Can we Still Make Money with Adwords and a $10 Product

by ab4444
17 replies
Hello,

Several years ago I was dominating a niche with Adwords. I could pay 5-10 cents a click and get enough traffic and conversions to make it a pay.

Now that same niche is costing 25-35 cents a click.

Is it still possible to create $10-$15 reports and make money from adwords?

Thanks
#$10 #adwords #make #money #product
  • Profile picture of the author David Surk
    I'd like to hear others thoughts on this subject as well. I really like the small reports model and am going to be testing the waters shortly. Obviously the best bet is to have a backend and multiple upsells in place.

    Much love,
    Dave.
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Burton
    Originally Posted by ab4444 View Post

    Hello,

    Several years ago I was dominating a niche with Adwords. I could pay 5-10 cents a click and get enough traffic and conversions to make it a pay.

    Now that same niche is costing 25-35 cents a click.

    Is it still possible to create $10-$15 reports and make money from adwords?

    Thanks
    This is largely going to depend on your conversion rate. Additional considerations as to whether you can trim the cost per click any and whether you have any back end product to follow up with.

    I'm assuming you are using an information product that does not have a production cost per copy. Since I don't know anything about your traffic, I'm using round numbers here.

    example quote here for clarity
    25 cent bid x 100 clicks = $25 in costs.
    Product at $10 require 2.5% conversion to break even.

    If you get about 30 clicks per day, and achieve a 2.5% conversion rate, you could expect to spend about $7.50 per day and close a sale every 40 clicks (1-2 sales every other day)

    Over 30 days (900 clicks) you've spent $225 and had 22-23 orders for an income of $220 - $230, effectively a break even.

    If this product leads to back end sales you have a winner
    If the conversion rate can be increased, you have a winner
    If the bid price can be reduced by as little at $0.01 you have at least a small profit margin.
    If you can do all three...
    1. Reduce the cost per click by $0.01 (900 clicks now cost $216)
    2. Increase your conversion rate to 2.7% (900 clicks = 24-25 sales for $240 to $250 income)
    3. Back end sales worth another $10 sold to 5% of the people who buy your first product (24 buyers x 5% = 1 sale = $10 more income)

    Net result:
    1. cost per click down by $9 per month
    2. conversion up by .2% = increase of $10-20 per month
    3. back end sale = $10 per month.

    From a break even product to a small $29-$39 profit per month.

    Not a fortune maker, but recreate this process with additional products adding just 1 per month (with corresponding back end sales) in one year you are up to 12 products or product lines, with a warm list for further products in that line, and a monthly income of (assuming $29 per month per line) $348 which is $4176 per year.

    I realize that you can't control the bid cost per se, but testing of course becomes very important. If you can consistently land the number 2-3 ad position instead of the number 1-2 ad position, and your click-thrus don't suffer, you may be able to shave off pennies per click. Over the course of hundreds of clicks, that means dollars.

    If you can find tweaks to your marketing to produce just a tiny increase in your conversion rate, you make more sales as the click-thrus mount up, making more income.

    If you can offer subsequent products on the back end that likewise have no per-unit cost, any conversions straight from the original product becomes straight increase in income.

    I personally am not presently marketing where the $10 product and adword dependent advertising are my major considerations, but it seems to me that it is still quite viable, albeit not as profitable as it used to be.
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  • Profile picture of the author tommygadget
    OK, here's the deal:

    If you have a dynamite upsell, you can turn this into a winner. You must also be building a list. Many marketers lose money on the front end just to acquire the customer. Put them in the sales funnel and follow up with dynamite content and offers. That's how you do it. Just selling a $7 report is a total waste of your time if that's all you do.

    TomG.
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  • It's all about the sales process, and fine tuning. As a post right up above, Scott showed how tiny changes could really affect a campaign, especially if you have a good sales process, ESPECIALLY if you have multiple products.

    I've found though, that it's easiest to have a large budget, do some extensive testing, and spend big, use small profit margins, but have such traffic going through that even a small margin is good money. You want more traffic. More traffic is almost always better, because you are building a list!
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    Money isn't real, George. It doesn't matter. It only seems like it does.

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  • Profile picture of the author MarcusXavier
    you can make money on Adwords with anything as long as you have a product that converts well, and you target and maximize the traffic you send to your landing page.

    Yes, Adwords does cost money, but still is the fastest and easiest way to not only test a niche/product, but also make some serious cash. it's a different game than a few years ago, you just need to adapt.
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    • Profile picture of the author MADMONEY
      Originally Posted by MarcusXavier View Post

      you can make money on Adwords with anything as long as you have a product that converts well, and you target and maximize the traffic you send to your landing page.

      Yes, Adwords does cost money, but still is the fastest and easiest way to not only test a niche/product, but also make some serious cash. it's a different game than a few years ago, you just need to adapt.
      Let's be realistic though, unless you're promoting to an existing customer base or warm mailing list it is, at best... difficult to achieve conversion rates greater than 1 to 2%. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the most part AdWords traffic is cold traffic they have no relationship with you, no reason to trust you, and that's just the way the world is.

      So when you say to target and maximize traffic those are great words, but what do they mean.

      Do you mean choose keywords that have a high commercial intent? Do you mean choose your competitor's product name and convert off that? These would be examples of targeted keywords. How do you maximize traffic? And what does maximize traffic mean? Create the maximum traffic? Duh...

