Hey shoe affiliates what's your secret to success?

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Lee.

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Jan 20, 2007
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Not ShoeMoney but shoes.com, zappos.com, 6pm.com etc...

I recently ran an 4dW0rds campaign for a shoe affiliate. Has anyone here run succesful shoe campaigns? Currently with CJ base affiliate for shoebuy is 17%, shoes 17%, and 6pm 13% but just about every good shoe keyword is 1.00 or above (adwords). With 17% say on a $30-40 shoe I would need to convert before the $5 mark.

I managed to find / create some good keywords that seem to be profitable that got enough hits (XXX) to run for a few days, but with no sales. I was looking for feedback on tweaking and I have a few questions. I turned off the campaign because the acquisition cost would exceed profit. I was expeecting at least 1 sale for a few hundred clicks.
  • Should I create another keyword list and try to pull in from the .05 to.10 range ? ( few hits / long term)
  • Is email better for shoes? (I was thinking with such high costs, advertisers competing on weak terms and all the saturation that email is far better.)
  • Has anybody who ran a shoe campaign found landing on storefronts to be successful?
  • Does anybody have conversion info for shoes?
  • From your experience does straight to merchant work better for shoes?
 


Well in your case I would either stay away from PPC for shoes, or only bid on specific types of shoes that people are searching for, like Heelys. Of course in that case Heelys is a very competitive keyword right now. You might want to try different types of specialized shoes from Puma or something. Even better, why not try advertising for certain types of sports cleats and shoes? For instance in soccer, kids type in certain types of boots all the time. One of the most popular is Nike Mercurial Vapors, but there are plenty of others if you do some digging.

As far as trying something different than PPC, you might want to think about advertising on fashion blogs, websites, and forums if you are using your own website.

The thing is, there is definitly money in being a shoe affiliate. You just have to do your homework that's all.
 
Don't forget to take into account the 30% avg return rate for online shoe sales.
 
And also don't forget the 365 day return policy
Return Policy:

Shoes.com offers the easiest return policy on the web. If you are not completely satisfied, simply return your purchase within 365 days for exchange or refund. NOTE: Please be aware that worn shoes are not returnable and we do not refund shipping charges.
It used to be that you lose your commission, even after 365 days - so I'd check that out.
 
Thanks for the tips. Yeah, I know there's some paper to be made. I just have to figure something different. Yes, I was doing specific shoes and specific brands, just not gettiong the conversion I thought I would. I do have a few fashio blogs and websites I'm going to target, but I plan on hitting those after I see the positive return, then tack on the targeted sites. for +$+$+$. Should I expose my target sites before I start converting? I didn't think that I should..

The ads seem targeted well, I may turn the campaign back on, but drop my price per click and build a list with users that click. In the meantime I cn tweak the campaign

A few examples of my keywords are

buy xxx
buy xxx free shipping
free shipping for xxx
womens xxx
buy xxx womens
 
Thanks for the tips. Yeah, I know there's some paper to be made. I just have to figure something different. Yes, I was doing specific shoes and specific brands, just not gettiong the conversion I thought I would. I do have a few fashio blogs and websites I'm going to target, but I plan on hitting those after I see the positive return, then tack on the targeted sites. for +$+$+$. Should I expose my target sites before I start converting? I didn't think that I should..

The ads seem targeted well, I may turn the campaign back on, but drop my price per click and build a list with users that click. In the meantime I cn tweak the campaign

A few examples of my keywords are

buy xxx
buy xxx free shipping
free shipping for xxx
womens xxx
buy xxx womens


You can go long tail, but good timing will probably outearn those efforts. Kris Jones over at Pepperjam wrote on their blog about taking advantage of some seasonal flux in supply and demand for a particular type of boot. As mentioned earlier in the thread, do your homework.

You can go for the fat end of the keywords instead of picking up crumbs in the long tail if you can be the one to spot the market trends. Shoes (and anything related to fashion) is real trendy. Go hang out on some school playgrounds and offer kids pieces of candy in exchange for their input on what's hot and not in the world of kids shoes. ;) That would be a good one before the back-to-school shopping this fall so long as you didn't end up in jail.
 
Try to use pricing qualifiers in your search terms like "cheapest" "best price", etc.

The shoes vertical has a really high percentage of "window shoppers" (women, primarily) who type in things like "sexy high heels" and click on ads, then browse around your site, with no intention to buy anything at the current time.

This can totally kill your average CPA (cost per acquisition).

So try the qualifiers. I'm sure you can think of more things. Just try to think of things to add to the keyphrase that only people who are actually intending to buy would type in.

Here, one more: "Shoes free shipping"
 
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