I had an interesting e-mail recently from one of blog readers, Chuck. He’s been struggling to turn his first PPC campaign into a profit, and wanted to know why this was and what the hell he could do about it! here’s his first question: -
Hi,
I am just starting my new career. I am 62 and presently working in Iraq. My
goal is to establish a living income from Internet marketing.
My question is: I am using PPC and it costs too much.
My first sale brought in $23USD and cost me $47USD for Adwords.
How do you drive traffic? Do you use PPC, do you use Organic traffic? I am
looking for suggestions to establish a plan of action for my “things to do
list”. I need to learn how to get “Traffic”
I jusy set up a simple site with a different page for each keyword group. I am
selling an eBook there.
I then sent Chuck an e-mail asking for more detail about the product he was pushing, the type of keywords he used, and how much he was paying per click. Out of respect for the work Chuck has put into finding his niche so far I’m not going to publish the name of the product (just some general sector details) and in a similar vien I’m not sharing the links to his landing pages which he sent me. Instead I’ll pop up a screenshot at the appropriate juncture.
This was his response: -
The product is “XXX XXXXX Diet”, which is an e-book.
I set up a very simplistic landing page for four of my keywords.
For Keywords I use:
“XXX XXXXXXX Diet” at .20 to .50 USD,
“weight loss” at .20 to .50USD,
“weight loss tips” at .20 to .50USD,
“natural weight .loss” again at .20 to .50USD.
I have about 35 other key words but these 4 are the main ones that got a few
clicks. I made a separate landing page for each of the four keywords listed.
These landing pages are actually nothing more that a few lines with a button
or contextual link to click for more information which sends to the product
sales landing page.
I was getting about 65 click thrus a day but most were from Google context
adds.I have my daily budget set to $25 and keywords max to .20 to .50USD.
I finally reduced context add bid to .11USD Now I get 6 to 12 clicks a day
on search results. I finally reduced the max bid to .11 for everything
search and context because it was starting to cost me money with no returns
in sight.
www.xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx.net/
www.xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx.net/weightlossadvice
www.xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx.net/naturalfoodsdiet
These links are to my mini landing pages
I actually sold one ebook. I can’t say which ad or keyword.
Here’s my response to Chuck: –
Well, I can immediately see a few things you are doing that you need to
take a look at.
1 ) It’s really important to track what’s working for you in terms of
keywords. That way you can identify what’s working for you and weed out
anything that is drinking up your budget and not providing any returns.
2 ) Google contextual ad network… I never touch this as I’ve
traditionally found the traffic hard to make work. Often your ads are
displayed on sites that are not entirely relevant. It really is best to
be displaying ads in response to a real, targeted search engine query.
3 ) Some of your keywords are waaaay too general. If I was going to
promote an e-book (and I probably wouldn’t!). I would restrict myself to
the name of the e-book (as you have done) and similar sounding names. I’d
also only seek to drive traffic from people genuinely looking for an
e-book solution to their weight problems. See, a big factor in successful
PPC is getting the “buying” traffic. I always base my activity on trying
to get someone right at the end of their online decision making cycle. In
your case, this would be targeting them when they’d decided to buy an
e-book with dietary tips. At the moment, when you send traffic to your
landing pages for people looking for “weight loss” or “weight loss” tips,
you’re basically aiding people in their research. It would be far better
to target things like “weight loss e-book” or “diet e-book”. There might
be less traffic, but you will undoubtedly find that it converts better.
Affiliate success is as much about finding the traffic stream that works
for you as it is about finding a product that people will genuinely want
to buy.
4 ) You don’t mention commission levels, but I think your initial bid
level may be too high (but that’s just a guess). It’s really important to
have a sit down and work out how much money you might make from a sale,
what the merchants conversion rate is likely to be, and therefore how much
profit for every click you send you think you might make. I’ve mentioned
this in my Google Adwords For Beginners Guide, but here’s the relevant
section: -
Will the merchants commission structure support PPC activity? Before
jumping on in there and splashing your hard earned cash, stop and think.
Yes the products look good, and the site is magnificent, but are they
paying you enough to earn a good margin? Network data aside, it may be a
good idea to find out data on average basket size and site conversion
rates. Many merchants display this data, and most are happy to share this
with affiliates.
So, if merchant x pays 8% commission, has an average basket size of £35
and a conversion rate of 2.5% This means that for every 100 clicks you
send to them you will earn £7. You should initially use this data to
determine your maximum CPC. In this case, a max cpc of 4p would yield a
profit of £3 per hundred clicks. Use the formula below to work out how a
merchant’s commission structure should determine your cost per click
strategy: -
Avg Basket Size x Avg Conversion rate = Avg Sales Per Hundred Clicks x
Affiliate Commission = Avg Earnings Per Hundred Clicks
This simple formula should help you avoid losing money by over spending on
your PPC, or helping to identify a merchant whom you may not be able to
make a profit from. Please note that this is a very generalised method and
will never be spot on. However, it should help you make a more informed
decision about who you should be sending traffic to.