      Unless, as someone had mentioned-- that you're willing to take a loss on the front, to get a customer, to build a list and to promote back end offers there's no reason to present a $10 e-book.

      Even at a five dollar conversion cost you would have to sell 2000 e-books month to generate a $10,000 per month income.

      (To me if you're not making $10,000 a month, you're wasting your time. That should be your goal.)

      Some places where you could utilize a $10 e-book, would be to get some so-called free traffic, from forums, blogs, article directories, Squidoo pages, hub pages etc.

      I call it the so-called free traffic only because it's time intensive instead of capital-intensive. But when you're first starting out you trade your time for dollars.

      Just my opinion,

      Mad Money
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  • Profile picture of the author scotl47
    Yes you can, maybe just change your approach a little. Have your sales page geared towards giving away something for free ... small taste of what your trying to sell. Capture the email with an autoresponder. Give them a little 1-2 report with high quality, condensed information for the sole purpose of letting them know you are an expert on the subject, then push the full product. I have a little niche where I sell a $7 thriller, 50%+ of the visitors sign up, and 20% buy it making me 3x the cost. Excluding the value of the list, and the profits from follow ups. Does it make $10,000/month ... nope, but I spend zero time on it, and the model can be duplicated over and over.
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  • Profile picture of the author kieljo
    I sold a 10.00 ebook on Disney travel secrets with adwords campaigns but I didn't use your typical adwords that you see in the google search. I setup my campaign to be viewed on certain websites ( and I know there is a name for this but I can't remember it at this moment) which really gives you highly targeted traffic. The campaign gave me a break even outcome which really isn't a bad thing. My only problem was that I didn't have a backend product to sell which could have made this a profitable venture. Have a backend lined up and I'm sure it will work.

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author David Surk
    As I mentioned above this is a model I'd really like to make work my self. Here's what I'm looking to do. First I'd try to focus on markets that you could create a product line in.

    This way you could create more then 1 report and market them separately and cross promote them. You can also upsell a combo pack of all your reports as an oto. I'm also thinking if the reports are long enough that I could offer a physical version upsell. Combine the above with quality affiliate products on the backend.

    Much love,
    Dave.
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  • It's all about your sales process people, and medium-term planning.

    Many of the people you see spending a few thousand a week, or even daily, are losing money on the front end. I have a product that doesn't sell a single copy from direct adwords traffic, but by the time they are done my autoresponder series, purchased, and ran through my backend, I've made a killing.

    A lot of people use a cheaper product that over delivers big time on the front end to help stay immediately profitable, and then rely on the sales funnel, but remember, the more your customer paid this time, the more they are likely to pay next time.
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    Money isn't real, George. It doesn't matter. It only seems like it does.

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  • Profile picture of the author Dave Cornish
    What the previous posters mentioned is the key. The money is in the list.
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  • I was just told today by one of my buddies who just happens to be one of the biggest Internet gurus on the web. He said that today your product should be at least $25 in order to insure a good profit.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarcusXavier
    MAD MONEY - What I meant by targeting your traffic is targeting the right keywords(i'm sure you know how to do this). and by maximizing, I meant yes building a list.

    as far as making a profit with $10-15 ebooks - all I was saying was that yes, it can be done, but I never said that I would do it.

    My personal preference is to not promote anything under $20.

    Thanks for your insight.
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  • Profile picture of the author logosi
    List and backend product would be the key. Keeping the adword costs in check will always be a quest. Good content on the landing pages will help of course.
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    • Profile picture of the author Fabian Tan
      Yep, you definitely can, or Adwords will be out of business

      Let me share with you the system I use on Adwords to build a list of subscribers on autopilot:

      1) Make A List Of Seed Keywords

      Make a list of seed keywords. You will want to go with the long-tail keywords that are proven to convert. How can we do this? Get Spyfu. See what keywords your competitors are advertising on, then just plug them into your own campaign. This is very simple with Speed PPC and the Google Adwords editor.

      2) Use Speed PPC To Group Your Keywords Into Ad Groups

      Copy your keywords from the spreadsheet you get from Spyfu or from your own list and then just paste them into Speed PPC and let it spit out the text output that you will be able to paste into Adwords Editor. From Adwords Editor, simply upload your campaign into your Adwords account. The two steps discussed so far can be done in 30 minutes or less.

      3) Insert Seed Variables Into Your Landing Pages

      Insert the seed variables into your landing pages (instructions included in Speed PPC). This will include your seed keywords automatically on to your landing page, and in your meta tags if you want. This is an easy way to get a great Quality Score.

      4) Bid High To Get The Number 1 Position

      Bid high to get the number 1 position for your keyword. You can use Position Preference to stamp your authority and tell Google to show your ad for the number 1 position or don't show it all. Now, the number 1 position is not the best in terms of ROI, but your initial goal is to build a strong foothold for your campaign. You'll want to get a high clickthrough rate, so you'll pay less in the long run.

      5) Lower Your Bids Gradually

      Lower your bids after 2 weeks and see if you maintain a high ad position. Customize your landing pages to achieve a great Quality Score if you haven't done this, so you pay less and less while still bringing in the traffic for the lowest cost.

      Fabian
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