What’s your favourite 3 letter word? I know what mine has been this past year, yep that’s right SEO!  Although 2009 was a bit gnarly for me in places, the little thorns in the usually sweet-smelling affiliate ointment galvanised my determination to insulate myself from margins that were on the wibble.  This is a process I first began just over 2 years ago when I was a 100% PPC affiliate.  The first year saw some small progress and I managed to get myself to 80% PPC and 20% SEO.

However, once the dust from our nuptuals had settled and the credit crunch had really bit, I applied myself to the business of garnering organic traffic like a woman posessed. The results?  An absolutely brilliant increase in my profit margin and turnover.  I will leave the explaination of why combining PPC and SEO can be so powerful to Nadeem Azam – he did a great post on that a while back.

Now I’m Not Letting Any Numbers Slip But…

I can show you how the impact on my bottom line looked!  I keep monthly stats on all of my sites and do love a good graph.  So here’s my monthly income and expenditure graph (numbers removed!!)

The distance between my profit and expenditure (green and red lines) which you can see in January is a pretty accurate reflection of how it had been for the whole of the previous year.  As you can see, throughout the year the amount I’ve been spending on PPC has not increased that much whilst the green and blue lines (profit and turnover) have adopted a pleasing upward trend, followed by a terribly exciting spike around the festive season.

In 2009….

Investing time into writing content and building quality sites reduced the percentage of my turnover I was spending on PPC from 49% to 25%.  Given that a good chunk of my new income has come from sites which are only a few months old I’m incredibly optimistic about consolidating my success further in 2010 and reducing my reliance upon Google Adwords (because I’m starting to get alarmed about how they view affiliate landing pages).

How Will I Capitalise On My SEO Success?

I think I’m going to play the same numbers game I did in 2009 to keep myself motivated.  Every day I set myself a target to get 8 new pages written and live.  I give myself 2 hours to do this.  I set aside a few hours a month to link build for my sites and am using the Content Now Link Building service to garner links for my lingerie site.  I’m seeing some rather pleasing results from that and my rankings are improving all the time.

Where Will My Little Green Line End Up At The End Of This Year?

Well, after a rather sad drop in January I’m hoping it will resume its gentle upwards climb. It’s taken me 2 years to get to this point, and I feel I really know what to do this year to really secure my various sites in the SERPS and insulate Duncan and I from any more recession-esque income fluctuations.

I’ll let you know how I went in January 2011

Happy New Year Guys!

Well, 2009 can best be described as having been an “interesting” year for me and my affiliate business.  The recession and some issues with key merchants took quite the gouge out of my bottom line in the early part of the year – but I managed to work through that and I feel I’m finishing the year with my business in pretty good shape and in a great position to reach new heights in 2010.  Before the shit really hit the recession fan I made a few resolutions about what I hoped to get out of this year – you can see them here.

How Did I do in 2009?

Well, all in all I managed to meet most of my resolutions. I’d estimate my success rate at 80% to 90%.  My failures were as follows: -

• I didn’t manage to create much in the way of revenue with Affiliate Future and Linkshare. Of the two networks I think Linkshare has the most merchants that are a good fit with my sites, so I hope to correct my omission in 2010 and will keep an eagle eye on Affiliate Future for inspiration!
• My vegetable garden hasn’t really eventuated. However, I have 6 tomato plants in the garden. These are still alive and seem to be fruiting.  Baby steps!
• I didn’t change my name to McKenzie! I had planned to be Mrs McKenzie in my personal life, however I got unaccountably agressive when the bank said I couldn’t have one name on my personal accounts and another on my business accounts.  Who is Kirsty McKenzie anyway?  She didn’t make that money, and I was buggered if her name was going on it.  I got a name plate for the front door in the name of “Mr & Mrs McKenzie” – that almost counts
• I didn’t pay off 20% of my mortgage – 2009 was a year of  stupidly big bills.  Not a month went by without someone sending Duncs and I a comedy bill of gargantan proportions.  Oh, and the GBP nosedived against the dollar. I’ve got the equivalent of 10% sitting in a Sterling account though, and with a following wind I hope the value of that will increase to 13% (if the exchange rate improves eventually).  Not a runaway success, but given the challenges we’ve had this year I still think that’s pretty good.

