Just started – newbie questions

January 30, 2009 on 12:33 pm | In Questions and Comments | 3 Comments

Tony,

Thank you for your book.  It was an easy read and I learned a bunch.  I finished reading your book last Friday and my first campaign was up Tuesday.  My first affiliate trials are promoting Amazon products.  I have had no luck with my first campaign (i think the niche is too small) but I am learning how the ad interface works.

I have a 2nd campaign that I just started not even 12 hrs ago and my stats are: 532 impressions, 24 Clicks, 4.5% CTR, NO conversions!  I checked the link- thats good. Maybe I am jumping the gun on realizing conversions?? Is Amazon just a slow/poor convertor?  My add specifically states what they are to buy at the click.  Please give me some direction as to where my investigation should begin.

Brian

3 Comments »

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  1. Brian,

    Sorry for the delay in responding. For those of you reading this blog who have noticed I occassionally fall behind in responding, a quick email to affiliatesupport@affiliatemillions.com usually wakes me back up.

    Amazon will take a day or two to show conversions.

    Since its been a little more than a day now (sorry again for the late response) let me know what the results look like and we’ll take it from there.

    Tony

    Comment by Administrator — February 12, 2009 #

  2. I ran the campaign for 5 days. My ad was rated very good on the quality index and that made my cost per click lower than I bid. However there were no conversions. My stats: 967 impressions, 68 clicks, cost per click .24, Conversions 0, Loss- $16.32 As you can see, I was very conservative on this campaign and did not want to lose a bunch. I was promoting the High School Musical DVD pre-order on Amazon.

    I put all this data into a spreadsheet I created. In order to profit at this CPC, I would need 31% conversion! Even if my CPC were .01 and my conversion 5%, I would profit $2.04.

    So, If I try this again, (assuming I use Amazon) my strategy should be to promote something at a higher $ value? Find something that has a higher sales volume? Maybe I need to try a CPA campaign and try to get some people to fill out zip submits, or surveys or product trials. This is another ballgame.

    How do I build on this experience to learn more and maybe make a couple dollars?

    Comment by stumper — February 18, 2009 #

  3. Stumper,

    When you are promoting a pre-order item, you will not be credited a commission until the order ships, which of course won’t happen until the release date.

    This is really good way to make – or lose – a lot of money. The competition is not as stiff on these pre-orders, because of the risk, and so if you pick the right product and write a good ad, you can clean up.

    However…

    Since you don’t know what your conversion rate is for days, weeks or months, you can’t be sure that you aren’t spending more than you are making, so you need to be EXTRA conservative on the bidding if you trythis at all.

    Also, a few years ago Amazon put “A Dance With Dragons” up for pre-order, claiming it would be available in a few months. It is STILL not even finished!!! I did my due diligence, and found out on the author’s web site that the release date was made up, but if I hadn’t been careful, I might have blown a few thousand dollars, and still be wondering if I’d ever get anything back.

    MY advice is to stay away from pre-orders until you really feel like you can do this in the dark, because that’s where you’ll be. As for CPA’s and free offers like those zip submits, these are good programs to try, I just wouldn’t want you to give up on Amazon over a pre-order delay in commissions.

    Tony

    Comment by Administrator — March 27, 2009 #

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