I am just starting out...

I am testing a direct linking campaign and a landing page campaign - different offers but related.

I am currently only using Google Adwords - because that is all I can handle now. Once I figure it all out - I will expand out.

There is so much to learn!!!

Anyways - I am currently spending $10.00 a day on the campaigns. .50 for exact search terms and .35 for exact. I am spending .15 on the content network.

I have 217 raw keywords in the direct and 444 in the landing page. Each keyword is both broad and exact making it 434 and 888.

There are three ads running for every keyword.

The QS for the direct campaigns are around 6/10. The landing page is around 4/10.

I would like to know how my approach stacks up with people who know what they are doing.

Once I start getting some sales, I plan on adjusting keyword pricing, dropping and adding keywords.

I am just wondering if I am spending enough per day or how long should I wait before making other adjustments.

What is different from people are able to run at least one profitable campaign as somebody who knows what they are doing.

Zale

First off, build your campaign on adwords editor and use the keywordgrouper tool to group all your keywords into adgroups. Then builds 3 to 4 ads that are specific to each of your adgroups (this will increase your quality score).

As for your current spending, you need to spend more to test out your market to gain proper data to see what is working. A low daily ad spend with a high keyword bid will not give you proper data to work with. Try to up your daily spend and lower your keyword bids small enough to stay competitive in your niche.

For now turn off content network and focus on search. If search doesn’t work out, then test out content network. If both don’t give you any results then try a new keyword list or move on to a different offer.

Hi Aaron,

Thank you for your input.

How much should I be spending as a newbie?

What should I lower the amounts to? What is a good starting point?

Why should I turn off the Content network. What difference does it make?

Can you give me real life examples of what you did and what happened so I can relate to it and help make my adjustments?

Zale

Hi Zale,

Honestly the more you're able to spend, the faster you're able to obtain data but I know that's not realistic to expect of beginners because budgets are often tight starting out. Ideally a minimum of $50 would be great.

You want to test content network separately from search as they function completely differently and as a result you want to filter your data and configure your setup differently for search than for content.

I wouldn't normally mind giving you an example except it would take way to long to type out at the moment and we're really behind on support. I will make a note to PM you later when we have a bit more time to go into these details further.

Hi guys,

I really don't need a lot of information about the examples.

Just simple stuff - 50$ 300 keyword four ads generated 10 sales. Revenue was $10 with a max cost per click of 1.00.

I am really at the beginning of this.

I am getting frustrated because I have made 0 sales and I don't know why.

On my direct campaign and landing page campaign I am getting clicks.

I realize every campaign is different - but - I am not sure even what level of clicks per keyword are useful. It is a 100 or is it a 1000 before I will get reasonable data.

I know that I need to test, test and test some more. But right now I am testing almost every variable at once because I just have no feel for what will work.

And the worst part of this - is I have done my research.

I have read all the top books on direct marketing. So I know what copy is supposed to look like and sound like. I know who my target market is.

I have watched a few course. Read some blogs. Watched your videos. I am doing it all.

I am just so frustrated with myself. I just don't know what to do to get the first sale.

I know without a doubt I will be successful - I just need the break through.

Any sort of experiences that happened when you started out that made a breakthrough will be great.

So far the only advice is to spend $50 a day. Is that assuming a .50 max CPC?

(Thank you for letting me rant a bit)

Aaron - I have setup each adgroup with the keyword - one as a Broad and one as an Exact. I have the same three ads running for all keywords. My headline is the keyword. For keyword phrases too large - I have edited them to reflect the core relative words to my offering.

I have turned off the content network for both test campaigns.

As for configuring the Content network differently - what do you mean? Do I put all my keywords in one adgroup or do I organize using the keyword grouper?

By the way - what does it mean to be competitive?

Does that mean - in position 4-8? or does that mean that they show up?

By the way - I like doing this in the forum - so that others can follow and learn from my experiences.

I currently keep my keywords in Excel and have multiple pages - its easier for me to make multiple changes and add new keywords to the list.

OUCH!!!!

First big lesson on content network.

I had 36 clicks from one site business.com - it blew my daily budget. It was all from the content network.

How does one protect against this?

This was from my direct test campaign.

