See how I made $39 in 20 minutes using Adwords

Oh..its your blog! I am following it since your first post! you do an excellent job. Just don't stop the good work!

 

Hmm, am I missing something or did he apply (very skillfully, all credits) the simple technique of using a ppc network to advertise a ppa advertisement?

 

That about sums it up.

 

friend iam applying your idea and getting success. thanks

 

thanks for this type of good information

 

Nice share man.. Keep up this good thread.. Good info for beginner like me..

 

i only want to know which ads do you have used to promote?

 

So ya rather take the fish, instead of the fishing rod eh?

Dude: He doesn't have to do this... it's already great stuff that he's sharing with us.

If you can't at least get a unique idea to implement from this thread, you're at the wrong forums.

Kudos to you Rob, glad you're willing to open up and share your methods with us.

 

If you look on the first page of this thread, you will see the ads I used.

On another note, I am helping my sister setup this same campaign. Everything is almost done.

1. Join adwords (using credit card to pay for it)
2. Join Commission Junction - lendingtree.com approved today!
3. Join adsense. (waiting for approval)
4. Bought domain (namecheap.com)
5. Setup Hosting (set her up free on my hostgator account)
6. Built up website (almost done using free content from ezinearticles)

Should go live by Monday with or without adsense. We are both excited!

I will post her progress as well.

So far this month (5 days):

Adwords spent: $546
Yahoo Spent: $87

Adsense Income: $35
Affiliate Income: $1045

Net Profit: $447

I now have about 4 hours invested time into this campaign which has made me over $2000 net profit in 35 days.

Adjusted landing page: about 1 hour total - indenting the text and putting in bold the keywords. I have a screen shot of my landing page somewhere in this thread.

Editiing keywords, grouping them, testing different ad copy: about 3 hours - my very first adcopy is still the best performing. But that doesn't stop me from continuing to try new ones.

I know the adwords budget is very high for most people starting out. I had to tell my sister that she needs to budget about $5000/month to do this. She took a deep breath and said "How much did you do yesterday?". I showed her: $300 affiliate sales, $155 adwords cost. Net profit $145. Took her about 10 seconds to say "This better work!".

Seriously, you all have about 90% of what I did in detail. There's only one thing I'm not telling you - the exact keywords I'm working with. But you do have the list I started with on the first page of this thread and a few of those keywords are in that list. The other 10% are keywords I just used my brain to come up with. Like adding plurals, putting things in quotes and brackets, using different verbs, etc...

Honestly, since 99% of the traffic is coming from the content network, the exact keywords are not an issue. So there is no reason anyone can't start this campaign and make a few bucks.

The only other advice I can give you now is that this campaign as outlined here requires you go full steam in adwords. Budget $100-$200 per day. Sometimes the campaign will run all day with no sales, then in the last few hours I'll get like 4 sales. So if you only budget $50/day, you would not have gotten those sales and lost all your money.

One more tip: Don't run your ads on Saturday, and between the hours of 12 midnight and 9am california time (gmt -08). I lost money every saturday and didn't record any sales in those off hours. I was losing about $10-$20/ day in the off hours on wasted clicks. I guess people were too tired to fill out the application LOL.

I'm still struggling with msn ppc and yahoo ppc. MSN is still not getting any clicks and very few impressions. Yahoo is not getting anywhere near the volume, but is generating a nice profit, albeit a fraction of adwords.

I'm debating if I should start bidding higher on the search network, like $6 to get on the first page. Kinda scary, since that would double my budget to $300-$400 per day. I'm really not ready to risk that kind of scratch just yet. Maybe after I get my $7000 checks from last month. Kinda got my eye on a new laptop though. Oh well, we all got problems.

 

Hey Robb,

I'm having a problem with being accepted to LendingTree affiliate program through CJ, is there a certain requirement to sign-up with them. I keep on getting decline.

Following this thread closely and trying to implement it as soon as i get approved with LendingTree, I notice CJ/LendingTree are the only merchant that provide the "advance" link (fill-form), which is a big help in converting!

 

My sister signed up at the lendingtree site directly, and got approved. We had no website up yet, no cj stats or anything. Don't know what to tell ya.

 

i'll try applying directly with LendingTree, thanks

 

Just got home from a cruise to Mexico... Fun fun..

Anyway... I am sad to see that I have yet to make a sale...

While I was away on vacation I lowered my max budget to $5 a day so it would still run but I wouldnt be worrying about throwing alot of money away...

Stats as follows:
41 Clicks
9500 Impressions
0.42% CTR (Content Network is Dragging CTR down)
$46 Spend

Nada from Commision Junction...

Note: This is in the Insurance Realm - If this becomes a successful campaign I will share all information including keyowrds, ads, landing page etc. I would appreciate it if someone could critique and give advice on my landing page...Please PM if your interested in helping me..

 

Rob, this is a pretty frickin awesome thread. I think it's really great that you shared all this. Good on ya, man! I'll definitely take a stab at this approach.

Mike

 

These are some great questions I got in my private mailbox, so I thought I'd share them here.

Right now I have 3 adgroups in google, 2 in yahoo, and 1 in msn. I use a different landing page for each adgroup, and track sales using a "SID" as provided in the the linking codes givin by lendingtree. SID is a common variable available to most if not all cj affiliates.

Using the SID, I track which adgroup/landing page and which ad link they click on for every sale.

Currently, I do not track which specific keywords convert. Two reasons this is not an issue since 99% of the traffic is comming from the content network anyway, and I only have a few keywords (3-10) per adgroup.

 

The primary keyword is "refinancing". I just ad variations of verbs and adjectives like "home loan", "mortgage", "find" and "refinance", and plurals like "home loans".

I guess you could call these long tail keywords since they are 3-5 words long. But they are really just variations on the same keyword.

I am constantly brainstorming for other variations to test, but again, since I'm in the content network, it's not as critical as the landing page, adcopy, and tracking.

 

wow 3-10 keyword per adgroup....you must have a keyword or keyphrase drilled down to it nitty gritty

ex:
mortgage refinancing
"mortgage refinancing"
[mortgage refinancing]

mortgage refinance
"mortgage refinance"
[mortgage refinance]

mortgage refinances
"mortgage refinance"
[mortgage refinance]

 

That's pretty close. I also adjust my adcopy and landing page for each group of keywords.

 

by having a very "tight" adgroup, it makes it easier to create relevant adcopy that links to your landingpage thats has a keyword rich article, which in return rewards you with a GREAT quality score....

its all about making Google Adword happy!

(sorry if im just pointing out the obvious)

 

I'm beginning to wonder if there is some fundamental difference between the thought processes of people looking to refinance and those looking to sign up for insurance. I have to make a sale, I have a new landing page I the works that is more professional looking and less wall-of-text like.