Starting Off in PPC
- Thread starter zorba
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I was able to get $100/day in clicks with MSN at first, my impression count has just declined every day even as I set my budget higher. Like I said, I think there's some "silent" quality scoring going on.
I'll try Yahoo again at some point -- I have a credit balance with them I'll certainly want to spend on something -- but their tools are so painfully bad. If I get up to enough volume for them to enable uploads on my account, that would be better, since I could develop campaigns in the Google or AdCenter tools and then just upload the whole thing to Yahoo and not have to touch their horrible website.
I'll try Yahoo again at some point -- I have a credit balance with them I'll certainly want to spend on something -- but their tools are so painfully bad. If I get up to enough volume for them to enable uploads on my account, that would be better, since I could develop campaigns in the Google or AdCenter tools and then just upload the whole thing to Yahoo and not have to touch their horrible website.
+rep
1. This is the most important part. People usually click the back button right after they landed on your LP but 20% for LP to Offer is still low. I'm not sure if you hire LP designer or designed it by yourself, but i'd recommend getting one from buy and sale section. It's fast and you know it works because everyone's doing it. Don't reinvent the wheel, just modify some of it and you're good since this is just the experiment. Try to aim for 50% at least(if it's review style).
2. Don't know much about Adwords but if it's YSM and Adcenter, just add new adgroup or create a brand new campaign. You can't get banned as easy as with adword.
3. So when you set up your campaign for US and CA? Or you want to monetize the traffic leaks from CA? Either way, just set campaign on US ONLY and forget about the leaks traffic from CA or other country. It's not worth it if you already set for US.
4. I usually start off with one or two adgroups per campaign. Then after having some converted keywords, expanded each keywords by using it as root.
5. Signed up with it but never used it(ver 1.) it's not that useful if you don't know how to convert. It simply just speedup your research process.
-I've tried many low payout keywords but none of them were profitable, lots of flucations so data has lots of gaps. Maybe cause i just suck at it.lol
-Don't waste time with MSN.
From reading your posts, I got the impression that you know how to educate, but not how to sell. I'd read up on marketing and human behavior and try to hone your copy to address wants and needs rather than citing a boatload of studies and info.
+ rep and thanks for the insights and well-written posts.
I am pertrified of PPC...I will keep using up all these free and time consuming ways that work and are safe until I feel like I have money to burn for when I mess up just testing and trying things in the PPC world...
and advice gladly will take it...
and advice gladly will take it...
I realize your click volume is still really low, but one of the most important things to do when you're starting out in a new niche with landing pages, is to split-test several variations from the start.
You're saying you will set up a new landing page, and that's probably a good idea at the moment. But if you can - try to get some more traffic, and split-test between 2 or 3 very different types of landing pages. (e.g. Review style VS Flog VS "Authority"/informational style).
Since you don't have any PPC Bully research to rely upon, this is hands down the best way to find what type of page will be working the best for your visitors.
The good thing about PPC Bully is that it helps you narrow down the choices (landing page styles that work well for a niche) from the beginning.
When you have narrowed it down to the best performer (conversion-wise, not just CTR-wise), start up a new split-test with variations of the winning page. This time start experimenting with layout variations, headlines, etc.
The only downside to this is that you do need some volume to base your stats on. If you're getting 50 clicks a day in total, it's gonna be slow to split that across 3 different pages. Unless you wanna be patient and wait till you have at least 100 clicks to each page.
You're saying you will set up a new landing page, and that's probably a good idea at the moment. But if you can - try to get some more traffic, and split-test between 2 or 3 very different types of landing pages. (e.g. Review style VS Flog VS "Authority"/informational style).
Since you don't have any PPC Bully research to rely upon, this is hands down the best way to find what type of page will be working the best for your visitors.
The good thing about PPC Bully is that it helps you narrow down the choices (landing page styles that work well for a niche) from the beginning.
