Do I Suck Or What?

by yzal

Posted: 15 years ago 14 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I think I need some help.

Venturing into the internet marketing stage, I thought I would try a 'bonus' offer to get people to buy via my affiliate link. It seems like a decent strategy which i have seen pulled of successfully (I certainly like to get extra whenever possible).

I chose a Clickbank product (in the website video category) with a gravity of 52. It had decent payout and few refunds.

There was one other marketer offering a bonus, so I thought it was best to beat that by offering much more value.

I set it all up and chose to only bid on a select few keywords so that only people who are looking for that product would see my offer. I had a much lower bid for content just to see if that was effective.

I let it run for 3 days, checking twice a day to see response. Number of clicks was quite low (17) so I decided to leave it running for a while longer and did not check it for 4 days.

I came back to find 708 clicks from the content network! And not a single sale!

WTF!?!

Even if I had got one sale it would have been a conversion rate of 0.1% which is awful.

I feel like I've been screwed. Either google screwed me or clickbank screwed me!

But I know I have to take responsibility so what did I do wrong?

It cost me £59 in clicks so it would be awesome if I got some valuable lessons from this mistake!! I really want to break out of the rat race and create success online, so I will not let this early setback put me off, but sooner I can start doing this right, all the better.

Thank you for any and all feedback,

Adam

LB 15 years ago

Either google screwed me or clickbank screwed me!

Neither is the case...don't fall into the victim mentality. Especially when you're using the content network you need to keep really close tabs on it.

Chances are since most of your clicks came from the content network they may not have been the most targeted.

Of course, it's pretty tough to make that call without seeing the website with your offer. It might just be a poor sales page or poor offer you're using.
- Thanks
- 1 reply
Signature

Tired of Article Marketing, Backlink Spamming and Other Crusty Old Traffic Methods?

Click Here.
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586272].message }}
- Kris Turner 15 years ago
  
  Next time, it might be better if you set up a separate campaign for search and content traffic. And set a daily limit that's right for both of them.
  
  Content traffic always seems to convert terribly.
  
  Thanks
  
  Signature
  
  {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586320].message }}
jkatzenback 15 years ago

lol.. you do not suck and good for you for trying. A couple suggestions...

1. Set a low daily budget of no more then $30 for the first couple days.
2. Separate the content and search
3. Set your starting bids at 1% the payout. So if it pays out $30, then start with 30 cents per click
4. use a good tracking system (prosper202 is fantastic and free)
5. Consider testing first with an iframe or direct link to see if offer converts at all
6. Use negative qualifiers in your add to reduce click happy people (such as "buy now")
7. After day 1, reduce bids in position 1 to 3 by 25% (eliminates click happy people and focus more on serous buyers)

lots more but there are a few suggestions
- Thanks
Signature
100%FREE Backlinks -->http://TrafficLaunchPad.com
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586346].message }}
peter gibson 15 years ago

My golden rule is always this: for 200 people, 1 person should buy something. If you are over 700 with no sale it could be just a ghost in the machine or you need to retest your sales copy.

But I wouldn't rule out clickbank being fraudulent. It is possible. If not clickbank check with the actual product. A good way to test is to use your own affiliate link to buy a copy of the product and see if it shows up.
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586347].message }}
Alp Bozkurt 15 years ago

Originally Posted by yzal

I had a much lower bid for content just to see if that was effective.

Much lower bid = much lower targetted traffic = much lower conversion.

Search bids are expensive because they convert better.

Expensive keywords are expensive because they are proven to convert better.

IMHO, the only way to make content network work is targetting placements. Determine high traffic, ultra targetted content pages and place your ads directly on those pages.

Otherwise your ads will appear on mostly irrelevant pages and people will click them because they are bored, or because they find your ad style interesting, etc...
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586480].message }}
jasonl70 15 years ago

how many hops does clickbank show?
- Thanks
Signature

-Jason
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586498].message }}
yzal 15 years ago

Thanks for all the useful advice, I will try to incorporate it into any future campaigns. Definitely going to be more careful with PPC next time.

Jason: after checking, it turns out I forgot to put the cookie on my link (I'm only just getting the hang of tracking), so no hops showing.

