The Unofficial DP Winter '06 Affiliate Noob's Challenge thread

Yes, I agree with skimmy...

 

Well that's definitely a pissabolity. I know they to remain active for content searches. Is this what you mean?

 

No I mean actually active for search. A few of my keywords say inactive for search yet they still get many impressions through the search network. Doesn't make much sense but it's happened to me more often then not.

 

I have also come across keywords which have a low # of searches or the like and when I bid on the keyword I get quite a few clicks.

 

Hello everybody, I was too starting out with Adwords after reading an interesting ebook. Unfortunately, unlike many of you, i was not successful so far with sales only £4.30 after spending £40 . Although i have read several things about affiliate programs i found this thread much more interesting because of the progress you guys report!

I would like to ask you a favour and help me a bit. After I saw your results i created some ads which are product specific rather than shop specific. Even though I include all the info in the add (title of the product) when i try to add the keywords the minimum bid is $0.5! I can see that some of you are working with 0.1 staight from the beginning. My adv could not be more specific for the product.

Can you tell me what am I doing wrong?

Thank you for reading, and congratulations for your progress!

 

Very nice thread!
I'm also starting my own Adwords campaign after reading it but I'm not sure how to start. I registered on ClickBank and I see many websites but very hard to pick one.

 

Carefully check out the landing page of the affiliate you pick to send traffic to.
I have a site with 30 different but product related affilates.

After a couple of months I notice some that although they look like they would convert really well lag behind the others although clicks were about right compared to the others.
I couldn't put my finger on the problem until I noticed a toll free phone number to call on one of them.
After checking the other sites that lag I saw that they also had phone numbers on them.

A lot of people don't trust doing business on the internet and if there is a toll free number they will use it and we don't receive the commission .

 

Welcome aboard! Your problem is probably that people are paying that for the same KW. How many ads are up there for the same KW. I'm guessing at least 20? That will be your problem - competiton.

 

Thank you jimboot for your reply. This is the strange think (sorry i forgot to write it before) there are only 2~3 adds for that key words. With my minimum $0.5 my ad is displyed first position. If that is the case then what are the rest ads paying since lower than mine ($0.5) the search is incactive?

Thank you again

 

Then find word that relative for your keyword and that don't have to much competition

 

Aaaaaaaaahhhh . If you read this thread you will see I have already posted with the same problem.
I once had a KW where there were no other ads and Google said they wanted $6.46 per click! According to Wordtracker the KW was getting a significant amount of hits. I don't have the answer for you but I think it may have something to do with Google historical data or something. It sucks I know and I can't explain it. Sorry

 

Thanks Jim. Actually i did read your posts I just thought maybe you had found the solution. Anyway if I have anything new I will post it here.

However how my lowest bid on ANY of my specific ads is ~$0.5? Whatever I try to advertise I cannot get lower than that. Could you please tell my an example of an old ad that you used and had low bids? What were the keywords? I am trying to figure out what am doing so wrong compared to you guys, as you all seem to have extremely low bids.

 

I can't sell anything?

Here is my ad:
Dog Training to Stop Your Dogs Behavior Problems!
Put an End to the Stress and Annoyance of Your Dog Behavior Problems and Slash Your Dog Obedience Training Time in Half by Using Techniques That Give You Immediate Results!! Only $37.00

Here is the product!

165 Clicks with Searchfeed.com 0 Sales

Keywords:
aggressive behavior dog training - barking dog stop train - barking dog stop training - basic dog obedience training - basic dog ovedience training - basic dog training - book dog obedience training - book dog ovedience training - boxer dog - command dog training - dog - dog and training - dog bed - dog beds - dog behavior problem -
dog behavior problems - dog breed - dog breeders - dog breeds canada - dog clothes - dog collar - dog door - dog fence - dog food - dog grooming - dog hand obedience signal training - dog health - dog home obedience training - dog house - dog house small training
dog medicine - dog names - dog obedience - dog obedience puppy training - dog obedience tip training - dog obedience training - dog obidence training - dog ovedience trainer training - dog picture - dog potty training tip - dog problem - dog show training - dog supplies - dog tool training - dog train - dog training
dog training advice - dog training biting - dog training books - dog training collars - dog training course - dog training courses - dog training guide - dog training methods - dog training obedience - dog training products - dog treats - dog wallpaper - dogging
dogs - dogs training - house train a dog - house train dog - house training older dogs - how to train a dog -
how to train your dog - how train dog - litter train dogs -
obedience training for dog - older dog house training - pet dog training - pictures of dogs - pitbull dog - potty training a dog - train dog - training a dog - training adult dog - training older dog - wisconsin dog breeders

 

Mark,

Some keywords are probably too broad (dog clothes? dog collar?). I suspect you might be getting curiousity clicks.

Text Suggestions:

Train Your Dog!
Immediate Results only $37
Free Expert Consultation!

Hang in there and test, test, test. Really try to pick people interested in buying dog training. Focus on those keywords like a laser beam and cut the rest out.