FYI - I have turned off the content network and doubled by daily amount to 20.00/day and have added a schedule to my ads.

I know who my target audience is - and I am pretty certain of the hours they will keep. The idea is to focus my ads to those people I know will buy.

I have also limited my search to the 170 largest cities - since my target is educated professionals. I know I will lose some from the smaller towns - but I want to maximize every click.

One more piece of information - I have had virtually no impressions on search.

I also got tens of thousands of impressions on the content network. On the content network some of my CTR was over 20%.

One more piece of the pie - I have a whole number of ads disproved because they couldn't access my page.

How to I get Google to retest my landing page.

(I am not sure why the page didn't work)

Update: Found in keyword tool how to find disapproved ads.

Changed one letter (Lower case to uppercase) and resubmitted bad ads.

Hi Zale,

It entirely depends on how your whole campaign is set up. You'll want to test not just one LP but multiple to get a feel of what is converting and what isn't. It's also crucial how generate or niche your keywords are. Some keywords drive clicks but never convert. Same with your text ads. What are your quality score at on average. Much like a combination lock, your keywords, text ads, landing page, and even offer page must align for you to get the best conversion possible.

Also again, you will want to separate search and content and run them separately. If you're going to do this, you should focus at least $50 on search and at least $50 on content although I'd put off one or the other if you're on a budget at this point.

In my opinion books are a fallacy. I've seen some really horribly designed LPs that convert badass and I've seen nice designs convert badass. It's all about testing, you can never assume something is working correctly without proper testing no matter how much research has been done.

No problem. No, we're assuming an avgCPC of around $0.50. Of course if you're CPC is higher, yes, your daily budget will probably need to reflect this because the name of the game is to collect data. With insufficient budgets and high CPC niches, you won't have enough data to evaluate.

What keyword tools are you using and how are you doing your research?

Do not run exact while testing. You limit the possibility of collecting long tail terms if you run exact. It only makes sense to run exact match after you've found the working data. Doing so in testing only limits your chances of getting real converting keywords.

As for content, you set up larger number of keywords per adgroup than you would normally for search so you don't necessarily need to use the keyword grouper in this case. Again, how are you pulling keywords and doing your research in detail?

Ideally getting on the first page results in terms of search would be good. Some people argue second page at the top is also good. It's really depending on your niche and how your testing show but ideally I find that position 3-4 is usually good.

You have the option to target sites for content network. Check out Google Learning Center, its a good place to start if you're just getting into Adwords. A bit boring but its got some good info for very beginners.

I think this is a bad idea if you're just targeting large cities because again, you don't know if the other smaller cities will convert or not, its leaving data on the table and assuming way too much. There is way too much unknown and thats why people will always emphasize test test test... What schedule and you're doing only $20/day in testing? How much is your average CPC?

In adwords, check your keywords and mouse over it, your keywords may not be showing due to numerous reasons. It should be listed.

What was the reason for disapproving your ad?

Okay let me know how that goes. Hope this helps. Sorry again for delay in response. Appreciate your patience.

This for Adwords.

Set your budget to $1000.00. (won't spend a $1000)

Set your keyword bid from $0.11 to 0.30max.

If you get impressions, decrease your bids and see if you still get impressions.

If you don't get impressions, increase your bids to a max of 0.35 if you're starting out.

Some folks suggest content placement, it is expensive and can cost up to $1.50. For lower budget, go with mass content placement and not try to focus on a single placement since once can't spend $1.50 to test this.

Once profits are there, go ahead.

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your comments.

I think I had better provide some background about me which will help put some of my comments and questions in perspective.

I want to make it clear - what ever I write here is not intended to be in disagreement with what you are telling me.

I do so appreciate all the comments. I appreciate them more - when they come from real world experiences and the experiences are shared.

I do realize people do things differently - but I need to integrate what you are telling me with what I know and what I am comfortable with.

And I do greatly appreciate being told I am full of BS.

I love Truth. I assume when people are contracting me - the purpose to achieve the truth.

I have been doing sales and marketing for a number of years. I have sold technology contracts worth 100's of thousands of dollars.

I own (with a partner) a retail franchise - so I come with a large amount of marketing

I have solid e-mail list of over 100,000 people.

