PPC Question About Bids

[Zos0r]

I have a question for you guys:

I built out a landing page/review site for a niche I know is quite profitable for some guys. The commissions range from $15 up to $130. According to some of the more popular spy tools, the guys killing it in this niche are sending anywhere between $1000-5000 a day in clicks to their sites.

I started out with exact match keywords but I'm not bidding high enough to hit first page on the more competitive terms. Just to hit first page I need to be spending a minimum of .80 per click.

Now, from what I've read, it's good to assume a 1 percent conversion rate to begin with, however, I don't see how the math adds up.

Even on a $30 payout, if you are paying .80 cents per click and you convert at 1:100, you are losing a shit ton of money.

So I'm assuming that there are golden nugget keywords out there that convert at 1:15 or whatever...but how do you possibly find them without a HUGE budget?

 

[soulscience]

i would guess that they might have more involved lp's that are converting better. check out some of the lp's you get to after you google 'weight loss' they have full on fake video news commercials and shit, custom not scraped i mean. serious thought going into the copy as well.

if they're sending x,xxx/day to them, they've probably been testing and retesting for a while to get the converts up too.

at $30 and .80/click you do a 3%conversion rate you're in the black.

i think there are also ways you can lower your QS to get your pricing down.

god i wish i could be of more help, that chick on the bottom has such a nice ass.

 

[mattfca]

Only way to fin keywords is to test.
And it also depends on which network you are using.

When I did adwords and such, I just used broad match 2 words keywords, then found long tails.

Thats all I can say, don't know much else, but those pics are epic win.

 

[Zos0r]

Ok then this shit has definitely gotten harder since last year this time period right? I guess I'm going to throw a little money at it and see what happens. Minimum bid on some of these are like 15-20 fucking bucks. WTF

 

[Volume10]

I would guess your conversion rate is lower as is the payout you are getting.

 

[malpais]

As one with similar ppc budget issues, I can relate. My suggestions would be:

1) If you're doing Google, look at your quality scores per keyword. If they aren't 9s or 10s, then you can do some serious work to increase them and thereby lower your costs. But once a domain has a history of Q score for certain keywords, it could be a while before they re-evaluate you. So you can built some good content and wait, or build some more content and put your site on a new domain.

2) Don't worry too much about what the PPC spy tools tell you. They aren't really necessary and can be misleading.

3) The only way to find the nuggets is to get a shitload of data. With a limited budget it's easy to throw some money at a shitload of keywords, not get enough data, not get enough conversions, get scared that you're blowing all your money, and then pause a campaign. For example, let's say you have a budget of $1,000 and you're testing 100 keywords. At $0.80 per click you can only afford 1250 clicks total, and this few clicks to 100 keywords won't tell you anything. You won't have enough traffic to any single keyword to really know if any are good or not.

Ideally you want to get a few hundred clicks per keyword, so estimate how many keywords you can afford to test, then prioritize the words. If you can only afford to test 5 keywords thoroughly, then do that. See what happens. Repeat.

 

[Jonyk]

Start with a cheaper traffic source. I personally never use Adwords. Also unfortunately you will have to spend some money simply testing which keywords convert better so get that initial budget of yours up.

 

[Zos0r]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

So I did the math: if these guys who are killing it in this niche were getting a 75% payout on the retail value of the product ($60*.75) AND their traffic converted at 15% then they could still be paying up to $7.31 per click and breaking even.

Malpais-

My quality scores are scattered depending on the keywords. I could do a lot of work to bump those up, but I don't think I'll be able to get cheap enough clicks for it to matter.

I think Jonyk is right, I'm going to have to start with a cheaper source of traffic. I'm going to try MSN first to see what the bids are like. Last time I tried MSN for a different niche there wasn't enough traffic.

This isn't a niche that can be advertised on any of the mainstream social networks, so those are out.

I'll do some more investigating...