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1. Margeret,

   None of your samples (with the possible exception of advertiser #5, which I’ll ask some questions about later) have gathered up quite what I would call a statistically significant sample, but I’ll tell you I think so far.

   Advertiser 1 is about break-even, and this is almost always a pretty good sign in the beginning. Since you aren’t losing money, I’d leave the bid the same, maybe raise the budget a little, and focus most of your ad tuning on this campaign for the time being. If you can get your ad performing a little better (write a new ad, and after a few days or weeks compare its CTR to the old ad) then your costs should come down, and if your EPC (Earnings Per 100 Clicks) holds steady or improves, you’re making money. At that point, get more aggressive with the daily budget.

   Advertiser 2 isn’t close to break even yet, but early conversions are still a good sign, usually. You probably do need to lower your bid a little here, but you aren’t spending much, so its up to you if you want to wait on more data first. There is so little data right now on this campaign that your real EPC will almost certainly wind up being at least a little higher or lower than it is now (only time will tell). Since you do have a conversion, I’d give this campaign a little bit of your ad tuning time as well.

   The other campaigns (excluding 5) really don’t have enough clicks to know anything about. Unless 6, 8 & 12 have Commissions that are really low, I’d even let those run for a while longer.

   Now for Campaign 5…. at almost 300 clicks, this campaign may or may not be finished. The missing peice of the puzzle is the expected commission for a conversion. If this advertiser pays $150 per sale to you, then you are no where near a statistically significant sample, as these programs are expected to convert less often, and if you get just one sale in your next 300 clicks you’d be profitable. I want to warn you and everyone else who reads this, though, that these large commission programs can be very expensive to reveal them as winners or losers (you should expect to spend roughly 3 times the commission at least, to be sure you have a roughly accurate picture of the return you can generate) and I advise you to stay away from them in the beginning unless you have deep pockets.

   Now if Campaign 5, has a low expected commission – say $5 – per conversion, than you have definitely reached the point – passed, in fact – the point that it should be abandoned.

   And don’t be afraid to abandon campaigns. If you are like me, the temptation may be to try to turn every last campaign into a winner, but I can tell you from experience that it is not possible. Some of these campaigns pay commissions that only make it sensible to run them on an established website with a unique clientele. The goal here is to find two or three profitable programs out of every dozen or two.

   Hope this helps,

   Tony

   Comment by Administrator — January 14, 2008 #

2. Tony,

   Thanks so much for your insightful comments. Advertiser #5 only pays $17 for a sale (I did get one sale on this since I left the post), so I guess it’s time to abandon this.

   Your analysis was very helpful, as yes, I do have a tendency to try to make every campaign a winner. It’s really helpful to know that I should only be shooting for 2-3 out of every 12-24 tries…that’s very revealing to me.

   Thanks again,

   Margaret

   Comment by NJOYAZlife.com — January 14, 2008 #

3. You are very welcome.

   Comment by Administrator — January 17, 2008 #

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