic.

For example: – Multicoloured Canvas Trainers by Babycham Footwear

Or

Black Trainers with Pink Laces by Babycham – Hot 80s Style

Or

Babycham Basic Strap Trainers – Cool Velcro Fastenings!

What content like that does is draw in traffic both from people who  already know they want to buy Babycham Trainers but also from people who  know they want shoes with Velcro fastenings.

If you can, do some link research or ask around in forums and see if you  can get some backlinks to help the site bring in some organic traffic.

I’d also get your side menu populated, as it’s currently looking a bit  bare.  The more navigation / information options you give your visitors  the better chance you have of converting to a sale.

Finally, change your home page title from Babychamtrainers.com to Buy
Babycham Trainers UK : Designer Trainers – or similar.   Your main
product title as all one word will weaken the SEO strength of the page.

One thing you have done that could cause you issues later is buying a  domain with a trademark in it.  I’ve known a few affiliates put a bit of  work into such domains only to have them whipped off them by the brand.  Some brands seem very worried about this whilst others don’t pay any  attention.

I hope this helps you in your affiliate efforts!

I had a question from Dave this week.  I’ve helped him before getting started doing some PPC campaigns and he now has a steady flow of sales.  Unfortunately he’s not so crash hot on his profit margins!

Ok, at the moment im battling with increasing my profit. I know I can make this work now, its all about increasing my profit. Now I know its not what it should be proably because of my mismanagement of keywords. I know you should wait 100 clicks/1000 imp before you delete if you dont have a sale, but when youve got hundreds of keywords going on at once each costing the 7 – 12 p each, then it adds up doesnt it. So instead of only deleting after 100 clicks has been reached or so, do you go by how long they’ve been going?

I’m averaging about £40 – £60 commsion rate now per day, which is good, im happy about that, but my £20 or so profit can dwindle to as little as £3 or £4 by midnight that same day..So what is it i need to start considering when managing my account?

You definitely need to look at making sure your profit margins are better.  First of all, what is costing you the most money for the least return?  Are there any keywords in your account that have never brought in any money?  It might be an idea to consider weeding those out.  If there’s not a lot that you can discern in your campaign as being “dead wood” or “star performers” that can be worked on, then you may need to take a formulaic approach.

If a campaign is only breaking even or even losing you a bit, work out how much you earn per every click you send to the merchant.  Say you send 100 clicks and earn £15, this means you earn 15p for each click you sent them.  If you’re spending 20p to get these clicks then you need to reduce that.

There are a couple of ways you could approach this.  1. you could work out a reasonably desirable profit margin and reduce your max CPC to reflect this.  i.e. Just knock your bids down to 10p and take whatever traffic you can get. 2. Work out ways to get cheaper traffic to offset your more expensive traffic and bring down your average costs into a profit.

Re: not deleting keywords until you’ve reached X amount of clicks. I think you have to apply common sense to this as you suspect.   If keywords that are closely related aren’t working then you should definitely have a clear out.