 

Wow - that's brave using the F word. I concur with your other points though. You should also take the words that are getting the clicks and setup new adgroups just for them. This way your ads will be more relevant. When I do this the new adgroup's CTR triples or quadruples.

 

This is a bloody good thread and I think all of us are taking something away from reading it.
This is something I have cobbled together, I hope Mark finds it beneficial.

How well your PPC campaign performs is based on keyword centric ad-copy relevant to your business, short and sweet landing pages that not only load quickly but that give the prospect what they want, and lastly good tracking so you can see what works and what doesn’t by focusing on the numbers, not your opinion.

First, you will want to create one ad-group for each keyword. Next, Create around 3-9 ads per keyword. The key here is to test, test, and test until you are running an ad that has both a high Click Through Rate and secondly a high Conversion Rate. Again your objective is lowest possible CPA. When you test, don’t use your opinion on what you think your customers want. Use the ad with the best data representing CTR and highest conversion even if the ad is not something you feel is very good, always go by the numbers.
Ad-copy is a funnel process, from the attention getter to the call to action. There are 4 display lines in Google Adwords ads:

Title –The attention Grabber – 25 Characters Max
Description Line 1 – Talk about the product or service offered – 35 Characters Max
Description Line 2 – Call to action - 35 Characters Max
Display URL - 35 Characters Max
Tip: Ensure the ad-copy that you are creating is relevant to the keywords you are creating the copy for. Thats why you split the terms into small tight groups.

Landing Pages.....This is the page where Prospects turn into leads, the page the lead is persuaded about your product or service. The tips here are easy to explain, do not send all your prospects to the same landing page for each keyword or ad. Your landing page needs to be relevant to your ad. So, if your ad was targeting Dog Training and your ad sends the prospect to the homepage talking about everything from Dog Food to Dog Breeds Canada you will lose the prospect which will result in a low conversion rate.

If your ad is about Dog Training, send the prospect to your Dog Training page. You have roughly three seconds to grab the attention of your visitors so ensure the page is the correct one or they will go back and click on a competing ad to find what they are looking for.

Less is more in regards to content on a landing page. Have your call to action at the bottom of the page and ensure your landing page is giving what the prospect is looking for in a clear and easy to read format.

Be realistic about conversion rates and click through rates. Do not expect unrealistic returns. Realistic click through rates are 1% - 2% and realistic conversion rates are 1-2%, but anything below 3% for conversion rates is considered low when your PPC campaign is managed correctly.

Hope this helps and good luck.

 

Hi Jim,

If you mean the "Free" word, I used it because in the sell-page, the guy is offering a free 1/2 hour consult for any dog training issue (reg 120 dollars). So I figured it was a good way to get the "Free" word in there...

 

Hello there.

I am using a landing page that i made for the adwords ads I have, and i can see that over the last 4 days out of the 60 (!only!) clicks i had on my ads only 7 actually were interested on the product. You may say that my landing page is ugly. I think is not . In fact it displays much more encoureging information (i.e. extra bonus, free shipping, additional discounts etc). I find it very difficult to believe that somebody would click on an ad saying "Buy product AAA for only $20" and land on my page that says "Along with the AAA product you get BBB and CCC and DDD....." and NOT CLICK further to see the actual product!

I hope you know what i mean

Well any thoughts?

@MARK5022: Hello. I am not an expert (in fact exaclty the opposite, I made no profit at all so far) but I believe the product you are choosing is a bit saturated. Why not try to find a product less popular? My opinion about the keywords you have, it is just --->increse impressions(with not corresponding clicks)---->lower your CTR---->lower your adv quality--->increase keywords CPC. This is beacause I dont think that somebody that is searching for dog clothing would be interested in your product i.e. increase impressions.
Beware! this is my opinion that so far i have spent $80 and made only $8 ...

Good luck to you all!!!! Keep up the good work!!!

 

Wow! thanks for all the input.

The reason the keywords were so broad is I can’t get any clicks with Searchfeed.Com for words that are not broad. I didn’t get any clicks at all for about the first week after the campaign was approved and called Searchfeed.com. They said that their publishers might not have clicks for those specific keywords and try broader or different keywords. I don't recommend them.

I’m going to pick a new product and get an Adwords account setup and try again. I stopped using Yahoo/Overture because they wouldn’t let me setup an ad without a landing page. I should have used Adwords in the beginning but was tiring to be cheap! Live and Learn

Mark

 

Heres a question I don't know the answer to.
Should you get charged for the clicks obviously made by the same person, I had three clicks registered early today for a term but only one impression, it had to be from the same person. Its easy to tell when you have a clickthrough rate over 100%,
I notice I have been charged for three clicks but feel I should only be charged for one.

Because I have my own tracking program I can see that so far today I have 25 clicks but only 19 uniques.
Every day their is a dispariety between clicks and unique clicks.
This adds up to a lot of money over time, not just for me but everybody that uses Adwords....Google is making multi millions from these extra clicks .