Yet another noob diary

M

mprey

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May 6, 2009
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So yeah, this is another noob diary revolving around PPC. I've had some AM experience before, but none of it successful (in SEO). So I'll be trying this PPC thing and going straight to Adwords. Now some might say it might be a bit too much for a beginner, but the rather pragmatic truth is that I've currently got no credit card (I'm located in Europe, and they're far less widespread here) and Adwords is the only place that offers paying via bank account/debit card. But this will change in a few weeks and then I'll try to tackle Adcenter.

So yeah, got my first campaign set up - a landing page which I'll be split testing once I got some decent data for the initial version, 3 adgroups with 2 slightly different ads each.

I've come up with some 40-50 keywords or so spread over the adgroups more or less evenly and which shouldn't be too expensive. Set my max CPC to 0.80 (Euro, though) which apparently gets me an average of a position anywhere from 1-4.

My first question is related to this actually...how do you guys handle your max CPC? Do you enter it on a global campaign scale or per Adgroup? I'm slightly confused at this point what is the most clever and most economic way to handle the CPC stuff...

Anyway I just unpaused my campaign and we'll see what happens next...
 


I second jackfitz's motion to do it per adgroup. Then when you have data, per keyword.
You didn't mention multiple ads. I usually write about 10 ads for a new adgroup. Set them to display best performing ads more often. Try to write ads as diverse from each other as possible.
Your CTR is being established at first and a ballpark idea is that if the CTR is over 1% there is hope, but get much below 1% and your impressions and campaign will probably die. Focus on that CTR on a per keyword and per ad basis on day one. You should probably pause ads and keywords with CTR much below .5% They will drag down the good ones and hurt the campaign. Maybe when you have a better ad CTR you can bring back the marginal keywords.

Don't be too scared if you lost a little money. If you got any conversions at all, then there is hope for the campaign.

If you have spent 2X your conversion value with nothing coming back you need to start backing off and if it gets worse, walk away and try again with something else.
 
Thanks for all your advice guys, it really helps me a lot. How do I find out how not to bid more than is necessary for my ad to stay in a given position..? Should I go by the Google Keyword Tool Avg CPC data for that?

Anyway, I need to make some big changes today. On the plus side, I've got one conversion, which puts me short of breaking even and tells me that there is some money to be made here, somewhere. On the negative side, out of a total of 36 clicks, I only got 8 click-throughs to the offer from my LP. That's pretty abysmal.

In terms of ads, my overall avg CTR is 1.12% (though Adwords hasn't updated yet so this is based on 26 clicks, 2,323 impressions). I suppose that's pretty bad as well. I've already paused some of the ads with the worst CTR but I'm unsure whether that's a good idea because I got so little data to begin with, and it might not be really meaningful yet?

I mention "free trial" or something similar in my ads because I felt that it ensures only people slightly inclined to buy something would click. Good idea or bad idea? Obviously it drags my CTR down.

I'll try whipping up a completely different LP today. See how that goes. Although I'm also considering making a few minor changes to my existing ones. No idea why the CTR is that bad. Am I being too "in your face" with my link promotion perhaps? Got 2 h2-sized affiliate links above the fold and perhaps my copy is too salesy...we'll see how it goes with the other one...just hope I'll at least break even, and that the 1 lead wasn't a fluke.
 
Your CTR isn't great yet, but it can vary by vertical. So it might be better than you think. Also you can probably double or triple that CTR just by optimizing your ads. Consider dynamic keyword insertion.
If your adgroups aren't tight enough to use DKI they probably aren't tight enough. DKI can be used on every line including the display url eg: www.example.com/{Keyword}
You did the right thing by pausing week ads early. I often do it after 300-400 impressions when big G often waits until well over 1k impressions.

mprey, don't worry about bidding for position. It's a distraction based on ego. Focus on bidding for profitability. If in a very competitive high volume keyword, you may make money in position 15-20.

That being said, you may need to over bid to establish CTR until you get the worst of your ads and keywords eliminated.

Don't kill yourself over the 8/36 clicked through on the landing page. Also don't kill yourself focusing on fixing your LP or replacing it. Your LP converted one and proves that it can convert. I think you should focus more on your adwords campaign for a few days. If you are building a new LP you should be rotating it with your old one. Don't give up on that sucker yet.
 
Okay my campaign is continuing. I think I definitely have some keyword shortage in general because Adwords doesn't even manage to spend my daily 25 Euro budget. It's either that or the market for this is rather small - however it seems to be a popular, well converting offer so I wonder where other affiliates draw their traffic from. Anyway, maybe it's good because everything is more controllable and laid back this way and I don't have to watch t202 every 3 minutes to see whether I'm draining 100 bucks per minute.

Wrote 3 new ads, doing their first test run today. I am not using the new LP yet because it needs a bit more work, so I just made some minor modifications on the old one and see how that works out. If my LP CTR still sucks, I think I'll pause my campaign until SEO Mike's LP webinar...
 
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pickledegg: Thanks!

Anyway, I'm pausing this shit until I can figure out what the hell is wrong with my LP. 44 clicks and 8 offer click-throughs. Something is seriously wrong here and I don't know what. No idea at all, really - I'm promoting my aff links in a similar manner that my ads are written, which the same people that enter my keywords and click my ads then don't click.

I've heard LP CTR should be at LEAST 50% so...this is really pathetic. And I'm figuring 50 clicks are enough to judge at this stage.
 
