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How Scary Is PPC?

by Slin
28 replies
I have been pretty successful with article marketing.

Next month I am thinking of moving on to PPC advertising.

I have a budget of $100 saved up to get me started. (I could make this bigger but would rather risk a small amount of money)

I always hear scary stories about losing money, so pretty much I'm just wondering.

Can a mathematically minded guy like me make it in PPC?

Thanks guys,

- Nils

P.S. I have been using free traffic methods forever, just felt like I should step it up.
#ppc #scary
  • Profile picture of the author MildredSpoonhouser
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    • Profile picture of the author skatir
      Prepare to lose some before you earn some, till you make it worthy for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author LivingCovers
    To be on a safer side, why don't you try searching for a google adwords coupon code, so you can just first 'test the waters'?
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  • Profile picture of the author gdrg
    It's quite funny actually. I'm not the most difficult person to throw away some money on an experiment. Last week I threw 50 euros at Google AdWords and it got me 3 sales which totals nearly $100.

    Mission accomplished.

    I don't understand PPC at all really, I flew through my 50 euros in like 4 days, which I dont even know is fast or not. I just tried it out and liked it. I'm reading up on more specific details.

    I did hear you should always go for banner ads. Less competition, same CTR and lower CPC. That's what I've been told multiple times.
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  • Profile picture of the author Raygun
    It can be really scary if you don't know what you are doing. What you need to always be doing is split testing everything to see what works better. Start out slow and make sure that your keywords are longer and highly targeted.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris W. Sutton
    It is not as scary as a colonoscopy or a prostrate exam but you should research it a little bit before you jump in full blast. I would use 7search.com, miva.com or some other low-cost PPC search engine. You can find a lot of keywords for pennies per click so they are a good training ground.
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  • Profile picture of the author KenThompson
    It's not scary at all if you have a good sense of what you're
    doing. The best way to get that is to get some education on
    it. Get it from recognized experts on it like Perry Marshall. He
    put out the definitive ebook about it years ago.

    I did adwords ppc years ago and did well with it.

    But you'd be crazy to do it without learning about it, first.
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    • Profile picture of the author Burtgummer
      You will likely lose at first. It's almost a guarantee.

      In my opinion, the most important thing to do in PPC is proper keyword research. And then, you need some personal judging. You want to be attracting people that are at the end of the buying cycle, meaning they are ready to whip out their credit card and purchase something.

      Don't make the mistake of using non-buying keywords. They are just drains for your money, because most of the time, people will want free information.

      Basically, when the user searches for a keyword, and clicks on your advertisement, does the page they land on answer their 'question' proposed by their keyword? That will reduce your intitial bounce rate.....but then you need to ask yourself if they will be wanting to buy something when they search for that keyword.

      For instance, I stay away from keywords that include the word "tips", because asking for "tips" is basically asking for something that's free.

      "Weight loss tips"
      "World of Warcrat Tips"
      etc......

      Look for keywords that give you an insight to the mind of the user....and focus on them if they are in the buying mood. Keywords such as....

      "world of warcraft guide"
      "world of warcraft guide reviews"
      "where to buy world of warcraft guide"

      Those are all awesome buying keywords. It shows you that the user is looking to purchase something.

      If there's one thing you need to know in PPC though, it's this.

      Test Everything!

      PPC is about optimization. You want to biggest bang for your buck, so to speak. By optimizing a PPC campaign, you could easily get 10% conversion ratios (or higher), because you will have found targeted traffic that is ready to purchase something.

      But if you don't tweak and test a PPC campaign, you will lose it all. Writing articles to do article marketing is equivalent to tweaking a PPC campaign. It's absolutely necessary.
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      “Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” -Nikola Tesla

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  • Profile picture of the author 1life1fire
    Hi Slin!

    As Perry Marshall says... "Pay per click Adwords is the most evolved form of advertising known to man - there is not even a close second."

    I highly recommend getting Perry Marshalls "5 Days To Success With Google Adwords" ... (of course this would work with any pay per click search engine.)

    His email course is excellent value for free!
    Hope this helps!
    Dan
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    • Profile picture of the author DogScout
      Originally Posted by 1life1fire View Post

      Hi Slin!

      As Perry Marshall says... "Pay per click Adwords is the most evolved form of advertising known to man - there is not even a close second."

      I highly recommend getting Perry Marshalls "5 Days To Success With Google Adwords" ... (of course this would work with any pay per click search engine.)

