Week 3 of my PPC challenge, I thought I’d keep a little day to day note of how I felt about things every day. Just for a bit of insight into the self doubt!
Day 1 – Started off the week feeling disheartened after a weekend of zero sales! Shattered, kids awful. But nevertheless I cranked out two new mini campaigns and did not enjoy it at all. The campaigns get a few clicks immediately. I go to bed feeling quite excited. I’m sure there’ll be a sale from somewhere in the morning
Day 2 – Still no new sales. God I suck, I really don’t know what the point of this is. Why are there no conversions? Really disheartened. I log into Facebook to distract myself from my feelings of impending failure. Everyone’s just been paid FFS. What’s the issue here!! But I’ve been here before. I get disheartened and stop the project. Two months later, everything’s working marvellous and I SHOULD NOT HAVE STOPPED. With great reluctance, I get my hour done and pop up 5 new adgroups.
Day 3 – sigh. Not a new penny. Also, discovered I’d stuffed up and left the “search partners” option activated on Bing. No wonder my click levels have been fluctuating madly. Now resolved. However, It did make me realise I’ve added a lotta adgroups since the start of my project. I’m up to over 120 now. I’ve popped up another 5 adgroups today to add into the campaign I did yesterday.
Day 4 – Small commission made, One new campaign set up. I only managed one Adgroup due to the time it took me to find the appropriate test areas to start off in. The merchant site I chose wasn’t in one of my “preferred” niche areas so I had to cope with a little bit of unfamiliarity.
Week 3 Results
Total Clicks: 111
Total Cost £15.97
Total Revenue £12.80
Loss: £3.17
Cumulative Results
Total Clicks: 238
Total Revenue: £31.91
Total Loss: £3.54
The Swear Jar is Rammed To Bursting
This right here is the point at which this sort of promotion drives you freaking batty! All the revenues over the three weeks have come from different places. What performed in Week 1 has died in week 2 & 3, or the traffic has vanished. Some of the new things I’ve added which make up the extra traffic have volume but have done nothing. I’ve been doing a lot of silent swearing under my breath this week as I check my stats, and really feel a bit disheartened. I’ve only spent £3.54 on all this though and I’ve gained 238 data gathering opportunities on the click front. I can’t see any reason to not just keep pushing on.
Giving My Work Time To Succeed
A lot of what these campaigns need is simply time. Bing in particular takes weeks for PPC to bed in. I’m also only using phrase and exact match for my little experiment as I mentioned in week 1. That does mean volume will fluctuate, as I have found you do need to venture into broad match with modifiers to really get the old Bing volume flowing. However, I’m not doing that until I can see who is converting as it’s fairly labour intensive to manage that traffic stream initially.
What I’m Doing in Wk 4
I said that in week 3 I’d be honing things, I didn’t do that. I added a new merchant every day because I remembered I am going on holiday this coming week. I won’t add in new things on holiday, and I won’t be doing my hour a day challenge in it’s full form. My kids will be in a log cabin with me, and I am incapable of concentrating on being creative around them. Also, they should get to enjoy a bit of Mum time without the “Shh. Working!” thing happening. I will spend time doing bid management and negatives though, when my darlings go to sleep.
Wow, Affiliate Marketing Takes Time!
That’s right Susan. Remember that the next time you see an infallable making money product online 😉
