By George I Think She’s Got It!
May 12, 2008 · Print This Article
My last post covered Project Supernova and my wish to boost flagging traffic to a niche before it burned out altogether. I followed the instructions contained in the Going Natural 3.0 video put out by Stompernet.
After 48 hours i thought I would share with you the results. Please forgive me as I am truly a n00b in this area and followed Andy Jenkins’ instruction without having much of a clue what I was doing. I had never used AdWords before. So if I say something stupid, well you will know why!
As I said my niche is one that is basically something that is coming to the end of its fashionable life. Having run with it since the beginning of the Thirty Day Challenge I had the figures from Statcounter that showed me that two countries dominated my searches. The USA and the UK. That made choosing where to run the ads as a test pretty easy.
Adword Campaign Test 1 the UK
After blindly following the video I had the outline of what I needed to do. As this was to be my loss of virginity in this field, I wanted to see whether I enjoyed the experience before getting funky with all the ad triumvirate stuff.
So I created two ads in under a minute each.
Ad 1 reads
Cool XXXXX XXXXXX
Stand out from the crowd!
Pics, ideas and great deals
Ad 2 reads
Awesome XXXXX XXXXXX
Don’t XXXXXX what your friends XXXX!
Buy and be unique
Have to start somewhere right?
I picked the keyword phrase that was the most “commercial” for my niche, even though I knew my site was not absolutely optimised for it, but that it was close enough.
After 48 hours here are the results
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The other important figures to note are that each click is costing me 43c and average position is 1.1.
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Adword Campaign Test 2 the USA
Same ads but in this one I used both the “commercial” keyword, and what the site was optimised for. It made sense at the time.
click picture for larger size
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Clicks are costing me 44c and average position is 1.6 which I think is pretty good as there is more competition in the USA ads space.
Silly me now thinks, I should have measured like for like on the keyword phrase though (and I will be dropping the optimised one to see what sort of an increase in cost that will make to the results).
But all-in- the UK is winning in the CTR stakes by a landslide.
So what does this mean for conversion to sales. Well I have doubled this month’s sales already in 48 hours. Sounds impressive doesn’t it?! Shame it is an affiliate site that is not going to cover the cost of the advertising.
I don’t mind though, the experience has shown me
- I can write ads
- I can set up adwords so it works
- I understand what is going on
- I can DEFINITELY replicate this for something that pays better for conversion
I think I am sold !
Hi Allison! That’s SO cool that you did what you did in 48 hours!
Sorry my voice grates on your nerves…
It was the special effect that I used.
Unless… you’re talking about my on-camera stuff.
Good LUCK with your next campaign!
Allison, you can *indeed* write ads! Those offers go right to the heart of real felt needs and emotions.
I’m glad you enjoyed our video. It’s stories like this that make it worth the long hours.
Thanks!
Dan
Dan Thies’s last blog post..Split Testing Adwords: You’re Doing It Wrong
Ack Dan I should be thanking YOU. I am ecstatic at the results and will definitely be implementing in other niches! Thanks for the great video it has turned me around on whether to use PPC or not.
Andy *feels slightly sheepish* love your work, just get the vibe you are trying too hard : )
(the dramatic entry thing on the vid was great, you didn’t need to apologise for a sales letter in moving pictures :))
That’s amazing Allison!!! The biggest thing that I admire is that you reviewed the information and took action. Sure you lost a bit of money, but you learned a lot!
~Shannon
p.s and congrats on the comments from Andy and Dan, that’s freaking cool!
Shannon’s last blog post..Shannon’s Tweets for 2008-05-12
p.s. I enjoyed his voice… I really like that special effect… Hey Andy, if you’re listening, what program did you use to do the videos and is that voice special effect included with it? They were awesome!
Shannon’s last blog post..Shannon’s Tweets for 2008-05-12
Thanks for the encouragement Shannon!
The money isn’t that much really compared to the sales (probably a massive $5 short lol) and I can certainly recommend the process to anyone who is a stone cold beginner like I am in PPC.
Affiliate marketing via Adwords is a tough, tough game.
Google stacks the deck against you to a degree - because they only allow one affiliate. The seller normally takes most of the profit, unless they’re infomarketers just trying to gather leads. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to improve conversion, which forces your hand to an extent when you’re choosing keywords and writing ads.
We use affiliate marketing of infoproducts as a ’safe’ training ground to learn marketing principles and techniques, but in the long run you want to sell something yourself.
(Seems like you’ve already figured all that out…)
Dan Thies’s last blog post..Split Testing Adwords: You’re Doing It Wrong