Unsuccessful PPC … it doesn’t always work
May 12, 08 by MaxI’ve had many a successful ppc campaign over the 2 years i’ve been in affiliate marketing, but it’s not always the case. Often i’ve ran ppc campaigns and they haven’t been profitable. It’s not as easy as adding some keywords, making an advert and seeing the cpc turning a profit !
Recently i’ve been doing some direct PPC to some merchants to find that the CPC and conversion rate isn’t worthy of me carrying on. Direct PPC can be great but it doesn’t always work like you want it too. One of the reasons my PPC campaign didnt become profitable was as I was competiting directly with other merchants and not other affiliates thus they would make a bigger mark up on a sale than I would. So they could afford to push the price of each click up more.
When is the stop off period ? how long should I let it go before I pull the ad ? People have various ideas on this, but I generally wait till either 200 clicks have been done, 2 days of the ad, or if a limit of around £100 has been reached before I look into an ad and see if I should pull it.
The point is, if a campaign you run isn’t successful at first then maybe it won’t be overall.
Dunc Says: 12.05.08 at 5:51 pm
Nice post, interesting stuff about the cut off point. What made you try direct to merchant? Are there really any benefits other than not having to build your own landing page?
I read time and time again that you’re throwing your money away with direct to merchant stuff because of your reliance on their (frequently) shoddy website to convert well.
Hat’s off to you for trying this though.