      His email course is excellent value for free!
      Hope this helps!
      Dan
      I'd also get his 'Ultimate Guide to Adwords' ($197) before 'investing' anything, unless you are naturally intuitive or lucky.
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      • Profile picture of the author anthonyk
        I totally agree, spend the money on getting up to
        speed with ppc.
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  • Profile picture of the author rayx
    To me it makes sense to start on low cost PPC and set a budget... and track your results

    if you make money scale up and figure out what's working and what isn't

    It's all about knowing your numbers, for instance I pay $0.25 per subscriber and I send them to a sales page that converts at 5% at $9.95 so that means I'm making approximately double what it cost me to get the visitor + backend profits
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    • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
      Originally Posted by rayx View Post

      To me it makes sense to start on low cost PPC and set a budget... and track your results

      if you make money scale up and figure out what's working and what isn't

      It's all about knowing your numbers, for instance I pay $0.25 per subscriber and I send them to a sales page that converts at 5% at $9.95 so that means I'm making approximately double what it cost me to get the visitor + backend profits
      Actually I'd say the opposite. Whatever amount you are going to lose refining your campaign, you're going to lose anyway. It's just the cost of figuring out what works and what don't, IMO you may as well just get there quicker. As long as you keep your eye on the ball it should make no difference. Obviously set a limit so that things don't go way out of control but that's about it.

      The only thing that scares me about PPC (as far as Google is concerned) is the TOS.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sour
    I'm still building a budget so I can test out PPC for the first time, but from my understanding, you need a few hundred dollars for your initial campaign because you're basically throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Once you find out what works, you trim the fat and start split testing/tweaking to increase your ROI.

    I've heard that MSN AdCenter is better to start out with. I tried out a $100 AdWords coupon, and I think they're purposely ignoring my ads (they've been under review for two weeks) because they aren't making any money off of me, so I'm low priority.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anonymous Affiliate
    You WILL lose whatever test budget you throw in. PPC is a VERY nasty beast and it's utterly impossible to make money on your first goes at it. PPC is only profitable, on average, on 1 campaign out of 5 and only once you know what you're doing and only once you've done some serious campaign tweaking.

    PPC is probably the least newbie-friendly field in Internet Marketing.
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  • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
    Originally Posted by Slin View Post

    I have been pretty successful with article marketing.
    Next month I am thinking of moving on to PPC advertising.
    I have a budget of $100 saved up to get me started. (I could make this bigger but would rather risk a small amount of money)
    I always hear scary stories about losing money, so pretty much I'm just wondering.
    Can a mathematically minded guy like me make it in PPC?
    Thanks guys,
    - Nils
    P.S. I have been using free traffic methods forever, just felt like I should step it up.
    Do not think of adwords as a one night stand / i have xyz to test it, you need to think of adwords as a long term relationship where over time it will give back.

    Set up a seed budget spend, say $70 per week seed money, and put this in each week, then over time as you start to turn a profit you can replace your seed money.

    Just allocating a set $ amount as a one of test your better probably trying something else as its really down to luck and as a newbie the odds are very slim on hitting that home run.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasondinner
    It cost me about $150 to finally figure it out.

    Now I typically make back $5-6 for every $1 spent. Some times much higher.

    This month I'm at about 800% ROI so far.

    The fear I had of it kept me from really diving in until last october.

    Now looking back, I wish I wasn't so afraid of burning through some bucks to figure it out because I probably missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    Oh well, no regrets. My success with it now is a result of everything I've learned up
    until this point.

    My advice to you is just get started.

    Go after low hanging fruit. Don't bid more than you can afford (obviously, but many people screw this part up)

    Watch your campaigns like a hawk in case you bid on a keyword that gets a ton of searches.

    Keep your keywords consistent in your ad and your landing pages.

    And make sure you have a game plan before you dive in.

    Good Luck
    Jason
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  • Profile picture of the author Shane Hale
    Do your research on a niche and watch what the competitors are doing. I always watch the middle man. The guy who is ranked 3rd. It has been proven the best position on Adwords. Now, as for eye training reports The Google Triangle always scares me... Yahoo seems to be the best converters and even the best route to start for beginners. Get a voucher for $150.00 and get started. Just research and take your time. I have lost over 300 in day by jumping in too fast. Also, set a small budget like $5.00 a day and take your time. You will be better off in the long run.
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  • Profile picture of the author Floyd Fisher
    Originally Posted by Slin View Post

    I have been pretty successful with article marketing.

