The Diary of a PPC Newbie Part 2 and 9 Basic Tips
Ok, so this is the follow up to my first PPC newbie post. I’m going to take a step out and share some figures, as well as lessons learned.
The State of My PPC Campaigns
Ok. Currently I’m embracing multiple traffic sources(4-5 active) so don’t blame me if I don’t expand a whole lot on those. After much tweaking, my first somewhat ill-advised Adwords campaign is profitting at around $300+ per day with a relatively high spend. While it isn’t a great ROI, it’s profit, and in a very competitive niche. I’m beginning to expand it into the other areas I use for traffic, with varying results. It would appear something is seriously wrong, as the normally easy market of MSN is converting worse than Google’s traffic. I’ll have to look into it more.
I’ve had a few other campaigns that were profitable but are on hold until I can fine tune a few things.
I have a few other adwords campaigns I’m tweaking like crazy, and hopefully will be seeing some results on soon. They lose a little less every day, and are currently a completely negligible amount. But hey, almost everyone loses money in the beginning of a campaign.
My other campaign running on my the alternative traffic source. Currently, I’ll admit, it’s my lifeblood. Current spend is $750-$1020 per day, with an overall income of about $3300-3500. So Minimum is roughly $2200 per day profit. The big issue here is that I switched to a credit card in my own name(before I was a secondary account holder) and the lovely folks at American Express decided I deserve a…$3000 credit limit. So I’m ending up paying off the credit card every like 2 days.
None of that is to brag, it’s to show my experience so far. A lot of people out there are kicking my ass in PPC.
What I Have Learned So Far – Yes, I’m aware these are quite basic. Deal with it for a bit, we’ll get into more advanced PPC stuff as I get more familiar with it.
- Tracking, Tracking, Tracking – I started with really crap tracking. The tracking I use for my scraper sites actually. NO. I’m figuring out niches that I failed in utterly in the beginning are suddenly looking up. What’s the 1 primary difference? I’m tracking it like I’m OCD. Keywords, match types, landing pages, everything. If there was a way to pull their DNA sequence with each click, I’m getting to the point where I would. Certain keywords just will not convert, for seemingly little reason. Kill em, and kill em fast.
- Accelerated Ad Impressions is a No-No? - I have not verified this with anything other than my experience. But when I was running a campaign at a loss(tiny) I got overeager to see the affects of my tweaks and shifted it into Adwords “accelerated” mode. Meaning they give you impressions as fast as they can. Well, it would appear the side effect of this is you get a lot more expensive clicks than when you let them distribute it. Once again, that’s an observation, not a fact.
Edit: Some disagreement in the comments on this one. I’ll say the jury is out, but looks like I may be guilty of a boo-boo here. - Yes, Landing Pages Do Matter – Ok. So I am not a web designer. This has been confirmed and reconfirmed over and over again for me. My last attempted landing page design looked like it was made in 1995 by someone using Homestead’s old site creator. Nickycakes (jokingly) recommended I go all out with the flaming torch background if I was going to use that page. He’s right.
A properly designed one(in a brief test) got 500% more clickthroughs than my little crap one.
Not only are they important, but they should be split test like crazy. I heard this all time, and believed it to an extent. But did I want to fork over the extra $50-75 for an extra landing page to split test with? No! Well, turns out that cost me a lot of money.
For those of you who don’t know what splittesting is, it’s pretty much taking 2 pages, and serving them up an equal amount of times, and seeing which one converts over better. - If It’s a Quickly Made Campaign, It Probably Won’t Work – Every so often, I see something and just launch at it. Get the campaign up and running in 20 minutes or less. NO. BAD plan. Maybe once you’re experienced at PPC this works. For now, it really does not. Even if it seems like something that you have to move fast on, take your time. Research. Divide up the adgroups. Get a good landing page.