My 2010 Resolutions

• I will consolidate the success I’ve created in 2009 – I created several new sites last year and these have been pleasingly successful.  In particular I’m happy with my Mens Underwear site. It was only started in February last year and has created some impressive fledgling results.  I have loads of ideas in new areas I know will work. However, a trap it is all too easy to fall into is to always be starting new projects and not doing your existing sites justice.  My current sites have the potential to really create a significant turnover boost this year if I devote a block of time to developing them further.
• I will increase my organic traffic and decrease my reliance upon PPC. I’ve already made vast inroads in this area, in fact the results are so impressive I’m going to do a separate post showing the effect of organic traffic on my bottom line in 2009.  Also, given recent “mass banning” outbreaks over at Adwords HQ I’m keen to insulate myself from such an eventuality. Paranoid?  Maybe.  But always preparing for worst case scenario isn’t a bad thing!
• I will keep investing into the growth of my business – it’s too easy to just grab all that lovely affiliate cash and get it spent.  However, it is well worth setting aside a good proportion to invest into promotion, content, and site development.  I see lots of people who make a small amount of affiliate cash, and just keep on spending it. This can lead to turnover stagnation.  It’s so important to nurture the vehicle of your success.  In 2009 I invested heavily in content and it has paid off big time. I wish I’d done it ages ago!
• Add 20% to my profits. I’ve crunched my numbers based on a 5% monthly traffic increase to key sites and it seems this is achiveable.  In fact, my calculations suggested I might well manage to add significantly more than that – but as affiliate number crunching is nebulous given all the variables outwith your control I’ve decided to try to “keep it real”.  Time will tell and I’m not counting any chickens, but its good to have something to aim at!
• I won’t spend too much time affiliate number crunching. It’s all fantasy till you actually get the work done and its too easy to spend time you could be working setting out yet another growth forecast.
• I will pester my merchants more. Goddammit Kirsty but you don’t ask merchants to do enough. Particularly the ones you are driving strong volume to. Get it sorted girl.
• I’ll definately go to the A4U Expo in London this year. I can’t go 2 years running without seeing all my affiliate pals I might even bring my Mum for y’all to meet if she’s up for it.

Personal Resolutions

• More effort at NOT working. Harder than you’d think.
• Plenty of weekends away. We live in a tropical paradise. More sightseeing effort required.
• I’ll spend a chunk of cash getting the house ship shape. Despite the shit exchange rate, it’s time to unleash the moths as this house in its current state is starting to drive me bonkers.
• I will get better at spending my money on myself. Funny thing I have.  I find it really hard to spend cash on myself.  Any purchase over $50 and I get “the guilt” in the pit of my stomach.  I think nothing of spending money on nice things for Duncan, or the house, holidays etc.  But stuff only for me?  I can’t do it.  Whats the bloody point of all this work if I can’t get some goodies for myself? LOL.

OK, I think that’s enough resolutions for one year.  What are your resolutions? Personal or affiliate it doesn’t matter. Record them below so that I can see how mine compare!

Apologies for radio silence readers – I have been completely preoccupied with Christmas related affiliate stuff and the rising mercury here in Queensland isn’t leaving me with much energy at the end of the working day which is usually when I talk to you guys.

Anyhoo… Christmas trade is over for another year, and as the dust settles most affiliates will be taking stock of what worked for them, what didn’t, and what information they have gathered that they can use either next year or to help them identify new niches in 2010.  Christmas reveals a lot about peoples buying habits and popular products, so I’ve been making feverish notes and analysing everything to within an inch of its life recently. Time consuming, but incredibly revealing!  If this is your first affiliate Christmas, or the first one where you’ve done well it will definately pay you to take a few hours to reflect upon your stats!

