Mistake with first Product.. Advice?

I think you guys may have entered the wrong niche. The ground rule in info marketing is find the market 1st then create the product. If you guys had researched this niche before making the product you might have not jumped into it so quickly.

You can still get traffic but its going to take some work. Try article and video marketing to start with.

Real Estate in general right now is struggling, is the niche still hungry?

Niches trend in a certain direction at any given point in time. If you look on Google Trends the news volume has been continually growing while the search volume since 2004 has continually fallen.

I might shelf the product until the real estate issues are starting to show recovery unless your product has something that is in demand now. ex: how to stop foreclosure etc..

As for affording the traffic that should have been studied before producing any product.

I am not an Adwords expert but with the cost of acquisition so high you have a few choices...

1) Price your product high enough(and provide enough value) that you profit on the initial sale.

2) Develop a series of products that you can sell your customers.

For #2 you hope your initial offer brings customers in the door and you can convert enough to purchase from you a second and third time.

Hope this helps.

D

We actually did research the market first, but we're both PPC novices and didn't really research that aspect of it.

We have been trying article marketing and we're starting video marketing this week.

It is very hard to test whether or not the site actually converts while relying on non-paid methods of traffic.

Chris

Good advice Derrick. That is probably what we'll end up doing.

Lesson learned regarding PPC costs.

Chris

Its not hard at all. Just drive traffic and the sales will come in. Once you've made your first few sales you'll start to get an idea of your conversion rate. You can start tweaking and testing things like your headline, body copy, etc..

To start out with here's what you need to have a high quality converting sales page:

*Attention Grabbing Headline
*Compelling Benefit Rich Body Copy
*Many Many PROOF elemets (written/audio/video testimonials, screenshots of bank statements, check scans, pictures) <---THIS IS BIG! If you think you've got enough of these proof elements, you're wrong! Get more!
*Good price point
*Call To Action
*Some type of pressure for them to act NOW (limited copies, pending price increase, being taken off the market, etc..)

Get those in place and bring your traffic. Don't worry about PPC if its too competitive for you. Pick one or two traffic generation methods and beat the crap out of them.

-Have you tried classified sites like Craigslist.
-Have you tried MS ads and Yahoo Ads
-Have you tried selling it using the google network instead of the google search option
-Have you considered turning the ebook into a CD and selling it via offline means
-Have you tried banner advertising
-HAve you tried contacting a few RE sites and offering parts of the ebook for free in the hope of making $$$ in the backend
Have you considered increasing the price of the product to a point where you can afford the $5 adwords cost
-Have you tried advertising in social media sites
-Have you considered turning your ebook into a membership site and thus affording the $5 adwords cost
-Have you considered changing your whole ebook into a $2000 CD course or seminar and thus affording the $5 adwords ad cost
etc etc etc

Apollo

We researched pretty well, making sure the market is full of hungry buyers. Our product is actually 1 of 2 on the market for this particular type of real estate investing.

If we decide to go ahead and try PPC I'll definitely head to the PPC forum for questions. Great to know you're able to get clicks for $1.

Thanks!
Chris

You could try targeting "long tail" keywords surrounding your ideal keywords. You can compensate for lower traffic per keyword by targeting more keywords. With a little automation (e.g., keyword elite, micro niche finder, etc), 10,000+ keywords is not too burdensome to manage.

Start an affiliate program and offer a generous commission.


Andrew

I agree, you should be spending your time building an affiliate program and relationships with affiliates firmly trenched in the niche looking for great new products.

I wouldn't use PPC it's not worth it. Go somewhere where you can target that traffic. Rather than hoping someone clicks and then hoping their interested..it'd be better to know theyre interested and hope they buy..

Maybe I only make sense to myself.

Hi TNTRADER:

Hope all is well. Could you use the downturn in real estate to actually help with creating a buzz about your product, articles, and web sites? Can you come up with articulate information that is well structured with the proper words and hits the demographics you seek that talks about the problems real estate brokers, buyers, sellers, banks, etc are having? Tips to thrive in a soft market. How the seller can put their house ahead of the pack and how the potential buyer can get more for their money. Submit statistical analysis how with lower interest rates and tax incentives even in tough times a couple may be able to own a home and not pay rent. How an investment today can give a stable future down the road.

Experts like you can tell the story when there are good times and bad. Say it well and a bit different and there can be other avenues besides investing in adwords!

Good luck to you and the entire real estate market for a quick turnaround!

Have you tried Site Placement with your Google ads?

I don't know the exact nature of your product but consider site targetting with your ads and you may have more luck.

Roy

If you don't have a lot of competition for your type of product (I think you said there was only one other similar product out there), I'd do 2 things instead of PPC:

1. Find relevant forums and start participating heavily. There must be a ton of investing and real estate forums out there. Make sure they allow links in your sig and start posting helpful comments. Build up trust first, then you'll get some highly targeted, free traffic. Most importantly, they will be people you've impressed enough in the forum with your helpful comments that they will see you as something of an authority, which of course lends credibility to your product. Could produce lots of good leads and enough sales for you to fine-tune things.

2. Approach webmasters of sites that are in the industry, but not direct competitors. See if they're open to promoting your product on their site for a cut of the sales. It's easy to set up the necessary tracking, etc. to ensure compliance for payouts. When you're trying to break into a market, this is a great way to get a foot in the door.

If your product is outstanding, word of mouth should carry things along nicely once you get some sales under your belt. PPC is a tough nut to crack, especially in a saturated industry. You don't have to use it.

Good luck,
John

Are those high cost keywords really money keywords? I mean, often the best keywords are the long tail ones. More focussed buyers and often cost way less. Try digging deeper.
It might work for you.

Geoff

Other than using PPC, it is possible for you to use other free traffic methods such as article marketing and blogging. Organic search traffic is targeted and PPC is not the only way. Another way to reduce costs for PPC is to use Google placement ads.

It comes down to being able to convert the traffic.

When your site has a higher visitor value than most of your competitors, you've got them.

For a $55 product in the real estate industry, this wouldn't be a walk in the park.

Try building an email list and promoting several products. Build that funnel up.

Like you, I understand ppc is the single best way to test conversions.
why spend weeks/months to test, when it could be tested in a day? Why write a hundred or so articles, and build links, only to discover that the keywords you chose sucked?

Ok - so regarding the high cost per click that google is predicting for you. I have a new site/campaign that google says I need to bid $8.75 to even crack the first page. I bid $1.50, end up getting clicks for around $1, and have an average postion of 4.2. So those numbers are not always accurate.

I do agree with those who are saying to look for affiliates who are already in the niche - but you need to have your conversions in order first.

Here is one thing that you can do.

Use the Google site targeting thing where you can target a specific page on a specific site.

Type in "Real Estate+Forums" and look at the top results for forums. Can you place google ads on those sites? WHat about the top Real Estate Blogs, can you place ads on those sites as well.

What you will find is that if you target those instead of the Google Search pages then it is a cheaper cost per click.

What about finding other Real Estate list owners and doing a JV with them?

Shane_K

Please do not use PPC advertising! UGH! You are wasting your money. There are other ways to get traffic to your site. You need to use other methods such as blog commenting in high volume on high page rank real estate blogs and forums. Also, you need to try article marketing. You can use article spinners for this. Good luck

another option is to find out who is ranked from 1-5 in the serps for the keywords you want to target and see if they would be interested in either paid advertising or selling your product for a commission. No harm in trying.

Regards
Steve

Go to 7search.com... they have cheaper clicks. Yes I realize Adwords is Google's baby, but why not save a few $$ if you're only testing?