Taking the Plunge
In my last post I discussed my success with running PPC campaigns on the content network and polling surfers on news in the entertainment industry. It definitely works and I have been making a consistent $5 – $10 day doing this. However, these income streams are short lived and only bring in small profits. So this month I decided it was time to take the plunge.
In the past I have always gone after small and not very competitive niches. I have succeeded with some and failed with many and I finally got tired of it. I was tired of spending hours and days building websites, writing content, and launching new campaigns and then losing it all in the end or only making a few dollars a day profit. I can attribute all of this to one thing… FEAR. I was afraid of losing money so I went after small niches. I was afraid of competing with other affiliates so I only went after markets that had very little competition. I was afraid of paying $1+ per click and I was afraid to spend more than $100-$200 to test a campaign. In then end my fear set me up for failure.
Every month my affiliate manager at Azoogle will send me a list of the latest CPA offers that are currently hot and typically I would just ignore them because they were highly competitive markets. But this month I said “what the heck” if everyone else is making money there then I can too. So I found one of the top 10 offers and started researching it. I spent a week looking at various sites and learning about the product and market until I was ready to start building out a site and a campaign. Most of what I did was following the guidelines set out by Kris and Andrew at CashTactics.net.
Immediately I starting seeing some sales causing me to become very excited but then I didn’t see any more sales after that. In the past I would have shut the campaign down but I knew that since there were sales there was also potential to make a profit. So over the course of 2 weeks I tested 5 different landing pages, tweaked ads, and cut out keywords that weren’t performing. I had a second lull where I didn’t see any sales and I was tempted to shut it down but then I read Andrew’s article called PPC Suicide that made me stop and think about it. I was emotionally tied to my money and in the past haven’t taken a scientific approach to my marketing. If I am going to make sound decisions, then I need significant statistics and to get that I need to let the campaign run.
This weekend I had two days of profit one was $60 and the other was $40! If I had turned it off I would not have seen these sales. What I learned this month is that your affiliate managers send you those top 10 lists for a reason. They are proven money makers and if you take the time to test them you can make a profit. Second, I learned that to test these top 10 markets you had better be prepared to spend $1000+ to thoroughly test them. Let’s look at my campaign…
Time: 2 weeks
Cost: $676.46
Clicks: 398
Avg. CPC: $1.70
Income: $327.50
As you can see my campaign has a negative %51 ROI but what I have learned in that time is what landing page, ads, and keywords are converting. These next two weeks I am going to spend tuning this campaign because I know with out a doubt that money can be made in this niche. I wouldn’t have learned this unless I was patient and took the time to test. My hope is that those of you who are reading this can learn from my mistakes and be patient and unemotional in your marketing efforts. Don’t let fear govern your decisions because it will only lead to failure. So go ahead and take the plunge, take the risk, and make some money.
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Hi there Jason, I also have this fear of losing my hard earned money.. but then again, it takes money to earn MORE money.. I am also on the learning curve of PPC-CPA and been doing reading and “some” trial campaigns that have been paused for fear of having a bad advertising history due to booboos.
I am on the verge of launching another campaign next week. I just hope this time, this would work out. Hope to hear more from you man.
All the best,
jayl
BTW, im assuming “income” is actually “gross income” right?
Hey Jason,
Congrats for taking the plunge man. Respect and all that! I’d guess that the majority of the affiliates out there never make the sacrafices to make some serious money and I think it’s a brave man that’s willing to risk $1000’s.
Were you using ppc bully and how accurate and useful did you find it?
I’m gonna start testing long tail keywords with high OCI and very little competition. I haven’t tried the banner ad approach, but they maybe something to look into in the future?
Thanks Des! I do use PPC Bully and it helps me in various aspects for example, I can quickly see what all the profitable ads and landing pages look like to give me a good starting point when I start building my campaign. Secondly it let’s me easily see which keywords are profitable. However, you still have to test and what PPC Bully says is profitable does not necessarily mean will be profitable for you. I have a lot more coming as a follow up to this post and should have something to share in the next couple of days.
Good post. I am just starting to get into PPC after doing SEO on small niches for the past six or so months. I’ve been scared to spend money so my campaigns have brought me little in the way or income or education as you can’t learn much on one or two clicks a day.
Joe, if you’re just starting out with PPC I suggest heading over to CashTactics.net as they have some great tutorials. I know what you mean though. It’s tough and takes a long time to test when you only have a budget of a few dollars a day. The great thing though, when you finally have a profitable campaign even if it’s a few dollars a day, you can then take that money to continue testing and expanding. If you’re starting out, I suggest starting on the content network as the clicks are cheaper and it’s a little easier to get going. Don’t forget to track either otherwise you are just throwing your money away.