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all have a great Christmas Day and that all you UK people aren’t too fed up with all that snow and ice.  For the record, it’s 33 here today and I am not feeling in the slightest bit festive.  I’m looking forward to my pressie from Duncan tomorrow and a taste of the giant cheesecake he’s just made though, so that at least is a start!

If you didn’t read it then, here is last Christmas’ festive poem.  I’m too hot to write anything creative this year so in true eco friendly style I’m recycling!

Have a great Christmas, and I’ll see you all in the SERPS for the January Sales.

Festive love and hugs,

Kirsty xxx

P.S. I’ve just re-read a post I wrote on December 12th last year about how un-festive I was feeling and how I was having my best Christmas ever (it came up as a related post when I previewed this one!).  Clearly doing much better this year as I’m not displaying any of the scroogy symptoms as per last year.

Well, its that time of year again – Mega Monday is upon us and todays papers are full of tales of seasonal spending excess.  Apparently £4,000 a second has been forecast as the golden sum that will be spent on interweb shopping today.  John Lewis has had a record breaking week, selling £102.4 million in the week to 5th December, beating their previous 2007 record by over a million quid.

Online forums, Twitter, Facebook and every other electronic communication medium will be filled with the shouts of thrilled affiliates seeing those shopping pennies whizzing into their network accounts.

But at this time of year there is a bit of a danger.  Introducing…

Commission Envy?

I think if Sigmund Freud was still around he’d definately be adding commission envy to his list of ills.  The theory of the Phallus would be revised, and  he’d be chatting on about how all of us deal with the absence of Shoemoney-esque commission cheques from our lives and the devastating effect of that missing symbol of power.

The trouble with this time of year is that we’re surrounded by tales of people making insane amounts of cash.  It can often only take the reading of one tale of thousands of pounds earned in a single afternoon  to turn a feeling of elation at a good innings in Christmas trade into a deep and nagging feeling of inadequacy.

Being “Pretty Good” is Also Acceptable

I say this often, but today I reckon should say it again.  It’s absolutely fine to be a “Pretty Good” affiliate.  Although all those huge commission cheques, the fast cars, mansions, and impossibly glam lifestyles are great motivation I think they can be counter productive at times.  Who doesn’t compare themselves with their peers?  And with money being the measure of success in this industry, a lot of people can start to feel a little bit inadequate when there’s really no need.

Although I have always gone on about not needing to be “super”, I’ve definately fallen into the trap a few times.  (I can see the headlines now: “Scandal, Shock Horror, Kirsty’s Not As Perfect As She Lets On!!!!”)  Sometimes I find myself grumbling about a month or day that’s really been below my expectations before I remember that in terms of my hopes and aspirations when I started out in this industry, I’ve outperformed my early imaginings about my potential earnings by a huge margin.

What Do YOU Think is Good?

In affiliate marketing success is a self defined thing.  If its an amount you are pleased with, you are doing great. Getting caught up with how other people are doing is a completely counter productive process.  Remember this: -

The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become.  (Harold Taylor)

Something that never fails to amaze me is the amount of outright and blatant shit that is spoken by the “Make Instant Money Online Today!!!!!!” fraternity.  My near terminal bewilderment at the outrageous nature of their claims is only matched by my disbelief at the amount of people who fall for their spurious claims about lacklustre and / or completely useless products each and every day. (Sadly it’s usually the latter).

As a public service I’ve created a translation of the sorts of claims people make versus what they really mean.  That way, if you must search for things like “make money online” and “make money fast” you might have a chance of telling the bullshit from genuinely useful information (hint, searching for those terms rarely produces useful info).

Visit OurSpammySite.com and make enough money to quit your job next month! Free System!

