My PPC Conundrum
- SEO |
Preface:
I'm running a CJ affiliate campaign with a blog-style website and targeted landing pages.
The rant:
For the most part, you need lots of impressions to make decent money. Only popular keywords generate lots of impressions, so by nature they will be increasingly expensive. Since impressions are expensive, profit margins will be squeezed. Squeezed profit margins mean lower ROAS (return on ad spend), which means your carrying cost (ad spend) is high from month to month due to the lag between your ad spend and receipt of payment.
You can reduce the ad spend and increase ROAS by finding low CPC keywords (longtails), but this involves considerable time (time = money) in order to generate sufficient traffic from less popular keywords. And the quality of the data from Google's Keyword Tool with regard to estimated ad position for a given CPC is very poor, IMHO (maybe I'm doing it wrong). What they show to be .05 cent keywords for positions 1-3 are actually $1.00-$4.00 in my adgroup (my quality scores are all 7-10).
Testing of ads, keywords and landing pages never ceases, requiring more time, time not spent creating relevant content.
Yet, people do make good livings running their PPC campaigns. So where am I missing the boat?
Questions:
What is a decent ROAS?
How do you handle carrying costs from month-to-month?
How can small players compete in today's PPC climate?
I'm running a CJ affiliate campaign with a blog-style website and targeted landing pages.
The rant:
For the most part, you need lots of impressions to make decent money. Only popular keywords generate lots of impressions, so by nature they will be increasingly expensive. Since impressions are expensive, profit margins will be squeezed. Squeezed profit margins mean lower ROAS (return on ad spend), which means your carrying cost (ad spend) is high from month to month due to the lag between your ad spend and receipt of payment.
You can reduce the ad spend and increase ROAS by finding low CPC keywords (longtails), but this involves considerable time (time = money) in order to generate sufficient traffic from less popular keywords. And the quality of the data from Google's Keyword Tool with regard to estimated ad position for a given CPC is very poor, IMHO (maybe I'm doing it wrong). What they show to be .05 cent keywords for positions 1-3 are actually $1.00-$4.00 in my adgroup (my quality scores are all 7-10).
Testing of ads, keywords and landing pages never ceases, requiring more time, time not spent creating relevant content.
Yet, people do make good livings running their PPC campaigns. So where am I missing the boat?
Questions:
What is a decent ROAS?
How do you handle carrying costs from month-to-month?
How can small players compete in today's PPC climate?