- Do Not Forget if You’re Running a Campaign in more than One Place
Ok. So one of my first campaigns generally scrapes by. It has a relatively large spend, with a relatively small reward. But that being said, profit is profit. Or so I thought. I logged into MSN adcenter for the first time in awhile, and realized “OH CRAP”…I was running the same campaign on AdCenter, but only doing my math to see if I profited using Adwords. Yeah. That slim reward? Not so rewarding anymore. On the upside, with a bit of optimization, it’s really in the black. - Google is Not the Only Traffic Source – Right now I have accounts on probably 10 different PPC programs. I honestly don’t know what all of them are named. Some of them can provide dirt cheap clicks that are of decent quality. Some of them, I have no idea where the hell they’re getting their clicks, but they sure don’t have credit cards. The point is, that finding just one PPC program where your niche is not saturated can be gold. I do recommend severely limiting your daily spend until you see if it converts.
- Saturated Niches are Not Inaccessible - Niches that are saturated are saturated for a reason. There’s a lot of potential for profit. What I’ve had some success doing is finding unique or super-niche ways to market the product where the CTR is higher, then later shoveling more competitive keywords into the already successful adgroup. Not sure if it’s a placebo affect, but it seems to be working quite well.
- You Only Need a Few Profitable Areas to Work – Near as I can figure, most everyone who is doing this has a few niches they tend to stick to, and saturate. It’s hard as hell to find profitable areas. Even moreso when you’re not an expert. But finding a few that you can really control is all you need to be successful.
- Don’t get Discouraged – It takes a lot of experimentation to hit a niche. Especially starting out. You’re going to lose money. At some point, decide if you can get it to convert or not, but in the meantime, don’t let it sit. Kill your keywords that aren’t converting. Try different match types. Play with it. Pretend it’s monopoly money(within reason). If you don’t stand out, you probably won’t make much.
Conclusion
Honestly, I feel really odd in this situation. I still feel like a PPC newbie. I am a PPC newbie. But at the same time, I’m profiting an obscene amount per day ($2500+ most days). I’m hoping I didn’t just get lucky, and that this will all go to hell as soon as the niches I’m in tank. They’re pretty competitive, so I’d like think I can keep this rolling. We’ll see I suppose! I’ve invested in a new heavy duty server for all this (9 distributed IPs, speedy ass bandwidth, constant monitoring, etc) so I’m a bit less stressed than when I started. I’m expanding quickly, and this should hopefully make for an interesting series.
-XMCP
PS: Yes, I don’t always play by the rules with PPC. Still shady. With any luck soon you’ll be hearing more about that.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
$2500 most days
wow.
not after specifics, at all, but what kind of thing are you promoting? You doing zip/email submits? or “real life” merchants (that delivery physical goods)? or clickbank lol?
do you find email/zips are easier or harder?
March 24th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Hey Shady,
Great article. I don’t think it’s fair to label yourself as a newbie if you’re profiting over 2k per day. That’s obscene. Congrats!
I guess your shadiness transfers over to the PPC realm as well. lol nice – would love to hear more about it.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
@bart: Typically, zip/email submits don’t have much profit. The public is wise to them more or less, and it’s hard to get proper traffic.
I find anything with a free signup, or a free trial is a great offer. Also “free quotes” for anything, so long as you can get the traffic.
@Gyutae: Haha thank you! I really just consider myself a newbie because while I’m doing all this, I don’t feel at home the way I do when I’ve truly become excellent at something. Perhaps if I can sustain it for longer my thoughts will change on that.
And yup, I’ve got a few splendid PPC entries coming!
Thanks for stoppin by all
March 24th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
The accelerated setting in Adwords is useful when you want to be on every single search related to your keywords AND Google’s system, in its infinite wisdom, is trying to spread out your traffic to make your budget last all day. If you are doing it right CPCs should not rise and CTR should not fall. Works best for terms that don’t get a huge amount of traffic to begin with. Granted I have not idea what your doing with these campaigns.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
What kind of tracking software are you using if any? In-house or something else you bought?
Thanks!
March 24th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
You make $2,200 per day and you can’t get a credit card with a limit higher than $3,000? Something doesn’t seem right about that…have you talked to American Express about bumping up your limit?
