blingblam

Okay, so for the benefit of myself and other newcomers to the PPC game, I've come up with an idea...

How about we all work together (pros and newbies) to create a campaign we can watch become profitable. I'm going to start a CPA Campaign on Google, Yahoo Search, Adbrite, AdSonar, and maybe Pulse 360... we can add other advertising networks as we go along.

If people want they can follow and create the exact same campaign with the exact same landing page, exact same ad, and exact same keywords... Just let it become profitable first please.

Here are the rules:
1. Anyone can input a suggestion or a criticism... but since I'm putting my money on the line I will have the final say on what changes will be made.

2. It has to be a widely available CPA offer (non-exclusive to a network) and should be in a market that has shown to perform well in the past.

3. Once we come up with an offer to promote, I will build a landing page. I will then post the landing page here for all to look at. Suggestions should be made on how to improve it, what should be taken off, etc...

4. We will then come up with keyword ideas if we start off with Google and Yahoo. We will test 5 keywords on both Search Networks at the same time. We will workout what the bids should be for each keyword.

5. We'll all input ad ideas relevant to the keywords we're testing. We'll find out which ad performs the best.

6. After this experiment begins, I'll post up the exact Data that is relevant to the campaign. Bid prices, CTR Rate, Conversion Rates, Profit, Expenses, anything that is relevant.

7. We'll figure out what changes need to be made to make it profitable and go from there.

8. If we cannot make this campaign profitable after $600 of spending, or 2-3 weeks of running, we'll stop the experiment.

I'm not sure if this has been done before on this forum, but as a newbie to PPC I think it will help me learn the game and help everyone else on this forum too.

If people don't feel like participating, or no one participates, I will still post up all the results. If that's the case, I'll come up with everything myself.

Let's try and make some money for me and everyone else

blingblam

Okay... so first things first. We should begin by coming up with a market to find offers in. Personally, I have no ethical qualms with rebills, so health and beauty is a market that I think has proven to work time and time again.

If a lot of people here have problems with rebill offers then we'll use a non rebill. Here are the markets I'm thinking about:

Health -- the Acai Berry + Colon Cleanse Combo, Diabetes Sugar Level Testers, Pet Supplements, Health Juice

Beauty -- Teeth Whitening Combo, Skin Care, Lip Plumpers

Debt -- Debt consolidation, Tax Rescue, Credit Score, Cash Advances, Credit Cards

Insurance -- Auto Insurance Quotes, Life Insurance Quotes

Dating -- Ashley Madison, other dating offers etc...

Movies -- Netflix and others...

We need to take the payouts into consideration if we're going to be using high bids. I'm not sure I like the dating market, or the insurance market.

I do like teeth whitening and the Acai Berry Combo stuff, but I find it to be saturated. I wouldn't mind doing these though as other people seem to be making good money off them.

Also, Debt Consolidation could be good if we can somehow tell people to combine two debt consolidation offers to get better results (bigger payout). I've got an idea for this...

I'm not sure if we'd need to build a landing page with Netflix... but this also could be a great offer.

Any suggestions for different offers will be looked at. I'll leave the offer open for discussion for the next few days... Any and all suggestions are welcome.

blingblam

Since, Re-bills are tough to put on google without getting slapped, we should probably stick with the non rebill offers. That leaves us with Debt consolidation, Insurance Quotes, Cash Advances, Credit Cards, and Netflix.

The payout for debt consolidation ranges from $13-$18, credit cards payout over $50 (not sure about that market though), Netflix pays out about $18, Cash Advances payout $7-$30, and Insurance Quotes $2-$18.

Now, if we're going to be bidding high for certain keywords, we want to make sure that the payout is big. If we create a landing page offering Netflix + Dish Network ($8.50) we're still only at less than $30 per full conversion. Which sucks... if we're bidding 60 cents per click then we need to hit at least a 2% conversion rate to break even.

