My 1st Month in PPC - I am Getting Killed

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writtenstyle

newbie taking action
Nov 3, 2008
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So, I decided to test some CPA campaigns with PPC. This was something completely new to me. I have been making money with freelance work and article marketing, and SEO, but never tried PPC.

I have tried a couple different methods
Adwords
FaceBook
CPM Banner buy

Here is my success. I am averaging 30-40% ctr from my LP to the offer. That goes for things like Acai, dating, mobile, email submits... My LP skills seem to be good enough to get people to the offer.

Another success is with my ctr's from ad to LP, especially with the banner buy that I did. I had a .28ctr for the two campaign I tried.

Here is where I fail. No matter what offer I pick, I cant get it to convert. I am running offers with high network epc's and not making conversions. Here is just a quick stat from NB, not the other networks.

nb1.jpg


Not all of those were campaigns, just some random clicks. I am just trying to be transparent. 15 conversions out of 1300 clicks?

The one success was with the mobile offer for th World Cup. Of course, that was a short lived offer. Ran it on FB and had a .24% ctr. bids were $.08 cents bidding cpm

As you can see I cant convert offers. On a couple other networks I ran a highly targeted banner campaign for dating. I had 300 clicks to the offer, ZERO conversions.

I also ran 130 clicks to Acai Max, only converting 1.

Adwords is killing me. It wouldnt be if the offers were converting.
Banner Buys are killing me. I was averaging $.04 cents per click, but the offers dont convert.

At this point, I beleive I am out of the game. It is frustrating to get your ads t oget high ctr's and get your LP's to get high ctr's only to have the offer to fail in the end.

That was my first month in a nutshell. I lost around $600.
 


PPC can be a tough nut to crack.

my first success didn't come until I got an AM manager to basically write my ads for me and supply the keywords...

kw research is really the key, dont skimp on it!
 
A few quick things I'm going to point out - all with the caveat that I'm very much in the same boat as you...

You are running 21 offers on 3 different platforms. If you're doing each offer on each platform, then you have to be handling 63 sources of data. I sincerely hope you have tracking set up for that so you know how what is converting.

SCALE DOWN!

Take your best performing offer - looks like the grocery card submit from here - and find the source of the most conversions. Now focus all of your energies on turning it profitable. Maybe ask your AM what a respectable EPC for that is, and then work on getting your CPC down below it.

It sounds like you've learned a lot. You've figured out how to get a good CTR on Facebook. Have you split-tested using a lander vs. direct linking? Have you optimized your LP?

I'd be interested in talking more about this over PM or something. Like I said, I have not had much success and come from a similar background of doing SEO and writing. Hopefully someone else on the forum with more experience and a positive ROI will step in with some advice as well, but I've had success in other projects when I teamed up with people at the same level.

Finally, good luck bro.
 
If it was so easy everyone will make solid money. Concentrate on one thing, don't do FB, Adwords, media buys at once!
 
you ever try direct linking some of those campaigns? seems like a lot of the offers you're trying run well without a lander

you should be asking your am about this
 
aaaaaand welcome to affiliate marketing ...stick in there! 57 and 3 not god awful for zip submit I guess..try to get better target audiences for your offers maybe. looks like you don't have enough clicks on a lot of those to rly call them fails.
 
^^^ Ive talked to AM's but never have found one all that helpful. They basically tell me the offers should have converted and maybe I should try a cheaper traffic source.
 
Another thing to consider is that you could possibly be getting more curiosity clicks than anything else. Are you qualifying the user before they click to make sure that you're targeting the right audience?
 
Try to review the landing pages. These are the main problem for conversion.
Do you have a good "call to action", an "hero shoot" on your pages?
 
^^^ I thought going with the offers with the highest network epc's would be safer in the beginning, than reviewing offer LP's.

Yes, I have strong calls to action. Like I said. I am getting people to the offers. That is all I am doing at this point.
 
I have tried many different approach to the acai/detox/colon vertical and this current approach has been the most useful to me to date: (the vertical has been hit hard since early this year)

In a nutshell:

1. PPC Traffic from Adwords - Tens of Thousands of long-tail keywords to reduce the CPC

2. Send the PPC traffic to a high-converting/tested email optin (with good marketing video) short and simple landing page.

3. Redirect them to appropriate offer landing pages right after, both GEO and Gender targeted. (you can have scripts to figure out the gender based on the first name)

If you optimize the step 2 well (e.g. good marketing video to make the visitors more interested on what you have to offer), you can maintain or even improve the conversion rate (compared to sending them directly to offers in step 3)

Plus you build up your list so you can re-market to them later on, so the overall "value per lead" improves significantly.

But yes, agreeing with what people said, you should focus on monetizing 1 type of traffic instead of mixing your traffic sources. That'd be the first step IMHO.

That's just my approach in a nutshell. It has been satisfactory so far.
 
But is it ok with networks ? What you do is basically coreg or not ? And coreg pays shit, while you get paid solid $xx and still have lead.
 
Communicate openly with your account manager, you need to sit down and focus on a single niche before trying too many things. I noticed a lot of the offers you were promoting there are somewhat weak too...
 
How aggressively are you trying to see a return?

I havent done PPC in a while, but when I have time I plan to get back in to it.

Heres my plan for when I do:

My target profit is going to be 200-300%

The amount of return is more important to me than the turnaround time, meaning if I spend $200 on a campaign. I dont care if it only gets a few clicks per month, as long as those clicks are extremely targetted and convert well.

The very first thing I learned in PPC was, the faster you try to get the clicks to come in, the more likely you just end up spending your money faster.

Until you have a handle on how to convert through your landing page, pick very targetted keywords, regardless of how low the volume is. They will be cheaper per click and your learning curve tuition wont cost as much.
 
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