PPC kicked my ass in a week!

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tony115

tony115

New member
Dec 29, 2007
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What the fuck!! I just started PPC. I got my ads rolling and I have no clue as to if I'm making any money!!! AAArrrgggghhHH! Here are the stats...


Last 7 days Clicks
170 Impressions
4,995 CTR
3.40% Avg. CPM
$44.03 Avg. CPC
$1.29 Total Cost
$219.91
Ok. I make money at work, but I don't make it to put food on google's plate! I reduced my max cpc to 0.05. It was 0.25. Real fucking smart huh? Well I had it at $2.00 max cpc. I increased my daily budget from $20 to $100 to compensate. I know these assholes did not change my max cpc in time so I'm sure that's why these guys are grabbing $200 from my account. My ads are running in the 1 to 3 position. Any Ideas about what additional steps I can take to become profitable or know if all these clicks are gonna make me some money? Thanks dudes.
 


tony115 said:
Last 7 days Clicks
170 Impressions
4,995 CTR
3.40% Avg. CPM
$44.03 Avg. CPC
$1.29 Total Cost
$219.91
Click to expand...

I think you mean this:
Last 7 days
Clicks 170
Impressions 4,995
CTR 3.40%
Avg. CPM $44.03
Avg. CPC $1.29
Total Cost $219.91

There's many variable why you are unprofitable. Since I don't know what you are offering to visitor, your revenue per sale/lead and what your landing page looks like I can not answer.

but I can tell you this: since you are just starting out, go grab adwords/YSM voucher and make a test campaign. If the campaign is profitable move it into your real PPC account.

And don't forget to include this on <head> for your guinea pig landing page:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

You don't want your LP accidentally indexed by SE because you may have many variation for split test and/or tracking intention. And dupe content will lower your QS
 
Demonez666 said:
And don't forget to include this on <head> for your guinea pig landing page:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

You don't want your LP accidentally indexed by SE because you may have many variation for split test and/or tracking intention. And dupe content will lower your QS
Click to expand...

robots.txt, anyone?
 
Reality check here. If this is your first PPC gig, you are not going to compete in either a niche or keyword where your avg cpc is 1.29.... someone plz tell me I'm being a dick by shrinking his dreams here. Start just a smidge lower on the totem.

If you know something unique about that market, then have at it, but you had better go for some longer-tail terms unless you are going to get some education, quick. If that is the case though, then shouldn't you bring in a partner? If you don't have something extraordinary to add, then find another market because you're competing with 20 other people on the entire planet (10 paid, 10 organic). If you don't bring it (oh no he did-n-t) you'll lose :anon.sml:
 
I think I'm a little late for the voucher. Plus... I can't find the damn thing. Any who; those guys over at google kept my search bid at $2.00 eventhough I set my defaults to $0.05. Guess you live and learn. My landing page is for black dating sites. CHeck it out here-- </title> <link rev="made" href="mailto:"> <meta name="generator" content="NoteTab Pro 5.5"> <meta name="author" content=""> <meta name="description" content=""> <meta name="keywords" content=""> </head> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Tr. And yes, it looks like shit. My wife alreday told me so. Not sure how to make it look better. Maybe I'll grab adobe cs3. Anyway.. thanks for the feedback so quick demonez666.
 
Long term??

blacktastic said:
Reality check here. If this is your first PPC gig, you are not going to compete in either a niche or keyword where your avg cpc is 1.29.... someone plz tell me I'm being a dick by shrinking his dreams here. Start just a smidge lower on the totem.

If you know something unique about that market, then have at it, but you had better go for some longer-tail terms unless you are going to get some education, quick. If that is the case though, then shouldn't you bring in a partner? If you don't have something extraordinary to add, then find another market because you're competing with 20 other people on the entire planet (10 paid, 10 organic). If you don't bring it (oh no he did-n-t) you'll lose :anon.sml:
Click to expand...


What longterm keywords are you talking about. Not sure how to apply this idea to PPC. I understand that people go through 3 phases. A browse phase, compare phase and buy phase. So do you mean long term like this:
Join black dating site? Thanks for the reply btw. :D
 
tony115 said:
And yes, it looks like shit. My wife alreday told me so. Not sure how to make it look better. Maybe I'll grab adobe cs3. Anyway.. thanks for the feedback so quick demonez666.
Click to expand...

OMG...go to BST and hire someone to design one for you. You are burning money with that LP...
 
tony115 said:
I think I'm a little late for the voucher. Plus... I can't find the damn thing. Any who; those guys over at google kept my search bid at $2.00 eventhough I set my defaults to $0.05. Guess you live and learn. My landing page is for black dating sites. CHeck it out here-- </title> <link rev="made" href="mailto:"> <meta name="generator" content="NoteTab Pro 5.5"> <meta name="author" content=""> <meta name="description" content=""> <meta name="keywords" content=""> </head> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Tr. And yes, it looks like shit. My wife alreday told me so. Not sure how to make it look better. Maybe I'll grab adobe cs3. Anyway.. thanks for the feedback so quick demonez666.
Click to expand...

That really needs help. Go look at your competition and see what they are doing. Or you could pay someone to make you a new one like mentioned above. Just keep testing new designs.
 
tony115,

As others have said, your landing page needs help.

But, in my experience, there's a lot more involved in making
PPC profitable on the 1st-tier engines over time, including...

