How did you feel when you opened your first PPC campaign?

[classixuk]

You know, until 2 days ago when I joined this site, I would never have considered using adwords; I mean for goodness sake - it costs money!

But as of today I have my first proper affiliate store up online (not an amazon iFrame or homemade bookstore, but a "proper shop"). GULP!

Hopefully my organic visitors to my existing site might buy some stuff in there, but I have taken the gamble and began a Google Adwords campaign.

Do you remember the first time you began a Google ads campaign? If so, the following might sound familiar.

I'm using a product feed with almost 5000 products, and I have decided to concentrate on promoting specific products or lines for now.

I very quickly found myself "upping" what i thought would be worth promoting. What started as "£20? That'll be good to promote..." quickly became "That costs under £60, I won't be promoting that".

I can see why retail will be a long slog...7% on sales doesn't leave much of an advertising budget from a £20 item!

Anyway, after working for 4 or 5 hours setting up different ad groups in my campaign for different lines and almost reaching the finishing block, I was horrified to see that 2 people had clicked on my ads and cost me money! Seriously, I wasn't excited at all. I know it's only 24p but I felt this kind of seething inside as I projected, "You better have bloody bought something!"

I logged in to my affiliate and was pleased to see 2 click throughs, but of course that may have come from my organic traffic!

Suffice to say that I will be giving PPC a go and monitoring the results closely. I read somewhere on here that if it gets to 100 clicks, £100 spent or 3 days? without a resulting sale that you should scrap the ad, so I'll be on the lookout for any ads that aren't performing.

I'm kinda nervous right now but I'm sure that will fade.

What about you guys? What was your first experience like with PPC? Did you make any mistakes, did you get angry at the ones who clicked on your ads 'just to have a look'? Perhaps I've brought back fond memories for you?

[beejeebers]

It's a different world when you move to buying clicks. I remember when paying £4 per click made me nervous. Now it doesn't because what the result of a couple of those clicks is.

As for testing with retail. It is a pig. My best performing programs are the ones where no credit card is required. If the person just has to give you information and you get paid for that, it works a lot better. Less commitment by the surfer.

Anyhow, good luck with your new adventures!

[classixuk]

Originally Posted by beejeebers It's a different world when you move to buying clicks. I remember when paying £4 per click made me nervous. Now it doesn't because what the result of a couple of those clicks is. As for testing with retail. It is a pig. My best performing programs are the ones where no credit card is required. If the person just has to give you information and you get paid for that, it works a lot better. Less commitment by the surfer. Anyhow, good luck with your new adventures!

Thanks BeeJeebers. Paying £4 per click would certainly make me nervous right now! I guess that's because 7% commission of a £30 sale would leave me funding the merchant

I've read a few of your posts, most interestingly your challenge post.

How long had you been affiliate marketing before you joined the school? It certainly looks interesting.

Regards,
Chris.

[chromate]

I haven't done a lot of PPC stuff. But I literally find it hard to sleep at night when I'm running campaigns. With SEO, which is what I'm used to, you have nothing to lose but time. PPC makes you feel very vulnerable.

I remember at the end of each day logging into the my aff network account and literally *wishing* and holding my breath as the page loads that there would be some sales shown. Then all too often the disappointment, or SHOCK, when the amount shown is STILL damn £0.00. Then you start to think, "great, all that money for nothing!"

But you have to look at it differently. These are the two aspects I find most difficult coming from SEO to PPC...

1) You have to start looking at the money spent on getting those clicks that don't convert as still having some value. They're showing you what doesn't work, be it certain keywords, techniques or whatever. You're paying for a learning experience, which hopefully will eventually result in a successful campaign.

2) It's also all too easy to end up changing stuff in campaigns before they're ready to be changed. I find it really hard to relax enough to let a campaign run through enough clicks to gather any meaningful statistics. As soon as I see I'm losing money, even if it's run less than say 40 clicks, I instantly have the urge to start changing stuff. I have observed from my own campaigns that the ones I made successful are those that I allowed to run through at least 200-300 clicks before I started messing with stuff.

[vcm]

Originally Posted by chromate 2) It's also all too easy to end up changing stuff in campaigns before they're ready to be changed. I find it really hard to relax enough to let a campaign run through enough clicks to gather any meaningful statistics. As soon as I see I'm losing money, even if it's run less than say 40 clicks, I instantly have the urge to start changing stuff. I have observed from my own campaigns that the ones I made successful are those that I allowed to run through at least 200-300 clicks before I started messing with stuff.

I defo agree with this comment. One of the important things to remember is Cookies!

If you've picked a good merchant, you should have a 30 day (or more) cookie dropped whenever a user clicks your ad. When I first started with PPC, I had exactly the same feelings you described classixuk. I spent over £50 on the first day, go nervous and then stopped the campaign.

It wasn't until the next day that the sales started rolling in. I then increased my daily spend and still make sales from the initial clicks!

When starting with PPC the one piece of advice I would give any beginner is not to use broad match keywords. You will burn through your budget in no time. Start with phrase or exact match keywords, then when you know how well the campaign is converting, add a few more.

You will not become a PPC millionaire overnight. Take your time and grow slowly. You will start to see the rewards a lot sooner if you take your time, rather than throwing loads of money at keywords that are not really targeted.

Sorry to rant. Hope this is helpful,

VCM

[classixuk]

Thanks so much for taking the time to give me such great advice. I'm learning so much, so quickly. It's great.

For my first few adverts I have tried to follow the advice I've read on here over the past couple of days.
My keywords consist mostly of the brand + a keyword for now.
Some stupid idiot clicked on me for a really popular yet expensive product. When I checked her keywords, she had typed "Free" before the name of the product.
She should have tried searching for "Free spectacles" instead because my ad clearly stated the price, as well as "Buy Now".
I guess I'll end up with so many wasted clicks, I won't even notice after a while though huh? LOL

[essdeekay]

I don't buy into this "cookie" malarky.

In excess of 90-95% of all my sales have been made whilst the client has still been on the site.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Si

[matty]

depends what you're selling.

if it's a consumer item, then i'd say mostly sales are made immediately.

if it's insurance, holidays etc, people will continue to search for a better deal, and then come back a couple of days later if you've got the best price.

[flippinfishster]

if it's insurance, holidays etc, people will continue to search for a better deal, and then come back a couple of days later if you've got the best price.

That's not working off the original cookie, that's working on having a memorable site. In the case you sketch out you would still get the sale on the immediate cookie as when they left and went elsewhere they probably collected loads of other cookies rendering yours useless.

I don't buy into "cookie malarky" either. The residual income from a cookie is going to be minute and hardly worth counting on, you need to make the sale when they're at the site if you're going to convert.

[Mogga]

Originally Posted by essdeekay I don't buy into this "cookie" malarky. In excess of 90-95% of all my sales have been made whilst the client has still been on the site. Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Si

You'd have to look at stats which show cookie set, sale made info from networks like POR.
Do any others offer this?