New Challenge: £5,000 in a month doing ppc

[Stuart]

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Well I am no PPC expert but I would say that £1370 profit is not bad , more than some earn in a month in a full time job, well done with the challenge I have enjoyed watching the progress, keep up the good work and best of luck with whatever you do next.

Regards
Stuart

[Flightmapping]

beejeebers,

I've done 2 challenges here and both have not hit my goal.

Always better to fail than to never try, imho. Besides, you've still made a profit, but you don't mention your ROT (return on time).

Plus I figure there will be weak players in every industry and if I can take their share away from them, then that works for me.

So is this attitude a reversal of "those who can't, teach"?

monk-i,

I agree the thread is popular which makes it a great starting point for someone looking to learn but all the rubbish that comes with it can certainly be off putting for anyone new.

I have no interest in PPC, got out of financial services about 3 years ago, and don't really subscribe to the Gordon Gekko school of management training either, but this thread still makes excellent reading.

Sometimes people need (or even want) a good verbal tolchock to get them going, and I really don't see any harm in this, we're all adults. If we want to wrap each other up in cotton wool, and start calling our ballsups "deferred success", then we should go and work as paper pushing pansies in our local council.

[csn]

Is the thread http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-...challenge.html the same as this one, just in dollars?

Appears to be dogged with negative posts over there too. Something about lack of information besides stats.

[beejeebers]

Is the thread http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-...challenge.html the same as this one, just in dollars?

Appears to be dogged with negative posts over there too. Something about lack of information besides stats.

Yep I posted it there too to give it a try. They wanted to know the url and wanted the list of keywords too...worse then this place!

But I use that as motivation as I've explained earlier...so it's all good.

[D-Mac]

An excellent thread, the best on here for months. Well done beejeebers!

[Donk]

Well done beejeebers!

How do these figure pan out from a cash flow perspective?

The costs are paid out up front, but the revenue will not come into your bank for say two to three of months.

Would it be fair to say you would need capital of say £4-£5k before you started a campaign such as this?

[beejeebers]

Well done beejeebers!

How do these figure pan out from a cash flow perspective?

The costs are paid out up front, but the revenue will not come into your bank for say two to three of months.

Would it be fair to say you would need capital of say £4-£5k before you started a campaign such as this?

I won't see the money until the end of the next month. So I'll see half end of this month and the rest end of next month. The network I used pays one month in arrears, (which is nice compared to the 2 or 3 month delay networks).

But don't get me started on those a-holes...

You don't need a huge budget to start. You can take the slow approach too which is targetting long tail keywords only, but it will take a lot longer. I went after more "fat belly" words in this one and will now target some higher volume ones too. A mix of all three is ideal though.

[Donk]

Rounding your figure and assuming a 20% increase per month and a constant ROI. For someone starting on 1st May:
<table border="1">
<tr><td> </td><td> May </td><td> Jun </td><td> Jul </td><td> Aug </td><td> Sept </td><td> Oct </td></tr>
<tr><td> cash b/f </td><td> 0 </td><td> -1500 </td><td> -3300 </td><td> -2460 </td><td> -1452 </td><td> -242 </td></tr>
<tr><td> income </td><td> 0 </td><td> 0 </td><td> 3000 </td><td> 3600 </td><td> 4320 </td><td> 5184 </td></tr>
<tr><td> expenditure </td><td> 1500 </td><td> 1800 </td><td> 2160 </td><td> 2592 </td><td> 3110 </td><td> 3732 </td></tr>
<tr><td> cash c/f </td><td> -1500 </td><td> -3300 </td><td> -2460 </td><td> -1452 </td><td> -242 </td><td> 1210 </td></tr>
</table>
It would be quite a few months before you would be able to spend the fruits of your labour.

