The phrase "widget boxes" brings up about 220,000 results, so it's not that competitive a phrase. But I had to bid up to $1.25 a click to get #5 or better for that phrase.
My profit on the sale of a widget box is about $25, and my competitors' profits are probably in the same range, since we all buy from the same network of distributors.
So how can they afford to spend that much? I set my budget for one ad today for $10, and the budget was exhausted in a couple of hours without a single sale.
So how can they afford to spend that much?
Based on the concept of Quality Score - you won't and can't know what your competitor is spending. Even if your CTRs are similar (which is a stretch to assume), if you've only recently begun bidding on this keyword, your lack of history will likely force you to pay a premium - and your lack of data will be too unreliable to draw such assumptions from...
I set my budget for one ad today for $10, and the budget was exhausted in a couple of hours without a single sale.
If you've just starting selling widgets and bidding on these particular keywords - I'd focus on collecting as much data and learnings as possible at this point. I don't think I'd have specific conversion rate expectations - nor would I expect this expectation to necessarily play out over only $10 in spend.
My point is that if you can afford it do a larger test to get a better idea of what your return will be, do it, $10 won't give you any idea of what you can do. 8+- visitors does not a statistic make, especially considering that 3-4 of them were probably your competitors checking out the competition.
Even when you have the same cost structure as your competitors (cost of product and similar cost per click) it could be that they aremore profitable because their sites convert better than yours.
So, drive traffic to your site and work on enhancing the conversion process.
I had to bid up to $1.25 a click to get #5 or better for that phrase.Sometimes it is better no tobe listed in the top positions. You get a lot of tire kickers, but no buyers. Oftentimes visitors from page 2 or 3 results are more qualified and deeper in the buying process.
I should clarify a couple of things. I didn't just spend $10. I spent $30 over the course of three days.
My site gets 250,000 to 300,000 visitors a month with over a million page views. It ranks very high on the SE's, with most phrases in the top five results. I did the Adsense ad for a term that had fallen to #33 because I wasn't pushing it.
I have banner ads on the site for two products, one of which is the item I advertised with Adsense. The banner ads are getting conversion rate of about 1% or so.
The Adsense ads had 25,000 impressions, and got 46 clicks. .18% CTR. Not good.
AdWords indicates that the quality score was "Great." I don't know if that's what Poster_boy was referring to.
Since I'm trying to advertise one particular product at the moment, maybe I should be more specific. Instead of going for "widget boxes," I'll try "Acme boxes."
Any other ideas are very much appreciated.
