Hi all, This is my first post to the digtal point forums. I've been reading a lot about CPA/CPL programs and PPC advertising and wanted to share my experiences and ask a few questions. I stumbled onto Shoemoney's blog a while back about his success in ringtone marketing. I've also noticed many posts here on digital point discussing ringtone programs. After reading Shoemoney's post at his blog, I figured I'd give it a shot. I have/had little experience with PPC (using Adwords now) and CPA/CPL programs. I've mainly been doing sites for CJ/Linkshare/Amazon promoting products. I figured that the ringtone market is pretty established and possibly over saturated by now. After the responses to Shoemoney's blog post, I figured it would get even more competitive. I decided to give it a shot anyway since I thought it would give me a good opportunity to learn the PPC market and how Adwords works. New niches are probably the best to get into, but if I could make inroads into an already established market I'd feel a certain degree of success. About 3 weeks ago I started promoting a ringtone offer from Azoogle ads. I used the adwords keyword tools, overture inventory tools, etc to build a list of keywords. Using the these lists, I saw keywords like: "free ringtone" "50 cent ringtone" "eminem ringtone" etc... Of course I targeted those keywords, but damn, they were too costly per click. Even when I set a low CPC, I didn't get many impressions because I might be down in the 50th ad position or so. That sucked. The keyword lists didn't give me enough sugestions of keywords that were cheaper. So I started making up some other keyword combinations. I finally found a set that gives me a low CPC, but not much traffic. I guess the ultimate goal is to find the keywords nobody has has found yet and get lots of impressions. Since I'm new to this game on so many levels, I'm not sure what to expect in terms of conversion rates. My average CPC on Google is around 25 cents, and my ringtone earnings are around 60 cents/click. Not too bad as I'm still coming out ahead. My problem is that because my keywords are on the fringe I'm not making too much per day. (Of course I'm not spending too much either). This is basically due to not having enough impressions (something I see as gaining more exposure). My questions are: 1. My keywords average showing up in positions 2-16. Should I boost my max CPC to try moving my ads up higher? If I pay too much and don't increase my conversions then I'll end up making less. 2. What methodology should be used to determine more keywords. I need to find keywords that are within my budget, yet have high volume. I need these keywords to be able to convert too. 3. I have no idea which keywords are converting. I simply look at how much I earn vs how much I pay to determine how I'm doing. I have too many keywords to try creating unique tracking codes for each. It would be too tedious. Any other method of tracking conversions? Again this is going Adwords -> Azoogle. 4. Am I on track to with my costs? If a lead pay out $10 or so, how do I determine my max CPC? I know if depends on my ad copy and how I'm converting, but I'm not sure how to find the sweet spot. 5. Am I normal on my conversions? I'm converting at about 1/20 clicks at Azoogle. I'm only using Adwords now, but know that I can try Yahoo and MSN also. I haven't yet as I'm still cutting my teeth on this stuff and would like to narrow down all the combinations at this point. Thanks, Grant
You might want to try reading through this thread if you haven't already- it's all about PPC and has lots of good feedback. Actually, the 3-6 positions convert the best, in my experience. That is a very good conversion rate. Just calculate how many clicks it takes to get a sale. You said above it takes 20. OK, so that means divide your 10$ commission by 20 = your break even point is .50 a click. Anything under that is profit, you just need to test and as you say, find the sweet spot. Don't forget that at the beginning of a campaign, you may want to spend a little more to establish a good CTR, that will give you higher positioning for less $ later.