First Experiment With Direct Linking/PPC

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maxor

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Jun 1, 2007
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I wanted to get started in affiliate marketing and had been reading a lot (too much) about all of the various ways. Well, sometimes the best way to get started with something is to just dive in head first.

So I started a few direct linking campaigns using AdWords and Clickbank. I found some niches (dog treat recipes and reverse phone search) and started.

First off, I got Prosper202 setup and have been using that for tracking my success (failure).

I did some brief keyword research using the keyword tool in AdWords and created some tightly grouped adgroups. I then wrote 3-4 ads per ad group (about 20 ads total) and set my max CPC to a low number.

The dog treat campaigns never really went anywhere. My ads were getting decent CTR (5%) but no sales. I later looked at the "gravity" for the offer in ClickBank and saw that it was %.47, so that might have been a good sign that it was a crappy offer.

I moved on to the Reverse Phone Search offer who's gravity was something like 400%. I did some more brief keyword research and found some alternate keywords/ads that were less popular but were getting good CTR.

Unfortunately the average CPC was something like $1.25 which is just too high for me starting out, especially when I run the risk of killing my entire budget trying to test this offer when I'm just getting started.

Since google was so expensive I figured i'd give MSN AdCenter a shot. I migrated the campaign over there and while the volume is pretty low, the CPC is down also and my CTR is semi-decent.

I did have 1 sale on the phone search offer, but my ROI ended up being something like -150%. It is a small sample size, maybe 40 clicks all together across both PPC networks.

I feel like there is some potential in the phone search offer and as part of my next step in learning I'm building a landing page/site on a good domain and going away from direct linking, at least for this offer.

A few questions:
- Am I wasting my time with clickbank?
- How important is the "Gravity" of an offer there? Should I just be calling up my affiliate manager on another network and asking what the good offers are?
- Should I give up on direct linking?

Hope you enjoyed my FAIL TALE.
 


Honestly, direct linking can be extremely successful but I would suggest shying away from click bank.

Try getting approved with Hydra, Neverblue, or one of the other CPA networks and go from there. Personally, I prefer Hydra across the board. Their tracking is by far superior, AM's are awesome, and their payouts are typically higher.
 
What I would do if I were you:

1) Make a landing page for the offer.
2) Go back to Adwords.
3) Utilize negative keywords.
 
@Spades: Thanks. I'm sure directly linking works, it's just that with the new restrictive display URL/destination URL rules it's hard to outrank a competitor who's got more budget to outbid you. I'll give those other networks a shot.

@FortunePlaza: That's my current plan, waiting for the domain to get setup and then I will launch the landing page.
 
I would also recommend taking a look at your competitors keywords. Generally, if I am about to promote a new offer, I tend to analyze keywords used by a competitor promoting the same offer as me; this way you could get a couple keywords that should be profitable of the bat.

I suggest to try out Keyword Spy

You can do a trial, and see if you like it.
 
Well I got the new site/landing page put up tonight and re-started my adwords campaign. My average CPC has plummeted from $1.50 to $.25 which will REALLY help me hit my ROI target.

I'm going to let this run for a few days and then start optimizing/testing. I'll be back to post later.
 
Realized this morning that clickbank wasn't tracking any of my subids. I thought "Hrm, that's odd, I know I'm sending them".

Turns out that my clickbank hop URL had a typo in the username. So, dumb move, 30 clicks and $6 later I've got it fixed.
 
That sucks...I think it's pretty lame that you have to manually type in your username. You're logged in, right? Then automatically put it in...
 
maxor said:
...I'm sure directly linking works, it's just that with the new restrictive display URL/destination URL rules it's hard to outrank a competitor who's got more budget to outbid you...
Click to expand...

Remember. No one has a "higher budget than you"
That you can control and still be above him.
The fact that he thinks each click is WORTH $0.50/click is that he can convert them at that rate and make a profit.

If you can't. It's not your budget that's preventing you, but your setup (landing page/direct linking, quality score, conversion rate)

just putting in my 2 cents. I've seen too many people stop from bidding on a keyword because it's $70/click if it's $70/click it's because you can get a return higher than the $70x20 (5% conversion rate) that's all. The per click doesn't matter only the profit per conversion matters.
 
Also don't assume that everyone paying more per click thank you are has some secret. Some are losing money for the sake of branding. Some just don't know how to spend their money. Some haven't been advertising long enough to realize they're losing money. etc etc etc
 
thedamian said:
Remember. No one has a "higher budget than you"
That you can control and still be above him.
The fact that he thinks each click is WORTH $0.50/click is that he can convert them at that rate and make a profit.

If you can't. It's not your budget that's preventing you, but your setup (landing page/direct linking, quality score, conversion rate)
Click to expand...

This is a good point, I hadn't really thought of it from this angle before. Thanks.
 
Spades said:
Honestly, direct linking can be extremely successful but I would suggest shying away from click bank.

Try getting approved with Hydra, Neverblue, or one of the other CPA networks and go from there. Personally, I prefer Hydra across the board. Their tracking is by far superior, AM's are awesome, and their payouts are typically higher.
Click to expand...

Clickbank can be very profitable if you know how to promote. I never had success with direct linking on clickbank. However, most of the products there actually needs a presell article, and some bullet points with benefits won't help.

The gravity is a shitty variable, you can make a lot of money promoting low gravity offers, however you need to keep in mind, that while your new to this it'll be much harder, so try promoting products with 60-70+ gravity, and when you'll be ready, try the shitty once...

Good luck...
 
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