I am trying out the QUOTE stuff - I hope I get it right

(I wish there was a preview function)

Steven - Thank you for your time and effort in answering my postings.

A little confusion here - this is getting to be a large post - so I should qualify something.

I was only explaining the market for Curves franchises and how I look at marketing.

Understanding who your market is for a product is basic marketing 101. The better you know who they are and what motivates them will help in headlines, copy writing and everything else. I actually write it out, reread it, and add to it as I go along.

The keywords that generates the clicks - tells me if my understanding of the people is correct or not.

(1) If they are clicking on things that are not consistent with what I would expect - that tells me I don't know what they want.

(2) If keywords are getting great impressions - but I am not getting clicks - that means I don't understand my market well enough.

FYI:

1) I have lots of keywords beyond I expect of my market place - this is so I can totally test by assumptions.

2) For my particular campaign - I have not set any Sex or age parameters. With Google Adwords - age and sex is only available in the content network and I have totally turned of content.

As you say later in your EXCELLENT response, test, test, test. So that is what I am doing. In fact, I am reducing the amount variables, so that I am totally aware of what I am testing.

So right now I am only testing what it takes to make a Direct Campaign work.

1) Keywords

2) Ad content

3) The offer

I have concluded that the last campaign didn't work because of the offer. I learned what Ad content and keywords generates clicks. I was not able to learn what keywords/ads generates sales since I didn't have any. The total lack of response from the affiliate managers told me that the problem may be on the offer side.

Therefore, I running the same campaign keywords and have improved the ads based on the successful ads.

I ran both Broad and Exact for the above reasons. The broad gives me all the variations - the exact is to tell me if that phrase by itself converts.

I am getting some data. Once I get some sales, I will increase my purchase - What I have avoided by setting the times is data from people who are not my target market.

If I know the kinds of purchasers of my product aren't up in the middle of the night - then why should I advertise then? For example - single young men cruise the internet at night - fathers who drive their kids to school in the morning are not going to be up. (YES - there are some - sometimes - but the vast majority don't)

This is all good stuff. I am still at step 2. Conversion. I am getting traffic to the sites - but no conversion.

The advertiser claimed a $30.00 EPC (based on a 100 clicks). I go no sales with 300 clicks. Therefore and after analysis of the keywords - that generated the clicks - I should have had at least one sale.

I have done this kind of marketing before - I firmly believe I should have gotten at least one sale.

The ad copy was written so that it was clear what the click was about. You would not have clicked on the ad copy unless you wanted to buy the product.

In the end - I think I chose a dud offering.

On the up side - I now know how to create a ppc campaign, I know how to read traffic levels and adjust my pricing.

Bottom Line:

I have relaunched the campaign with a different offer.

With this offer I have sent the affiliate manager an e-mail and received a response and support with in an hour. I am comfortable that they are honest and providing a good product and supporting me (the affiliate).

It happens that the affiliate manager is the supplier of the product.

Some of my learnings:

1) Google Adwords takes several days before it kicks off.

2) When you have an end date for a program - it peters down the last Day.

Bottom line - When setting your budget - you won't hit your daily spend for three days, the day before your end date won't be effective. So - you can add a couple of extra days in your budget.

If you want to test a full week - see how different days do it - run the test for 10 Days - 7 days of real test, 2 days for google to ramp up, and one day for Google to ramp down.

AdWords editor won't show an ended campaign - so you need to set it to Pause - then its shows up.

If keywords don't show - I am adding .20 to the keyword. If they show up over position 9 I add .10.

If they show up in position 0-3 - drop them by .10.

This approach seems to be getting my keywords in the 4-8 range.

Another problem I found - watch for keywords that take up a lot of your budget. And variations which of those keywords. I found two "words" that were in a huge number of my Clicks.

Since I didn't make any sales - I don't know if those words were good.

---

Update on my newest program. This one has seven ads. I saw what worked on the last ads, did some research John Caples "How To Make Your Advertising Make Money" has a list of over 100 headlines that have made money over the years. While I couldn't use any directly, he discusses what works about them and how to modify them. Using this and what worked on my previous campaign I have modified up my ads.

I adjusted my start prices based on what the average CPC click I had in the last campaign. So they started a little lower.

Again each day, I am adjusting the prices based on the average position. I want the most ads shown for the least amount of dollars.

Once I have data based on sales - I will adjust more.