March 24th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
@cw360: Thank you very much for the clarifications on that!
@RAA: Currently running a mix of inhouse and tracking202.com. I think I’m going to go with tracking202 until I have enough time to create a truly powerful/reliable in house system.
@Todd: Up until this point, I was a secondary account holder on the credit card I was using. So while I did a great job at bumping the primary account holder’s credit, mine remained untouched. I’m barely 20, with no loans and no credit history. Not much I can do. I’m planning on trying to pay off the Amex card every 2 days or so for a month, then see what I can do about a bump.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
“Accelerated Ad Impressions is a No-No”
Keep experimenting – accelerated is the way to go if you want to maximize revenue. Works best in conjunction with exact match and very well refined (ie lots of negatives) broad matched campaigns.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Not an expert at this, but I believe once you file a tax return that shows a decent amount of income, you should be able to show that to a credit card company and get a huge bump in your limit.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Thanks for shooting down my hopes of a 20 minute rags to riches story
Lol… Seriously though, I learned a few things here. Didn’t realize you were so fanatical with the tracking.
Q: Are you getting your tracking pixels/code placed on the merchant’s thankyou page? Or just tracking clicks off your landers and subsequent CRs?
March 25th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Right now I’m assigning clicks subids as they come in, then tracking it back later with a copy/paste of the sales sub-ids. The system is still wayyy in development though. God willing I can get pixels running soon and simplify the whole thing.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Hi,
great article. What do you now like better? PPC marketing or SEO for profit?
Honestly i have alot of experince with “white hat SEO” but it really gets frustrating trying to rank Top 10 in google and takes a very long process. And thinking of going to PPC marketing and blackhat.
Do you still use black hat methods as an alternative traffic source? If so, is there anything you would recommend?
THanks
March 25th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Shady, you must be joking..:) If you are so rich, why don’t you buy us some USDA prime rib steaks and some French wine!
March 25th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Every one of my blackhat friends finds it impossible to think whitehat and do ppc. Making $300 per day is a great accomplishment, congrats! My question to you is, what is easier? blackhat or whitehat?
March 25th, 2008 at 9:01 am
@Igor: Haha no joke actually. I can handle the rib next time I’m around(if things keep going this well), but afraid the wine will have to wait until I’m 21
@mike: Add a zero haha. Thanks though!As for BH vs. WH, I’d say it’s not a “easier” kind of thing. Good whitehat is as hard as good blackhat. They’re just different business models that require different kinds of effort.
@kerry: If time is a frustration, I don’t know if blackhat is where I’d go. It takes a serious amount of time to design these systems. I’m really not sure which I like more though. PPC and it’s “instant reward” is excellent, but I’m not sure if that will ever be able to overcome the game of outsmarting the search engines for me. For right now though, I’m placing more emphasis on PPC so I can prevent a complete SEO burnout.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Oh my bad, I read it wrong. It seems like its so hard to break the “blackhat” mindset with some people. Like, they will constantly think of how they can game the system. Change is a constant in both models, but it seems like there is more change in blackhat – and you are constantly adapting. Whenever I do it, I find an exploit and run with it until it’s found out and squashed. I then spend more time figuring out how to game the system again. All when I could set up a PPC campaign in 15 minutes and immediately start getting traffic and potentially profiting. To me PPC at least is easier.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:30 am
@mike: I agree. It’s very hard to break that mindset. In some cases, I find it necessary to however.
I’m finding it’s best to combine tactics. Run happy legit whitehat campaigns that would make Matt Cutts smile, stabilize them, then run around looking for exploits.
No matter what, whenever you’re profiting off a system(adwords or otherwise) you make money only by separating yourself from competitors. And if your competitors are following the rules, sometimes a realistic way to stand out is by NOT following those rules.
Mixing the stability of WH and the profits of BH seems to work quite well though.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Ya? where is the shady ppc?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Well done slightly shady bastard!
March 25th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I was going to tell you to make sure to get yourself a good accountant and take your earnings and invest them smartly. It’s a great time to buy a house now if you don’t have one.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Great Post! How many keywords do you have per campaign?
