If you like this series let me know in the comments so I know to keep going!
Summary
| Campaigns Launched So Far | 73/100 |
| Revenue | $93 |
| Cost | $1,253.86 |
| Total Profit/Loss | -$1,160.86 |
Ok, so another $88.75 spent on Google and $52.20 spent on Bing.
Results? 2 Sales @ $20 each on Clickbank = $40 Revenue.
Pay Per Call
Since the last update I’ve taken a step back and taken some time to look at my current campaigns and my strategy towards them.
Teespring taught me to launch launch launch. Test $30 and repeat.
It seems I can’t apply this strategy to Pay Per Call because it takes some time and spend to get some insight into what the right keywords to bid on are and for the cost/click to decrease.
For example, the first $50 spend will allow me to look deeper into what exactly people are typing into Google to trigger my keywords and which keywords are leading to clicks. There’s no other way to get this insight apart form putting $50 out there. I’m basically paying for data that can potentially point me in the right direction.
I’ll find out that instead of ‘local dentist’, people are searching for, ‘low cost dentists in Manhattan’, ‘Dentists for 2 year olds near me’, etc.
This allows me to tighten up my adgroups and give it another shot which is where the second $50 spend comes into play.
I think I’ll have to set aside a $100 spend budget for my Pay Per Call Campaigns from now on.
I spent some time analysing me analytics data and realised the following,
25 out of the 28 clicks from one of my campaigns did not come from mobile!
That’s a big problem.
I need my ads to appear on only mobile so people can simply click and trigger the call function. People browsing on desktops are rarely in calling mode, their in browsing mode.
I saw this was the case for many of my campaigns! I had spent $250+ on non mobile traffic and stupid keyword triggers.
It was kind of a good realisation because it taught me to go through this a little slower and that there’s options I can edit to make my campaigns perform much better.
So from now on I select either ‘Call Only’ ads or ‘Text ads’, make sure I click the ‘mobile’ option in the ads set up and pause the other, ‘non-mobile’ ads. I also increase my device preference bid by 20%. Hopefully this should take out computers/tablets straight out of the equation.
Talking To Reps
Like I mentioned at the start, I took some time to evaluate things. I called my Google rep and told him to check out my campaigns and see if I was missing anything. He gave me a tonne of advice.
I called my cousin who’s a Google Adwords Specialist for a local company and he showed me how to look at all the above data.
I also got in contact with someone from a forum that does PPCall and we’re most likely going to share ideas/progress and help each other grow.
My learnings in this space has been tremendous. From total PPCall noob to knowing enough to hopefully find a profitable campaign eventually, this month was well worth the challenge.
Bing –> ClickBank
Bing is an interesting traffic source. It’s definitely quality but is in many ways, very different to Google.
I’ve read a lot on people promoting Clickbank offers over there so I decided to give it a shot. I set up 3 campaigns and let some traffic run.
A day later I made a sale. Two days later, another one.
So now I’m sitting on 2 sales from the same product which I should hopefully, be able to turn into a profitable campaign.
I’ve bid pretty broad on Bing. Eg, for a Photography product, I’ll bid on things like, ‘online photography course’, etc.
The most important thing here is a negative keyword list. Without one, you’ll never make a profit.
When I started implementing the right negative keywords, I started making sales because my ads were displaying for the right keywords.
So I took out keywords such as,
- guides
- tutorials
- free
- video
- youtube
etc,
Words that people who are interested in looking for free tutorials and videos would be searching.
Everyday I keep adding to the list as my analytics reports picks up crappy keywords.
Moving Forward
I’m taking a slower approach and am slowly moving past the newbie phase of these traffic sources, (hopefully).
What I mean by that is my ‘stupid mistakes’, phase should be over allowing me to save a lot more of my spend and strengthen up my profit/loss margins.
I’m going to be focusing on,
- Bing to Clickbank
- Google to Pay Per Call
- and PPV to CPA offers.
I haven’t set up my PPV stuff yet but as soon as I do, I’ll be launching some CPA offers which will open up a whole new set of things to test.
You’ve probably realized I like to spend a lot of money.
It’s because I’ve realized the only way to learn is to spend. Without spending and losing, you will not learn the exact things you need to change.
Their investments into my knowledge base that will stick there forever.
If you read success stories on StackThatMoney and Aff PlayBook you will see many where people have lost $1,000s before finding a campaign.
It’s how the industry works and when you figure this out, you’re learning rate will increase 10 fold.
Mateen
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You have a blog making $4K a month, you have a forum, a list, products and kindle books, those are real assets and a real business. Why not invest that money in growing this blog and building a business rather than focusing affiliate marketing which is just making money. The $1000 you just spent on affiliate marketing could have been spent on traffic to your blog or new email subscribers. People that will come back everyday and people that you can make money off of more than once.
Another thing why did you start a second blog when you could post all that same content here?
That’s very true.
But once you’ve made $100s of thousands off a campaign in Affiliate Marketing, it sticks to you like a drug and you always keep trying.
Sure this blog income might rise to 5, 10 or even 20k/m but it’s a very slow process and personally, I don’t enjoy blogging.
I enjoy AM, you never know when you’ll find a monster campaign that can buy you 3 houses within 6 months.
Please keep these posts going.. best thing I’ve read in AM blogs. Love hearing the nitty gritty reality of affiliate marketing.
Might keep going with this the whole year! Thanks Jeff
I think invested money in the affiliate stuff was the right desition other wise how are you planing to have a blog about affiliate marketing if all you doing is blogging and not doing the business
Also did you complete give up on teespring ?
Exactly, The whole point of this blog was to track my affiliate marketing adventure.
I always go back and visit it, but for now I’m going to try other stuff.