Beginner Woes

April 22, 2008 on 7:20 pm | In Questions and Comments | 1 Comment

Well like many others Tony has inspired me and I have posted my first campaign last week accumulating 200 clicks in 3 days as well as spending about 100.00 only bringing in 10.00! I’m putting someone through college!! :( Oh well, i am learning and i guess that’s the cost of doing business however….what’s the trick? How do you pick a program that pays…i think my ad was killer…it prompted a great response and ran # one or two the entire time it was up (quality index was high too).
In reading the book I see that costs per click were very low…not like the average $0.69 I paid for my campaign on yahoo. At these rates and 5% commission I can’t ever foresee a time where this could be profitable. Tony, Is this cost significantly different than it was a year ago? Has this market place changed or is it simply the product line i was promoting not worthwhile and just not that hot a commodity? ANY insight to how to choose a profitable advertiser would be appreciated though I understand that this is the crux of the business and well…..i wouldn’t want to give that out either.

Thanks for the book, i’m still inspired albeit subued and a little frustrated.

Brian

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  1. Brian,

    Like most businesses, it can be frustrating and expensive in the beginning to learn the ropes, and sometimes things are not always as they seem.

    You seem convinced that this advertiser or product line might not be profitable (and that is possible) but was someone else running an ad for the same company before you started running yours? Are they back now that your ad is gone? Sometimes when our ads are running in the top spot and getting a lot of clicks we assume that the ad is doing well – and maybe it is – but we really have no idea if it is doing BETTER than the competition. The ad that ran in the top spot before and after yours should be looked at very carefully. A higher CTR than yours (I’ve had CTRs as high as in the 70%, range, BTW) might mean that the other person’s ad you bought your way on top of might have only been paying .10 cents per click. Some discriminatory language in the ad might be weeding out bad leads, resulting in higher conversions. You might not even wan to be aiming for the top spot.

    The key is getting your costs down and keeping your volume up, and if your strategy is all about bidding, you can’t improve one without hurting the other. Your strategy has to be focused on writing better ad text.

    Early on, I might see a CTR of 10% and think to myself that my ad must be great (and 10% is a great CTR), but it doesn’t mean the other guys aren’t getting 20%. If someone else is promoting this company or product in the space you are, he’s probably making money, as hard as it might be to believe from your own results. Try looking for weaknesses in his ad, then create a similar ad with small changes to improve that weakness. You may find dramatic improvements in either CTR, CPC, Conversion Rate or all three.

    Some well written ads, however, may have very little room for improvement, and we can’t always be lucky enough or talented enough to turn a better phrase, so don’t kill yourself trying to beat every advertiser who appears to be turning a profit (if their ad is running for a prolonged period, you can bet they found a way to make it profitable). Just give it a few shots, and if you are closing the gap, keep working on it. If you are no closer to break-even, then look for another affiliate program or product that you might be better at promoting.

    As for choosing quality advertisers, a good way to identify affiliate programs that might be profitable with search marketing is to see if anyone is currently promoting them on search engines for the same search terms you are thinking of using to promote them.  If they can’t be made profitable for a given search term, you will only occassionally see their ads tested in that space.  If they can be made profitable for a given search term, you will likely see an ad for that program running nearly all the time, day after day. 

    By the way, if you want to know what search terms are driving the most traffic to which sites, KeyCompete.com can give you that information.  It is a paid tool, but it takes all the guesswork out of choosing your keywords, and lets you focus more time on ad tuning.

    Good luck,

    Tony

    Comment by Administrator — April 23, 2008 #

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