When you have narrowed it down to the best performer (conversion-wise, not just CTR-wise), start up a new split-test with variations of the winning page. This time start experimenting with layout variations, headlines, etc.
The only downside to this is that you do need some volume to base your stats on. If you're getting 50 clicks a day in total, it's gonna be slow to split that across 3 different pages. Unless you wanna be patient and wait till you have at least 100 clicks to each page.
Sounds to me you're running Never blue, in which case I would recommend you be split testing the offer with one from another network. You may be surprised by the difference in conversions.
Not great, unfortunately. I still haven't been able to make the campaign consistently profitable -- I have profitable days and losing days.
I got sidetracked a bit; I've got a 30-day trial of PPC Bully 2, so I've been playing around with that, not just on my ResV campaign but trying out some other stuff, too. However, I'm not raising my budget to do that, so playing with it requires pausing or reducing the budget on my ResV campaign. Essentially, I want to make sure I do enough with PPC Bully 2 in 30 days to know if the tool would be useful to me or not -- so far (after only 5 days, admittedly) I've not made any profit with it. Since I have only 30 days for this, and all the time in the world with ResV, I've delayed the ResV campaign.
This said, I'm still working on it. My 20% CTR from landing page to affiliate offer, while vastly better than what I used to have, is still not great. I've done #1-#3 on my checklist from my last post -- that is, I've created a brand new landing page (based on a new style, rather than the flog or review styles) with good keyword density and more thought toward sales language as well as strong linking (i.e. practically everything on the page links to the affiliate offer if you click on it -- as long as you don't click Back or the red X, you're probably going to end up on the offer page.) I've got this page up on a new domain, and have it set up in a new campaign in MSN (this was another reason for the delay -- I wasn't about to start paying for PPC before being sure the new domain had fully propogated.)
Also, my new LP has PHP-based geotargeting -- if you're not US or Canada traffic, you get straight-up 301 redirected to an international ResV offer. In answer to redmonkey, my campaigns were set up as US/CA only, since my offer only paid for US and CA leads, but I still got a little bit (3-5% normally, 10% on one day) traffic that the network was redirecting as non-US/CA traffic. I don't want that to be totally wasted, hence the redirect -- I figure even a crappy international ResV offer has to be better than fucking Webfetti.
Also, when I reactivate the campaign (which I will do tonight, actually, pausing my PPC Bully 2 experiments), I'm going to take this_guy's advice and try a different network -- he's right, I had been running with Neverblue ResV and skin care offers. I like their tracking system and their payouts, and the AMs have been good to me, but I have seen a lot of complaints here on WF that the CRs are lower there than other networks. I asked my COPEAC affiliate manager for ResV offer suggestions, and I'm going to try out the ones she gave me. (One advantage to having done $46k of SEO before getting into PPC -- I was accepted at every network I applied to within a couple days, which I think might be unusual judging by reading people's complaints here on WF.)
Other stuff I've done: modified my Prosper202 install to track LP-to-offer CTR rather than just keyword-to-offer -- my new page is more customizable than my previous WordPress-based one, so I figure I can use this knowledge (i.e. if some keywords constantly result in people hitting Back/Close from the LP, maybe I need a custom LP for those keywords.) Also, my new LP is straight PHP based instead of WordPress, so I can do my geotargeting, swap out the offer just by changing a DB field, and easily base the page on the keyword. As easy as WordPress is, as a programmer I feel constantly hamstrung by the inability to put server-side code (e.g. PHP) in posts and pages. I'm considering trying to get the best of both worlds by cracking open the WordPress codebase and modifying it to let me insert arbitrary code into posts. I can see why it doesn't normally allow it (as a professional security expert, the idea makes me cringe), but for IM it would sure be nice.
I'm trying not to be discouraged by my inability to get significantly above breakeven -- I really need either a 150% ROI on good days, or to not have any bad days.