*On the “accelerated” mode, my theory is this only applies to content match.
Blessings!
March 25th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Which post would u recommend to get anyone started on black hat?
March 25th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hey XMCP -
Just a quick question about the offers you promote…do you tend to go towards higher paying offers as opposed to the low paying ones (<2.00 ~~ zip/email submits) or whatever has a decent network epc? Just curious
-D
March 25th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I would call Amex tomorrow I’m sure you can get your limit raised right away. I’d imagine if they look at your last week’s account activity it should be an easy decision for them.
I just started reading your blog and enjoy it a lot. Keep the posts coming and congratulations on the great numbers
March 25th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Excellent articles. Thanx for sharing your experiences so openly.
I got into SEO and PPC two years ago this month… Mainly been reading, learning and applying the lessons in real-life situations. You’re not kidding when you talk about jumping into PPC and worrying about tapping out your financial resources… Stressful indeed.
When I started, I launched a couple of ppc campaigns on AdWords and YSM. I watched and tracked for a day or two… then I took a trip to Las Vegas with the guy who was teaching me how to be an SEO and ppc (white, grey, black hat)…
After two days in Las Vegas, I borrowed his laptop (I didn’t own one yet), I went down to the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel (where there was a strong Wi-fi signal)… and I logged in to my ppc accounts… only to find that I had run up over $4,000 in clicks… and very little income was created from all those clicks! I immediately shut off the accounts and went back to the drawing board.
You’re so right about not rushing into the PPC world. Do it right the first time. Plan, plan, plan! I had done it all wrong… and dumb, too! And I paid a price. Well, live and learn.
I’m happy to say that, now 2 years later, I have more than made up for that silly mistake. I have learned much, and there’s always more to know. And losing some money really lit a fire under my ass to do well, just so I could make my money back!
PPC can be risky, but you reduce your exposure if you pay attention, monitor your results, and DON’T GO TO VEGAS!
Thank you for the great posts. Keep ‘em coming!
March 25th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
@Justin Chelf: Wait for it, it’s coming! I’m still learning AdWords, so it’s going to take a bit before I get everything ironed out to the point where I’d be willing to show it.
@Todd Mintz: I’m saving up with that in mind. But for now at least, I’m still in the dorms at college haha. I’ve got a few big decisions coming up, and my decision to get a house will be among them.
I actually just got an accountant, because I’m absolutely terrible with money. I don’t keep good records, I lose checks, just miserable stuff. Haha my accountant will be very busy.
@Aniston: It varies wildly. Typically I generate my keywords/adgroups, so only 3 words per ad group, but maybe 150+ adgroups.
@Kerry: Use the search for “Blackhat 101″
@Dustin: Every so often I find offers with a higher payout than cost to the user. That’s my favorite kind. Payouts are from $12-$30. My big money one though actually only pays out $3.25-$4.25 per lead.
@Ryan: That would be the plan. I just started using the CC that I’m the primary holder for, but I plan on paying it off every 2 days or so.
Oh yeah, and thanks!
@Gambler: I’ve had VERY similar experiences.
After that I got a healthy state of paranoia, and learned to set up $100 tests of each thing. At the end of the day, change everything I think might cause lower conversions. Rinse, lather, and repeat until it’s converting at a profitable rate. Then take the budget throttle off!
You’ve definitely learned that by now though haha.
Thanks everyone for the comments!
March 30th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Shady, I need to switch to the dark side and learn from Darvader..:)
White Hat just does not pay!
But if you are making all this good money, make sure you put it in a bank, because the lucky streak will not last for ever.
I had a good import business about 10 years ago and made some nice cash, but times changed, and I closed it up. At the end I was just flying around the world and not making money but just covering expenses. But during the 10 years that I’ve done it, it was nice!
March 31st, 2008 at 9:27 am
great work, i would like to know more about how your tracking your shit. -MIXNET @ WF
April 27th, 2008 at 3:56 am
nice, motivating
i am starting my campaign again