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

I tried running a ringtone ad on Miva on the weekend. I believe they have a click fraud problem. Killed $100 in 5 hours ... 800 clicks in 5 hours! Not one sign up. A quick search on google "miva click fraud" tells the same story.

 

When i search google for "miva click fraud" in quotes i get 0 results, without quotes i get 70,000 yet none of the listings in the first few pages are saying miva has a click fraud problem.. How did you conclude from that search that they do have a problem?

 

Oh man .. without the quotes .. on page one:

3rd Tier PPC Fraud Very Bad: 100% Click Fraud?
Don Sausa - The Independent Blogger: Why I quit Miva / FindWhat ...

I'm not even going to bother quoting them on page 2... why am I even responding to this?

Findwhat was renamed to Miva 4 or 5 months ago.

 

That is strange my friend...
Do you mail them?
Because I have success with miva.
Miva have 1:120 conversion, but work
Do you check your affiliate program?
I first check and then only work with affiliate program that realy work...

 

Pissed at Adwords. I'm pushing a product relating to Passover (which is next week) and they sat on their ass over approving the ad for four or five days!

Is it because of the religious theme, as Jimboot had encountered or because there were yiddish words in the copy and keywords and they didn't understand them? They weren't obscure... I mean I'm not Jewish and even I knew them!

Well, long story short, my potential profits were probably halved by the delay.

 

I mailed them, they said they they take click fraud very serious and asked me to follow up with logs etc. I really can't since I jumped the clicks directly to azoogle ads. Which btw only registered 490 clicks! The other 300 clicks never even made past the redirect url!

So that's a 0:800 conversion for me. My recommendation? Do not bid for the #1 positions anywhere.

 

Well, it's been about a week, I have only had the 5 sign ups on the first day, nothing since. They have not been reversed yet, so many the person entered 5 different people?

The keyword competion has gone off the roof. The day I started promoting the vendor was the 2nd day in they joined CJ. In a week I have had 26 clicks costing $14.81 The ads still are not in the content network yet ... what is google doing?

I am now trying my own landing page so I am not in competition with others for the direct link to the vendors landing page to see if I can get some better positions.

I really hate adwords.

 

Damn, I've bought ebooks about adwords, went to seminars, and nobody has boiled it down to such excellent advice as that. Great post!

 

Hi! This is my first post on Digital Point. I've just re-read this thread and decided to jump on this.

I have a few questions some of you might be able to help me with, if you are willing to share.

1. How do you pick which products to promote?
2. How do you pick which keywords to bid on?
3. How much do you research the product, service or niche before acting on it?
4. Are there any particular tools to help in the process?

Thank you very much!

 

Sorry for not responding much sooner.

Basically the niche is a health niche that solves a problem.

The keyword phrase I picked has 4 words in it and the 166.0/day is the amount of people that search for it on google. I have the top placement for the keyword phrase on MSN and I only get 15 hits a day.

Advertisement on adwords is like $2. On Miva I can get some traffic for 15 cents but the conversion rates have been pretty low so far.

I get $14 per sale and $.50-$1.25 per google ad click.

I'm not really worried about my lack of traffic as much as I am low conversion rates. I've tried the "make your content presell approach" then the rich jerk approach and I'm thinking about doing the Name Squeeze approach.

After that I will just move on to higher paying niches and affiliates.

 

I would be interested in those reponses too.

 

I agree,
I love 3 or 4 position

 

I had another two adgroups that still have not been approved in that campaign. I've forgotten how long it is over a month I think now. They're a bit touchy on religion methinks

 

I 'm with you guys.

I have had the blue spot on google for a few campaigns and the CTR is incredible but conversions REALLY SUCK!

I think this demonstrates that the majority of people that click on adwords know now they are ads whereas in Google that little blue spot is mistaken for an organic listing.

 

I agree I would also add make sure your keywords are in your ad copy where possible. Don't go over 20 or so KW per group. this includes when you are using "" & [] it decreases relevance to the reader and therefore your CTR.

 

1. I'll let you know when I work it out LOL - But basically
I look for something that at least has $16 in it as commission and that represents 50% comm. I have to think that the product has an audience so I check seaches on KWs and I like to know that it can convert. So I look for info on that as well. Gotta go and feed my dogs I'll answer the rest later.

 

1. I use things like Amazon (early adopters, top sellers). I find products that are popular and are priced high enough so that I can make a profit at 2% conversion. I have an adwords calculator on my blog to help figure that out.
2. I pick keywords based on search popularity and google adwords research tool.
3. I read all reviews I can find (customer and professional). No way do I want to offer a crap product.
4. I use the free keyword suggestion tool here at DP, nichbot.com, overture keyword tool, and google adwords tools.

 

nextebizguy's advice (points 2-4) is solid for the most part, but I will add this:

Dude, if you have figured out a way to profit from running adwords campaigns to sell Amazon products, you are some kind of mad genius. Adwords can be so expensive and Amazon commissions are so miniscule!

 

Yeah, I'm no mad genius that's for sure. Lots of trial and error. I actually have turned a slight profit through Amazon.com (go figure). Where you make your money is picking a product that easily goes with "OTHER" purchases. I'm finding that when people go to buy, they are buying more than one item. All that extra commission adds up.

For me, when people go to buy this certain DVD player, they are also buying DVDs and other items. It is becoming harder because Adwords keeps bumping up the prices. What I used to get for 13 cents, now costs me 17 cents. I'm falling out of good rankings even at 17 cents. It's killing me.

 

Are you using misspellings? Don't overlook that as a source of cheap keywords.