Could this be profitable?

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thesilly1

thesilly1

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Mar 6, 2008
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I have been dabbling in PPC and have a question on whether this PPC campaign COULD be profitable based on these numbers. I don't want to spend hours trying to optimize a campaign that would be too difficult to become profitable. Can we determine this from these numbers?

Background: This is from a 'shopping' based site. As an example say it's about Nascar Hats (not the site, just an example). So when someone searches for a nascar driver and clicks on the ad they come to that specific nascar drivers hat section with say 10 different hats.

I did a little direct link campaign to see if it's worth setting up a site. here were the numbers...
Imp 5552 / Clicks 78 / 1.40% / CPC $0.30 / Cost $23.25
Return => 1 sale for $17.19

Since I'm a PPC newbie I decided to spend way too much time setting up a shopping type of site with this niche and continue the campaign. Some numbers...
Imp 33190 / Clicks 543 / 1.63% / CPC $0.20 / Cost $108.49
Return => 3 sale for $29.08

What's my next move here? Too early to tell? Split test and optimize?

(I'll PM the site to people if they are interested in helping but I don't want to give the niche away .... I might just be a paranoid PPC newbie. )
 


If you are just target people who search for "Jeff Gordon" and send them to a page expecting them to buy a Jeff Gordon hat you are going to have a hard time making any money. You need to target buyers.

You need to target phrases like:

jeff gordon apparel
jeff gordon clothing
jeff gordon clothes
jeff gordon merchandise
jeff gordon hat
jeff gordon hats
jeff gordon gear
jeff gordon products
jeff gordon store
jeff gordon collectibles
jeff gordon cap
jeff gordon pit cap
etc.

I'd also include variations with the word "buy" prepended.

The key is targeting searchers with "Credit Card in hand". That should drastically reduce your impressions and junk clicks.

I'm not sure if that's what you're doing (targeting buyers), just going off of your example.
 
That's basically what I'm using for keywords... A little more specific as in Jeff Gordon Hats rather then Merchandise, apparell, etc... I don't have the 'buy' keywords on their yet so I'll add those too.
 
thesilly1 said:
That's basically what I'm using for keywords... A little more specific as in Jeff Gordon Hats rather then Merchandise, apparell, etc... I don't have the 'buy' keywords on their yet so I'll add those too.
Click to expand...

That's good, once you get the more specific terms profitable you can test others.

I just wanted to make sure you were not using a generic term like "mp3 players" and expecting them to buy.

It's hard to tell what needs work without more info. Your ads, keyword groups, landing pages, etc., a small change in any of those could make a huge difference.

You can pm me the niche, if I'm actively targeting it now I'll let you know. If I'm not, you can PM me the site and I'll try to help
 
your first example seemed to have the potential to be profitable. Theres 2 things I think you need to do.

1) slowly drop the bids (could create instant profitability depending on your average position which you didnt tell us)

&

2) Start figuring out which clicks are actually being wasted and ad negative keywords. If you figure out that 1/2 the clicks are on a term not likely to convert and negative it out you could create a winning campaign very quickly.
 
Well the sample size in the first example is WAY too small. For EX: I ran a campaign once on a particular offer that paid let's say $60, and I got lucky and early on got a lead at around $20 spend and so I figured score, and scaled it up a bit and left it overnight.

Turns out a few hundred bucks later that was the only lead I was going to get lol. I didn't have a "statistically significant" sample size. I'm not sure what the term for it is, but there is a name for when that first lead comes early on when in reality the conversion % might be much later.
 
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