The PPC Experiment Continues

Well I'm continuing on my PPC testing, though I've slowed the daily spend until I actually receive my first affiliate payout, as I've quickly racked up a fairly sizable dent in the credit card (for me at least!)

I've had some set backs, including a few issues with some campaigns I was running, though these have now been resolved.

I'm also testing a variety of different niches, and landing page types, to try and learn as much from my initial PPC spend as possible.

I've had a couple of campaigns now that have just chewed their way through about $25 in clicks each, with no conversion as yet, though one has just made a $28 sale.

While that campaign has only yielded a mighty $3 profit, I learned a lot about the PPC process, as initially despite using only Phrase/Exact matching on my keywords, there were still a bunch of mistargeted keyword phrases coming in. They were related to the niche, but the specific product type they were searching for was not what I am offering.

This mistargeted traffic, combined with high bid prices, low CTR from my landing page to the offer, and no mention of the small shipping price on the free trial all came together to mean that I was chewing through my campaign budget with no buyers.

To remedy this, I set about correcting what I saw as issues with that particular PPC campaign.

I added the shipping price to the PPC ad title, to discourage freebie seekers.

I lowered my bid price slightly to test if I could still get test traffic at a lower cost.

Then I moved one of the landing page text links up to above the fold, to increase the CTR from landing page to offer page.

Finally, I sifted through my keyword tracking reports and made a list of all the search words that were hitting my landing page slightly off target, and added that list in adCenter as Excluded Keywords.

For those of you who aren't aware, Excluded keywords are words which make your PPC ad not display. For example, say you're bidding on "bikes" (as in mountain bikes), but you realize people are searching for "motor bikes", and because you're bidding on the term "bikes", your ad is showing up - and some of them are clicking your ad for some reason.

Obviously these people are not likely to be buyers of mountain bikes, so are simply costing you money.

To stop this from happening, simply go to "manage keywords" in adCenter, and add "motor" as an Excluded keyword. Problem solved.

After my changes to that campaign, I saw a slow down in clicks, which was to be expected, since my ad now clearly states that spending is involved.

I am hopeful that this testing will be successful, as a day after making these changes this previously unproductive campaign made its first sale. I'll keep it running and see if this new improved traffic keeps converting.

In total, I think I have about 5 different niches being testing, though some have been paused for now as I mentioned, due to my wanting to see some cash back before investing too much more in PPC.

Of my 5 test niches, 4 are in the black, while one remains unproductive, which I think is largely to do with the affiliates landing page being too sprawling and leaky. Also I'm not 100% certain on the "buy words" for this type of niche. I think I'll stop this particular campaign shortly and test a new one.

Stay tuned for more PPC testing updates.