$250 a day

How long to get to this?

[domfos]

How long do you reckon it would take to get to $250 a day if you go full time and have a fair idea of what you are doing and have plenty of ideas?

[mwack]

Thanks for all the great replies!

I think I'll take however much money I can afford to lose and give PPC another try. I did some tutoring over the weekend and so my advertising budget's swelled a bit. Now it's off to the AdWords/PPC forums to do some more research. Again, thanks to everybody for their great replies, it's reall given me the confidence I needed to get going in PPC.

[davewray]

Mwack...Before you spend any of that hard earned money do yourself a favour and do some Intesive keyword research. If you look and think hard enough you can come up with several thousand different keywords for ANY industry. And I do mean thousands of keywords. What will this do? It will increase your chances of getting clicks at a lower price. Let me explain. Let's say you only have three keywords and they are the most popular for that niche. Let's say the average top bid for those three keywords is $1. Let's say traffic volume for those three keywords is 5000 searches per day. Now, let's say you come up with 2500 related keywords whose average top bid is 10 cents. Let's say all together those 2500 keywords account for 5000 searches per day.

So, taking a look at numbers for the above example this is what you get:

1. Let's assume a CTR of 2%.

2. 2% of 5000 daily searches is 100 clicks.

3. If you bid on just three keywords at $1/click, you are paying $100 for 100 clicks.

4. If you bid on the 2500 keywords at 10 cents/click, you are paying $10 for 100 clicks.

Therefore, you are getting the same traffic volume for 10 times cheaper. In fact, it is quite common that you will get a better conversion rate by using more specific (longer) keyword phrases than you would with the more common one or two word phrases.

So, that is why I say that keyword research BEFORE starting an Adwords/Overture campaign can help save you Tons of money and also make your experience more enjoyable.

Just my opinions and what has worked for me.

Dave.

p.s. For keyword research I use: Google Sandbox, Overture, Espotting, 7Search.

p.p.s. Keyword tools I use to help are the "Keyword Wrapper". It'll take your list of keywords and put them in broad and exact matches as well. Another tool I use is the Keyword generator which will take your entire list and for example, replace all "widget" words in your list with "widgets" (plural), or anything else you can think of...misspellings etcetera. Just Google "Keyword Wrapper" and "Mytrashmail Keyword Generator" to find these two tools.

[jmedia]

Dave,

that was very valuable advice.

How do you set up your landing pages when you have so many keywords, most of them very specific?

[davewray]

Jmedia...I only use one landing page per product/form. I use Google or Overtures conversion tracking code to see which keywords convert. Also, I study my raw log files and match it to the exact time the conversion happens so I get the exact keyword phrase that converted. If I find a phrase that converts well and on a consistent basis I will increase the bid all the while trying to maintain a good ROI. Hope this helps.

Dave.

[jmedia]

It does help - very good advice.

More about landing pages - let's say I promote about 1000 different products for the same industry and for every product I have 5 different keyword variations, and that would make 5000 keywords - example:

industry: widgetology
products: bluewidget, redwidget, greenwidget, etc.
keywords:
buy bluewidget, cheap bluewidget for sale, best bluewidget, etc.
buy redwidget, cheap redwidget for sale, best redwidget, etc.
buy greenwidget, cheap greenwidget for sale, best greenwidget, etc.

Now what would be the best way to set up landing pages?

Set up 1000 different landing pages - one for each product? - But then, what's the best way to manage adwords and overture consoles? Manually entering 1000 urls?

Any advice on how to set up and manage lots of different landing pages?

[midwestguy]

Hi Davewray,

I've been wondering about something you mentioned since you posted it on August 14th...

"Let me clarify. I've been in affiliate marketing for two years. Didn't make too much. Once I KNEW the way to do things right, it took ONLY 3 to 4 weeks to get it rolling. I didn't "get it" right away, it took two years to finally find what works! Some will find the "right" way faster, some slower :)".

Would you be kind enough to clarify something for me please?

When you mentioned it took two years to "get it" and find what works, did you mean two years to learn how to do affiliate marketing right (and then get affiliate marketing rolling right in 3 or 4 weeks in addition to PPC) -- or rather mean that after two years of affiliate marketing you decided to switch your efforts to pretty much all PPC (and it only took 3 to 4 weeks to figure PPC out and get PPC rolling)?

I'm wondering what your feelings are on affiliate marketing compared to PPC now that you have succeeded in getting PPC working so well (and congratulations btw!). If it's OK to ask, what percentage of your time do you figure you still spend on affiliate marketing efforts, if any?

Thanks a bunch for sharing...and may your bids stay low and your revenues high! ;-)

Thanks again and take care,

Louis

[davewray]

Jmedia...I've never had to deal with thousands of products and PPC. I usually deal with just one product at a time, so it's easier that way. What I would do is start with your most profitable and popular products and do PPC for those first. I assume that each product has its own page? That takes away the need to "produce" a landing page for each product. As the display URL just use your site URL and use the specific product page as your landing URL. As far as I can see, you will need to use different URL's for each of your products if you use PPC to advertise your products. For each product you could probably come up with 100 unique keywords. Think of descriptive words such as: purchase, buy, get, find, need, cheap, cheapest, cheaper, low cost, inexpensive, affordable and on and on! Hope this helps.

Midwestguy...When I think of affiliate marketing I think of selling a company's product for a cut. So, I feel that PPC to merchant, or using SEO to drive SE traffic to your product landing page as both being affiliate marketing.

I did start affiliate marketing two years ago. I started primarily building sites and trying to SEO them to get SE traffic to them. On my sites I would place affiliate links to various products that fit the theme of the site. After a few months I dipped my feet into PPC as an additional way to drive traffic to my sites to increase my number of targetted visitors and therefore sales. I was "relatively" successful in that I didn't lose any money and made a modest profit.

What I meant about getting it after two years is this. I was "exposed" to affiliate marketing for two years before I finally met the right people and learned about the right products to make a really good profit. Once I found the products/merchants that sold well, that's when it took me just 3 to 4 weeks to implement my NEW knowledge and make that kind of profit. Hope this makes sense?

Right now I am primarily doing just PPC and not SEO. Why? Because PPC gives me instant results as opposed to waiting six months for Google to "decide" whether my site is "worthy" to show up for certain keyphrases when I know perfectly well what type of folks are looking for my product. I can balance the risk using purely PPC because I know more or less what my costs will be and what type of profit I can expect without worrying about whether the SE's will drop my site in any given algo change. PPC is more controllable and I like that!

Dave.

[midwestguy]

Hi Dave,

Thanks a lot for both clarifying and for sharing as you have in this thread; I very much appreciate it. Now I understand what you meant.

And again, congratulations on doing well after all the hard work and perseverance in hammering away at it until the "puzzle" cracked open for you.

Thanks again and best wishes in all regards,

Louis

[davewray]

Louis...I have only just begun :) I plan on cracking that $1000/day mark before the end of this year.

Dave.

[domfos]

davewray: i'm sure you will reach your goal.

Thanks for all the good advice.

[pardo]

A bit off-topic...

What resources (books, sites, e-books...) can be used as a good starting point to learn about the PPC-environment?

[midwestguy]

Go Dave, Go!

I'm rooting for you!

Thanks again for sharing as you have.

Have a great weekend and take care,

Louis