Some interesting things - this campaign is getting more non-real clicks - like thousands. This program is running with a clickbank advertiser - and clickbank is registering click counts almost the same as "All Clicks" from T202 rather than some number close to Google's count.

Far different results than I had with CJ.

Zale

http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ZaleTabakman <- An invite to me adds 2,521, 187 really nice people to your network.

http://66DayJobClub.ZaleTabakman.ca <- My way of helping 10,000 people find a job. No Membership fees.

A quick recap:

I have restarted my campaign with a changed product.

Expanded set of keywords.

Improved my ads.

Adjusted my keyword spend based on the previous campaign.

Goal: Keywords to display in positions 4-8 at the least possible cost.

Each day I do the following:

I use the average from the beginning of the

Keywords with Position > 8 - increase max cpc by .10

Keywords with Position 0-3 - decrease max cpc by .10

Keywords 4-8 - don't touch

Goal: Have as many keywords display to find which ones generate a sale.

There is a keyword that's part of multiple phrases that uses up a lot of budget. I have selectively reduced those keywords by .10.

One more interesting point.

When switching products I also switched from CJ to Clickbank. Doing the switch has taught me something else.

The CJ reported clicks were reporting significantly different than T202 and Adwords.

Clickbank reports on every SID and tells you the number of Clicks or "Hops" each SID generates.

The total ClickBank Hops matches within 10% of the "ALL clicks" reported by t202.

The unique Clickbank hops is off from the T202 "REAL clicks". They seem to be converging - but we will see.

The REAL Clicks and the Adwords Clicks seem to be matching very closely (off by a few).

All this is interesting - but I am still not making any sales.

Update on speaking with the affiliate managers from CJ. I contacted CJ and told them about the non-response. I received an e-mail today requesting a copy of my e-mails with the affiliate managers. I have sent that off.

This was all done through the CJ Contact us system.

I have figured out how to find out about the multiple clicks.

In Clickbank it provides for each SID the frequency of clicks.

I so I have picked a number of SID codes and tracked them through T202.

Here is are my results:

I wanted to search using the Visitors Tab in T202.

Clickbank had reported over 2000 clicks since there is no way to search or sort in T202 - so I needed to download the CSV file. Unfortunatly only some 1,600 clicks were in the CSV file.

The first frequent click wasn't in the CSV file. First lesson make sure you download the correct SID stuff.

Once I got my act together:

Webcrawler.com is reported as REAL by T202. Clickbank showed 11 clicks, T202 reported 1 click.

Somebody found my ad in the UK with uk.ask.com - interesting since I have told Google Ads only certain cities in the US. Went back and checked my Google Ads locations - Guess what - the GB city was listed. Fixed that!

(Some american/canadian cities are the same as England - gee history hurts)

T202 only flags the first of them. I am not sure why Clickbank found 6 clicks.

T202 only tracks one click per SID.

Once 6 click item was reported by T202 from Mountain View CA (Home of google) but the IP was from Canada using Google.ca as the search engine.

An ask.com search from an ip in Canada reports from Mountain View CA in T202.

Seems there are problems with the reporting from location in T202 - my ip shows up as Toronto, BC, Canada - I am in ON about 3000 miles away. But there are 10 provinces in Canada.

I checked a few other locations...

Its useful to know the T202 is not necessarily reporting locations accurately sometimes. I will assume they report IP addresses correctly.

This is great information - but i am not sure how useful it is at the present time.

Once I launch big time - I may use it to limit my ads to even tighter physical locations - Direct Mail people select on ZIP codes that reflect housing prices, annual income or car ownership for example.

The variation in IP and location reporting could be because IP addresses float, and the addresses I am finding are different than T202 is reporting because my conversion date is different.

I have finally made my first sale!!!!!!

YES!!

YES!!!

YES!!!

Zale

Ok - Now I have made my first sale - I have looked and seen everything that T202 can help me to make my next sale.

Interesting thing happened - the sale came from one of the ads that had the least number of clicks.

The sale came from a computer in a public library.

(Using an IP search and whosis thing) I am not sure if it was an employer of the library or somebody using a public computer.

The sale came from a keyword that you would think the user was looking from a competitive product.

According to Google Adwords the key word (an exact) was only clicked once.

[B]The ad reported by Google was different than the ad reported by t202.

I am not sure if that is my problem or a problem with T202 reporting.

I think I am an idiot.

I think I keep screwing up with T202, Excel and AdWords Editor.

