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

I've not tried overture for Amazon affiliate links, but have done Adwords. Is it possible that the URL's length is an issue for the overture interface? Could you sub a tinyurl?

 

Google received my adwords payment. I'm good to go. Set the limit to 3$ a day and running a couple of 0,05$ a click keywords. Will see how the impressions and CTR do.

How long does it take for your ads to show up for the keywords?

 

Not very long at all. I can't say I have timed it, but I would guess from mins to an hour max.

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AdGroup "Fad X" $10 max/day

Date Imp/Clicks/CTR/Avg CPC/Cost/Avg Position
1/28/06 971/38/3.9%/$0.13/$4.90/1.1
1/29/06 2,352/95/4.0%/$0.11/$10.30/1.2
1/30/06 2,592/93/3.5%/$0.06/$5.19/1.3
1/31/06 1,494/47/3.1%/%0.05/2.52/1.2

Sales (Some delay)
29-Jan-2006 $8.22 (1 sale) ~2.6% CV (estimated)
30-Jan-2006 $13.61 (3 sales) ~3.2% CV (estimated)
31-Jan-2006 $15.45 (3 sales) ~3.2% CV (estimated)

Ads: $22.91
Income: $37.28

Now if I can manage to get some more clicks I would be doing well. Today is not going too well. CTR is down a little and traffic is also down. These are conspiring to keep clicks low. I am guessing I'll end up with 40 clicks for today.

I am going to have to think over what KWs I can add or make less restrictive. Maybe I should be duplicating this campaign at Overture...

Also I think I can think of some parallel campaigns to run with this one. That is similar campaigns for similar types of items. Need to think it over.

 

Hey alext if you don't mind me asking... are you using a landing page or direct to amazon? I only ask because I am going to be starting an amazon campaign over the next couple days. If anyone else has had success with one or the other I would love to hear about it as well.

 

I am using this experiment to learn more about CPC ads direct to an affiliate i.e. no landing page. I currently run a successful cpc->landing page campaign already and have run semi-successful campaigns in the past. Nothing very big though.

The current campaign is #3 for this thread. It is NOT with Amazon but with a CJ affiliate program. The first 2 campaigns are dead, and one of those was to Amazon. I didn't expect the Amazon campaign to be a money maker, but was being used as a learning experience. What I learned is that Amazon is not a very good choice

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As far as Amazon goes, you might want to read back a few pages. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that Amazon is NOT a good program for this sort of advertising. Without double checking I think a commission of 25+% is what was recommended. Not to say Amazon cannot work, but you may want to be cautious.

 

Ah so CJ doesn't have a problem with sending visitors to their sites directly from AdWords?

EDIT:
I noticed 'Advertiser allows image redirects for this link.' & 'Advertiser allows URL redirects for this link.' displayed for some partners at CJ. I take it this has something to do with my question...

 

I find it funny how people always try and add keywords to their list.
I go the other way, start out with a bunch then drop the ones that don't convert.
Obscure ones or misspellings I place in a seperate campaign untill they receive 5 clicks, if they don't convert after that they get the boot.

All I want is a few high converting terms in a tight campaign. This keeps the costs down which is a major issue....especially the way the cost per click keeps rising.

 

Since I am sending the clicks directly to the advertiser's site I can't know what KWs are converting. With CJ stats I can see what "website" id was coded into the link, but that is it. Or am I missing something?

It depends on the advertiser. Some advertisers have rules on what you can and can't do. Or specifically can and can't do with PPC campaigns etc. CJ itself is just a system for connecting advertisers and publishers.

 

I wasn't pointing the comment at you alext......I know you can't see what is happening, thats where a website or landing page really helps.
I was just making a gereral comment.

I just know that I wasted a whole lot of money paying for non-converting terms. I didn't even realise it until I got a tracking system...then I found some terms I had spent hundreds of dollars on that never converted.

Tracking systems........aarrggghhh......I spent a lot of time looking for an inexpensive one.......every one I looked at for under $500 was no better than Awstats which comes free with hosting. The system still didn't tell you what was converting, just how many visitors arrrived at the site, from where and when, and thats about where they finished.
Some tracking systems have a monthly fee for using them, again anything under $50 a month was useless.
The systems that do what we need cast around 2k+ which is too much in my opinion.

Then my host told me to use an affiliate program, I found one for $200 that does the job. It takes a bit of work to set it up for tracking adwords but once it's done it's really good.
You just set up different adgroups for different terms and assign an affiliate code to each group. When a sale is made you can see what group it came from by the affiliate. You can take it further and assign affiliate code to each term so you know exactly which term was used for each sale.
It just takes more time as you have to make up an add for each and every term.
I start off whith groups of 5 or 10 then I start to narrow each group down by splitting them into smaller groups until each term has it's own code.
It's a simple way to do it and you weed out non-performing terms along the way.

 

similar campaigns for similar types of items is good idea.
I run similar campaigns for similar types of items always

 

Alright, I think I'm going to jump in here, too. Was checking out some affiliates on CB and noticed that there doesn't seem to be a way that I'd be able to track what AdWords keyword a sale came from. I know with CJ I can create seperate links for each keyword and CJ will tell me what link converted into a sale, but with CB I do not see how this would be possible.

I just wanted to check with everyone else before I moved my research over to CJ. This is my first experience with CB and I am only looking into it because of the success some of you have had with it in this thread.

Thanks!

 

Im starting to lose faith in all this. I spent about $200 last month with no results.

I must admit I havnt tried using a landing page yet, I will try that now, but Im not expecting any results.

 

Okay here's my first day:

Setup three campaigns, promoting different products within the same sector.

Put in a bunch of keywords or keyphrases. Currently had about 200 impressions and 15 clicks (@ 0,05$ per click). Just a matter of time to find out how it converts.

 

Then you must stop it and change it.

Don't loose your money on nothing my friend

 

May I ask what type of product you chose to promote? Not asking for you to give away exact details. Just curious if it is a CJ, CB, Amazon, or just a sole affiliate program you found?

 

I had another sale and have now made $77,- however yesterday I figured, hey - lets see what'll happen if I get all the clicks I can, so I spend $30 and didn't make a single conversion

I've backed the campain down to $10/day and at the same time I'm trying to advertise with banner ads instead of search engines. I found a "learn to draw" ebook on clickbank and I have about 140.000 impressions by drawing interrested people a day, so I'll see if they are willing to spend a little money.

 

sole affiliate, they pay about 12$ comission per sale. I expect a conversion rate of 1 or 2% which means I would spend less then 5$ (0,05$ clicks) for every sale.

Will see how it turns out.

 

Instead of using Amazon, Commission Junction, Clickbank etc, another way to go is to think of a product that you think will sell over the net.....(like you wouldn't have much chance of selling a fridge ....shipping costs etc)... then do a google search for sites that sell that item. Find out which ones have an affilate program, it's usually in small print at the bottom of the page.
These tend to pay out more as their is no middle man involved.
My daughter did that with her weight loss site and did very well out of it.
Of course I don't think using PPC for weight loss is a good idea......clicks are very expensive .

 

You can not bid to pharmacy business if you don't have square licence
But if you can , bid is one of highest on PPC

 

Yea! I think that was the issue. I setup a landing page and ad campaign. My keywords were just approved. The product I am promoting is brand new so there are only 4 keywords for it and the click rate from last month is very low because the product was not out then. I may have to add a new product just to get some clicks. One good thing is know one else has any bids on the terms so there cheap clicks.

I setup an additional test with a Clickbank product and opened an account with Searchfeed for traffic. Does anyone know anything about them? "Searchfeed" that is!