Hey all, I'm new to Adwords, but in the last 48 hours or so, I've had 200+ clicks without seeing any $$ show up in my Clickbank account. Any ideas on what could be causing this? It seems unlikely that all my merchants could suck this bad (I'm an affiliate), and so far as I can see, I'm using the right link format with my CB name included. Any thoughts?
Maybe they realised it was an affiliate website, and left? I know I would do. Or could it be click fraud - have you checked your stats to make sure?
Hi ajvan, I'm just starting out with Adwords too but am starting to see some success. I'd suggest to stick with just one merchant at the start and fine tune the keywords & ads to get the best results and see what works & doesn't work. Set your max daily budget low. I found about 60-75% of the commision for one sale was a good balance, leave it at least a day between changes and when you do tweak it only adjust one or two things each time. Don't go crazy fiddling with everything otherwise you won't be able to figure out what actually helped. Be prepared to lose a little money in the beginning, but look at it as an 'investment' as long as you are learning something and can afford to spend the money. If after about 5 days you don't see any sales, it might be time to take the Adwords knowledge you have learnt and apply it to a different product instead. Perhaps something that's slightly less competitive. This is just my experience so far, I'm sure others who have been using Adwords longer will correct me or have better suggestions. Take a look in the Clickbank forum too for more advice relating specifically to that program. There is a huge amount of very worthy free information here on DP so read, read, read..
This will be a newbie question, but how would I check for click fraud? Just to clarify, I don't have a site at this point - I'm sending link directly to the merchants.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe my problem was trying to start too many campaigns too fast... I'll start clicking around the forum.
might be ure placing ure site the wrong waay.. try to lower your bid rate.. or try for a rank of 9 or 10 if not 1.. it could defenitely be click fraud too.. hope for the best.. cheers
What kind of keyword matching are you using? If you're very new to ppc arbitrage..I'd suggest you start off learning something from MSN adcenter..it costs a lot less and will give you a lot of time to learn...IMO... But Have you done the best targetting you could? What does you ad look like? If you write the correct ad..let's say with prices...you might get lesser clicks but clicks that are more likely to convert.
I just initiated checkout with a couple of merchants via my ads, and sure enough, the page bottom is reading "affiliate:none." I'm pretty positive my link format is correct, I'm not bidding too high, and my ad content compares favorably with similar ads. What would cause my affiliate info to get dropped between the entry page and checkout? (I've paused my ads for the time being.)
I've using Adwords, leaning heavily on the Google keyword suggestor, as well as keyword tips from the merchants I'm affiliated with. I think targeting is OK, because my clickthru rate is decent, if not great. My ads compare pretty favorably to other ads in the genre (download rap beats). Does this stuff relate to my affiliate info getting dumped at checkout, though? (see above)
Sorry Ajvan, late reply Use a stat counter like www.opentracker.net or if you use a blog use www.performancing.com and you can monitor Google Adsense clicks to your website. It's more than likely not click fraud, but you should take precautions incase it does happen, and you have evidence to send to Google. Remember that many people don't like affiliate ads, and this will put directories like DMOZ off including you. Have you thought about contacting companies direct and create a page per company to promote their products or services. I went this way with one of my travel sites, and I found that I built up a good personal relationship with the marketing director - the downside you probably don't earn as much as affiliate, but people prefer clicking on a non affiliate link in my opinion.
Welcome to the ring-toss game that is adwords. You will find that you are not ialone in that you can't makem oney with adwords.