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

I've gotten poor results from Miva. The conversion rate was pretty low but I made 2 sales (out of 250 clicks) totaling $50 bucks on my last campaign so it probably wasn't bot traffic.

I don't know what the problem with Miva is. I paid for the top spot but I could be on the 2nd page on some of it's search partners and they also get a lot of clicks from content pages with nothing but miva links as well. That would explain the low conversion rates.

I got absolutely no sales from adbrite but I was advertising on donkeymails.com lol. I didn't realize that these people are probably being paid to read e-mails with adbrite ads in them Omg thus they earn money to view my ad and are probably not the right audience to buy anything.

 

Like maintenance? The ads been active for nearly 5 days and nothing but the other non pharmacy ads are all running properly. Maybe its because its a pharmacy ad but i worded it so it wouldnt ask me for an id to continue.
Smeagol UK miva has been good so far better then the same ads on adwords actually but its only been a few days in.

 

As long as somebody is getting good results with Miva I won't give up on it. At least I got two sales.

 

Just went to the Adwords panel and hey, there's a new option in campaign:
Delivery method:
Standard: Show ads evenly over time
Accelerated: Show ads as quickly as possible

Might be why you're not getting much hits now.

 

I still don't get why everyone thinks campaign CTR affects anything. I think what matter is keywords CTR as your ad gets showed by kw. Does anyone have any information on how the avg. for campaign would affect anything?
Thank you!!

 

You are right that quality score is determined on the keyword level, but the campaign CTR would give a good idea of the overall quality score of the account.

 

Thanks for Info Dude

 

Thanks for pointing that out.
I'm not sure that it's much use though, timing when the ads are shown could be a critical part of using Adwords, for one of my campaigns which is a membership site after 10pm at night is when it goes tits up, thats when the loonies come out to play, they click on the ad then try to sign up using an invalid credit card or someone else's card. Very rarely do the clicks convert.
Conversely from 8am to midday is the best time for conversions with a very high % rate. The afternoon is next best and after 6pm the conversion rate drops dramatically and the clicks rise, this is when the surfers are out in force.

If I am up at the right time I often pause the account over night, it's quite cost effective, one problem is different time zones however that campaign is only for the US so it's not as bad as targeting different countries.

I track this in a dairy so at a glance I can see exactly what time the conversions came in.

Another campaign I run works differently, I get a lot of conversions at night, however this product is an amusing one and people who have a couple of drinks in them tend to buy, they would prpbably give it a miss if they were sober .

Getting back to the options, Show ads evenly over time or show ads as quickly as possible. Well neither is really a good option, it's taking the scattergun approach and is a bit like gambling, hoping your going to hit your target.
We can show our ads geographically but we can't control the timeframe they are shown in which as I have pointed out could be crucial and lower our costs significantly.

 

I'll jump in too.... I started PPC advertising last week. I had tried it before but only with some $50 free coupons-- not enough data to be useful. I am a successful affiliate using mostly CJ programs so that is what I stuck with. I know some merchants that convert so it was simply a matter of buying the keywords that I don't rank for yet in natural search. Using areas that I already knew was a great help.

I'm doing this on the side of my normal affiliate and client work so I started out haphazardly. I'm still probably missing some tracking info since I am funneling some of the clicks through one of my existing sites as a landing page. I haven't had enough time to test out the code I wrote to facilitate tracking. Anyway... I'm sure I've probably missed a few sales that were really due to PPC but I didn't track them correctly and they look like my normal natural search sales in the CJ report.

So far after 4 real days of work (2 days of Adsense and 2 of Adcenter) here is what I've got. The data is approximate because of Adcenter's horrible reporting:

Different programs used: 8
Number that converted: 6

Imps: 16,215
Clicks: 187

# of sales: 4+?
# of leads: 7

Total network spend: $228
Total income: $226.56

I'm actually behind $2! I think that is off though as I do about 20 sales a day with my main merchant and a few of those have probably been from PPC. I am going to track more closely now but since I know what converts with them already, I'm not too worried.