We will send you a (useless) video on how to make money.  By the time we tell you the way to make the REAL money even QUICKER you’ll be too excited not to give us your credit card details.  Subsquently you may discover that the initial $849.95 wasn’t for the entire system and that you will need to give us $200 per month so that we may drive 85,000,000 visitors to your site.  Per second. When those visitors don’t turn up, this will be your fault.  But don’t worry!  We can fix that RIGHT up for just another $500 – you dolt!

Our simple system will create you a website with no knowledge of coding required.  Cowboy Dave’s system is a simple little method that has made many of his happy customers thousands of pounds!

For a simple one off payment you too can own a website about a product you know nothing about which is exactly the same as the other 24,000 we’ve sold to gullable fools here at Cowboy Dave Inc.  Once you get your site you’ll have no clue what to do with it, nor will you posess any of the marketing skills required to make a single bean.  However, worry ye not.  We’ll have your money by then and will be only too happy to draw your attention to the “No Refunds will be issued and all claims are for illustrative purposes only” clause in our terms and conditions.  We will think its great we totally blew smoke up your ass and took your money – and you can’t do a damned thing about it!

I make £10,000 a day doing almost nothing, sign up to my exclusive members club for full and FREE proof of my income.  All you have to do is exactly copy my system and you’ll be quids in.

I make lots of money every day by being a complete and utter scumbag.  My system consists of nothing more than lots of vague instructions, bland platitudes, outrageous promises, and absolutely no useful information whatsoever.  By the time you realise my red hot system gives you an ice cube’s chance in hell of ever making a penny, I’ll have spent your hard earned cash on something nice for myself.  Aren’t I wonderful?

Make £35,000 a month with my completely automated online system. Absolutely no work involved, no website, no building lists, no advertising spend.

Seriously, I can’t believe people fall for my bullshit sometimes.  Myself and my mate Cowboy Dave spend all our time competing to see who can make the most outrageous claim – and you guys still sign up.  To make things even more hilarious, I’m going to hook you into a monthy subscription and bombard you with advertising filled with increasinly ridiculous claims – and the odd request for cash to keep my Porsche 911 in petrol – those cars don’t run themselves you know (I’ve got 5,000 mug punters doing that for me).

Finally, my guide to the deep meanings in commonly used punctuation, words and symbols.

!!!!

We said absolutely nothing worth listening to in that sentence, and there was absolutely no information about what it is we’re trying to sell, but we’ve put these exclaimation marks in to show you just how dashed exciting our mystery product is.

Guaranteed

It’s guaranteed we’ll make money.  You didn’t think we were taking about you did you?!  *guffaw*

UNDERLINED and IN RED and UNDERLINED IN RED

We don’t want you to read the words in between these because you might work out our product is about as substantial as a puff of air.  Hopefully you’ll be that desperate you’ll only see words such as MILLIONAIRE and also EFFORTLESS SYSTEM that is FREE TO RUN except for our $200 a month admin charge, and your first born son’s lifetime earnings but this bit is not in red or underlined so its invisible.  Sneaky eh?

$$$$

Yep, you can earn $$$$ simply by joining our monthly club where we will slowly reveal absolutely hee haw of use to you.  We’ll keep you hanging on for as long as possible by repeatedly promising the really good stuff will turn up next month.  Eventually you will discover that you really can earn $$$$.  Of course, we didn’t put any figure in front of that so your earnings will be the multiple of zero of your choice.

Got Another Example?

Add your make money online translation to the comments section!

If ever merchants needed a good reason to sort out their blinking well Xmas promotions before December 15th then this syndrome must be it. I’m sure I can’t be unique when I say I’ve had it with Christmas.  In fact, I’ve had it with Christmas for at least two weeks but have struggled gamely on.

My brain is currently at the point where me simply sitting in front of a computer screen seems to induce me to contemplate my navel closely for several hours interspersed with the odd visit to Facebook or Twitter to talk a load of shit.  This is in stark contrast to my usual feelings of energy and downright go getter-ness (another symptom is that I’ve started making up my own words).