I keep all my keywords in one page in the Excel,

I have a control page where I put all my ads.

I then use Excel to generate all the content for the rest of my campaign -

Keyword groups - one keyword Broad and Exact per adgroup.

Text ads - every ad is available for every keyword.

But I somehow keep screwing up the connection between T202 and the excel. And since T202 generates a new link everytime you push GENERATE TRACKING LINK - I can't be sure of what is what. I think thats why the SUCCESSFUL ad reported by Adwords is different than the one reported by T202. However, the keyword is correct and I can use Adwords to find out exactly what happened.

Anyways JUST TO BE SURE - I have regenerated all the AD stuff and maybe the next sale will be better. Unfortunately - Adwords will go through every ad and generate a zillion useless clicks which T202 and Clickbank will flag.

Zale

Good luck with your next sale!

Don't try to figure out too much information from one sale - it can't tell you anything yet.

Thank you for your comment.

I will try not to.

I am just reporting the kind of analysis I was doing.

The only thing I have done is increase my daily budget with part of the sale amount.

Enough money was made to justify it.

It still doesn't cover the daily nut. But, I had a budget in place - the extra money might as well go to generating some more sales and getting me even better data.

My approach of daily adjusting the CPC is reducing my cost per click and increasing my percentage of clicks based on traffic. The extra budget money will drive more clicks and more sales.

With more sales I will know which keywords and ads are non-producing.

The next step in the plan.

Zale

Newest approach to adjusting my costs for each keyword.

I am now getting into it!!

I have set a ROI return that I want to get me started.

I have started with 50%. This means that I need to get a 50% return on a keyword. Therefore for every $100 I spend, I need a $50 profit. I have just chosen the amount randomly since its in keeping with the typical Retail standard of 50% margins.

Anyways - that means I can now start looking at the number of clicks I get for a keyword and decide if the price is too high.

For example - if my keyword costs me $.50 and my sale is $15.00 - the 75% means that I must make 5% CTR on every click.

ie: 5 out of every 100 clicks must generate a sale.

100 * $.5 = $50 Costs

5*$15.00 = $75.00 Revenue

Profit = $75 - $50 = $25

$25/$50 = 50% ROI.

Therefore - I can look at the cost of any click - and know how many clicks I need to make my margins.

If the click was $1.00

100 * 1.00 = $100 costs

At 50% margin I need to generate $150 in sales.

Therefore CTR needed at 1.00 a click is 10% (10 clicks out of 100 = $150 in revenue - $100 equal $50 in profit.

Therefore if after 11 clicks I don't make any money - the price of the keyword needs to drop.

I can keep adjusting each keyword based on the number of clicks it gets.

My approach to pricing the keywords:

I use all the data from the beginning of the campaign.

1) Keywords in position 0-3 - drop by .10 - goal is to decrease my cost with no effect on results (save some money)

2) Keywords greater than position 8 - increase by .20 - goal get the click.

3) Keywords with click to sale ratio lower than profit target - drop to price where if the next click came it would be profitable.

Does this make sense or is am totally going down the wrong path?

Zale

That last post was too complicated.

Let me simplify it.

Definitions

-----------

ROI = 50% - The return I need to be profitable across the entire campaign

CTR = Conversion from a click into a Sale

CPC = Cost per click

Profit = How much I make on each sale

SALES = total sales

COST = Total Cost

TRAFFIC = Total Number of Clicks

TARGETCLICKS = My target clicks for sales for a keyword at a CPC price.

Some formulas

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

ROI = (SALES - COST)/COST

SALES = (CTR*TRAFFIC*PROFIT)

COST = (CPC*TRAFFIC)

TARGETCLICKS = CTR*TRAFFIC

Doing some substitution

ROI = (CTR*TRAFFIC*PROFIT - CPC*TRAFFIC)/CPC*TRAFFIC

CPC*TRAFFIC*ROI = CTR*TRAFFIC*PROFIT - CPC*TRAFFIC

Remove common terms

CPC*ROI = CTR*PROFIT - CPC

To solve for CTR

CTR*PROFIT = CPC*ROI - CPC

CTR = (CPC*ROI - CPC)/PROFIT

Using this formula - we can find the CTR I need to achieve a specific ROI for a specific CPC.