Also, a number of the things I'm promoting are Lead driven so I expect some of those to be verified after the long weekend which should present a nice bump up for the profit numbers. I've already paid for the clicks but I expect them to convert in a few days... no big deal, again, something I do a bit of with natural search so I know the merchant is good. I expect the profit from those clicks to go above $300 once they settle in. I wasted about $35 of the clicks on programs that I don't know about so once I start weeding those out, the ROI will improve.

That is the real key... find the merchants that convert and throw everything you can at them. They are rare-- the ones with no leaks on the page (phone numbers, adsense, etc)-- the ones who don't do reversals and really give you every sale that you make. I love those type I'm speaking from experience in natural search affiliate marketing; I'm as green as you can get with PPC.

 

TheHoff, after how long did you got that response? 4 days, one week (you said last week at the beginning), one month?

I've started doing some PPC advertising though I think I'm too stupid and went in a high CPC keyword list. Yea, that's dumb to want to advertise paid surveys from clickbank, I might try something else this week as I'm about to finish my semester, I'll have more time to take care of my business

 

I started last week. I spent two days with Adwords and quickly blew through a $50 certificate. I'm now waiting for my bank transfer to arrive at Google so I can continue. Since the CPC is higher there, I'm concentrating on what I really know converts. Then for the past two days I've been playing with AdCenter. It takes twice as long to get anything done with their interface, the traffic is much lower, but the CPC is lower as well.

I tend to stay far away from ClickBank. I know some people have luck with them but it is full of shady offers IMO. Commission Junction works well for me as well as Shareasale and Azoogle. For this PPC experiment, I'm only using CJ at the moment.

I concentrate on real products that average people buy. I don't like e-books, information, paid surveys, gift cards, or free items where you pay S/H -- unless I'm sending free, untargeted traffic at it. I prefer actual products or lead forms that apply to actual products that people buy online. Even better are products that people buy, use up, and then buy again.

If you're wondering what to promote, try an informal survey of a dozen friends and family members. Ask them to list out the last 3 things they bought online (besides books) and where they bought them from. Sample your target audience and make it a wide sample-- don't ask 10 guys in your dorm because you'll get the same 10 answers. Now you have a custom list of products to work from that you know actually convert. Finding an honest merchant is the next step.

 

Hi Prodigy,
You are nearly correct. It is at the adgroup level.

 

I am confused... you guys are still spending moneyto earn money.

Which is exactly what I was talking about so many months ago... when I was still new around here.

 

What is the confusion? People spend money on ads, spend time researching and writing them, and then get paid by affiliate programs for the traffic. While not as profitable as natural search, it still takes skill and time. You can also start new programs immediately. I'm a 5-bar CJ earner on natural search alone but adding PPC now allows me to try new affiliate programs without having to wait weeks or months for listings.

 

No... What I meant was I am confused how this is beating what I said originally. YOu guys are spending the meoney, to make the money.

 

Whether I did better today or the weekend sales are coming through or it is because I fixed my click tracking for one of the merchants; either way... PPC stats only for today:

expenses: $120.73 from 106 clicks
return: $222.72 from 8 sales and 4 leads
profit: $102.01

It is strange to see my CJ numbers so jacked up from the PPC but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I'm anxious to get a full week's worth of stats into a spreadsheet.

 

Nice One Dude
Keep work in that direction

 

Hi jimboot,
Could you provide a link to where you read that? I'm not seeing the bad keywords affecting the good ones, but I'm using pretty laser targetted groups so could be that. I still think what matter is the isolated keywords.

Thank you!

 

How do you advertise products that are already generally ranked #1 in google search? Are you using landing pages or you send them straight to the affiliate?

 

If someone is searching for a brand name or a product name and there are a lot of natural results you have to lure them in with a catch-- free shipping, 20% off, etc. You do have an advantage over natural search results in that you can change your ad text much more quickly to find what works. I do a mix of landing pages and straight to the merchant.