If we offer 2-3 cash advances on our landing page and tell them that by signing up for more than one they have a greater chance of getting more money faster we can potentially make over $50 per conversion (if they sign up to all of them). Which means our bids can hit $1 to break even with a 2% conversion rate.

Debt Consolidation is pretty much the same as cash advances... we can tell them to sign up for more than one to lower their debt by more, or to get a better reduction. We'll tell them to make different debt companies compete with each other.

Insurance looks like crap.

Summary: I'm thinking our best bet is to go with cash advances or debt consolidation offers.

blingblam

Rather than sticking with one offer, I'm going to create a Finance Landing Page with relevant content. I'll also build backlinks to the page. This way, we can have a place for Insurance Quotes, Debt Consolidation, Cash Advances, and biz opps.

I'm going to start working on it today in Wordpress. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll have it finished and ready to go. I'm going to start doing some keyword research and pickout 10-20 keywords from each area to sprinkle in the website. I'll post up the keywords here...

blingblam

Credit Cards Keywords:

1. "Credit Cards Limit"
2. "Credit Cards Account"
3. "Credit Cards Purchases"
4. "First Credit Cards"
5. "Credit Cards Cash"
6. "Credit Card Services"
7. "Credit Card Application"

Debt Relief Keywords:

1. "Card Debt Relief"
2. "Freedom Debt Relief"
3. "of Debt Relief"
4. "debt relief"
5. "debt relief program"
6. "debt relief programs"
7. "debt relief consolidation"
8. "Avoid Bankruptcy"
9. "Bankruptcy 7"
10. "new bankruptcy"

Cash Advances:
1. "Cash Advance"
2. "Cash Advance Loan"
3. "Cash Payday Advance"
4. "Cash Advances"
5. "advance cash online"
6. "Cash Check Advance"
7. "Fast Cash Advance"
8. "Cash in Advance"

I'm going to focus on writing articles for each of these keywords right now... These are keywords that have a pretty big monthly search volume, but also have high competition.

I'm using these keywords because I figure Google will give me keyword relevance with anything similar to the above. I'm going to write one article per keyword starting with cash advances, then debts, and finally credit cards. I will add other categories after I'm done this.

I've already setup the website at Financial Freedom Tips - Just another WordPress weblog (let me know if its against the rules to post up a website here). I just have to start fixing it up and writing content for it. I also have added a debt relief landing page at Avoid Bankruptcy: A Dad's Trick to Reduce his Credit Card Debt by 70%! - Consumer Info Weekly

I still have several different changes I have to make with this landing page (the logo, the picture, etc..).

So that's where I'm at so far. By tomorrow I should be done most of the articles, and the website should look a lot better. I'm also going to add an opt in box on the main site.

Kenster

Very interesting thread, the only challenge is that when you are doing live campaigns like this, all the profitable keywords will be copycatted (if thats a word) and it will be hard to keep anything profitable for long...

I may be interested in going through a whole campaign from birth to death and then showing the whole process on here. This isnt as fun, but is more 'realistic' because you wont have copycatters stealing keywords and such.

Just an idea.


Great idea though!

Burtgummer

Your "Avoid Bankruptcy" page has bad links to your offers. I'm getting a 404 on them.

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blingblam

Thanks for the heads up. I just fixed the problem.

The Fix Your Credit offer has expired though, so I'm going to have to switch that with a different offer before I go live with this. And the Debt Safari offer is only available for U.S. customers.

Right now I'm just focusing on building content for the site, I'll start the campaigns soon, probably in a couple of days.

The Wordpress Theme I'm using is the free timeline digest theme for anyone who wants to know.

blingblam

I'd love to see you go through a campaign from birth to death, even if you don't give away the profitable keywords. I'm a newbie at all this so I'm sure I'm going to make tons of mistakes along the way. Hell, I might even lose all my money.

But I look at it as a good learning process. By making this thread I have a little more motivation to actually take action. I'll be happy if I get this profitable for even a little while, so I don't really mind too much if people copycat my keywords later on.