Let's substitute for

.10 CPC

.25 CPC

.50 CPC

(.10*.5 - .1)/15.00 = .043 = or 4.3% CTR

(.25*.5 - .25)/15.00 = .108 = or 10.8% CTR

(.50*.5 - .5)/15.00 = .2166 = or 21.6% CTR

Now I can even calculate when I must get my first sale at each CPC price point. If I don't get the sale - then I need to drop my price - because I will never be profitable.

As I get more data - then I can keep adjusting my prices. Eventually I will get to a profitable price point for each keyword.

For a 21.6% CTR:

SaleCLICKS = CTR*TRAFFIC

1 = CTR*TRAFFIC

So how much traffic is needed to get me 1 profitable click?

1 = .216*TRAFFIC

TRAFFIC = 1/.216 = 4.6 - since we can't have a partial click = 5

Therefore at $1.00 CPC I need a sale after 5 clicks. If I haven't received the sale - the price MUST drop to something that is profitable at 6 clicks.

And that's how to keep adjusting the prices.

However, there is a problem - the price you are willing to pay may not get you to play. AND it takes a while for Adwords to adjust your campaign and pricing fluctuates based on what other people do.

So - I am waiting to the number of clicks reaches 10 for a keyword before I adjust the prices.

This is why it takes so much time and $$ before you can get profitable.

So for a product which generate $15.00 in profit here are the maximum number of clicks you can get before making a sale for different CPC prices at a 75% profit margin.

CPC Max CTR needed

Clicks For profit goal

$0.10 97 1.03%

$0.15 65 1.55%

$0.20 48 2.06%

$0.25 39 2.58%

$0.30 32 3.09%

$0.35 28 3.61%

$0.40 24 4.12%

$0.45 22 4.64%

$0.50 19 5.16%

$0.55 18 5.67%

$0.60 16 6.19%

$0.65 15 6.70%

$0.70 14 7.22%

$0.75 13 7.73%

$0.80 12 8.25%

$0.85 11 8.77%

$0.90 11 9.28%

$0.95 10 9.80%

$1.00 10 10.31%

$1.05 9 10.83%

$1.10 9 11.34%

I think this is real REAL important - because it doesn't make sense to be paying for keywords that are not profitable and can never be profitable.

DON'T MIX UP CTR for sales with CTR for impressions. CTR in the adwords is showing conversion from IMPRESSIONS not conversions from CLICKS. BIG BIG DIFFERENCE.

THE CTR from impressions is doesn't fit into this scenario.

The CTR from impressions tells you how good your ads are doing.

Not how much you should be paying.

(Yes - I did make that mistake - I got caught up in my own thinking)

oops.

The chart I did in the last presentation was based on a 16.97 profit (mine) here it is for a 15.00 profit.

Also the chart doesn't show as nicely when I post it.

$0.10 86 1.17%

$0.15 57 1.75%

$0.20 43 2.33%

$0.25 34 2.92%

$0.30 29 3.50%

$0.35 24 4.08%

$0.40 21 4.67%

$0.45 19 5.25%

$0.50 17 5.83%

$0.55 16 6.42%

$0.60 14 7.00%

$0.65 13 7.58%

$0.70 12 8.17%

$0.75 11 8.75%

$0.80 11 9.33%

$0.85 10 9.92%

$0.90 10 10.50%

$0.95 9 11.08%

$1.00 9 11.67%

$1.05 8 12.25%

$1.10 8 12.83%

I just looked at my spend and I noticed that the google network spend was far above my google spend. It wasn't even close. The google network was taking up a lot of my spend.

When I looked at who the referrers were in T202, I am not sure it was a wise spend. Of the three top - google.com was matched by business.com and ask.com.

I have gone to these site - not something that looks profitable to me.

For example - I did one of my keywords on business.com - there was an ad for ask.com - when I clicked on that ad - it displayed something similiar to what business.com did.

What the f was that?

Am I paying for that somehow?

Google as a company is straight and does its best.

I don't need to finance ask.com or business.com.

I have turned of the search partners site. Lets see what happens now.

Zale

yes you got it, it is the search partners.

Zale, how many ad groups do you have?

When you say "each ad for all keywords" it sounds like you put everything into a single ad group or otherwise have very irrelevant keyword / ad matches. You should really break them up and not run every ad for every keyword. Instead pair them up to have your keywords match the ad, landing page and have keywords present in the ad headlines.

Your quality scores are really low. Any QS under 7 indicates a likely problem with campaign structure - relevance of keyword / ad combinations. The goal is to to get QS to 10 over time as you build CTR history.