Merry BuggerAllThisMass…

As I sailed out the door to the shopping centre at 10am this morning full of the spirit of “Bugger All This Mass” I said to Duncan; “I really don’t know whats up with me dear I really just can’t think straight.”

“What do you mean you don’t know what’s up?” He says.

“Eh?” I eloquently replied.

“You’re like this every effing year love!”

“I am?”

And it’s true.  I am.  There’s something about the push for Christmas trade that is incredibly exciting.  But bear in mind that much like an over excitable 6 year old I’ve been getting myself all wound up for it since the middle of June and making sure I was going to do as good a job as possible in getting those affiliate pennies in at this very lucrative time of year.

And So My Dear Friends, This Tightly Wound Affiliate Coil Has Unsprung…

I must have done quite well with my festive efforts, because my “Cant Be Assed Mass” has arrived almost 20 days early.  I feel as if I have now done as much as I possibly can for the big man in the red suit and as a result I’m like a balloon that’s been burst (by that over excited 6 year old we were chatting about a couple of paragraphs back).

I think my lack of motivation is in reverse proportion to the amount of money appearing on my screen when I log on to the networks each morning. The more thats there, the less I want to do! What little brain capacity that remains has been devoted to keeping an eagle eye on my margins.  Much time is being spent analysing every single penny I spend and click I send. So merchants, it is now too late to grab my ear with your latest and greatest promotions.  That ship has sailed and it’s captain is  roaring drunk in the wheelhouse.

What Now?

Well, I’d better get my finger extracted from my derrierre and my head out of the clouds.  Christmas might be all sewn up but January is still flapping in the wind.  I’ve got a LOT to do.

The only thing I can think of is to take the rest of the week off, power down, power up Sunday night and hope the old spring gets wound up again to get into my January promotions.

So Merchants… Please Leave My Commission After The Beep. Anything Else Will Be Deleted. BEEEEEEPPPPPP!!

Well, we have a new member of staff on the books here at Affiliate Stuff towers who is going to be helping us out with a bit of part time blogging about various subjects (but mainly knickers, bras, and swimwear related type stuff).

The Winner Is…

After careful consideration of a very long list of candidates we awarded a nice contract to….. MY MUM!  After 21 years of working in admin for a construction company she decided to make the big move and take voluntary redundancy. This has given her the golden opportunity to start her internet career and enj0y a nice bit of work from home fun just like her dear old daughter and son in law.  She’ll be writing for us part time and devoting a lot more time to relaxing, having fun, and all those little things she’s been meaning to do around the house for ages.

Like Mother Like Daughter…

She’s doing really well so far and I’m now pretty clear about whom I got my writing skills from.  Her knicker related prose is really rather good and she is even managing to post it all up into a basic HTML framework I have created for her.  It’ll take her a little while to get up to speed with the ins and outs, but she’ll soon be rattling out thousands of words an hour just like me!

I think it’s very cool to get the chance to give your Mummy a go at something brand new and exciting.  So Mum, I know you read this blog  – welcome to the affiliate business and I hope you really enjoy semi retirement!

P.S. I wonder if this means I should bring her to next year’s A4U Expo in London? I’m sure she’d have quite the little migraine after a few sessions of affiliate conferencing fun (not to mention the various after parties!!)

I’ve been meaning to post this Ask Kirsty for positively ages.   I’ve really been suffering with heat and humidity this week and have a head full of cotton wool to contend with and I’m going wheel it out so you all don’t think I don’t love you any more.  Panic ye not, the airconditioner is in the post as we speak and the office will hopefully have a better climate next week!

This particular “asker” had a lot of very good questions about many aspects of affiliate promotion.

1. In your post “Is There Still Mileage In Affiliate for PPC?” you say that most of your income comes from PPC, however, that post is about a year old.  Bearing in mind the crisis and everything, is that still the case for you and do  you feel PPC may still be a way to go in AM (particularly for new sites)?

