Hi everyone i'm new here but i'm looking for some help with a problem i think i might have. I've been advertising with adwords for about a month now, promoting various clickbank products and affiliate marketing for other websites. My question is, since i began advertising with adwords i've had about 450 clicks on the 10 ads i've been running. Does anyone think it's possible that after 450 clicks to not have ONE SINGLE sale or even so much as a lead for free programs? Like I said, I'm a little new to the ppc advertising thing, but to me, to not even have one single lead with a free program i've been promoting much less a sale, just doesn't seem possible. If anyone has any input on what might be the cause, ie commission theft etc., or whether or not this sounds normal, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I'd certainly be worried! Commission theft is only really an issue if you're promoting products / services to webmasters, as it wouldn't occur to most general punters to sign up to an affiliate network and substitute their own id into a hoplink in order to steal your commission. So without knowing what you're promoting, it's hard to say. It may just be that you've picked some turkeys, and you need to go back to the drawing board and choose some other products to promote? If you want to post some more specific details on the products you promote, and the keywords you're buying, we may be able to be of more help?
I wouldn't look toward commission theft ... especially if Clickbank is one of your networks...and double especially if you are new to affiliate marketing and/or adwords. Possible reasons you might not be getting any sales: 1. Your adword ads are not targeting the right market. People see your ads ... click ... and then go to a page that ends up being something other than what they really wanted. 2. Your adword ads are not specific enough. This can happen when your keyword phrases are made up of 1 or 2 or even 3 keywords using broad match. The user keys-in a search term which happens to contain your keywords, but when grouped with the other words in the search string could mean something entirely different than what you're trying to peddle. EVEN WORSE ...your adword ads could be alluring enough for the person to click on it .... but because it wasn't what they really wanted they might end up "window shopping". 3. Your adwords ad might be great, but your landing page is confusing or just plain ugly. 4. Your prices are too high. Those are just a couple of things you might consider. I'm sure there are many more.
First of all thank you everyone for your help. Let me give you an example of one campaign i'm running. I'm promoting a dating site, and in my ad i'm stating that it's a dating service where people can meet other people in their area for free. i would get paid $3.70 per lead. Over the course of two days i had 86 clicks on my ad. I would think that people would know what to expect just by reading the ad, yet i had no leads after the 86 clicks. It just doesn't seem possible, does it? This is just one example. In many of my other ads, I would purposely put the price of the product to hopefully keep people from clicking that weren't interested in possibly buying. I do think that i may be using too broad keywords possibly, but i would think that having the price in the ad would deter people from clicking that weren't considering buying. Any thoughts?
Dating Service. If this is a pay site, make darn sure that you exclude the keyword FREE on your adwords campaigns (-free). Also, if this is NOT an adult dating site (ie; adultfriendfinder) you might also want to exclude ADULT and other related terms. If you are using broad matching on short keyphrases (keywords/phrases without the " " or [ ] around them) you might want to consider changing those items to attract more targeted customers. How many people are actually seeing the dating site? If you are sending people directly to the dating site then you know how many (number of clicks = number of people seeing the site). If you are sending people to your own landing page, from where they can then go to the dating site ... you need to find out how many people are actually clicking through to the dating site. If you are getting 86 people to your landing page but only 3 of those are going on to the dating site, then you have a problem with your landing page. If the dating site has an affiliate area where you can see traffic statistics then you should be able to see how many people are getting through. If not, you may want to add some scripting code to your landing page to track clickthroughs. If you find that many of the people are actually getting to the dating site but are still not buying, then possibly: 1. You are sending the wrong people (adwords ads) 2. The dating site looks bad, cheap, confusing, etc. 3. The dating site service lacks features of other sites. 4. The dating site service is too expensive. If all else fails, you can always promote a different dating service.
Thanks for the input. The ad sends people directly to the site. I don't use any landing pages. Also, the service is free. Therefore I wouldn't exclude "free" in my keywords. You would think that after 86 clicks you would get ONE sign-up. I'm very concerned. Like I said I'm fairly new to affiliate and ppc marketing. Is there any known spyware or adware or the like that would allow someone to steal any commissions I generate through my affiliate marketing? Maybe that's a stretch, but the lack of results I'm getting has got me at wit's end. Thanks again for any help.
My 2 cents Affilate programs are full of products that don't convert on their own. That's why they use affilate programs. As a publisher you add value by bringing traffic that you have persuaded to convert along the way. Learn how to do that. Don't just bounce traffic.
I think it's much more likely that your product just doesn't convert well than that you're commission is getting stolen somehow. If you're new to it all just keep experimenting, and learn all you can about Affiliate Sales. You'll get there
Check, what they are paying you for. Clicks, impressions? Do you earn some money only when somebody buys memebership (or something else). These things can be pretty confusing.
Check these two things first. 1. Do Click bank register the clicks?. 2. Make sure your url you gave to adwords is right. Make sure you have yr affiliate id in it. If you want more help, you need to post yr ad and other information, so we can help you. Thanks Lavee
You can also cloak your link so user won't notice it http://www.affiliatelinkcloaker.com/ Another tatics is to register for your own domain and for example you want to promote this site www.no-smoking.com Your domain will be www.yourdomainname.com/no-smoking.html direct your link to www.no-smoking.com/affiliatewhatever. Basically it means that you show your affiliate link without leaving www.yourdomainname.com/no-smoking.html, thus preventing commission theft. I just know it works like this, for more technical bits, pls go and find out yourself
The value of that lead is fairly low for something you're sending a lot of traffic towards... on a lot of my programs I'm getting 1/10-1/15 conversion rate on $15-20USD leads. Perhaps you should try something else altogether? On that note, you may also have bad periods where you can push 100 visitors through without getting a single lead, and some days where you convert 1/5. Over time the accuracy of your sample data will improve .
I've suspended my campaign until i can figure out exactly what the problem is. Does anyone think that spyware could have anything to do with it?
Hey Dabro, I know this isn't what you want to hear, at the same time, your problem is probably not commission theft. 86 clicks is really small in the scheme of things...a lot of factors determine your conversion. My best guess is you are advertising on "browsing" keywords...such as "online dating" ...these type of keywords are the lowest converting...1 conversion in 100 to 300 clicks is not out of the ordinary. Why? Because these folks are browsers...they are in shopping mode...not buying mode or even filling out a form mode. What you need to do is find keywords that would indicate people are almost ready to buy or make some kind of action. Take Care, Travis