Yet another problem is that your AdWords account now has history of low CTRs. This means Google will punish any new ads and keywords with low quality score out of the gate.

I suggest deleting your keywords and re-designing the campaign around very tight ad groups - with one or few keywords per each. Consider dedicated landing pages per group too.

Finally, try running Google.com and search partners in separate campaigns.

Hi dkruglyak,

Thank you for your in depth comments.

I think I have addressed everything you are suggesting and I would like to explain why.

BUT if I have missed something or am screwing up in my implementation - LET ME KNOW PLEASE.

I think something got lost in my explanation and that post is a little out of date.

Let me review some stuff relevant to your comments.

(This was in in one of the zillion previous posts. - But I really don't expect anyone to have read every post)

I have 373 Adgroups.

I have a single landing page

(I am doing a direct campaign for a proven product that is relevant and needed by the consumer.)

Each ad group has two keywords in it.

The same keyword - in BROAD and EXACT format.

A total of 758 keywords - 373 unique ones x 2 (Broad and exact)

The Headline for the ad is the Keyword.

I have 10 different ads now running in each adword group.

There are two exceptions to the above rule and update to that post.

(1) When the keyword is a phrase longer than 25 characters, I have adjusted the headline to the keyword.

(2) One of the Ads has a specific headline. The ad looks exactly the same for each keyword phrase.

My QS is 7 for the majority of my ads.

2 groups have a QS of 8

670 of 758 have a QS of 7

10 of the keywords with a QS less than 10 should really be at the 10 level due to relevance.

I have removed the content and the search partners from the campaign. (My next post will provide more details to this)

Zale

Hi Wes (and everybody else),

Thanks for commenting. I appreciate it.

I have dropped the content search partners and am now in pure google land. Thinking it through now - its obvious this is where I should have started.

Its amazing how the allure for giving away money for clicks that don't make money is really strong!!!!

The results of dropping the content search partners was a significant drop in impressions. So I saved money.

However, the CTR rate was .56% while I am used to a 1.5% when I included the search partners.

My cost per click went up.

I am assuming that this is because Google needs time to adjust to my new reality.

---

I have received an interesting comment from the advertiser.

He told me they typically get 2 to 4 clicks from somebody before they choose to purchase.

I have noticed a large number of clicks for certain SID's.

Being able to track that is a significant advantage of Clickbank over CJ. And of course none of this information would be at all available if it wasn't for T202!

Zale

Zale,

Looks like you got most of the issues addressed and quality scores are the proof... I thought that might be the case as I posted only after reading Page 1 of this thread.

I have just a few minor comments:

1) Does EVERY ad in EVERY ad group matches keywords? Any bad combinations would drag down quality scores of keywords, ads and the account.

2) My opinion is that running 10 ads per adgroup is an overkill. Would take you 10 times longer and costly to collect statistically significant data. I would run just 2 or maybe 3 ads at a time and focus on best CTRs, before focusing on conversion of clicks that come from these ads.

3) You still might have to atone for your account history! Just focus on ad CTRs to get on Google's good side and get your quality scores above 7 and 8, hopefully to 10 so you could reduce click costs.

4) Your post makes it appear as if you are "mechanically" copying the keyword into the ad and LP headline. Just to be sure the flow needs to make sense to humans, not just to satisfy Google's QS algorithm.

5) Search partner traffic could be valuable too. I just suggest running it in a separate campaign, using different bids and gathering / analyzing different stats. Like which search partner brings what clicks and what conversions.

6) Sure, people like to research (multiple clicks) before buying high-ticket items. Help them with you LP sales copy - offer "free reports" in exchange for email address and keep sending them emails till they buy something!

Happy to bounce around these ideas, I learn from this too... What are your conversion rates and EPCs so far?

Wow - to get that far through certainly takes some patience.

I am a embarrassed at some of my earlier errors. But the point of this post is to help others.

I know I will get to profitability. I hope my efforts will help somebody else somewhere as well.

Not so minor - excellent!

I do appreciate it all.

BTW - do you have a name beyond dkriglayak? Like David or Doug, or...

Not every single one. There are a few keywords that don't. The ones with over 25 characters for example.

By the way - I had no understanding of the importance of the QS. From your comments - it seems its VERY important.

If you could expand on it, I would appreciate it. I had looked at Google's explanation of the QS and it didn't seem like something that was under my control or something I could change.

I had been wondering about that. I had no guidance at all about that.

I will look at reducing the number of ads.