100-200 clicks usually will help for a lp. also you should always have a page to split test against.
 
meh fwiw i recently started a campaign as well, my ctr from my lp is 20-25%, overall conversion is not that great - 1%, could be more could be less, i've made some changes but forgot to record exactly when so i'm not sure which start date to set in prosper.

but then i look at what i spent vs what i made and it's like 90 to get 145 back. if that keeps up who gives a shit about 'abysmal' click through?

i'm having the same problem you're having though, i can't get more bloody clicks. i'd love to click some button that said ok now you're paying nine hundred, or nine grand, and you get the exact same traffic multiplied by 10 or 100. but i guess that's what the real hard part is.

it's also counterintuitive for me to toss out keywords unless they're really really performing badly, because that will further cut down the already small amount of traffic i'm getting. at this point i'm not quite sure what to expect from the higher ctr -> more impressions thing - are they currently 'checking me out', or do i already get the max impressions i'm gonna get at my price?
 
Yeah TripleT, but at my current LP CTR I am bound to lose money - I got one conversion now and paused my campaign now. I just don't know what's wrong with it, hope the webinar can answer that, even if I'll be showing it to the world.

But anyways, you guys think I should drive a few more clicks? Just wonder whether I'm wasting money. I mean, almost 50 clicks, just 8 clickthroughs...isn't that enough to say?
 
mprey said:
Yeah TripleT, but at my current LP CTR I am bound to lose money - I got one conversion now and paused my campaign now. I just don't know what's wrong with it, hope the webinar can answer that, even if I'll be showing it to the world.

But anyways, you guys think I should drive a few more clicks? Just wonder whether I'm wasting money. I mean, almost 50 clicks, just 8 clickthroughs...isn't that enough to say?
Click to expand...

You are stressing the LP CTR too much. 8 clicks in 50 is not bad if you have an offer that is getting > $2 EPCs. Just consider all options and don't let things like LP CTR control how you view the campaign's profitability.

Like mentioned in here, you do not have near enough data to be drawing any real conclusions (you need to spend $200+ a day if you are promoting rebills to get even SMALL data). Make sure your campaigns have pixels placed so you can track conversions in Adwords. See what converts. Raise bids on good converting keywords and drop keywords that aren't converting. If you are running content, pull reports and see what data is and what is not performing well and add exclusion sites to your exclusion lists if they aren't converting.

If you are cutting even or barely profiting, keep it RUNNING and gather conversion data for Adwords.. once you have enough data you can turn on CPA optimizer and set a CPA goal and get some better ROI.
 
sgtryan: Thanks!

Overall my campaign is kinda going down the drain and I don't know what to do...overall Adwords CTR is down to .62% (10,402 impressions, 65 clicks), and the people that click aren't clicking on my aff links.

Not sure what to do. Raised my CPC up 40% in the hopes of getting a better CTR that way, but who knows. It might be my keywords. Or not? Since I have relatively little data - with some keywords having just a few hundred impressions - I don't know whether that is enough to judge certain kws as "bad performing" or not yet. Same with ads...

Pretty frustrated at this point. Gonna keep this running for another day...then scrap it, work on my other LP and start anew. Seems like the best idea at the moment...oh well.
 
So I let the campaign run until I exhausted my budget after all, and now it's time to step back and think about what I've been doing.

First thing though - if I'm ever to continue this I'll need to get prosper202 to my own server. t202 has been dropping clicks and clickthroughs left and right, and since I'm working with so little data at the moment to begin with, that isn't good.

Anyway. My result so far is: I spent $90 and earned $35.
13,652 impressions, 94 clicks, overall CTR 0.69% (though on the last day it was 0.90% probably due to me raising the max CPC by 40%). 24 LP-to-offer clickthroughs.

Easily the biggest problem I have right now is: I don't know what constitutes 'meaningful' data. For example, people say I gotta optimize my keywords and throw out the non-converting ones, but obviously a few hundred impressions per kw, a handful of LP-to-offer clickthroughs and *one* offer conversion are not nearly enough to make any sort of judgment regarding that, right? So am I really supposed to spend $1000 to get enough data before I can make any sort of return?

Am I paying too much per click? I raised it to about $1.80 in the end. Problem is that with my niche / this particular offer there doesn't seem to be the same giant demand compared to weight loss so keyword-wise it seems a bit limited. Should I tackle content instead?

And yeah, generally wondering how to continue this. Continue with the set of data I have, try another LP? Or leave rebills alone for now, do something like email submits?

Also, can someone say something about my Adwords ads? Because I've gotten the feeling they're responsible for my crappy CTR, but I don't know why. I guess at this point I don't really mind revealing a few things about my campaign. Here's two:

"Cure Your Insomnia Today -
Natural Cure, Works Instantly!
Free Trial, Just Pay S&H"
(CTR: 1.25%)

"Sleep Well Again Tonight
Discover the amazing new sleep aid
Non-addictive, 100% natural"
(412 impressions, 0 clicks..)
 
Don't tell them they have to pay shippiing and handling, yeah they know they will probably have to so don't put a negative in the ad.

"Cure Your Insomnia Today -
Natural Cure, Works Instantly!
Free Trial, Just Pay S&H"
(CTR: 1.25%)


Similar vein here, "non-addictive". Although you say non-addictive immediately you are putting in there mind things like this can be addictive and even though you are saying they aren't, maybe you aren't telling the truth, so remove the negative.

"Sleep Well Again Tonight
Discover the amazing new sleep aid
Non-addictive, 100% natural"
(412 impressions, 0 clicks..)


The below are better ads imo

"CURE Your Insomnia TODAY!!!-
Natural Cure, Works INSTANTLY!
FREE Trial"


"Sleep Well Again TONIGHT
Discover the AMAZING new sleep aid
100% NATURAL GUARANTEED"

(add guarantee on the 100% natural not they will sleep again).
 
some_guy,

I thought it was a good idea to put a little something in the ad about costs to deter freebie hunters? Is my thinking wrong on that?

Thanks...
 
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