    Next month I am thinking of moving on to PPC advertising.

    I have a budget of $100 saved up to get me started. (I could make this bigger but would rather risk a small amount of money)

    I always hear scary stories about losing money, so pretty much I'm just wondering.

    Can a mathematically minded guy like me make it in PPC?

    Thanks guys,

    - Nils

    P.S. I have been using free traffic methods forever, just felt like I should step it up.
    Have you been split testing, and improving conversions of your site?

    If not, you're asking for trouble.

    If you have been (and know your conversion rate), it's as simple as knowing how many clicks per sale (your conversion rate should tell you this), and how much each click on the PPC is going to cost.

    That will determine if it's a smart move going to PPC now or later.

    If you determine you can make a profit doing it, then go for it. If you don't think you can, then work on improving conversions and go later on after you get that up to where it's profitable for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    I think its VERY scary and i think that 90% of newbie marketers will fail.

    PPC *rarely* works with your typical affiliate programs like CB, reason is conversion rates, CTR rates, average payouts and avg. CPC (cost per click) <---- DO THE MATH

    if it needs 85 clicks/sale to get like $30 commission ---> it simply wont work and you will lose money.

    Adwords/PPC needs thorough testing and tweaking, keyword research and a pretty solid knowledge (match types etc..etc..)...add the fact that you deal with their stupid QS guidelines...."they" (Google) will always find a way to pull money from your pocket.
    Another problem is that keyword bidding in main stream niches is just ridiculously out of hand...check keyword prices for colon cleanse, fat loss etc..etc...you get the idea.

    YOU CAN be successful with it, but NOT without extensive split/conversion testing which alone could set you back a few grand UNTIL a campaign finally becomes profitable.

    You can see that many "pros" which are actually doing well with PPC first had to spend thousands and thousands to tweak...and not everyone has such a budget just for testing
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    I lost $15,000 in a matter of months last year. Cool huh?
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    • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
      Originally Posted by ramone_johnny View Post

      I lost $15,000 in a matter of months last year. Cool huh?
      G can bite my $$$, i have my campaigns paused for almost a year now and solely focus on SEO and article marketing And guess what? Sales are way, way better!
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      • Profile picture of the author Hyaku_Man
        I budgeted $1000 to learn PPC, blew through it and made back only $400. By the end I was running marginally profitable compaigns, but I ran out of all the money I could spare for it (I have to pay rent and eat before I pay Google), so for the time being I'm back to all SEO.

        I joined one of those coaching programs too, but that was a joke.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    >>
    Can a mathematically minded guy like me make it in PPC?
    >>

    This is good because you wont have problems doing the math.

    Simply look at your cost per click, see that an avg. conversion rate CAN OFTEN be like 80-100clicks/sale..and see what your payout is after you got like 80 clicks and one sale

    (Possible refunds not even considered
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr. Enthusiastic
    I see you're a War Room member. Go the "my ideas" forum and look for the ppc... war room only thread. (Don't post the full name in the public forum here.) That's a very complete, very friendly ppc course that will walk you through everything you need to know to get started.

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author Rod Cortez
    PPC in general is not scary if you know what you're doing and have a decent budget to play with. In reality, if you've mastered keyword research, competitive analysis, can write good ppc adcopy, track all your results, know how to get traffic, you'll be okay in most cases. But nothin is guaranteed.

    Now, if you're talking about Google Adwords, that can be a bit scary, even for seasoned PPCers. It's an extremely sophisticated system that changes, where quality score is a huge part of the Adwords game. If you're not on top of these changes, then you can go from 10k per month to almost nothing. I'm speaking from experience.

    I think I've been "slapped" at least a couple dozen times in various campaigns. Luckily once you get to a certain size you have your own Google PPC rep assigned to you that can help you iron these things out. But even then things can get frustrating.

    If you're going to jump into PPC realize that it's a big commitment. Don't simply "try" it. IMO a $100 is not enough to test it thoroughly. For example, you might have to test out several offers, ads, copy, etc. before you find a winner and $100 may not be enough to find that profitable mix.

    I always advise people to STUDY the ppc basics before they jump into pay per click, otherwise they are going to get creamed.

    RoD
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  • Profile picture of the author JonMills
    Lets put it this way. If you dont know what your doing you could blow through that $100 very fast. Dont rush into it, learn everything you can about it first.
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