I must say that this is no longer the case for me. Although PPC remains a big part of my marketing efforts my affiliate profit margins have been rescued in these troubled times by the addition of some SEO traffic. On some sites I now get 40 % to 50% or more of my traffic from organic search and estimate 30 to 40% of my overall sales come from free traffic.

That said, if you pick the right products and laser target your traffic there is no reason why you can’t have a perfectly good campaign on PPC alone. However I do now feel that SEO is essential to each and every one of my profitable sites. There are only two merchants I now work with driving PPC traffic alone and I’m currently working on an organic site for those also!

2. In addition to PPC and organic SEO, what other promotion techniques you find working for you and how efficient and time-worthy they are compared to the first two?

I’ve tinkered with Twitter, but I’m not aware of having gotten much revenue from that. It’s something I’m still learning about and monitoring though as I think it could be very important in the future. Other than that – there is the essential link building. It seems time consuming and is often frustrating but really pays dividends both in terms of traffic and improved rankings. I recently got one link that delivers me 800 very relevant visitors per month – just by asking nicely. Well worth the 5 minutes it took to write the e-mail!

3. Which of the common affiliate systems (e.g., Datafeedr, Easy content Units, others?) do you use on your sites (if any), and what features you like about the ones you use?

I don’t use any of the affiliate systems on my sites, I work with my own content and my husband creates feed magic for me in the form of shopping sections which I integrate into my Wordpress blogs to make them look / feel more like a standard e-commerce offering. If I was going to use one though it would be Easy Content Units – its an incredibly clever system developed for affiliates by affiliates. Highly recommended.

4. I heard (but never tried) that affiliates can get deep links from the merchants they advertise. Do you think those are worth the effort as a way to build links for improving site SERPs and/or getting some traffic?

I don’t have too many of these (one in actual fact!) however that’s probably because I don’t ask very often. It’s definitely worth asking via e-mail particularly if you have a good relationship with the merchant and they have a blog or similar where they might be able to provide you with a link. “He who asketh not getteth Hee Haw” as we say in Scotland

5. And the last. Many affiliates have lots of links to merchants on both their home and internal pages. Those links, however, may strip site of link juice and thus worsen its SERPs. My question is – do you practise nofollowing for the merchant links or any other way to go about that issue?

I use php redirected links on all of my sites. I do this for no other reason than ease of management. I suppose this is something you should give due diligence, but being a bit lazy I’ve not done much about it and still seem to earn a decent amount of money / get good traffic!

A while back I shared how I’d discovered you could create descriptions for categories, thereby giving those often useful resources a chance at ranking.

Having FINALLY gotten around to getting some content created for the categories on the website I intend to use this handy dandy little tip on, I was moderately horrified to discover that Wordpress will use these descriptions as link titles (well my theme does anyway).  That sort of volume of text showing up when someone hovers over one of your links is very unappealing as is the thought of how Google may react to 3,000+ words of text on every page of the site that isn’t always visible and is the same on each page!

So, if you decide to create nice unique content on your category page and don’t want mahoosive chunks of text flying all over your site, here’s how to fix it!

Just A Simple Edit…

One file controls all this hoo ha, and you’ll find it in: WP-Includes > category-template.php

Simply open this file and do a search for the following text snippet: ‘use_desc_for_title’ => 1

Change the 1 to a 0 thusly: ‘use_desc_for_title’ => 0

Save your changes.

And the pesky link titles should be gone!

That’s A Fascinating Looking File…

And I’m pretty sure it’ll do lots of cool things which I will investigate and report back upon in due course.  However, I might just leave it alone for now as I can do without accidently turning my site upside down, inside out, and back to front without knowing how or why I’ve blinking well done it in the run up to Christmas!!