When I do marketing - I spend a lot of time thinking about my customer - what they think about, what their problems are, who they are, what I can do for them.

This helps get rid of the clutter. So for example - my franchise is a Curves - its for women only. The primary market is women for 45-55. However, the Curves facility is fantastic for any woman. But we know who and what our sweet spot is. So my marketing is for the sweet spot - I don't waste time or $$$ on people who are not my target market.

Now how does all this fit into my PPC marketing.

1) I am slowly learning the technology. Where to get the information I need, how it works, where I am making mistakes.

2) I know my target market. I can get into the head of a university educated professional living in a large city. I can't get into the thinking of a high school graduate working in a factory. Its just that I can't relate to them. So to try to sell something to them would be almost impossible for me. Therefore, I have set my google adwords so that I am only getting those people.

3) I am trying my best to apply the rules of Direct Marketing to PPC marketing. In Direct Marketing the most important thing is the "List". The list comes from demographics (age, sex, religion, zip, etc) and cycographics (what they are interested in - as demonstrated by what magazine they receive, what they have bought via mail order).

3) One of the best Direct marketers in the world is John Caples. PPC is direct marketing to the max. The PPC ad is the equivalent of a Direct mail envelope, the landing page the equivalent of the package. The details are different - but the approach is the same. For PPC documentation I have looked at Cash Tactics and the content here.

4) I have now learned (Because of you showing me how to understand what I am seeing) that I had too many things in play at once. Therefore I was not able to sort out what was important.

5) As I mentioned previously - I don't want to share my market niche or products because I want to focus on understanding the process of getting to profitability.

6) I am assuming there is a profitable conversion price for every keyword. But, practically many key words don't make sense. Let me explain this:

A keyword has an profitable conversion rate.

For example 10% of impressions become clicks and 10% of clicks become buyers. Given a fixed set of parameters (cities, time, landing pages, offer cost) Therefore, the effective rate would be 1%. If I make $100.00 on each purchase - the program is break even for that keyword. If its slightly over 1% or slightly greater than $100.00, I am profitable on the keyword.

Therefore, I just need to find the conversion rate and price for every keyword. Getting rid of dumb keywords makes it easier and some keywords the conversion rate is so low or the price so high - it makes no sense to bother with them.

This is the "data" everyone keeps talking about.

For example: The keyword "Dog" will convert a woman looking for menopause medicine. The effective conversion may be 0.001% and the price to show the keyword would be $2.35 Therefore the product would need provide me 2.35/.0001 = $23,500 - an useless exercise. If my offer gave that kind of profit - then dog could be in my keyword search.

That's the theory - the practice is make sure I get the keywords by the people who are my customers.

I would rather get a small number of impressions and a large CTR. Which is sometimes happening with my ads.

This by the way - is standard direct marketing mathematics.

Now that you lets get to some specifics about me and how I am solving my problem....

FYI - I don't know how to add the quotes into my post.

a) Broad vs. Exact - I have both in each of my keywords.

2) Setting limits to the cities and times. This is based on who my market is. While some will be on the computer at 3:00 in the morning - my serious customers have families and will for the majority be with their families at those times.

3) My budget - since I have turned off the content market - I am not even reaching my new daily budget of $20. I realize that this is reflecting the limits on time and cities.

4) My search positions are real high many are over 8 - so now I am going to start increasing the PPC max.

5) I was asked about keywords search tools. Primarily I am using the Google keyword tool. I have selected the words to start with by looking at the content of what I am selling.

6) I AM NOT USING CONTENT ANYMORE. I am running two separate programs - one with a landing page and one that is direct. The offers are totally different - the only common element is the same customer with the same problem. The two different programs solve different stages of the problem.

eg: For example Curves focuses on middle aged women. They generally have weight problems and menopause. They also have kids, husbands, ex-husbands, worry about certain health issues. So I can sell many different things to these women, none competing against each other. That sort of where I am at.

7) I sorted out the disapproval - When Adwords went to my site the response failed. It seems to have been sorted out. (FRUSTRATING)

8) I don't know what you meant by "what is you PPC?" If you mean what is it currently set at - it was .50 I am seeing that the amounts are not working, I am not hitting my budget - so I am now starting to increase the amounts.