I'm working on building a full fledged mini-site with an email opt in. I hope that means it'll be good long term too.

All suggestions and improvements are welcome.

TimScott

The only problem is, that if you would have to make the people participating go though an application process and sign some sort of contract to agree not to duplicate the campaign. Cause If google sees bunch of duplicate campaigns popping up, they'll think something fishy is going on. But besides that, sounds like a fun idea.

harpreetrock

Thannk you really good post for the newb.. I am tooo following the steps as you have mentioned...Any problems I will surely post it here.....
Thanks

blingblam

Yea, I never thought about that. I doubt anyone will want to copy the campaign before finding out it's profitable though. I just want to take a campaign to profitability...that's basically the reason for this thread. If it dies after that I'll at least know how to repeat the process.

blingblam

I hope it helps all of us out. I'm a newbie too, so take what I say or do with a grain of salt.

JohnPark

Good Luck, I'm looking forward to see how you make out.

I've been involved in internet marketing now for 2 years. I also use a great system that generates leads and gets me great backlinks. There are many lead generating portals with this system. It has one of the finest email systems around. Live training and plenty of support. These days with the internet changing so much, we need all the help we can get. I wish you all the best in your venture. God Bless You

Kenster

Yes, I feel like that would help a lot of the newbies out. Not even to learn the technical aspect of how to run and test and track a campaign, but also the thoughts and concerns throughout the process.

btl1

eeee...you mentioned you were a ppc newbie...if you already have done this then please mind me, but if you haven't do yourself a favor and research how to run a profitable ppc campaign before you launch it....its too easy to lose money with PPC, that being said if you are careful and are sure to meassure conversions and monitor your keywords then it can also be very profitable.

Just put in the time to learn the basics to building out a high quality PPC campaign before you put your money on the line.

A few suggestions
- one keyword, one ad (or a few ads), one adgroup
- make sure your keywords are in your landing page (and ad but hopefully that goes with out saying)
-put yourself in the buyers shoes and think what you would be searching on if you were about to make a purchase HINT ** Debt relief may have a lot of searches but PLEASE don't bid on this keyword. "Debt Relief" to me indicates that the user is at the start of the buying cycle and is yet to be educated on the different options out there that 'solve' debt. Now I haven't ever bid on this keyword but I'd bet that its not going to be profitable. Really think about what a BUYER would be searching on...proper keyword research is CRUCIAL!!! can't emphasize this enough.

Good Luck!!! I hope it works out for you guys.

blingblam

I've done a couple of campaigns, none of which turned out to be too profitable. Lately, I've started making a bit of money with media buys, but no google, yahoo or msn stuff.

I'm going to start off with about 5 keywords at a time one per adgroup, 2-3 ads per keyword. I'll test each keyword until its about 1.5 times more costly than a conversion. If it doesn't get any conversions by that time, I'll sub it with a different keyword.

Here's an important question though: If I have the keywords in my website but not in the actual landing page I'm directing traffic to, will google still give me keyword relevance? Or do they only look at the destination landing page?

I was going to stick my landing pages in a content filled mini-site that has to do with finance, which I've already started working on.

Thanks for the keyword research advice. I'll have to sit down for a while to figure out which keywords to start with. I wanted to start off with keywords that pulled a lot of traffic, so I'd get some idea of what to do early on.

If I'm using keywords that don't generate too much traffic, I'll have to wait a while to get a feel for where the campaign is going. I guess it's better to be patient and hold on to money, than to be rushed and lose it all.

Anymore suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you.

blingblam

Well I'm going drinking tonight, so I don't think too much work is going to get done on the mini-site or landing page. I still have to write more articles for each category and start building backlinks.

blingblam

Update:
After the night of drinking I ended up being real lazy and haven't done much work on this since then. I have about 4-5 articles up on the website now, but I'm going to need quite a few more before launching the campaign...

