I lost and losing thousands but i am still trying :)

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itchy, dropping that knowledge and reminding everyone this place is more than dickrolls... sometimes

and to the OP, its better to lose money than to read forums and blogs for a year and not take action. You lose A LOT more money that way. Also its not "losing money" its "learning what doesn't work". As long as you are getting enough data to make actionable decisions, the money is well spent. Many people's fear of loss stops them from winning in life.

You'll get there and you're already closer than people who don't do anything, (provided you aren't a total retard).
 
Hello friend,

You may lose thousands now but soon may make thousands day if no in hour.

Good luck bro
 
Hey, itchy, what do you mean with this? still don't understand

itchy said:
what are they doing the others arent then find a similar but non cpa offer (clickbank works good for this) and cross reference the top ads for that. hopefully if you're not a total retard something will pop up here saying try this. (you're looking for something the cpa boys arent doing but that could make your ad stand out)
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SkipStaa said:
::Note:: Someone paying for first place on a major niche key word (education, debt, health, diet) in ppc is probably doing well the cost for the click wouldn't be worth it otherwise
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::Note:: Someone paying for first place on a major niche key word (education, debt, health, diet) in ppc AND NOT SLAPPED FOR MONTHS is probably doing well AND the cost for the click isn't even near to the high cost u pay for in %100 exactly the same conditions.
 
hannahmcintyre said:
Don't start in one of the super saturated niches. Find something with a low-average amount of competition, get a few profitable campaigns in those verticals going until you get the hang of how things work, then move into the bigger niches.
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Definitely that's what I do, Hanna. PPC could get a little more complicated sometimes so we basically have to develop certain marketing strategy to outwit it and get ahead of the tough competition.
 
If its PPC thats cost you money, then why not opt for SEO?

Sounds like you're relatively new to IM, and PPC for newcomers is not the best move. When I started out, I concentrated purely on SEO, its only now 18 months later that I have began using PPC to top up additional traffic that I get from SERPS.

With PPC, the effects are only temporary (like steroids..) and whilst this can be great for instant results and testing campaigns, in my opinion SEO/SEM is the way forward.

If you gave me a budget of $1500 for spend on your site, I would spend a large chunk of that on well written keyword targetted content to be used on your site. If you had done that you would receive much greater long term benefits than opting soley for the PPC route.
 
PPC Losses

Hi mate, sorry to hear about your losses, but i have to echo the other posts when i say concentrate your efforts on seo.

Master one area before you move on to the next.

Have you had any success with any of your ppc campaigns?
 
Heres a strategy I use that gives you a massive ROI

Use "buying" keywords and only use [exact match]. I have 20%+ CTRs doing this which gives me quality scores of 10, top positions and a very low average CPC

[buy (name of product)]

You wont get much traffic but it will be as targeted as you can get which = $$$
 
TG2006 said:
Heres a strategy I use that gives you a massive ROI

Use "buying" keywords and only use [exact match]. I have 20%+ CTRs doing this which gives me quality scores of 10, top positions and a very low average CPC

[buy (name of product)]

You wont get much traffic but it will be as targeted as you can get which = $$$
Click to expand...

Shoosh you!
 
TG2006 said:
Heres a strategy I use that gives you a massive ROI

Use "buying" keywords and only use [exact match]. I have 20%+ CTRs doing this which gives me quality scores of 10, top positions and a very low average CPC

[buy (name of product)]

You wont get much traffic but it will be as targeted as you can get which = $$$
Click to expand...


Very Nice. I just bought 10 domains to try it out.
 
itchy said:
ok this is probably the best advice here. don't just go straight out ripping ads and landing pages but use them as a reference, you'll learn more. 10 people all making review pages? - well make a review page. all direct linking? well direct link. with little to no experience and a lack of funds this is really you're only way to go without going bust. leave the "thinking outside the box" stuff to later on when you've got a testing budget and some experience of what works. because i can tell you now what you think will work, won't.

it sounds to me you are using the edison approach ie just slinging things at the wall in the hope things are going to stick. it might be more prudent to adopt the approach used by tessler (edisons nemesis). now tessler, unlike edison, was famous for building his machines inside his head. in fact he went in to so much detail he would even factor in wear and tear on the parts before he even lifted a tool. the result? 9 times out of 10 when tessler built something it worked first time. now while there is merit in both approaches when applied to aff marketing if you are on a low budget i'd go with tessler, building 2000 campaigns before finding a winner could get expensive (and edison had a team behind him).

so how can you adopt some of what tessler did? well firstly google really is your friend here. from google you can fully research every aspect of your competitiors campaigns. now i'm not talking about some dumb inaccurate spy tools i mean actually do this stuff yourself. firstly print out all the ads for the biggest keywords you can find for your offer in order and analyze them. ask yourself why the top 3 are the top 3. what are they doing the others arent then find a similar but non cpa offer (clickbank works good for this) and cross reference the top ads for that. hopefully if you're not a total retard something will pop up here saying try this. (you're looking for something the cpa boys arent doing but that could make your ad stand out) write down 4 or 5 ideas for split testing.

next, landing pages. once again print out all the top landing pages for the highest traffic keyword you can find. imitation is key here. with them all printed out on the floor look for the best bits from each page, fire up photoshop (or call your designer) and mangle them all together (with a few variations for split testing). this works period.

finally think about the "scent trail". warning ad? warning headline on landing page! scam ad? scam headline etc. you want your prospect to seamlessly flow from ad to landing page to offer (with credit card in hand lol). remember they clicked your ad, they are interested - only you can fuck this up. your stats will show whether you got it right or not.

now the offers. once again you can let everyone else do most of the split testing here for you. look back at those landing pages you printed off earlier. what offers are being promoted and in what order (if multi-review pages). once you have an idea of 2 or 3 offers you think are going to work check what networks have them (livehttpheaders) and divise your split tests between offers and networks. add a little php magic to your landing pages to get them offers rotating and you're set.

as you can see with a bit of research you can pretty much plan out most of your campaigns before you even spend a single dollar. and this works on content network and banners too but i'll leave you to work out that out for yourself.

finally the other thing i think you are doing wrong is the high bidding. this in itself is an immensly powerful strategy and in my eyes anyway the best way to game google for quality score right now. the problem with the strategy is that you will lose a bundle of money if your campaign is not profitable. so test with low bids in a test account and when that bad boy is optimised fully then move it to a seperate account, jack up the bids and let her rip.

it sux to lose money but hopefully some of this thread will help get you on a winner a bit sooner. it only takes one campaign and you'll be looking back at all this laughing while recouping all that lost money. good luck
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Excellent post, thanks, Itchy. +rep.
 
awaisuk said:
Great advice.

Yes, i track my keywords. And whenever i put a new campaign and keyword in i bid real high, like $5/click, and then go down to $0.25 a click or as low as i can. I just do that to get a good ranking and take the other guys off the competition.
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This is the worst idea ever!

I'm not affiliate marketing expert, but I do manage ppc for a large retailer. First off, bidding that high to get a ranking is not going to do anything but break your bank for a new site and account. Chances are, the guys in the top 5 positions have longer account histories and aren't paying $5/click. There are many factors that affect cpc, and bidding high to start then dropping the bid to $.25 is a bad plan.

Find a smaller, not so competitive vertical like others have suggested, and start small. Stay away from the obvious keywords as they will probably be too expensive for a new account...unless you have money to burn.
 
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