Oh, and do take a back up of that little file before you change it, just in case you have an accident.  I’m way too good at editing the original file and accidently deleting a single (but crucial) character somewhere along the way whereupon our neighbours hear something close to the following: -

“Arrghhh, ohhhh, Noooooo!!!! F**K!!”

Then the line my long suffering and lovely husband is all too familiar with;

“Duncan!  This f**king Wordpress has f**cking well stuffed up the site again.  Get it Fixed!!”

“What were you doing right before this happened, my love?”  He will say, mild mannered as always.

“Oooh… Arrghhhh, I dunno!  Fix the chuffing thing, quick!”

*Ahem* so yeah, I hope you guys find this tip useful!  Particularly the bit about backing up your files first.  You don’t all have Duncan sitting in your office to swear at and make it all nice and functional for you again should you make a small error

Are you excited about all this Christmas trade everyone’s been raving on about recently? Can you smell the scent of cash? Are you going to be PPC-ing your little heart out to get it? Are you like a little kid on Christmas day at the thought of a bumper festive season?

However, with till bells already starting to ring and many people running oodles of campaigns, it’s time for my festive warning….

Beware… The Christmas PPC Grinch is Out and About!

You see, during the heat of Christmas trade it’s very, very easy to get carried away and indulge in the upping of PPC bids based on good performance… and then forget completely to analyse how much festive bang you are getting for your PPC buck. When this happens, that sneaky little PPC grinch can nip in and nick a good whack of your profit on a campaign or campaigns.  The result?  Yep.  The PPC Grinch has stolen your Christmas!

As an aside, this is just as true at any other time of year.  However at Christmas that devious little Grinch weaves his wicked magic, throwing glittering dust into the eyes of bedroom affiliates up and down the country.  They often don’t notice until later until they’ve chucked away a distressing wodge of cash that evil influences were operating in their PPC campaign.

Let Me Give You An Example From One Of My Festive PPC Campaigns…

I increased the bid level on one of my small campaigns that is experiencing a nice little lift by 1p, hoping to increase my positions and traffic considerably.  This equates to a 20% increase in what I’m prepared to spend. I did this about 4 weeks ago with absolutely topping results so I could expect the same again, right?

After my changes, my campaign was still in profit and had increased a little.  As it was only a few pounds a day I then forgot about it for a while and never saw it again until I happened to get a mail from the merchant and it reminded me to have a looksee.  Here’s what I discovered the effect of my increase was: -

Old PPC Bid

Average impressions per day – 9,149

Average Clicks per day – 110

Average CTR -1.2%

Average CPC – 4p

Average Cost Per Day – £4.40

New PPC Bid

Average impressions per day – 9,653

Average Clicks per day – 140

Average CTR -1.46%

Average CPC – 5p

Average Cost Per Day – £7.00

**edit, I had to change the above figures after I umm… goofed them up!  I was re-doing them after miscounting the average number of days in the second part when Duncan rushed into the office to tell me about a Kookaburra in the garden.  So I lost my place and got them all back to front – sorry everyone!

Yes Thats Right Folks…

To achieve an additional 30 clicks per day (22%) I increased my PPC spend no less than 37% which was enough to stuff my campaign margins.  Now, you might well say “that’s all very well Kirsty but any idiot would notice if they’d done something like that”.  Which broadly speaking should be true.  However I know of at least one idiot who has fallen into this trap during Christmasses past and she’s the lady sitting writing this cautionary tale.

Why?  Because too often at Christmas you simply count up your daily take – there’s just way too many campaigns going on and too many distractions.  It’s not until afterwards when you really analyse what went on and realise you goofed up!

So Take Heed Of My Cautionary Tale…

Analyse each and every change you make to your Adwords campaigns.  Sometimes the increase you get from increasing your PPC spend isn’t really worth the extra outlay which means that mean and nasty old Christmas PPC Grinch can nick your hard earned cash and you won’t find out till his Christmas gold dust has cleared from your eyes.