9) I have written my ads to my target market and made it clear its about purchasing something.

10) I have not selected any general key words. eg: menopause - I have only selected keywords with actions associated with them help menopause, menopause health issues. Something that tells me the person is interested in finding a solution rather than just searching. I have assumed that a person looking for help on menopause will start with Menopause and then get specific if they are really looking for help. My target market are educated people with a real problem they want to solve.

I am assuming that no impressions means that the keyword didn't even show up. i.e.: Nobody actually did a search on it.

--------------

Changes to my my direct campaign:

Keywords that that positions greater than 8.0

(I am assuming that the ads associated with these keywords are never being seen by the customer.)

Broad keywords are going to .50

Exact keywords are going to 1.00

Keywords with positions less than or equal to 8.0

These keywords are being seen - but not clicked - so I need to improve the ads associated with them.

I started with my headlines being just the keywords. For phrases longer than 25 letters - I adjusted the headlines.

Now I would like to adjust the headlines are the keywords with position less than 8.

Unfortunately I can't find a simple process with the adwords editor to find which ads are associated with keywords with an average position greater than 8.0

So, what I have done is started to adjust the ads with impressions greater than 4 and 0 clicks.

Everything else I am leaving alone.

There are number of reasons why I am not getting click throughs:

a) The headlines for these ads are not working.

b) The ad text is not working.

c) The target address isn't doing anything for them.

So now I am working on ads with impressions and no clicks to improve them.

My Landing Page Test.

The landing page test is not getting any impressions at all. My keywords for those include the general ones "menopause" - so I am assuming that the need may not exist. I will wait a few days more. If it doesn't generate any activity at all - I will find another product and start it up.

Zale

Sorry - some other content to add.

All the analysis that was presented in the last post - was based on the weekend. Two days Sat/Sun of presenting from 10:00 to 3:00 - basically the time my target market may have been on the computer. The analysis was done using data from Adwords.

I looked at my T202 data.

1) The Landing Page campaign had some clicks on it - but adwords said nothing. I am assuming it was SEO traffic. None of the clicks went to the offer itself.

2) For the direct campaign - T202 shows clicks but outside the time i had stuff posted. I had thought T202 times were relevant to the person doing the click (like google) is this true? These were not REAL CLICKS. Adwords didn't show them as clicks. I know I can check out the IP to see if they are Google ones.

3) Landing Page campaign analysis from T202 results Since this is the only data I have.

Analyze Keywords:7 Clicks - 4 no keywords, 1 keyword, 2 with a path - The full path truncated - but it was the landing page.

Analyze Text Ads: 3 from two ads and 1 no ad

Analyze Refers: 6 REAL referrer clicks for yesterday. 6 my site, 1 Google.

Analyze Landing Pages: 7 Clicks

QUESTION!!!!

I can set a max for a key word and for a adgroup as well.

How does it choose the maximum?

I have set all my adgroup maximums to a 20.00 now since my maximum for a keyword is 1.00, I assume the max that can be spent on the adgroup would be $20.

Is this what shermanchoo meant by a 1,000?

Zale

Oops hit send to fast. I checked google adwords help.

They said the adgroup CPC is just a way to set the keyword cpc quickly. So I haven't changed my adgroup CPC at all.

It would be nice to be able to edit my posts - so that I don't have to add the "oops" and just edit or delete the posts.

[Is anybody actually reading this?]

Hi Zale,

I went through and read the whole thing. The only question you really had, you answered. There were a few minor ones but I believe they were rhetorical. There were areas where I view things differently but as you said (to which I agree) every affiliate takes a different approach and its not a matter of right or wrong, but rather a matter of better or worse ways to approach it.

Hi Steven,

Thank you for your comment. I really do wish that you identify where you feel I am doing something wrong.

We both have the same goal - getting to profit.

I am not profitable - I assume you are - then I am doing something wrong. I must be missing something somewhere.

I have tried to provide as much information as possible on my thinking and my approach. Please feel free to hammer away.

I am doing this openly so others can learn from my mistakes and hopefully my successes.

---- Todays Changes ---

1) I have created an excel spreadsheet so I can see the effects of the changes. I have done this because I view the process as a funnel - so I am following how effective my funnel is.