In other areas:
I've just had my first $200 day of Profit ($268) in revenue this Friday. So I'm trying to tweak the campaigns that made me all that money. For now, this will probably be put on the backburner.

Nevertheless, I'm going to try and finish all the article writing and content for the website by Friday. After that, I'll pick out approximately 2000 keywords and throw them all in their own adgroups (instead of the 10 I was going to start with). I'll see which ones get the most impressions and use those as my base for the "real" campaign.

Right now I just want to continue making $200 a day... not sure why Friday went so well for me, because Saturday and Sunday I lost $40. I'm thinking different days and different times = different results. Thursday I made about $70 in profit, and Wednesday made about $50.

blingblam

Oh and one question: Will Google search my whole site for keyword relevance? or will they just look at the landing page I'm directing traffic to?

Burtgummer

I'd like to know this too! I was wondering the same thing while trying to tweak my quality score. I've got 3s right now....

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erwindegrave

Cool idea.. but will it be that easy to work with other people?

Erwin de Grave
Success Coach & Internet Marketer
www.MassiveAffiliateIncome.com

btl1

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this post, I actually never checked in which was silly of me.

Regarding the landing page again its the same principle be AS SPECIFIC as possible and as RELEVANT as possible. When in doubt say this in your head " google rewards relevancy, google rewards relevancy, google rewards relevancy" this will never steer you wrong. I used to work at Google in the ADWORDS department so trust me here, I know what I'm saying when you can't go wrong with being OCD about relevancy. When building out landing pages the best possible solution is to build one landing page per keyword. If you don't have the resources to do that then at the very least one landing page per VERY tightly grouped similar keywords. This being said I think you will find that if you build one landing page per keyword you will see a return in your investment both through reduced CPC and increase conversions on that page. You see having a highly tailored landing page isn't just good for CPC it also will increase your conversion rate as the customer will see 'hey this site really is speaking to me' .

You mentioned you were targeting high traffic keywords - this good be good , and it could not be. YOu don't want to focus so much on high traffic keywords as much as highly researched and targeted keywords. Search around on forums of your niche topic and see what actual potential buyers are asking, what are they saying, how do they phrase their questions. All this will go a long way in again reducing your cpc and increasing your conversions. Try this..again PPC can be your best friend but it can also be your worst enemy if you don't take the time to do intiial keyword research and optimize your campaign.

once your campaign is live keep testing testing testing! also I hope this goes without saying but use some sort of analytics on your site and conversion tracking.

I'll be doing a wso on optimizing landing pages for adwords within the next week or two and it will elaborate on much of what I've said. If you need more help in the mean time just post back here and I'll check back more frequently haha :P

btl1

btw yes different days and different times often perform differently so you will want to run some reports to see what times are most profitable for you and adjust budget accordingly.

Kenster

As suggested above, once you start driving decent traffic, you will notice different performance on difference days of the week and times of day. Make sure you are tracking this down to the keyword level and for your main keywords, track how they individually perform throughout the day, week, month, season.

This kind of detailed testing and tracking is how you really optimize campaigns and milk as much money as possible. This is how you go from $20 to $200 to $2000 per day. Track test, track test.

kenster

Burtgummer

Regarding the landing page relevancy....

I've made landing pages with extremely relevant info on my keywords. The exact keyword is sprinkled evenly throughout the landing page, and all of the information relates highly to the keyword.

However, my QS is still 4-5/10. It also says "No Problems" for relevancy, quality, and load time. What could be the problem?

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btl1

It could be an entire host of problems.

What are you doing with your landing page? affiliate marketing?? selling your own product? collecting leads? What niche?

Then how have you structured your adwords campaign? further does your landing page seem natural? while you want your keyword in your landing page there is such a thing as too much keyword...

more details pls

Kenster

Yes there are many problems that could have occurred. What was the overall structure of the page? How many pages was the site? How many links, inbound, outbound, how many affiliate, etc etc.