1 month, $10,000 profit all ppc challenge
- Thread starter beejeebers
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Awesome thread. Started out sounding like nothing good would come of it, but he's definitely giving some sound advice, whether he's showing you his site or not.
Hey beejeebers, one thing that caught my eye is the fact that you're using your own lead capture form and filling in the affiliate form yourself (well, with a script). How did you go about being allowed to do that? I've built and done PPC for a few different clients in the finance industry and thought often about how much cheaper I was getting them leads for than the affiliate payouts would be if I was allowed to do that.
Hey beejeebers, one thing that caught my eye is the fact that you're using your own lead capture form and filling in the affiliate form yourself (well, with a script). How did you go about being allowed to do that? I've built and done PPC for a few different clients in the finance industry and thought often about how much cheaper I was getting them leads for than the affiliate payouts would be if I was allowed to do that.
First Update:
March 15th, 2007
Added 10 adgroups to adwords. I like to keep adwords lean and mean and always make sure I pass at least 2 variables along in the destination url. The keyword and the referring ppc engine. If you don't track your keywords, you're wasting money big time. I use adwords, oveture and msn's conversion code tracking on everything. I know there are people who wear tinfoil hats that think this is a bad idea, but it saves me time and is very easy to use. I also have all information emailed to me and submitted to my own database along with the merchants database automatically. One thing I would love to see on all ppc engines is the ability to adjust the conversions. If you get bad apps or fake apps, they still count for a conversion in the engines, but you can't use them for anything so it's worthless to you. That throws off all your cost per conversion numbers because you can't go in and manually subtract bad or fake apps. So that's one improvement I'd love to see.
I also added 10,000 keywords to msn and 10,000 to overture. I use the "shot gun" approach with these two engines. I will bid low to start, then go back in and adjust my bids once they are accepted. I wish all ppc engines had the "bid to position" feature the old overture still has. I love this feature and use it all the time. It takes about 5 minutes to upload everything to overture and about 10 minutes for msn. I use the bulk keyword upload for msn all the time too, very handy feature.
March 16th, 2007
Today I added another 20 adgroups to adwords, 8,000 to overture and 8,000 to msn. I also found an error in my coding where the error check script wasn't delivering all the form fields to me. It was a simple fix, but could have been very costly.
March 17th, 2007
I added another 10 groups so far to adwords and am bidding high enough to hit the first page of results. All conversions so far have come from msn and overture though. I plan on adding another 10,000 to each after this post. One neat thing I have found with msn is their reporting is very slick with their system. You can get reports in customizable formats a lot easier then overture and adwords. Plus the scheduling feature is very nice as well.
The numbers
Anyhow here's the numbers so far. It's St. Patricks day today so I expected them to be down, but 2 leads is a good start.
So, I have made some money so far, but it's only been 3 days. Sometimes it takes quite awhile for overture and msn to get up to full speed, not to mention adwords. I'm off to add more keywords now and get that profit number up!
March 15th, 2007
Added 10 adgroups to adwords. I like to keep adwords lean and mean and always make sure I pass at least 2 variables along in the destination url. The keyword and the referring ppc engine. If you don't track your keywords, you're wasting money big time. I use adwords, oveture and msn's conversion code tracking on everything. I know there are people who wear tinfoil hats that think this is a bad idea, but it saves me time and is very easy to use. I also have all information emailed to me and submitted to my own database along with the merchants database automatically. One thing I would love to see on all ppc engines is the ability to adjust the conversions. If you get bad apps or fake apps, they still count for a conversion in the engines, but you can't use them for anything so it's worthless to you. That throws off all your cost per conversion numbers because you can't go in and manually subtract bad or fake apps. So that's one improvement I'd love to see.
I also added 10,000 keywords to msn and 10,000 to overture. I use the "shot gun" approach with these two engines. I will bid low to start, then go back in and adjust my bids once they are accepted. I wish all ppc engines had the "bid to position" feature the old overture still has. I love this feature and use it all the time. It takes about 5 minutes to upload everything to overture and about 10 minutes for msn. I use the bulk keyword upload for msn all the time too, very handy feature.
March 16th, 2007
Today I added another 20 adgroups to adwords, 8,000 to overture and 8,000 to msn. I also found an error in my coding where the error check script wasn't delivering all the form fields to me. It was a simple fix, but could have been very costly.
March 17th, 2007
I added another 10 groups so far to adwords and am bidding high enough to hit the first page of results. All conversions so far have come from msn and overture though. I plan on adding another 10,000 to each after this post. One neat thing I have found with msn is their reporting is very slick with their system. You can get reports in customizable formats a lot easier then overture and adwords. Plus the scheduling feature is very nice as well.
The numbers
Anyhow here's the numbers so far. It's St. Patricks day today so I expected them to be down, but 2 leads is a good start.
So, I have made some money so far, but it's only been 3 days. Sometimes it takes quite awhile for overture and msn to get up to full speed, not to mention adwords. I'm off to add more keywords now and get that profit number up!
Great post beejeebers, just two things I thought I would point out:
1) Adcenter doesn't check their keywords manually anymore (I can usually get keywords approved in 30 mins and less)
2) To leave out broad match, just leave the broad column in your spreadsheet empty when uploading a keyword list to Adcenter
1) Adcenter doesn't check their keywords manually anymore (I can usually get keywords approved in 30 mins and less)
2) To leave out broad match, just leave the broad column in your spreadsheet empty when uploading a keyword list to Adcenter
I use various keyword programs to create big lists. I think I've used them all and I really don't have a preference, they all do the same basic thing.
My adcenter stuff did go through within 24 hours which I was amazed at, but I have done some stuff in the past where it took literally a week to get going.
I tried setting broad match to 0 and "n/a" and "off" but I don't think I ever left it just blank, I'll give that a try tonight, thanks!
My adcenter stuff did go through within 24 hours which I was amazed at, but I have done some stuff in the past where it took literally a week to get going.
I tried setting broad match to 0 and "n/a" and "off" but I don't think I ever left it just blank, I'll give that a try tonight, thanks!
This is a good thread. Props. For those asking for keyword tools, I would assume any of the tools in the market can be used to generate these types of volume. I personally use an old version of Rapid Keyword. They generate keywords from Google searches, Yahoo searches, Yahoo Groups, meta keywords and other sources. Then I combine the lists to form even more combinations.
Can't Wait to see the results.Oh by the way hello everyone. After umpteen years reading shit on the internet I have FINALLY found a home (if accepted) where I can learn something. I mean really learn something. I just found this site two days ago and I have got the biggest F'N headache from all the great information, I have been reading. Newbie here beyond belief but hope to someday contribute and continue to pass it on. Now enough the Bullshit from me. Looking forward to learning from all the pros
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