I'm just wondering if all of you affiliates (I'm new at this) set your CPC high enough so that you come in the top spots (1-3) for advertising your clickbank products? Is that more effective at driving traffic and increasing the conversion rates? And what are typical conversion rates ? like 1 sale for every 100 clicks? thanks
Yes, the average conversion rate is 1:100 About the bids... Well it depends what niche your are in. If you are in money making niche for example, I would not suggest to bid too high, because top positions are VERY expensive. However, if you are in non-competitive niche, then you can bid a bit higher to appear in top 3. I think top5 is ok as well.
So, let me try and get my math right here... If a product that I'm promoting as an affiliate profits me $25/sale, and the avg conversion is like 1/100, then setting my max CTC to .25 to try and get a higher ad spot would pretty much wipe out the entire ROI and be useless for me to try and promote it, correct?
I have found the 4th or 5th position to be the best for ROI & CTR on most of my niche's. Some do well on the 2nd page. But ... many times if it's new campaign/adgroup and the CPC is too low for the first page, the keywords will not become active (no impressions). Depending on the niche, and how much I want to test it, I will set the CPC high enough to get on the first page until I get about 10 clicks, then I will lower it to an amount that should give a good ROI. I usually start my keywords CPC's at a very low amount -- .02 or .03 when I first add them and see what amount Adwords wants to make them active. Then I will increase it to .11 or .12 and see if I can get things going at that CPC. Hope this helps
I think this is a stupid move and a waste of money. Aim to be in the first page, not position. You should aim for postions of 1-8. If you find a keyword that is converting well, then you increase the cpc for it. You don't want to be paying 1$ per keyword just to be in the 1st position, but the keyword is converting very poor.
Exactly. I just referred somebody else to a blog talking about a method that does precisely this - http://blog.campaignblasts.com/category/campaign-blasting. The blog appears to provide a fair amount of free information about the method (along with some links to products for sale). I don't have that author's ebooks but I have read about the method elsewhere - one source being the ebook 5 Bucks A Day which I bought. It points out that the campaign blasting method ought to apply to non-PPC experimentation as well. I should probably become an affiliate for this last book, since I keep recommending it. Basically, you don't need to out-think reality ahead of time - just do careful experimentation and let reality do the sifting and selecting for you. It's easier than lots of people make it out to be. And reality never makes a mistake! Best of luck, Bruce
Absolutely - the sum you've done there gives you the absolute upper limit for your bids. Your minimum bid (which you can see on your keywords page once the campaign is created) is the lower limit. I'd strongly recommend bouncing your adverts around the area in between the two, and see how many clicks (and hence conversions) you get per day, and at what cost. Then do the sums in each position, and see which is the most profitable. Test new adverts to improve your clickthrough rate. This will allow you to get more clicks for the same spend by reducing your bids, and will also increase your Quality Score, so you pay less to appear in each position. Also test changes to your website, to improve your conversion rate (and hence make clicks more valuable to you). And adjust your bids for different keywords or Adgroups, depending on their performance, and the value of a conversion.