5 ) Your landing pages need a lot of work before they are truly Google
friendly. Their lack of graphics probably mean a lot of people would be
turned off by them, and they might leave quite quickly. Landing pages are
really, really hard to put together though, particularly when you are just
starting out and trying to ascertain what works. What I really recommend
you do is use some direct to merchant activity to find a niche that works
for you. If you want to persevere with the landing pages, get some
banners on there at the very least… they will really help.
6 ) Perhaps being in the weight loss niche is a little too competitive for
when you are just starting out. You’ve done the right thing in selecting
a single product and something that’s a small niche of a large and popular
sector. However, if you can’t get the traffic cheaply enough to make it
work, it may be worth thinking about finding another area.
That said, the figures you mentioned were not too bad. You did lose a bit,
but given the general nature of a lot of your search terms, it could have
been WAY worse! On another note, I just bet your conversion came from
“xxxx diet”. If I were you I would run that term on it’s own for
a wee while and see what happens. You may just find it works out for you.
Good luck!!
November 6th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Hey Kirsty,
I don’t understand how you do direct-to-merchant when you can’t use the advertisers URL as the display and the display needs to be at least part of the same site as the destination URL.
What am I missing? Are you talking about framed re-directs?
THANKS!!!!!
Matt
November 6th, 2007 at 4:56 am
I don’t think Google prohibits you to use the merchant’s URL as the display URL. What happens, though, is Google only shows unique display URLs one at a time. So for example if you’re using http://www.merchant-x.com as the display URL and it turns out that another advertiser is also using http://www.merchant-x.com (also as the display URL), then Google will only show one of them (I forgot how Google determines which one to display, but I think Google just rotates them; someone correct me if I’m wrong though).
However, with that being said, you should also read the merchant’s TOS. Some merchants don’t care if you use their URL as your display URL, whereas others may not let you do it, so it really depends on the merchants.
For more info, read the first paragraph of:
http://adwords.google.co.uk/support/bin/answer.py?answer=14844
Hope that helps =).
November 6th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Hi guys, Frank is right… there’s no prohibition from Google about display URL usage. Nor do affiliate networks stop this. It’s only some merchants that do not allow this. As Frank says, check their programme terms.
If your intended merchant doesn’t allow it. Simply try to find a merchant you think is comparable. If that’s not possible, well, it’s time to move on and that merchant missed out!
November 6th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Oh ok, I must just be picking all those that do!
Thanks so much! Time to do some digging
November 6th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Perhaps it’s the sector you’re looking at? Some sectors (like UK Contact Lens Merchants) just don’t like it at all. Drop me a line if you want to share what area you are in, I might be able to help you find a merchant who’ll let you send traffic direct.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Wow. Great response. I think I might be trying to promote the same thing as “Chuck”.
hehehe…
Quick question though — I don’t understand one comment you made about “direct to merchant” advertising. The google adwords guidelines mentions something like you can’t use an affiliate or redirect url to the parent site. You need your own site (i.e. landing page, i.e. lot-of-work).
What’s the solution for that? Am I misreading something?
November 7th, 2007 at 4:39 am
oops…didn’t read teh comments. sorry.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:34 am
No worries Jack. Well, if you’re already on the same gig as chuck that means you’ve also gotten a little advice about how to promote your current target product.
I just didn’t want 100 other people jumping on the same thing and ruining his research time!
November 8th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Yea…..though I haven’t started with it, and I don’t think I probably will (it’s not something I would buy myself). So….I don’t know, I’m looking for something else I guess.
But now I know I don’t need a landing page
November 8th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hi Kirsty,
Thanks for publishing my “story”.
I will next add Google analytics code so I can start tracking my site stats. Right now I don’t know anything about my site activity.
What I have done is improve my landing pages. I added a sexy graphic. Maybe a coincidence but I got a sale within 12 hours of changing the landing page. My landing page is specific to my keyword and to my Google text add. I intend to create a total of 30 landing pages one for each of my long tail keywords.
This is an experiment. I need to learn the business and this has been a fun and exciting exercise.
I am also in the process of setting up an affiliate sales site that will provide profit on organic search results alone.
I will keep you posted on my progress.
Kirsty you are tops!
Thanks again,
Chuck
November 8th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Hey Chuck, Well I am delighted that you got a sale soon after making some alterations. It’s always a great motivator when you see something you have done working immediately.
The main thing is to just keep on trying… don’t let any minor setbacks make you think that you can’t make this work!
Good luck in Iraq, I hope you continue to keep your head down. My Cousin is off to sunny Afghanistan next week, so I hope it is a skill he employs effectively as well.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Hey Kristy,
Good advice as always!
I’ve a question on your forumla that came to mind.
Avg Basket Size x Avg Conversion rate = Avg Sales Per Hundred Clicks x
Affiliate Commission = Avg Earnings Per Hundred Clicks
I’m guessin’ that this is for direct to merchant PPC. Do you have a similar formula for if you’re making a landing page?
Cheers!
Tom