Based on T202 stats - I can see which ones are pulling clicks. And those are not the ones I would have thought would be pulling clicks.

But - clicks are not conversions. The one conversion I had had came from an ad I thought would convert but is getting the least number of clicks. YES - Conversions are more important than clicks - I just don't have enough conversion data yet. (Its too bad I couldn't get paid for clicks)

YES - I know I can - but that's another project once this one is up and running.

Ok - here is what I am going to do:

Look at Keywords with QS 6 and below.

Prune and edit the ads what I can do to get started.

I will start counting ads with QS below 4 and see what I can do.

Anything else?

That was the way I started. It was recommended by at least two sites. It seemed to make sense.

BIG EXCUSE: I was too overwhelmed at the beginning with all the things I needed to do to get PPC working. It was a great way to get started with a large number of keywords. It was a pain to write headlines.

I understand and agree totally.

I realize the search partners and the content network work differently.

I am not sure how to manage them differently.

Also is it possible to you restrict where on the search partners you can work with - like "Placement" on the content network?

[/quote]

My EPC and Conversion rate is horrible. 1 Conversion from a few hundred Google clicks.

The current product is selling for $29.97. So its not a high ticket item. The LP is being provided by the advertiser who has been doing online sales since 1997.

Credible guy with a great product needed by my target audience.

Now off to modify my Ads with QS less than 7.

---

ARGHH!!!

This was supposed to be posted yesterday - sorry about the delay - I had a meeting and didn't push SUBMIT!!!!

Zale

I apologize for the delay in responding. I had written a wonderful response yesterday. But didn't push submit. Then when I discovered it today - I had timeed out.

I am lucky I am good looking - cause I am not so bright.

Anyways thank you for the detailed response. Let me respond to (AGAIN) all your comments

Not so minor - very helpful!! Please keep them up. FYI - some real experiences with numbers would help. it makes it less theoretical. ie; QS of 10 was perfect.

Yes. Originally the keyword was the headline. I have now gone through many of the low QS scored keywords and adjusted the ads. I have tried to ensure that at least one of the keywords is in the headline.

I agree - I am just not sure what to drop right now.

There is an equal distribution among all the ads.

I realize if I reduce the number of ads - I will get a better data about which keywords are drawing.

On the other hand if I cut down the ads. I may remove an ad that attracts buyers and promote tire kickers. And with the little sales (1 !!) I wont' know.

I spent quite a bit of time developing the ad content.

And I used ad content that was provided by my advertiser who said his ads were based on his experiences.

Any ideas or thoughts on how to select the ads other than through what drives sales would be useful.

FYI - Since I removed the search partners - I have not spent my budget. This is consistent with my experiences to date. It takes google 3 or 4 days to hit budget spend after a major change.

I am working on it.

Some of the things I am doing with the low score items:

(Using all time average for this)

1) Increasing CPC max for ads not displayed by .20

2) Increasing CPC max for ads in position > 8 by .10

3) Adjusting Headlines by changing the headline from the EXACT keyword - to a more human readable phrase incorporating the headline. For ads with QS < 7 - Once I have adjusted the headline I leave them alone.

I don't want to adjust the ad - cause it will screw up my T202 tracking too much. If my ad is SO different than t202 - then t202 reporting will be useless. I am assuming that the 2 lines are as important as the headline when a person decides to CLICK.

4) I can't think of anything else. Suggestions welcomed!

Yes that is exactly how I started.

I am now doing that next step. Its easier to use the QS to help decide which ones need to be changed.

Thats due to your suggestion by the way.

Yes. I now have removed Search partners and Content search totally out of the system. I realizing its adding to many variables to the mix.

I think each program has to be run separately and differently.

To simplify my getting to profitability - I am using my advertisers landing page. Putting my own LP into the mix - will add one more variable too much. I will be adding my own LP - but just later.

[/quote]

I have only made a single sale from about 192 Adwords reported Clicks. T202 reported 267 Clicks in the same time period. T202 tends to over report - but moves closer to the google number as time marches forward. FYI - Clickbank reported 3,233 Unique in the same time period. A number close to the 11,503 ALL clicks reported by T202.

The program has been running for just about a week. And I removed the Search partners three days ago.

My daily budget is only $25.00

I have started pruning my ads.

I deleted 3 ads that were not generating any significant clicks from all my keywords.

Now using all time as my control. I have deleted all ads that with a CTR < 0.5% and which have over 100 clicks.