- ad copywriting skills
- keyword research
- keyword pruning
- keyword expansion
- offer selection
- pre-sells
- tracking keyword ROI over significant data samples
- back-end list-building
- many other things

Despite some people talking about shoveling traffic to an offer
and making a killing, PPC ain't easy. I was just telling a friend
that I don't envy those just starting out in PPC. It's difficult.

Yes, there are some folks who can drive traffic directly to
offers and maintain high-ROI campaigns over time. But, doing
so requires the diligence to track your keywords' individual
performance over time (not worrying about the "hills" and
"valleys" that occur over short periods) and the intestinal
fortitude to lose money on the front-end to gather significant
data.

A few of my campaigns each took a couple thousand dollars
to gather data and optimize them. Eventually, I was able to
turn them into high-ROI campaigns that have lasted over time.
Other members of WF are willing to lose tens of thousands to
dominate a market.

I know I'm not offering much help to you here. But, building
long-term, high-ROI PPC campaigns is a long, time-intensive
and often costly effort.
 
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Thanks a lot for your honest and thoughtful opinions. You are right on point Trademark and I will heed your advice. Wicked Fire rocks btw!
 
Trademark said:
tony115,

As others have said, your landing page needs help.

But, in my experience, there's a lot more involved in making
PPC profitable on the 1st-tier engines over time, including...

- ad copywriting skills
- keyword research
- keyword pruning
- keyword expansion
- offer selection
- pre-sells
- tracking keyword ROI over significant data samples
- back-end list-building
- many other things

Despite some people talking about shoveling traffic to an offer
and making a killing, PPC ain't easy. I was just telling a friend
that I don't envy those just starting out in PPC. It's difficult.

Yes, there are some folks who can drive traffic directly to
offers and maintain high-ROI campaigns over time. But, doing
so requires the diligence to track your keywords' individual
performance over time (not worrying about the "hills" and
"valleys" that occur over short periods) and the intestinal
fortitude to lose money on the front-end to gather significant
data.

A few of my campaigns each took a couple thousand dollars
to gather data and optimize them. Eventually, I was able to
turn them into high-ROI campaigns that have lasted over time.
Other members of WF are willing to lose tens of thousands to
dominate a market.

I know I'm not offering much help to you here. But, building
long-term, high-ROI PPC campaigns is a long, time-intensive
and often costly effort.
Click to expand...

What he said...
Also, I would look into different SE's. Some might have different general demographics based on their publishers, thus making your ad that much more relevant and more likely to convert. Also, the bids could be lower.

Cheers
 
tony115 said:
What longterm keywords are you talking about. Not sure how to apply this idea to PPC. I understand that people go through 3 phases. A browse phase, compare phase and buy phase. So do you mean long term like this:
Join black dating site? Thanks for the reply btw. :D
Click to expand...

long tail not long term keywords.

Long tail keywords is a way to swim with the big boys who may have better quality scores than you cause they have deeper pockets and have been at it way longer.

For example if you are advertising for BB guns, you're going to have alot more competetion with the keyword "BB Gun" than the long tail "A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time". Yes, it's going to wittle down your audience, but if that's exactly what your selling then the people that type that into search engines will fall right into your lap.

That's longtail in a nutshell.
 
Great Idea!

blacktastic said:
Reality check here. If this is your first PPC gig, you are not going to compete in either a niche or keyword where your avg cpc is 1.29.... someone plz tell me I'm being a dick by shrinking his dreams here. Start just a smidge lower on the totem.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Great idea. I ran the google keyword tool and realized i was out of my league for sure as a newbie on a lot of keywords. I have reset my bids to compete where possible and am looking to outsource my LP until I get this adobe photoshop ap down a little better.

For those interested use this traffic estimator to find out the avg cost of your keywords. Good luck to all! https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
 
adwords, what a bitch

Adwords is definetly not a nice place to start as a newbie. I'm trying to learn as much as possible about it before i dive in but i realize theres only so much you can learn for ebooks and sites. I need to dive in.
No pain no gain ei...
 
Update

Okay. I got the trial of adobe photoshop and gave the site a banner. I edited the keyword search ppc and trimmed down my keywords to 2. I still need to upgrade the site. Looking at another post gave me the idea to make the choices horizontal. Thanks Eli. Here are the new stats:


Clicks 43
Impressions 5.528
CTR 0.77%
Avg. CPC $0.38
Total Cost $16.49
Avg Pos 8.4

According to Jeremy Palmer of quit your day job, I should do my best to attain a position of 2 or 3. I am a little gun shy right now and I do need to make the further corrections on the site and add more choices. I'll post when i finalize the changes.
 
Quick Update.
For the first campaign's cost of $219.91 for I got one known conversion for $30.
For the updated campaign with cost $16.49 I got one known conversion for $30.
 
nice work... i cant get a single friggin conversion at all, made a thread with exactly what im doing but no replies yet.
 
Quick update

Okay. I have made final changes to the site and I'm crossing my fingers.
Take a look. ebonydatingsites.com

BTW Thanks for the vote of confidence JM. I checked out your site and it looks nice. Just listen to the moderators. I am a complete noob to this arbitage game.

And Nietzche.. Good luck in acheiving $365/day. You can do it!
 
I agree with what a few others have said about paying someone to design a professional landing page. Although, if you're currently in the black with that design (no pun intended) then stick with it. I've had some great success with very low tech, simple, early 90's looking landing pages.
 
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