Hi just thought i'd share my stupidity from a couple of years ago,when i first started using adwords. My very first campaign was to build my list by giving away a free ebook.I was bidding on terms like affiliate marketing, learn affiliate marketing...etc..etc. I had set my daily limit to unlimited and then i let it run for a while without checking it and ran up a bill of over $1500. Pretty smart huh! After all that i only managed to get 300 on my list. After that i read as much as i could about adwords before i dabbled again. I'm sure that the internet marketing niche is full of adwords casualties..anyone willing to share?
Yes, I noticed the same thing - I'm hypercautious, so I always set limits, especially once I heard that lots of people could click but none might buy, and that I would be paying for the clicks. (Pay Per Click - I felt so clever when I figured that out. Later I calmed down again.) Because of that I have no disasters to relate. I went to the best sources I could find - Perry Marshall, Matt Levenhagen, Jeremy Palmer. There are lots of others, but these - especially the first one - are some of the ones the rest turn to themselves. All three approach it as a real business (each has significant off-line business experience) and try to stop people from running off half-cocked.
I made a similar mistake when I started Adwords. I didn't put my budget to unlimited, but I've set it up higher than I could spend. I was thinking more clicks I get, more chances I have to make a sale. (Adwords+Clickbank) So when I spent about $300, and had only $100 profit, I realized that I was doing something wrong
the max i ever wasted on a non performing campaign was 15k that only made 1k in revenue... But this was at fault of the client who wanted to continue spending in hopes it would eventually pay off
running a campaign for full 24 hours should give some indication as to whether the capmaign would be profitable or not. i monitor a new campaign thoughout the day and at the end of the day, i have to atleast break even. if i loose money on day one, then time to revisit my keywords/landing page/etc cause something is not working right. i do not run that capmaign again untill i figure out whats wrong
This depends on your order latency time. I have one client whos average latency is 2 weeks. Basically this means he has to invest to in 2 weeks of advertising before he can get one penny back.... scary huh?