Friday, April 27, 2007
At last ... Some PPC Success
I've spent a whole tonne of money on Adwords before.
For my first few businesss ventures, I tried a few loony projects involving a combination of premium rate phone lines, singing competitions and selling topical mousemats (of which I still have 750 in the attic) which I promoted heavily using Adwords and lost a packet.
Since then I've tried PPC campaigns for affiliate marketing and usually broke even or made a loss. I've tried direct to merchant (with Amazon) and going through landing pages and not really made much headway.
So I'm pleased to be able to able to report that a recent project has worked quite nicely over the course of the last 4 weeks.
I picked a merchant with large catalogue of items within its sector, and then built a site around a niche area within that sector and extracted the relevant items from their product feed. Without wanting to be too cryptic, the items I'm pushing are actually not the items that the merchant would probably most like to promote as they sell other competing items that are worth more to them. But there's a demand for the items I'm promoting and I'm making it easier for people to find them rather than being pushed towards the competing items that the merchant would probably sooner they buy. In doing so, I think I'm kind of solving a problem, in that I'm making i easier for consumers to find a specific range without being sidetracked.
Anyways, to the numbers: Spent a little under £200 in Adwords and have made about £450 in sales (and there's a lengthy cookie so the ROI could be greater yet). I'll be looking to see if I can gradually decrease the cost of my average click in Adwords too.
New Vaio
I'm moderately excited that this is the first blog post I've written from my shiney new Sony Vaio which I took delivery off about an hour ago. I had a couple of laptops stolen from my car car last year, so it's nice to be able to get back to a bit of portable computing though my plan to get a 3g datacard has taken a knock since i just realised the laptop doesn't have a PCMCIA slot!
For my first few businesss ventures, I tried a few loony projects involving a combination of premium rate phone lines, singing competitions and selling topical mousemats (of which I still have 750 in the attic) which I promoted heavily using Adwords and lost a packet.
Since then I've tried PPC campaigns for affiliate marketing and usually broke even or made a loss. I've tried direct to merchant (with Amazon) and going through landing pages and not really made much headway.
So I'm pleased to be able to able to report that a recent project has worked quite nicely over the course of the last 4 weeks.
I picked a merchant with large catalogue of items within its sector, and then built a site around a niche area within that sector and extracted the relevant items from their product feed. Without wanting to be too cryptic, the items I'm pushing are actually not the items that the merchant would probably most like to promote as they sell other competing items that are worth more to them. But there's a demand for the items I'm promoting and I'm making it easier for people to find them rather than being pushed towards the competing items that the merchant would probably sooner they buy. In doing so, I think I'm kind of solving a problem, in that I'm making i easier for consumers to find a specific range without being sidetracked.
Anyways, to the numbers: Spent a little under £200 in Adwords and have made about £450 in sales (and there's a lengthy cookie so the ROI could be greater yet). I'll be looking to see if I can gradually decrease the cost of my average click in Adwords too.
New Vaio
I'm moderately excited that this is the first blog post I've written from my shiney new Sony Vaio which I took delivery off about an hour ago. I had a couple of laptops stolen from my car car last year, so it's nice to be able to get back to a bit of portable computing though my plan to get a 3g datacard has taken a knock since i just realised the laptop doesn't have a PCMCIA slot!
Permalink // posted by Rob @ 11:08 AM 
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Thanks Fraser!
I guess now the challenge is to make sure it's not a one month wonder and/or see if I can manage it with another site.
I guess now the challenge is to make sure it's not a one month wonder and/or see if I can manage it with another site.
I am a long reader of your blog (RSS), keep up the good work :)
I haven't had much success with PPC either (ebay and amazon). I am linking directly to the merchants (up to now a measly £1 from a £30 expenditure, how's that for a loss).
Any pointers appreciated mate ;-)
I haven't had much success with PPC either (ebay and amazon). I am linking directly to the merchants (up to now a measly £1 from a £30 expenditure, how's that for a loss).
Any pointers appreciated mate ;-)
Permalink // posted by 
: 3:34 AM
: 3:34 AM
Hi Anonymous - thanks for the comment.
I won't pretend to be an expert on the basis of this one success, but I do have a tip if you're working direct to merchant.
Create a tracking link in your own webspace that will redirect to the merchant page, but not before logging the exact referral url so you can extract the search query. Seeing exactly what people are searching for is helpful - add the interesting looking long tail terms to your keyword list as exact matches (hopefully cost you less next time someone searches for that) and add the search terms which obviously won't convert to your negative keyword list. Also helpful to watch out for click fraud from any rival advertisers.
I'd recommend turning off Content Network in Adwords settings as well.
I won't pretend to be an expert on the basis of this one success, but I do have a tip if you're working direct to merchant.
Create a tracking link in your own webspace that will redirect to the merchant page, but not before logging the exact referral url so you can extract the search query. Seeing exactly what people are searching for is helpful - add the interesting looking long tail terms to your keyword list as exact matches (hopefully cost you less next time someone searches for that) and add the search terms which obviously won't convert to your negative keyword list. Also helpful to watch out for click fraud from any rival advertisers.
I'd recommend turning off Content Network in Adwords settings as well.
Nice one. I'm within a few pence of breaking even on my first non-gambling PPC campaign. A few changes this week should do it for me then I can finely be in the class of PPCer's you just entered. The profitable (non-gambling based) ones. :D
That's cool. Don't forget when you do enter that class of PPCer, you must remember to write an ebook on the subject :-)
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