My first PPC campaign - Made first $1 from $10

lol
yeh, yesterday i created my first PPC campaign on yahoo.

Got 1 lead conversion of $1 with CPC 0.25
but i spent $10 to get that


I am loving it... but its tough guys.. affiliate marketing is risky.

wat ya say ?

 

it is indeed a tough game with PPC...I'm dying

 

lol.. yeh tough.. dont know how superaffiiliates make so much and get away with PPC easily..!!!

BTW any advise for starter like me ? which offers, max bid, tools, guides, etc...

 

PPC is like trading stocks, forex etc...

its a game of numbers, most of the time you and I lose....

95% of the time, I think

 

Learning about ppc traffic & conversion is not a one day game, it needs lots of time/skills and a positive mind approach to get success.

 

You need to increase your profit margins.
1.Use long tail low cost key words and phrases
2.Bid low, as low as possible until you get a clearer picture regarding what keywords convert best for you
3.If you are advertising on google or yahoo you can get free 50$ coupons that are circulating this and other forums
4.Consider trying to promote different products, some will convert better then others
5.Use clear specific adverts that say exactly what you are selling,
if you are selling toasters make sure you write Silver Toasters - But silver toaster at great discounts bla bla bla
rather then "want a toast for breakfast, get you dream breakfast materials here... "

You want the person who clicks to knwo exactly what is beyond the click.
If he knows and doesn't click you saved yourself a non converting click click costs.

Good luck

 

Thanks homerunner, great tips.

I used all the keywords which they suggest..

Just lost another $10. Dating offers are not working and they have high bid prices.

So earned $1 and spent $20 - what's my ROI then ?

 

don't use the key words they offer
Make you own long tail keyword list!

 

I just bought some traffic for my site, 1000 visitors for $5, and I can tell you those were 5 bucks completely thrown away, not a single visitor saw more than the homepage... so I guess CPC would be the way to go.

 

hmm.. then the search volume would be less ?

I searched for "online dating" and they gave a long list of keywords including singles, chat room, free dating etc.. I selected all of them.. And i think they are good keywords which we usually search. If i dont use them, then no traffic..

can you give an example of long tailed keyword for "online dating" ?

 

First, I am not familiar with this market but I will give you my best try.

online dating for the retired
online dating web sites
free online dating web sites
online dating web site
on line dates web sites
etc..

 

Maybe you should try zip/email submits at first

they are generally easier to convert

 

I don't think so,adwords is more expensive than any other PPC.

 

ppc has become V competitive,

i remember way back when most PPS'ers were making 90% of their revenue on brand bidding (e.g. bidding on a retail or trademark name) for every $0.05 they spent they probably made back $0.50 at least in CPA EPC earnings

i left PPC for affiliate marketing a while back as it was too high risk, prefer to put my money into schemes that have a stronger chance of return on investment

be careful as its all to easy to blow $1,000's and get very little.

 

Your tips are good but you need to be careful with few things

1. Most long tail low cost keywords and phrases are extremely low search volume. For those who are really successful with long tail strategy, when they say "long tail", they mean REALLY long tail keywords that may only give u 1 click per month.. so unless u planning to have 100k plus long tail keyword list, it won't get much success

2. Bid as low as possible your keywords won't even be active and u won't get enough traffic to get confident conclusion. Unless all your keywords are great QS with 0.05 or less bid price and no major competition, which I find nearly impossible in any given niche..

Apart from these two points, you're giving great insights

 

The key to get long tail, low cost, less competitive keyword is to think broad. Instead of getting many keyword variations of online dating, e.g.

free online dating site
online dating websites
on line dating site free, etc etc.. because all you are doing is find keywords that really is relating to one root keyword "online dating" which limits your traffic..

Firstly you need to further segment your market within the big online dating industry. For example, are you promoting spanish dating, christian dating, gay dating, asian dating, black dating, etc etc..

Even of these keywords are there own topic and theme. So you can make them separate campaign.

For any campaign, let's take spanish dating for example.

1. find some keyword variation for the keyword spanish, e.g. hispanic, latin, spanish, etc (i think that's pretty much it, but my vocab is crap so.)

2. find some keyword variation for the keyword "dating", e.g. online dating, dating, dates, match, dating sites, etc etc find a few more

3. where are you targeting? If you are in the US, then get a full list of all US cities..

4. now combine all 3, e.g. spanish dating new york, spanish dating sites LA, etc etc, spanish word x dating words x US city words, that will give you a huge list of long tail keywords

5, you should create your landing page with dynamic keyword inserted, that gives you the best landing page QS

But yes, most of these keywords will high very very low traffic, which will probably pisses you off when you see no impression, no clicks, not even much clicks and loss, lol.

But the truth about PPC is finding the balance. You either use some big keywords like online dating, chatroom, free online dating sites, etc that everybody is bidding on and cost you lots or get some low traffic keywords but you don't get much action... well if you can find the good balance, you win the game

 

Lots of zip/email submit offers are around $1.5 lead. It is really quite hard to make some money out of it (at least for me) even though it is supposed to convert better.

Also, many zip/email submit offers are like "what do you think is better, KFC or McDonald submit your email, or do you think heath ledger should win the oscar for playing the role of Joker in Dark knight, yes or no, submit your zip code" etc etc etc,

I mean how do you get keywords for these type of "products", i really have difficulty with it...

But if you're doing banner advertising on your websites, and not driving ppc traffic just for the sake of zip/email offer, then i think it's a different thing.

 

very well said beikepangzi , great guide..

Thanks for your inputs guys , keep them coming..
I just paused the dating campaign, and continuing with my zip submit offer which made me $2 from $20