However, my other campaign (which I remembered to put the cookie on) only shows 92 hops from 119 clicks recorded by my auto-responder. Is there any technical reason why they would not be tracked?

Adam
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586624].message }}
stefanjames 15 years ago

lol you don't suck Adam. It's all a learning experience. Maybe you should pick another product to promote that converts. If the sales page is poor no matter how much traffic you send to it you will probably get no conversions.

As for the content network it can be good but you have to be careful with it. Content is usually better for cpa offers where people don't have to buy anything first to make you money. This is what I found from my experience.
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586668].message }}
Samuel Lee 15 years ago

Perseverance is the way to go, and some great suggestions by other posters so far. As a suggestion, you could try managing and tracking your daily budget and set it to maximum of say $25-30 for the first week or two, and then try using a really good click tracking system to track your click through results, as there are several free one's available through the google search engine. These are just two basic suggestions that will assist and stefanjames makes a good point that the google content network is very useful in the promotion of CPA and affliate offers that have free trial as well. Hope this helps!
- Thanks
- 1 reply
Signature
WSO â€“ CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! ONLY $11 - EASY MONEY MAKING IS BACK! GET TARGETED TRAFFIC BY BUILDING YOUR OWN SOURCE LIST! NOW ONLY $11! CLICK HERE TO ORDER NOW!
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586772].message }}
- Megas 15 years ago
  
  Don't put yourself down, it won't help you.
  It is true that search bids are more effective than content however you need to analyze what went on and there are some great suggestions here as this is a great place to ask.
  It's good that you want to learn from your mistakes so you don't repeat them. Persevere and keep learning.
  
  Thanks
  
  {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586783].message }}
DavidVincentMuir 15 years ago

Hey Adam,

Firstly, you don't suck. If that were true, we all sucked at some stage in our marketing. This is just a natural phase to test you as an Entrepreneur as to whether you decide to quit or continue. My advice is to keep trying but if it doesn't work or is too costly then you NEED to change your approach.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again but expecting a different result.

What I have found to be most effective is to get into your prospect's heads and figure out what motivates them to buy your product. Once you've got that down, you move on to proper keyword research which means honing your keywords down to three or four laser targeted words or phrases that you know your ideal prospect will type into the search engines.

I recommend not to choose popular or general keywords because they have high competition and they also get higher traffic resulting in higher costs. Make sure you also have your keywords in broad, exact and phrase formats so you can track which keyword are converting into sales best and which ones aren't so you can keep the good ones.

One final note is to change your ad to something that matches your offer exactly. I've seen so many hyped up ads out there and when you click through it doesn't really correspond to what was advertised.

I hope this helps.

Keep rockin'...you'll get there!
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586789].message }}
travlinguy 15 years ago

Ever think that you might have been clicked into oblivion by a competitor? It happens. Someone new arrives to upset a marketer's good thing and they get click-bombed out of business. Some folks will even get family and friends to help so they don't get busted by Google. I'm not sure how you would check to see if that's what happened...
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586799].message }}
GreatBiz 15 years ago

Friend, it could be because of the way you have set up your campaign. Did you try testing its conversions using articles and a review site? If you have some kind of statistics at hand, you will know if the quality of traffic you got from the content network is any good.

When using content network, try using Google placement ads. Choose the sites you advertise on so that you know that your ad is running on relevant websites to targeted customers. If not, you will be wasting money on fun clickers.
- Thanks
Signature
Promote The No.1 Hot Selling Renewable Energy Guide - No, It's NOT Earth4Energy, Dude!
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[586855].message }}
yzal 15 years ago

Thanks for all the advice and kind words. I know I don't suck, it is just a disappointing start!

I have been testing different ads but I don't have the software at present to test different landing pages. Is there a free one anyone could suggest? or is it better to go for paid software?

How can test which keywords convert? The only way I know is through direct linking. How can I do it if my adwords sends people to my landing page?

I haven't ventured into article marketing yet, but I guess it would be a cheaper method of testing the waters.

Adam
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[587924].message }}

Do I Suck Or What?

Trending Topics

Can I change my username?

Check out DeepL Write

Is Wordpress Website Secure? - Emmanuel Katto

How did you turn it all around?

What's the Best IM-Related Skill to Learn Today That Can Help in the Future?