David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

The problem with PPC is that whilst it gives immediate results, it can give immediate cost too.

I ran a campaign a week ago that cost me dearly to the tune of £65.
 
Considering that I had zero sales and around 20 clicks, that was a lesson in playing it safe!

I put the loss down to the fact that I am a PPC newbie. All well and good but that's not explaining why I went wrong. And this is where others go wrong to.

"Whoops, I went wrong. I can't do it."

The problem is I went in after the big boys. Let's assume my campaign was about loans (it wasn't but we'll still assume it was!).

I went in after the terms "loan", "debt management", "unsecured loans" and "secured loans".

Why? Because of the vast amount of visitors I should have got and the quick return.

I WENT WRONG BECAUSE I WAS WORKING TOO FAST. I expected to make money fast. I wanted to make money fast and so I used the keywords I thought would generate such a return. D'oh!

Looking at it, I shouldn't have bid on the terms above. I'm not sure what I would get out of it.

For loan brokers, a £10,000 could equate to £1,000 commission. So technically, they could afford t spend £1,000 is acquiring customers. My budget is more around the £100 mark. Subtle difference, hence the reason why £60 buys not a lot of traffic!

So what can I do to rectify the situation?

Firstly, persist but smarter. I'm looking at getting a few orders with high commissions. Perhaps I should be looking at a lot of orders with low commissions.

Kieron of UK Offer 'hinted' that he generates PPC campaigns from data feeds so perhaps the way forward is creating AdGroups around specific products. This does seem a long and laborious task but if Kieron is doing it, it must work else he wouldn't be asking for a feed!

I'm a firm believer that PPC is the best way to make a living. I would quite happily run PPC campaigns over affiliate websites. Watching the AdWords screen all day is no different to watching the AdSense screen, only the money travels in a different direction!

It's not easy so it's difficult to enter into and prosper from, unlike building websites. Given what I've been talking about in the last few days, this is a recipe for success!

It will just take time and more focus. Eventually though, I should be able to build successful campaigns and look fondly back at this time and reminisce!

WEBSITE ANALYSIS REMINDER

Remember that I am offering to review your site for free and post the results here. So far, I have four websites in the pot. I would like a few more so that I can choose the 5 best sites. Read more...

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