However, I sometimes wonder if I'd be better off going back to SEO. It seems that my strengths (automation, programming, and, well, figuring out weaknesses in systems and how to fuck with them) are much more of an advantage in the SEO world than the PPC world -- the PPC world seems much more focused on soft skills (selling stuff, writing copy) that are harder for me. On the other hand, the massive scaling potential of PPC tempts me.
I got sidetracked a bit; I've got a 30-day trial of PPC Bully 2, so I've been playing around with that, not just on my ResV campaign but trying out some other stuff, too. However, I'm not raising my budget to do that, so playing with it requires pausing or reducing the budget on my ResV campaign. Essentially, I want to make sure I do enough with PPC Bully 2 in 30 days to know if the tool would be useful to me or not -- so far (after only 5 days, admittedly) I've not made any profit with it. Since I have only 30 days for this, and all the time in the world with ResV, I've delayed the ResV campaign.
This said, I'm still working on it. My 20% CTR from landing page to affiliate offer, while vastly better than what I used to have, is still not great. I've done #1-#3 on my checklist from my last post -- that is, I've created a brand new landing page (based on a new style, rather than the flog or review styles) with good keyword density and more thought toward sales language as well as strong linking (i.e. practically everything on the page links to the affiliate offer if you click on it -- as long as you don't click Back or the red X, you're probably going to end up on the offer page.) I've got this page up on a new domain, and have it set up in a new campaign in MSN (this was another reason for the delay -- I wasn't about to start paying for PPC before being sure the new domain had fully propogated.)
Also, my new LP has PHP-based geotargeting -- if you're not US or Canada traffic, you get straight-up 301 redirected to an international ResV offer. In answer to redmonkey, my campaigns were set up as US/CA only, since my offer only paid for US and CA leads, but I still got a little bit (3-5% normally, 10% on one day) traffic that the network was redirecting as non-US/CA traffic. I don't want that to be totally wasted, hence the redirect -- I figure even a crappy international ResV offer has to be better than fucking Webfetti.
Also, when I reactivate the campaign (which I will do tonight, actually, pausing my PPC Bully 2 experiments), I'm going to take this_guy's advice and try a different network -- he's right, I had been running with Neverblue ResV and skin care offers. I like their tracking system and their payouts, and the AMs have been good to me, but I have seen a lot of complaints here on WF that the CRs are lower there than other networks. I asked my COPEAC affiliate manager for ResV offer suggestions, and I'm going to try out the ones she gave me. (One advantage to having done $46k of SEO before getting into PPC -- I was accepted at every network I applied to within a couple days, which I think might be unusual judging by reading people's complaints here on WF.)
Other stuff I've done: modified my Prosper202 install to track LP-to-offer CTR rather than just keyword-to-offer -- my new page is more customizable than my previous WordPress-based one, so I figure I can use this knowledge (i.e. if some keywords constantly result in people hitting Back/Close from the LP, maybe I need a custom LP for those keywords.) Also, my new LP is straight PHP based instead of WordPress, so I can do my geotargeting, swap out the offer just by changing a DB field, and easily base the page on the keyword. As easy as WordPress is, as a programmer I feel constantly hamstrung by the inability to put server-side code (e.g. PHP) in posts and pages. I'm considering trying to get the best of both worlds by cracking open the WordPress codebase and modifying it to let me insert arbitrary code into posts. I can see why it doesn't normally allow it (as a professional security expert, the idea makes me cringe), but for IM it would sure be nice.
I'm trying not to be discouraged by my inability to get significantly above breakeven -- I really need either a 150% ROI on good days, or to not have any bad days.
However, I sometimes wonder if I'd be better off going back to SEO. It seems that my strengths (automation, programming, and, well, figuring out weaknesses in systems and how to fuck with them) are much more of an advantage in the SEO world than the PPC world -- the PPC world seems much more focused on soft skills (selling stuff, writing copy) that are harder for me. On the other hand, the massive scaling potential of PPC tempts me. 
I'd like to note about zorba mentioning MSN's invisible quality score, I think facebook does this as well (doesn't Microsoft manage FB's ads?). I've had ads on FB run great for a while, then suddenly just die with no chance of revival.