Top of the funnel is impressions

Next is clicks

Bottom of the funnel is sales

My spreadsheet works left to right and is intended to tell me how well I am doing moving down the funnel.

I am not sure how T202 fits into this.

Track effectiveness of my ads

# Impressions Avg Position

Effectiveness of my reach

%CTR # Clicks

Expenses

Avg. CPC Total Spend

Quality of Keywords

Total Ad Groups, Position - not display, 0-3, 3-8, over 8

Quality Of Ads

Num of ads, 0 Impressions, > 0 Impressions

Sales

Clicks reported by CJ Amount of Sale CTR% of sale

2) Here is my plan - pretty obvious - but since I need to control my jumping from shiny object to shiny I object - if I outline it - I can follow it

1) Find and understand the keyword-ad combo that generates impressions

2) Find keyword-adword combo that generates clicks

3) Find keyword-adword combo that generates sales

4) Find keyword-adword combo that generates profits

5) Expand to other networks. (A whole new learning curve!!)

The keyword-adword combo is all about the keyword price, the position, etc.

Obviously having problems with 1 and 2. Haven't generated a sale yet. Also - I have done my numbers. I realized that a 100 profitable clicks is a good goal before adding the other networks.

FYI - I keep all my data in an Excel spreadsheet which lets me add and modify so that when I move to other networks my raw data is available.

What do other people do?

3) I have written out a much more detailed description of my target market - doing that identified several new keyword ideas. I will be adding them to the package.

4) Changes to keywords

Goal: Increase the number of clicks of keywords being displayed. Assuming that keywords greater than 8 are being clicked because nobody sees them. (Note one was clicked at avg pos of 16.3)

Action:

Increased Exact keywords with positions over 8 by 0.50 and

broad keywords to .50 or 1.00 depending if they were at .35 or .50

PROBLEM - KEYWORDS WITH QS of 5-7 are getting 0 Impressions.

Any ideas of what I can do?

Is it that they are being searched or is that the ads not working? I use the same Ads for all keywords. These keywords have QS of 3-7 with the majority at 6 and 7.

FYI - My clicks are so low that I am not able to use T202 yet for detailed adjustments of my ads.

5) Added some new keywords - based on the few clicks I have and the results of writing out a detailed description of my target market.

6) Added two more adverts based on some thinking about the person doing the purchasing. What are they worried about.

(standard Direct mail marketing) The adverts apply to all keywords in the system.

Thats about it for today.

Any ideas of things to look at or better ways to improve - PLEASE post.

I feel real stupid - after spending time setting up my Excel spreadsheet - I just "discovered" the reports tab.

YUCH!!!! I hate learning curves.

Tomorrow - set up the reporting to match my excel spreadsheet.

FYI - I am starting to see increases in everything - as per plan. No sales yet!!!

Does anyone know how to set position preferences for all keywords at once?

A quick summary of Direct program.

640 Keywords - Each keyword Broad and Exact

7 Different ads. Each for all keywords

Ad1 - feature of solution

ad2 - Focus on customers feeling of stress

ad3 - Focus on the result of using product

ad4 - focus on customer feeling of worry

ad5 - focus on solving practical problem faced by customer

ad6 - Feature Price of product a

ad7 - Feature Price of product b

So Yesterday - everything was 4x the previous day - number of clicks, impressions, average CPC dropped, Spend went up - didn't hit the budget.

There was a large discrepancy in the number of clicks.

Google says 24, t202 says 33 real/47 All, CJ says 102. I have double checked my site - I use a Landing Page code - so the extra clicks are not coming from there. I am not too worried about this - I hope to sort it out.

T202 is telling me all my ads are generating clicks equally.

Using Google the clicks are coming from 14 keywords.

T202 is showing me 31 keywords.

The top three are totally different. However, from Google its a broad keyword.

Now, I am not sure what to do with my time.

All I have done today is modify the prices of keywords that are showing up. My goal is to get all displaying keywords in the 3-8 position. I have only used yesterdays results.

You can try this http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=31789

I'm going to be 100% honest I'm unable to answer everything, we are way to swamped and unable to assist with optimizing campaigns, myself especially. If your keywords aren't getting impressions its generally due to low cpc, low quality score, or low bid.

