When to Cut Off PPC Testing...

[weinerschizel]

I'm curious, I've been testing some affiliate offers using PPC.

When do you guys call it good? I picked a couple products from commission junction with higher gravity scores in the niche I'm interested in promoting.

Now I'm pumping traffic to them. I've dumped about $20 towards them and have around 38 clicks.

The profit is $30 for a sale... I know my initial ad testing isn't the most efficient per cost yet as I've narrowed down some higher CTR ads.

Curious though, about how much traffic should a person push before they have a decent idea a product won't sell? I just kind of figured around 100 clicks? But I'm not basing that on anything in particular...

[FrozenCanuck]

Depends. Where are you directing the traffic? Straight to the vendor site? Have you checked PPC rules for each vendor? Usually trademarked keywords are off limits. Just checking.

[weinerschizel]

Originally Posted by FrozenCanuck

Depends. Where are you directing the traffic? Straight to the vendor site? Have you checked PPC rules for each vendor? Usually trademarked keywords are off limits. Just checking.

I'm sending traffic directly to the vendor's sales copy. I'm using facebook and no keywords

I have to learn how to use MSN Adcenter though... And I've used Adwords but never liked it. It's so expensive! I think perhaps I'm setting up my campaigns incorrectly in adwords?

This is a clickbank product so I'm not entirely sure... do they have a per product / policy?

[Musetester]

I've found it incredibly difficult to affiliate market with relatively cold traffic. Though PPC screens out "uninterested" clicks, more often than not you'll go broke.

Think about this, a typical webpage converts at 5%. So your expected value of a click to said sales page at a 30$ price tag is 15 cents.

You'll have to find a way to pay less than 15 cents per click to make this work.

I especially hate this business model as you don't capture the contact info of the buyers you send to your vendor AND s/he builds brand equity instead of you off your investment.

If you are going to affiliate market I suggest either focus on building lists for the purpose of selling solo ads to other marketers or focus on building products for other marketers to promote.

[weinerschizel]

Originally Posted by Musetester

I've found it incredibly difficult to affiliate market with relatively cold traffic. Though PPC screens out "uninterested" clicks, more often than not you'll go broke.

Think about this, a typical webpage converts at 5%. So your expected value of a click to said sales page at a 30$ price tag is 15 cents.

You'll have to find a way to pay less than 15 cents per click to make this work.

I especially hate this business model as you don't capture the contact info of the buyers you send to your vendor AND s/he builds brand equity instead of you off your investment.

If you are going to affiliate market I suggest either focus on building lists for the purpose of selling solo ads to other marketers or focus on building products for other marketers to promote.

Wow... Thanks for the feedback. Between my business partner and I we spent around $300 promoting other people's products.

We had this initial feeling you mentioned. Our biggest challenge was exactly what you said. The sites reported converts to "their" lists which were converting fairly well. However, sales weren't converting very well and we couldn't make a profit off the dog training products we were promoting as a result.

Our biggest challenge was their sales copy. Which even for an armatures we could tell was sub par yet seems to be the industry standard. Additionally, we didn't have the follow up information to push the product / products with them.

Many of the product owners offer affiliate training / email lists. Which we've been following but they all pitch the same thing. They want minions out there creating backlinks for them with our affiliate link. While that seems like it would work I've gone down that road and never made a profit.

Ultimately, I do have my own product and found it silly to build somebody else's up but learned a TON from playing with other's stuff. We're also launching a marketing company to help local businesses with their online lead generation and manage their campaigns based off what we've learned.

I see you have a testing service you offer. Looks pretty cool!

[Musetester]

Good luck with the lead generation. That's a much easier sale to a small business than "hey I'll promote your site and make you a video"....

The only problem with offline consulting is there are so many consultants out there, of which 95% will do more harm than good.

Have you found a specific niche within lead generation to go after? I've found that retail, service and professionals (like doctors/lawyers) are a crowded marketplace.

[weinerschizel]

Originally Posted by Musetester

Good luck with the lead generation. That's a much easier sale to a small business than "hey I'll promote your site and make you a video"....

The only problem with offline consulting is there are so many consultants out there, of which 95% will do more harm than good.

Have you found a specific niche within lead generation to go after? I've found that retail, service and professionals (like doctors/lawyers) are a crowded marketplace.

Well we have a number of people in the hopper . Mainly acquaintances I've made over the years. Right now I've just spoke with my accountant and my dentist both of whom want to setup appointments. I also have to sit down with some other people who I know from photographers, to realtors. We're working on the marketing for that now (www.clickheros.com) so that we can showcase our work and hopefully get referrals out of the deal.

I also have my real estate license and will use our lead generation company to build that out as well. The intention being to sell buyers as referrals (www.keystoaz.com). I hope to get that up and automated with a team of agents under me or simply get the site going and sell list and or site we build out.

We're also currently experimenting with a product I made about a year ago and could never get to bite (www.fitlish.com/fitlishfeet). I never pumped traffic to the page (I had virtually no funds) so I struggled revising the copy. My business partner is now paying for traffic in exchange for commissions.

Pretty much we're learning the ropes and felt local lead generation / affiliate marketing would be a good thing to get additional experience & $$ with little time developing new products or promoting other people's affiliate offers where we have no control over the copy.