As for US and CA, i'd recommend targeting only US to start off. Targeting 2 countries could give u inaccurate stats and get yourself overwhelmed. CA might have different online shopping behavior than US. For ex, they might have little or no knowledge at all on Dr. Oz etc...Though there's no way i could confirm that, but being a minority myself give me this idea. If you want to expand your market internationality, do it after you have some experiences and able to make profit with a certain demographic(US in this case). As a marketer, you'd want to put yourself in consumer's shoe so imagine what made those people want to buy Acai or Rez...
PPCBully - I use this : Keyword Tool | Keyword Research and Tracking Tool | Competitive Analysis Tool - cheaper and more data than PPC-Bully(though i haven't tried 2.0 yet)
PPCBully - I use this : Keyword Tool | Keyword Research and Tracking Tool | Competitive Analysis Tool - cheaper and more data than PPC-Bully(though i haven't tried 2.0 yet)
Well, after only half a day running with my new LP and ads, I have two observations:
1.) My new LP seems to be quite good. Before, my LP to offer CTR was only about 20%; so far today the new LP has had a >50% CTR to the offer.
2.) It is amazing the difference Display URL makes; I'm shocked by the impact it had. My new ad campaign is identical in every way to the old one, except for the display URL, and my ad-to-LP CTRs are through the floor. The same adgroups that got 5-10% CTRs before are getting 0-1% now, with the same ad copy & position. I think this domain has potential in content network, but I'm sure as hell not going to use it in search anymore. I've already registered an alternative domain and am switching to it immediately. I can't make sales without any clicks.
1.) My new LP seems to be quite good. Before, my LP to offer CTR was only about 20%; so far today the new LP has had a >50% CTR to the offer.
2.) It is amazing the difference Display URL makes; I'm shocked by the impact it had. My new ad campaign is identical in every way to the old one, except for the display URL, and my ad-to-LP CTRs are through the floor. The same adgroups that got 5-10% CTRs before are getting 0-1% now, with the same ad copy & position. I think this domain has potential in content network, but I'm sure as hell not going to use it in search anymore. I've already registered an alternative domain and am switching to it immediately. I can't make sales without any clicks.
I really like this thread, I guess I'll contribute a little.
Think of the whole consumer cycle here. Understand their mindset is very important. Let me take acai berry for example
1. Consumer knows nothing about acai berry. No knowledge, whatsoever
2. Consumer learns about acai berry from reading the flog, watching ophra, listen to radio, watch dr. OZ or whatever
3. They read the flog, but didn't convert right away, saw the product on TV, heard it on radio, they want to know learn more about it.
4.This is when search engine comes into place. Sadly, as search engine marketer, we are picking up media buyer's left over, those that didn't convert when reading the flog, they come to search engine to do their research, also means those consumer are HARDER to convert to a certain degree.
5. Look at the media landing page, look at the ACTUAL media that gave the consumers their FIRST IMPRESSION on the product and think "What keyword would I use to research after I read this flog or watch this media"
You learned about the product from Oprah? Oprah acai berry? Omg, acai berry burns calories? Holy crap, acai berry can flat my stomach? anyways, you know the deal.
6. Ok, after you pick your keywords, now time to construct your landing page BASED on those keywords. What's customer's mindset here? They read/learn about the product. They like it, they want to try it, but they aren't sure, uncertain, that's why they are researching. They are looking for ASSURANCE in their research process, so basically as long as your landing page provides ASSURANCE and it CONFIRMS what they see from the media, your conversion can be decent.
Just think about your own mindset when you do research, it is not rocket science.
7. Landing page. Use keyword based dynamic landing page. If I learn about acai berry on oprah and i google search oprah acai berry, click on an ad to your lander, I am expecting to see Oprah. If you don't show me Oprah on your lander and show me rachel ray, you failed and I may not even know who the fk rachel ray is. Same logic applies to every keywords.
