OK, no excuses. I have lazy for the past month or so. I have not posted and I have been slacking off with AM. I got discouraged and my AM efforts slowed to a trickle. But, as you can see, I am back. I have decided to renew my commitment to AM and to making it in AM.
Today I recieved my first paycheck as an affiliate. The amount was not huge, but it was still inspirational. I have also recently been approved as an affiliate in a great new network that seems to really be interested in my success as a marketer. Apparently no question is too big or too small to ask the managers. I am going to make good use of them and ask questions about traffic sources, ad copy and so on.
I have also decided to adopt a more regiment approach to AM and it is this: ONE NEW OFFER PER WEEK. My goal is to research, setup and launch on new campaign PER WEEK. I will focus solely on that one campaign (aside from maintenance of other campaigns) and get it launched within one week. I figure this is a good way to get more proficient at creating, narrowing and launching new campaigns.
So there it is… I am back and I have a new strategy. I can’t be too hard on myself though, the weather has been so great I have gotten in SO MUCH good riding, but I do understand that I have to sacrifice in order to make it in AM. By this time next year I will be doing AM full-time and can ride for 4 hours a day if I so choose…
Here’s to goals being met.
Yeah, it’s been a while. I’m still here though. Still an AM wannabe. My latest campaign took a dump. I asked my AM what it’s conversion rate is and she replied that it was about 2.5%. Well, there’s a lesson to be learned in there. Run your the offers you’d like to run past your AM they will be able to give you numbers/tips that will help you decide if you even want to run a particular offer. If I had talked to her before I ran the offer I might not have even tried it.
I have compiled a list of social network sites/alternate PPC engines to try out some new campaigns on.
Keep plugging away…
I created an Excel workbook that I used when I was creating my ads offline. It has 8 columns, columns one - four hold the ad headline, description line 1, description line 2, and display URL. Columns 5-8 hold the corresponding length of a piece of the ad. If any part of the ad is too long the length is highlighted in red.
Excel AdWords Ads Listing Workbook
Not sure if this is useful, but maybe someone will stumble across this post and be able to get some use out of it. Currently up to 2500 rows of ads are supported.
Download link: AdWords Ad Listing Workbook
During the month of June I launched 19 campaigns. They have all been dismal failures (only one ALMOST have a positive ROI). Not a problem. I will just have to stick with this, dig my heels in further. In preparation to do that I am separating my funds into a separate account that is soley for AM. I am getting into trouble where I am using my CC and not paying it off, so this way I will have an account dedicated to AM.
I have a list of 11 campaigns, that I want to launch on the next 11 days, one campaign is merely waiting to be approved by FB before it kicks off. I have to be honest here, this is MUCH more difficult than I thought it would be. I mean failure after failure just keeps coming, but I am not one to give up easily so I will continue.
On a personal note, I did my first ride today on my neighboorhood loop where I averaged 20+ MPH. This may not sound like a big deal, but when you consider all the stop and yeild signs it really is. Starting from 0 is always tough. On rural course I average around 25 MPH for two hours before I’m cooked. All I can say is that God for my CAAD9, if not for that bicycle I would have lost my sanity months ago. Yes, it is a triple, however a few months ago I dropped about a grand to get the bike stripped and upgraded to SRAM Rival, LOVE IT.
I plan on doing at least 60 miles this Saturday, should be hot!
I paused my adWords campaign and proceeded to lose about $20.00 more on Facebook, why not? It is becoming clear to me that I need to look for less competitive offers in order to get my feet wet. When I become better at AM I will be able to compete better in the larger markets. My MSN campaign was never launched, I am pretty sure I would have lost that money as well.
I have put together a list of 10 campaigns from ML, NB and MB. My goal is to launch 1 campaign per day for the next 10 days. These offers will be promoted via Facebook and some other PPC sources. I think I am going to try some out of the way traffic sources like the ones I saw listed at NickyCakes.com.
So far I’ve spent $482.43, made $49.62, for an approximate ROI of -90%. Next month will be better. I hope to have my overall ROI up to around -75%.
As always, will post later…
Well, as of today there have been 213 downloads of Vibrant Pool!
http://download.cnet.com/Vibrant-Pool/3000-2056_4-10920318.html?tag=mncol
Well, here are my stats for my latest:
- Clicks: 42
- Impressions: 2,225
- CTR (to LP): 1.89%
- Avg. CPC: $2.67
- Total Cost: $112.30
- Avg. Position: 4.2
- CTR from LP to Offer: 21% (9/42)
- Conversions: 0
All of the match types were exact so that is why the impressions were so low I supposed. My ad CTR was not so great and my LP to offer CTR was extremely low. I suppose that is because my landing page is garbage? I mean isn’t the hard part getting the user to click the ad on Google? I made a few changes to the LP but either the traffic volume was too low or the changes simply didn’t matter. Long story short, I got 0 conversions. I have paused the campaign for now. I am going to seek some advice on getting my LP fixed.
Well, today is my birthday so I figured what better day to launch a campaign. I expect this campaign to cost the most of any I have tried to date. The niche is very competitive from what I can tell so the clicks aren’t going to be cheap. My strategy with adWords is to start my bids fairly high and lower them over time as my CTR gets better. I have 17 tight adgroups with 141 keywords. Each adgroup has 4 ads for a total of 68. A few of those ads use the keyword insertion functionality so we’ll see how that works.
I am fairly confident that my ads are decent, but I am concerned about my landing pages. I have one general landing page and 2 specifc ones. The pages are based off of similar pages that I have seen in the same niche. I did not “rip” the pages, but I was inspired by them.
Will update…
Man, my first big campaign is proving tough to launch. Always more keywords to include, customized landing pages, etc. I guess I just need to put a stick in the ground and stop adding crap and just get this sucker launched. My goal is Monday, of course the big G might have other plans.
Stay away from Facebook until you know what you are doing…
I ran a few campaigns on Facebook that made me a little money, but lately I have lost money.
I need to stay away from the lure of “easy” Facebook profits and focus on larger landing page based campaigns.
Once I learn more, maybe I will comeback to Facebook and try again.
EDIT: As far as staying away from Facebook, I am powerless. I have to make it work.