Reasoning:

I have WAY too many ads - its effecting my numbers and my QS score.

I needed a algorithmic way of selecting ads for pruning.

I want to focus on ads that will generate clicks and profits only.

If they are not generating any clicks after 100 impressions then they can't generate enough profit at .10 a click.

My average CTR for the entire campaign (averaging each Day not the entire campaign) is .97 with .47 my lowest day so .5 seemed a good minimum CTR.

.5% is pretty much the standard in Direct Mail response to an unfiltered list.

----

Other actions...

I continue to change the headline and text of ads with the lowest QS score.

I am seeing a general increase in my QS score and my average position is going up. Strangely so is my average CPC, while my average CTR is dropping.

Zale

I have started a 2nd campaign.

I am not making any money yet - but I fully expect to any day now. Its just a matter of finding the right keywords at the right price with the right ads.

Same account.

Same keyword set.

Same campaign structure.

Started keyword pricing at the same place.

Campaign2 has 11 ads for each keyword set.

I started the same way with Campaign1.

(Ads are deleted once they have over 100 impressions and < .5 CTR)

Differences Between Campaign1 and Campaign2:

1)Before launch of Campaign2 I modified the headlines slightly so that read better, instead of just being the exact keywords.

(I am currently fixing Campaign1 to be the same. The goal is to increase my QS.)

2)The landing page for the second product has lots of links to a very large an extensive site with many different products and services available.

3) Campaign2 has no location limits.

(A Reminder: Campaign1 is limited to the largest cities in Canada and USA)

4) Campaign2 launched with a max CPC for the adgroup of .10 while Campaign1 had it set to .50. My understanding was the Adgroup amount is over ridden by the Keyword amount and is only used when there is no keyword amount.

The results after one day have been interesting.

I have been running Campaign1 for two weeks now. Only three days have I spent my maximum spend.

Campaign2 hid it max within a couple of hours of running.

The average CPC for Campaign 2 was .32 while for campaign1 it has been around .58

Other thoughts...

I looked at PC Bully examples. They said it takes a week or two to get decent results.

Looking at their examples - It was interesting to note the large number of ads and keywords that were not profitable.

The number that were all Direct vs. Landing pages etc.

It would be really nice if somehow T202 could give us the same data - with the data scrubbed of all details.

In a sense provide some sort of way of seeing what works for people and what doesn't. Number of clicks, the number of ads, all the stuff we look at.

Zale

I was on cakes irc - to try to connect with some people for some help.

YUCH! rude people. Nobody offered to help. One person sent me to a disgusting website.

Anyways - one person gave me a few minutes of their time.

S/he told me to focus on CTR. My CTR is REALLY LOW < 1% - because I figured a CLICK was a CLICK. S/he said I was wrong.

I know I have TOO many ads - so I decided to drop a ton of Ads.

So - I have paused all ads less than the top 3 as reported by T202. I could only do that with T202.

I have also "discovered" the WarriorForum...

Lots of articles and comments from people.

Zale

Another Big OOPS!!!

I have been using Exact Match - when I wanted Phrase Match.

Changed them all!

Zale

This is painful - but I have realized I have made a large mistake.

A whole bunch of them in fact.

My basic methodology was to start with a large number of keywords and a large number of ads and whittle them down as I go forward.

This way I would find the performing keywords and ads.

And it would work if you have a large budget.

In the back of my mind - I had hoped to get lucky and find the converting keywords and ads immediately.

Guess what - it didn't happen.

Everybody says - start with a small number of keywords and focus on those.

I really didn't understand why and I kept reading about people with a large number of keywords. What I didn't understand (or chose not too) was that these people also have large budgets at the same time. As they get more and more profitable - they have more and more money to spend and experiment with.

Crawl, walk, run.

I blew it.

I am now going back to the begging - using my existing data to develop a strategy.

I have reset all my max CPC to .10 - the goal is to generate a list of long tail keywords that people click on.

My new methodology:

1) Create a campaign with lots of keywords - VERY LOW ppc. - My keywords should only trigger when they are part of a larger long keyword list.

2) T202 gives me a long keyword string that people use to click my ads.

3) The longer phrase now is used to create a long tail keyword program.

4) Have a separate campaign that uses the long tail program.

Each ad is designed to match the keyword. A very tailored program.

Steps 3 and 4 are reviewed daily and adjusted accordingly.

This is the hard work.

Zale