Nextebizguy » Pay Per Click

Google Adwords Campaign Post Mortem: Ebook To Nowhere

Nextebizguy — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:11:00 +0000

I recently received permission from my digital point buddy Randy to try and sell his ebook using a Google Adwords campaign. Here are some stats:

129 Keywords
1437 Impressions
8 Clicks
0 Sales

I ran the campaign over a month and I wrote four different rotating ads to the same landing page. The ad text with the most click success said:

Start Making Money Online

I’m not sure how all the “gurus” are making cash but I doubt it’s through Adwords. I had raised my budget to 0.35 cents a click as well to try and get higher rankings.

Keywords were definitely a struggle and I had initially thrown a very wide net by using nearly 200 keywords. As time went on I refined it down to the 129, but the keywords for this type of book are few and expensive.

While I would have rather had some success, I don’t mind failing. You learn a lot through every experience and are better for it.

Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

Nextebizguy — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 06:11:25 +0000

The catalogs are starting to show up in my mail. The holiday shopping season is starting and it’s time to start preparing your Adwords campaigns for the coming season. Here is an example of the type of traffic patterns you’ll find for various electronic items.

Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
0.35	0.36	0.62	1
0.39	0.37	0.56	1
0.36	0.42	0.52	1

I’m getting these numbers from the Google Adwords keyword research tool. I’m running numbers on a particular DVD player and you can see the spike in traffic volume coming in November and December. Now is the time to find the products you want to promote!

I’m starting to go through the catalogs, looking for niche products for an affiliate Adwords campaign. I’m also redesigning one of my websites to take this traffic and sell it. The basics remain the same. You have to do your homework and make sure that what you are going to pay for the traffic is acceptable at a 1 – 2% traffic conversion rate. If you can’t turn a profit off the affiliate commission, don’t run the campaign. There is no need to donate to Google this Holiday season.

Let’s examine being an Amazon affiliate. Currently, the basic payout for electronics is 4%. If you want to run an Adwords campaign, you’re going to need a fairly expensive item in order to make a profit at the typical 2% conversion rate. If you have to pay 20 cents a click, you will need to promote a product that sells for > 250 dollars. The higher your pay per click goes, the more expensive the item must be.

Stay tuned for more…

Shoemoney on Adwords Testing

Nextebizguy — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:15:00 +0000

Digital Point forums are excellent because of the people that hang out and share information there. Case in point, check out Shoemoney’s blog about a recent Adwords campaign: The 10,000.00 Experiment.

Key points:

Made landing pages for affiliate programs
Continually tested Adwords copy and used used negatives to target the audience
Did personal research to further narrow his target audience
Moved to affiliates that paid more
Was willing to spend enough money to be #1 for his keywords.

It’s great that people are willing to share how they approach winning campaigns.

Adwords Content Network

Nextebizguy — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:42:00 +0000

Another week in the tank. This week I decided to opt into the content network with Adwords to track the effectiveness of a such a campaign. As a reminder, I am selling two items currently (portable DVD player and MP3 player). So how did that work?

MP3 Player
Search Network: 12 clicks; Avg position 5.8
Content Network: 0 clicks; Avg position 7.5

Portable DVD Player
Search Network: 9 clicks; Avg position 10.4
Content Network: 0 clicks; Avg position 3.2

My initial fear with the Content Network was 1000′s non-converting clicks. Turns out I get half the page impressions and no clicks. Go figure.

The DVD Player was my best ad performer to date, but my average position is dropping weekly and I’m getting less clicks as a result. It’s coming to the place where I think I’m going to stop both ads and work on others.

Adwords Landing Page Update 2

Nextebizguy — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 12:54:00 +0000

Quick update: Invariably, if you post saying something like “it didn’t work” that the next week things will change. This week the landing page experiment turned in sales of a DVD player, books, a DVD, and a watch. Amazon numbers … Continue reading →

Adwords Landing Page Update

Nextebizguy — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 18:09:00 +0000

It’s been one week since I switched from direct affiliate links in Adwords to a website landing page. The results are:

28 Adword clicks (to landing page)
15 Click-thrus to Amazon.com
0 Sales

With my stats tracking as well I learned that nobody checked the rest of the site out either. So my thoughts of potential sales through other products didn’t work.

Another interesting thing I learned is that the Adword ads clicks are not just coming from Google.com. I got clicks from sites like www.buy.com, www2.shopping.com, www.nexttag.com, www.epinions.com, and www.become.com.

I checked these sites and they display Adword ads when visitors do a search. I received most clicks from www.nexttag.com. I was happy with the placement of the ad on the sites and think it’s not a bad thing.

More lessons learned this week. The more you try, the more you learn. I wish I had feedback from the customer as to why they didn’t buy.

Adwords Landing Page

Nextebizguy — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:07:00 +0000

There are a few ways to peel the Adwords apple. I started with direct affiliate marketing (bypassing a landing page going directly to the affiliate website). Yesterday I made a landing page and am now directing traffic there.

Pros:
1. I can track links
2. I have adsense well-placed on the page
3. I have additional products in the family of items listed below the main item
4. I have a website offering other products people can click

Cons:
1. The landing page may not sell as well as the affiliate page
2. Extra click required to get to affiliate sell page
3. Requires website/webpage

Only time and testing will reveal how well this works. I already like the flexibility I have with the targeted traffic (tracking and additional sales opps).