I started two weeks ago. So far, I have put 10 campaigns and spent about $50 ( had to refill my account once because of no enough CTR at the first day), most of the posts were at top 1 or 2 position, with CTR of 2%. My campaigns covered sports, magazine, cosmetics & toys. But all the clicks did not generate one sell.
For those who have made profit, could you share some experience as what kind of product you promote? do you promote your own site or affiliated ones? What other tricks I have been missing?
Huge thanks!
It does take time and money to get right; you have to track everything, make changes - but not too frequently that you can't properly measure any improvement.
If you're getting no ROI then one area to look at is your use of negative keywords. Use the keyword suggestion tool to see what keyword combos your ads are showing for (particularly on expanded broad match); and if any don't make sense then use negative keywords to prevent them.
On a small budget, try low bids like $0.05 if you can get traffic at that price, use exact or phrase match. If your tracking system can pull the actual keyword used by the person who clicked on the ad as opposed to the one you purchased, you may want to test some terms on the extended broad match and then use the ones that convert in broad or exact matches.
Most of all it just takes time. Even at a 5% conversion rate you need a lot of clicks to come to any conclusions and see patterns in what converts and what doesn't. Even then sometimes you can just find categories of keyword that convert. Widget keywords may convert, but there is no single widget keyword that really racks up the sales, whereas sprocket keywords don't convert at all so you drop all the sprocket keywords and keep the widget keywords.
