Another noob PPC journal

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nukeleearr

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Feb 2, 2011
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Hi there peoples, I am pleased to announce yet anottttttttttther newb journal! I'm a web developer for a large F500 company and was recently enticed into affiliate marketing as I find the whole process of optimization quite fun. I have about $2k in capital I'm prepared to lose doing PURE PPC to start.

I will be journaling about my experiences, a lot of my common questions I had and I'll even post links and details to my failed campaigns so hopefully I can get some feedback and help some future-newbs not make the same silly mistakes I did.

That's it for now.. will post shortly some details about my first (and most likely complete and utter failure) campaign
 


Hello journal readers!

I launched my first campaign this weekend with my $100 credit from AdWords. It was quite the learning experience, but I made a bunch of really really really stupid mistakes.

The GOOD:
- I had a 7 QS on all my keywords (i'm guessing that's the max google gives without traffic) after following a few guides frm this forum
- I setup t202 with WordPress
- I now know how AdWords works
- I used Market Samurai and realized that google traffic estimator is fairly accurate

The BAD:
- Terrible choice of what to promote. I had an idea for something, but my AM talked me into promoting something else and called the offer I wanted to promote 'crummy'. I made a quick decision to go with a certain niche, and soon realized that the niche was fairly saturated.

Lessons Learned: DO YOUR FUCKING KEYWORD HOMEWORK. 150,000 / 30 = 5,000 impressions a day. Assuming a 1% CTR (which is probably liberal for a huge fucking newb like me) that's 50 clicks per day... which is reasonable since you can always expand to other PPC services. Now why the FUCK was I using keywords with < 5000 searches per month? I'm a big fucking retarded newb, that's why.

If that wasn't already bad enough, I soon realized after setting up my campaign that my 'niche' market wasn't as niche as I thought and couldn't get any fucking action at all with $1 bids... which is much much more that I'm willing to spend as (correct me here if I'm wrong folks) a decent sample size for a campaign is around 250 clicks... so $250~ to test if a campaign has a hope is a little steep for someone with $2k in capital. I did only spend $8 on a new domain, and since I didn't get any action on any of my keywords... that's a pretty cheap learning experience, imo... so moral is still high.

Going to put this campaign on hold for now (since it may have a chance in the future if I have the capital to promote it. I won't be releasing details yet so you guys can see my failure of a LP sometime later, but tomorrow I'll be back at it researching a new product but this time DOING MY FUCKING KEYWORD HOMEWORK!

Running Total: -$8.00
 
great to see people actively seeing what went right and wrong with their campaigns. Am sure you will do well, just sick in there and all will come right (eventually :))
 
> my AM talked me into promoting something else and called the offer I wanted
> to promote 'crummy'. I made a quick decision to go with a certain niche

Can you clarify... you went with or against your AM's advice?
 
Well, all what you did is not worse that big as you think...5000 searches a month bad ? Why not use 30 that keywords ? Moreover CTR and QS will be much higher on them if you may realise than on that 150k, as well as cheaper bids.
Why not use 300 keywords for 500 searches a month each ? you got it.
 
pure volume of searches doesn't always equal more profit, often times it equals more money spent on random clickers.

Try to target your ads and keywords to buying terms in your niche as opposed to the broad term of the niche and then specifically target your ads for all the specific keyword groups.

Low search terms can do wonders if you use them right.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys! To follow up...

Chianti said:
> my AM talked me into promoting something else and called the offer I wanted
> to promote 'crummy'. I made a quick decision to go with a certain niche

Can you clarify... you went with or against your AM's advice?
Click to expand...

I promoted the product my AM recommended on the basis that is was 'converting well'.

seolinker said:
Well, all what you did is not worse that big as you think...5000 searches a month bad ? Why not use 30 that keywords ? Moreover CTR and QS will be much higher on them if you may realise than on that 150k, as well as cheaper bids.
Why not use 300 keywords for 500 searches a month each ? you got it.
Click to expand...

That is what I was doing. The problem is the keywords I was using are too competitive and I don't have the capital for $2 bids to test a campaign. Another idea I had was bidding on low competition broad keywords, but there would be low CTR/QS and a lot of random clickers.

Either way, I'm wrapping this campaign up for now until I can get more capital. I'm going to continue writing articles to improve my copywriting and maybe get some organic traffic on some of my keywords but will start researching new ventures this week.

Will provide more updates when I have an idea! Thanks for all the feedback!
 
I find that most of the time my AM says that something is working and people are making mad money then I usually end up losing a shitload real quick.

To many variables to just say yeah, lots of people are banking. How are they promoting it, what is their cost, and most importantly.....

what % of this offer does the AM get. I know i'd push for offers that I got paid from..
 
BacklinksMonkey said:
Didn't you just say you were starting off with a $2k you can afford to waste?
Click to expand...

I did. Just because I can afford to waste it doesn't mean I should blow my load so early. I didn't have confidence in that campaign.

ANYWHO, I'm back! I've been doing research all week on potential campaigns, and I have an idea that I'm going to run with. It's not really a new idea... there's probably about 1,000 websites that do something similar, but I have some decent keywords that I'm going to run with. Basically, the keywords are cyclical in nature, so the old one was quite popular, but the new one i'm going is not but is trending up big time.

One has (expected if the new keyword performs as well as the old one) 50k and 75k respected views monthly. They're both low competition and .08 avg cpc according to keywords (no idea how realistic this is).

Anywho, a quick analysis of my keywords

THE GOOD:
- As I previously mentioned, they're trending, low comp, and low cpc
- The website I have planned and the product I'm promoting is VERY popular and standard. With this campaign even if it fails, I'll def get my feet wet with making some money and learning more about ad words
- Not much SEO competition... all the top articles are from ehow or other blogs. The top site is NOT really related to the keyword and has only 113 backlinks.
- Excellent potential for other income streams (e-mail from subscribers) and can incorporate a lot of different offers (after saying this and some of the stuff above, I'm sure most people could guess at what I'm promoting).

THE BAD:
- Setting up prosper or tracker will be a bitch because i'll be promoting multiple offers.
- oversaturated market
- my keywords aren't THAT related to the 'main' market. What I mean is people searching for a site that has what I offer will 99% of the time search for something else which will have a lot of competition. Even if I hit #1 on search result, I'm not sure how much organic traffic will be relevant to my site. If this is the case, I'll still have PPC to fall back on.

All in all, I'm excited and sort of optimistic even though I think this will crash and burn, I'm sure I will learn a lot. Wish me luck! Will provide another update when the site is done and I'm about to go live.

p.s. quick newb questions - when buying backlinks, what's a safe amount per week to fly under googles radar?
 
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