Raise bid,

try some tigether adgroups (less keywords per adgroup)

and make sure your landing page is optimized for each keyword your bidding on

Hi Wes and other readers,

Thanks Wes for your input. I realize you are very busy.

This post history is only tangibly about T202. But, I like posting here because T202 has really helped me focus on the business side of things.

I had read that link. It makes it clear that I need to set preferences on a day by day basis.

I think one of my problem is with the advertiser.

Yesterday I had 140 clicks to the advertiser, over the last three days it totals close to 300 clicks. The advertiser says they had a $26.42 7 Day EPC - which means I should have made approximately $72.00. I have made ZIP!

With high quality scores - I should be on step 4 of my plan - Working on the profits - I am still on Step 3 -finding the keyword/ad combos that are generating clicks.

I have sent three e-mails to various addresses that are from the affiliate manager of the program and have received no responses back. I asked him if everything was in place.

I have concluded that there is something not kosher with the advertiser. Either their systems are not working correctly or there is a delay between a click and a sale beyond the scope of my testing. ie: The nature of the sale may include that. They may not register the sales until days after the click or until they are paid. And that would be fine - but I need to know and its not described anywhere. The lack of response to my e-mails is quite disturbing.

I have lots of experience with the keywords (remember I am going after a niche) therefore I am going to find another advertiser who the data I have collected will be relevant.

Unless I choose the exact same product, I will have to modify my keyword list.

I am going to let it run one more day.

Any thoughts are appreciated as always.

Results from yesterday:

Impressions up 25%

Clicks up 100% (doubled)in google reporting, 50% from CJ

(t202 is currently not reporting - so I can't provide the numbers)

I set the campaign termination date to Saturday and will start a different product on Saturday as per the discussion above.

I have again adjusted prices for keywords to move them into the 3-8 positions. But instead of using yesterdays averages, I am using time from being of campaign. (Duh!)

My spreadsheet tracks on daily basis. I have added a row to total or average - depending on the numbers.

Zale

Ok - Somethings are going well.

My CPC is going down and getting more clicks for my $)

There is a clear winner in terms of which ad draws more. Since I added the new ads in the middle of the week - i am going to wait patiently to see the results.

On the other side - I have not heard from either affiliate manager - the one I am sending clicks to and the one I am thinking of switching to.

I checked the whois for both companies - while the content could hidden - they don't seem related.

Forgot the most important problem - NO SALES at all.

I don't know if this is a real campaign or an example but in this case, I would do two things from just what you said if I were you...

The first is to use mediums such as Facebook and Myspace as they're made more for targeting demographic rather than keywords such as sex and age.

The second is to test ALL sexes and ALL ages rather than assume that female 45-55 converts the best. Your previous data no longer matter as soon as you enter a new traffic source to target. In this industry, only one thing holds true at all times and that is... TEST TEST TEST

Everything is base on personal preference and I don't believe in there being a right or wrong way of approaching affiliate marketing, only a better or worse way. Personally during "testing", I always run broad and not exact. Doing exact while testing could prove to be a bad move if you lose keywords that you could potentially have gotten. I prefer to run exact after testing is done as it makes much more sense. Of course for bidding purposes doing exact would make sense during testing but I don't concern myself with those things, to each his own.

This is obviously dependent on your keywords, the volume of your keywords and the traffic they get and also the time and place you are targetting. I would expand not to mention $20/day is really hard to get good data.

I also want to note that keep in mind affiliate marketing is like any other business. There are three primary building blocks that make up the foundation.

They are...

1. Traffic

2. Conversion

3. Retention (most other businesses) or Scaling (Affiliate Marketing)

Looking at it this way, you can see where you need to focus your attention to improve each step...

1. Traffic. You can improve this by working on keywords (in terms of PPC) and ad copy. This determines everything as a click is considered traffic and no click = no traffic. These two factors are what you work on to beat #1 whether you are converting or not.

2. Conversion. once you got the traffic, its time to convert. Looking at this, the two most dependent factor that converts is your ad copy and its relavancy to the landing page/offer page.

3. Finally, scaling. And this can be done in a multitude of ways.

I hope that looking at it like this will help you better understand and strategize.