Also, another tip, test small sets of keywords first with exact match, once you find a keyword that's making you $, expand the hell out of it.
Let's say that Oprah Acai berry is profitable, expand it to
Oprah berry
Oprah acai juice
Winfrey acai
Winfrey acai juice
and etc.....
Expand the hell out of the profitable keywords, set your base, get a good standing ground before you test more new keywords.
Hope you enjoy my little contribution and btw, one dollar max bid for resveratrol is too low.
If you want to talk more about ppc, feel free to pm me your IM info, I am not much of a coder myself, so I would love to make more coder friends to make my life easier.
Disclaimer -
I do not promote acai berry, so I am puling those keywords out of my ass. I have no idea if they are profitable. I am just using it as example.
Think of the whole consumer cycle here. Understand their mindset is very important. Let me take acai berry for example
1. Consumer knows nothing about acai berry. No knowledge, whatsoever
2. Consumer learns about acai berry from reading the flog, watching ophra, listen to radio, watch dr. OZ or whatever
3. They read the flog, but didn't convert right away, saw the product on TV, heard it on radio, they want to know learn more about it.
4.This is when search engine comes into place. Sadly, as search engine marketer, we are picking up media buyer's left over, those that didn't convert when reading the flog, they come to search engine to do their research, also means those consumer are HARDER to convert to a certain degree.
5. Look at the media landing page, look at the ACTUAL media that gave the consumers their FIRST IMPRESSION on the product and think "What keyword would I use to research after I read this flog or watch this media"
You learned about the product from Oprah? Oprah acai berry? Omg, acai berry burns calories? Holy crap, acai berry can flat my stomach? anyways, you know the deal.
6. Ok, after you pick your keywords, now time to construct your landing page BASED on those keywords. What's customer's mindset here? They read/learn about the product. They like it, they want to try it, but they aren't sure, uncertain, that's why they are researching. They are looking for ASSURANCE in their research process, so basically as long as your landing page provides ASSURANCE and it CONFIRMS what they see from the media, your conversion can be decent.
Just think about your own mindset when you do research, it is not rocket science.
7. Landing page. Use keyword based dynamic landing page. If I learn about acai berry on oprah and i google search oprah acai berry, click on an ad to your lander, I am expecting to see Oprah. If you don't show me Oprah on your lander and show me rachel ray, you failed and I may not even know who the fk rachel ray is. Same logic applies to every keywords.
Also, another tip, test small sets of keywords first with exact match, once you find a keyword that's making you $, expand the hell out of it.
Let's say that Oprah Acai berry is profitable, expand it to
Oprah berry
Oprah acai juice
Winfrey acai
Winfrey acai juice
and etc.....
Expand the hell out of the profitable keywords, set your base, get a good standing ground before you test more new keywords.
Hope you enjoy my little contribution and btw, one dollar max bid for resveratrol is too low.
If you want to talk more about ppc, feel free to pm me your IM info, I am not much of a coder myself, so I would love to make more coder friends to make my life easier.
Disclaimer -
I do not promote acai berry, so I am puling those keywords out of my ass. I have no idea if they are profitable. I am just using it as example.
Zorba, great thread so far. Keep posting away, and most importantly test, which it seems like you're doing.
Now for your problem: There's a WP plugin that lets you post PHP in posts, it's Exec-PHP and located at WordPress › Exec-PHP WordPress Plugins
Awesome thread Zorba!!! Great to see someon willing to share. It sounds like you have a very analytical mind which I've seen be a huge success factor in PPC affiliates and after reading this thread I don't know for sure but I would almost bet money that some tweaks to your lander are going to crack this one open. From what I've seen you shouldn't need a huge content site to get a good QS on MSN. Make it more of a call to action and keep in mind the people that are lookin for this quick fix product. It should be visually appealing and drive to the action but also full of copy that speaks to them and helps with your angle. PM and I'd be more than happy to hook you up with some design help and marketing help (agency background) no strings attached but to see the results posted on the thread.
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