First Attempt. What went wrong?

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gkemper90

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Dec 27, 2008
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Well, I'm new to the affiliate marketing thing. I have web programming and some graphic skills so I made a very simple website.

It's called UsedGameStash.com, I noticed how low the prices on used video games was on GameFly and signed up for they're affiliate program. I'm talking $9.99 for a decent game that came out in mid 2008, or $19.99 for a more popular game. So the website, you can check it out, or not. I don't care but it lists 5 great deals on video games for the xbox360, wii, and ps3. Just to give it a test run.

That didn't work. I spent about $25 dollars in advertising and it was gone in less than 2 hours at less than $.40 as an average bid. The ad said buy popular used video games in perfect condition at 50% off.

Since that didn't convert at all, I decided to just try a click through. The ad was semi intresting and braught them directly to the gamefly used game store, which to me sells itself. I did a test by convincing a friend to buy a game through the ad and the commision was collected so I know the ad works fine. I let it run over night and it didn't convert at all.

So any ideas? Am I on the right track?
 


CygnusX said:
How many visitors did you get for $25 and how many of those clicked through?
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He said around .40 cpc, so I'm assuming you got about 60 visitors? This is not nearly enough to gather any meaningful information from.

Remember - if 25% of your visitors click through your lander to the offer, and 10% of those convert on the offer (those are some pretty liberal numbers), only (0.25*0.1) = 2.5% total are going to convert. And you never know when that 2.5% is going to come. You might get to 300 hits and only have 2 conversions, but once you get to 1000, you might have the full 25.

You can't assume conversions are going to be totally consistent. At the end of the day, when you have a meaningful pool (I'm talking like 1k hits, or more), you'll get a better sense of it.

Something you can look at, even without many impressions, is your bounce rate. How many people hit your lander and then just peace? It's the thing you can control the most. You need to optimize your landing page so much so that the maximum number of visitors that hit it will go through to your offer, so theres all the more people that could potentially convert.

Try split testing. Split test link placement, colors, layouts, heading text, copy, images....test everything. Keep track of what converts the best. Go one by one, and once you find the best everything, stick with it. Slowly but surely your click through will increase, and with it the number of conversions.
 
If you have limited budget, you could narrow down the list of keywords to the minimum. You can't test too many keywords with that kind of buget, unless the bid is really low. Let it run for about 150-300 clicks or so with 5 keywords at max, that's when you decide which is worth running. First when i started, i only bid on 2 keywords. After you have some conversions.. then expand that shit
 
I'm new to this stuff as well, but have a background in marketing and promoting. I'm not sure this overall will have such a major effect, but you may wish to experiment by changing the sales copy text on your landing page. It's too "corporate speak-ish" for my tastes. Experiment, have fun with it and make people WANT to read it to see where you are going with it. People just ignore random corporate sales copy... might help your conversion rate to be a little different.

I'd wish you luck, but luck is for losers. :)
 
Could always throw PHPBay on there, SEO it and make some money while working with the PPC stuff. Just an idea.
 
1) $25 is simply not enough experimental money.
2) The keywords you may be bidding on aren't the "buying" types. If your bidding simply on game titles alone, then your not going to profit. You need to target an audience more in the "buying" state of mind.
 
ROIShareTeam said:
1)If your bidding simply on game titles alone, then your not going to profit. You need to target an audience more in the "buying" state of mind.
Click to expand...

Dude... are you retarded? Titles are pretty damn targeted you idiot.
 
Garrett said:
Dude... are you retarded? Titles are pretty damn targeted you idiot.
Click to expand...

Actually they aren't.

Bidding simply on:

" Halo 4"

Will not profit well. Since you will get clicks from people wanting to read reviews about the game, or maybe find a community, or see some images etc.

Bidding on:

" Buy Halo 4"
" Rent Halo 4"

Will actually convert better.

Hence the word "alone".
 
ROIShareTeam said:
Actually they aren't.

Bidding simply on:

" Halo 4"

Will not profit well. Since you will get clicks from people wanting to read reviews about the game, or maybe find a community, or see some images etc.

Bidding on:

" Buy Halo 4"
" Rent Halo 4"

Will actually convert better.

Hence the word "alone".
Click to expand...


Saying that 'Halo 4' won't convert is just retarded. It may not be 'the best' keyword, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Use your adcopy to call out YOUR MARKET... that's what adcopy is for anyways.
 
ROIShareTeam said:
Actually they aren't.

Bidding simply on:

" Halo 4"

Will not profit well. Since you will get clicks from people wanting to read reviews about the game, or maybe find a community, or see some images etc.

Bidding on:

" Buy Halo 4"
" Rent Halo 4"

Will actually convert better.

Hence the word "alone".
Click to expand...

Or even:

Halo 4 cheap
Halo 4 discount
Halo 4 bargain
Halo 4 sale
Halo 4 gift
 
Well,

I have somewhat of a limited budget, I am an independent web designer and thats how I make money. I'm willing to invest how ever much I need to if I saw promise in the idea.

To who thought gamefly only offered on they're rental service, they allow you to sell games at 10% commission at commission junction. To me just seeing the store price at gamefly made me tempted to buy from them, I guess the probably about 150 - 200 clicks I got have a differant opinion.

The site was just a 4 hour job to get something online, I was hoping just to see some promise. The phrase there is no such thing as an easy dollar keeps ringing in my head now..

Anyway I will experiment some more with this idea, give it some personallity, and try to target the keywords better. I'll keep the board updated, and if anyone has any suggestions feel completely free to share them with me, seriously, you can spam my PM or whatever as long as there is some kind of good advice in there. ;)
 
Garrett said:
Saying that 'Halo 4' won't convert is just retarded. It may not be 'the best' keyword, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Use your adcopy to call out YOUR MARKET... that's what adcopy is for anyways.
Click to expand...

Obviously it should convert but (a) it should convert worse and (b) the bids are probably more expensive.
 
a few things that came to my mind, others might not agree but this is what stuck out to me.

1) your page looks decent but the banner looks a lil shady since its all pixelated etc.

2) coming off 1), the buy button seems a lil committed to me, perhaps a "click here for details" might be more enticing the click through?

3) after clicking buy, and getting sent to the gamefly site, the button that jumps out to me the most is rent. then i see a "buy alert" which might caution the user rather than entice them to buy (compared to a "buy it now" type button). after clicking the alert it brings a pop up of

"Create a Buy It Alert and be the first to know when this game is available to purchase."

since i dont have an account it makes it seem like i cant even purchase this game yet. :(

in the end. perhaps its just me or the fact that i dont purchase games online but i dont feel like i'd want to sign up after following the above landing path...
 
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