2. How Many clicks must you average before you should give up on a programe? should it be apparent that it will turn a profit easily or is there some form of 'regression to mean' affect going on here? (ie am I just have an unlucky few days). Do things pick up after a while and always start slow?
Anyways I fully understand if you dont want to give information on this matter, but thanks for reading this far anyway :-)
Thanks
Jon
Statistically significent:
[webmasterworld.com...]
An excellent post to check against what you're currently doing, 15 tips for AdWords beginners:
[webmasterworld.com...]
You never answered my first question thou...
is is actually possible to make a profit!
Jon
You never answered my first question thou...
is is actually possible to make a profit!
Buzbe, you'll want to take my answer for what it's worth (as determined by you), since I work at AdWords - but the answer is, absolutely, yes. ;)
I kid you not.
By way of verification, I offer you the fact that the program has grown pretty nicely over the past couple of years. If something doesn't work, the market usually will tell you pretty soon. Just my $0.02. :)
I will say, though, that like so many things worth doing, there is a learning curve. And any time spent monitoring/experimenting/learning is time well spent.
BTW, there are many folks I've heard from on this Forum, who did not start out making a profit. It seems, however, as if most who have persevered, and who have really taken the time to learn how AdWords works, have done well.
A resource worth knowing about, as you come up to speed:
AdWords Learning Center
[google.com...]
AWA
I havent turned a profit yet, but I am learning! Bit of a break through today, I believe I might be seeing my first steady flow of converstions soon :-)
Excuse the spelling, chemistry revision is killing me. Bloody Finals!
a) Paying too much per click: I'd very very strongly recommend not going over the minimum cost per click until you know what you're doing. I'd get cocky with my merchants - I'd make a lot of sales, and decide I wanted more traffic! So I'd pay more per click to generate that additional traffic. Then I'd leave things to roll for a while, not see much more sales, then see my profits disappear. Just paying an extra £1 a day can add up - after a month that's £30. If it's not making money, it's pure loss against everything else you're doing.
b) Not factoring in reversals of sales: Although I didn't really touch clothing merchants in the beginning, some apparel merchants have unbelievable return rates. It kinda sucks when half your commission get wiped out 30-60 days after a sale. If you're close to breakeven on your sales, then a bunch of refunds come in, it doesn't look so good anymore.
c) Not using negative keywords enough: I have a list of 30 or so negative keywords that I apply to EVERY campaign I make. I don't think I'm giving away many secrets when I say the keyword 'free' is generally a bad one if you're looking for buying customers. And check out the keyword tool to look for other undesirable keywords that searchers may come up with. If you're looking to sell lingerie via AdWords (good luck!) then you'll be looking at a negative keyword list in the hundreds to keep out the 'window shoppers'.
d) Not landing users at specific products. If a user searches for 'pink widget 2000', they want to see pink widget 2000s when they click your ad. If you just shove them onto the index page of a merchant, you have to trust them to be savvy/keen enough to find the product on that site. At least point them at the specific category of product they're looking for. Be careful though, sometimes merchants show their best deals on their front page. If a user can't find what they want VERY quickly, they will just leave. And not all merchants/networks support direct linking.
It really takes time to discover the good merchants that you can apply a range wide range of keywords for at low click cost. For some merchants with very narrow product ranges, it can be very difficult to think up a large number of original keywords to point in their direction. And with the new AdWords changes (one advert per merchant per search), this makes it even harder.
I put all my stats together 6 months ago, and was very surprised to find that I didn't really make any profit in the first 6 months. Most of my early profit was wiped out in one month by a) above.
Well, hope I didn't reinvent the wheel too much with my experiences, and hope this helps. Keep an eye on your stats, but try not to refresh your commission report 100 times a day like I do. And in response to your how many clicks before booting a merchant: I'll say... it depends ;) Just make sure you break even. If you have 500 clicks with one merchant and one whacking great commission on it then that's good - just make sure they continue to give large commissions. If you have 100 clicks and one tiny commission, watch out. I had early success with one merchant after around 30 clicks - a big commission - then nothing... a further 100 clicks.. nothing.. then left it to rot for months, until it became unprofitable. Be sure to make reports on each merchant, and cut out the dead wood.
It takes time to get a feel for things though; these are my experiences and the best way to figure things out is to just go out there and do it!
Cheers,
Chris
How many clicks would a 'good' programe average a day? (just on search network, I'm finding the content network to be pretty fruitless)