So now is the time to start earning cash for Christmas

[matty]

it's been an interesting read bejeebers - i don't mean it in a nasty way, but i think it's actually quite good you haven't hit your target!

it shows that even someone who is used to PPC has to put time and effort into getting it right on a new campaign, but that also with a bit of time it will start to turn a decent profit.

you've made roughly 100% ROI during the first month, so it's a pretty good result on the whole.

[Leighlin]

Hi Bejeebers

Great thread and one which I and I'm sure many others have learned a great deal.

I noted with interest that you added 1000's of keywords each day and I wondered if you could post how many keywords you ended up with in each of the search engine accounts.

I also see that your cost on Adwords dropped off in the last 2 weeks. Was this due to the lack of decent conversions on Adwords and is there any further advice you can give on using Adwords for Debt Management in the light of this action.

Best regards and again a big thanks for such a great thread.


ATB

Leighlin

[jonsp]

Rounding your figure and assuming a 20% increase per month and a constant ROI. For someone starting on 1st May:
<table border="1">
<tr><td> </td><td> May </td><td> Jun </td><td> Jul </td><td> Aug </td><td> Sept </td><td> Oct </td></tr>
<tr><td> cash b/f </td><td> 0 </td><td> -1500 </td><td> -3300 </td><td> -2460 </td><td> -1452 </td><td> -242 </td></tr>
<tr><td> income </td><td> 0 </td><td> 0 </td><td> 3000 </td><td> 3600 </td><td> 4320 </td><td> 5184 </td></tr>
<tr><td> expenditure </td><td> 1500 </td><td> 1800 </td><td> 2160 </td><td> 2592 </td><td> 3110 </td><td> 3732 </td></tr>
<tr><td> cash c/f </td><td> -1500 </td><td> -3300 </td><td> -2460 </td><td> -1452 </td><td> -242 </td><td> 1210 </td></tr>
</table>
It would be quite a few months before you would be able to spend the fruits of your labour.

So now is the time to start earning cash for Christmas

I'm not sure that's correct - Beejeebers says his network pays 1 month in arrears. So if he started on May 1 and replicated what he'd done in the past month he'd pay PPC costs during the course of May, then get his first income of £1730 in late June. He'd be slightly cash negative at the end of June but into positive cash flow by July. Of course if he had zero cash to start he could use a credit card with 0% introductory rate and a £2k credit limit.

Cheers,
Jon

[chromate]

Nice one Bejeebers! I know you didn't hit your goal, but 100% ROI in the first month is really good going IMO.

Amongst the bad bits, there's some great info in this thread.

[dave1167]

Well done beejeebers a great post and a £1300 profit is not a failure in my books, In one of your earlier posts you mentioned that adwords was costing you too much and for the last 10-12 days of your campaign I noticed you did not use them. With the introduction of the quality score and other algorithm changes Do you think adwords is no longer viable and will this lead to Google ending up with only the big players using PPC on google ? Which was against Googles original philosophy on PPC?

[beejeebers]

To everyone who has posted kind words, thank you. I appreciate that. It's refreshing from the trolls that lurk in the dark corners of the forum and come out to snipe from afar once in awhile...

I'm not sure that's correct - Beejeebers says his network pays 1 month in arrears. So if he started on May 1 and replicated what he'd done in the past month he'd pay PPC costs during the course of May, then get his first income of £1730 in late June. He'd be slightly cash negative at the end of June but into positive cash flow by July. Of course if he had zero cash to start he could use a credit card with 0% introductory rate and a £2k credit limit.

Cheers,
Jon

Bingo.

Credit cards are nice that way if you need them for that. I'm not saying run up huge credit card bills, be careful, but once you get the hang of it, there is no shame in borrowing from your credit card, doubling your money and then paying off the card and keeping the profit!

Well done beejeebers a great post and a £1300 profit is not a failure in my books, In one of your earlier posts you mentioned that adwords was costing you too much and for the last 10-12 days of your campaign I noticed you did not use them. With the introduction of the quality score and other algorithm changes Do you think adwords is no longer viable and will this lead to Google ending up with only the big players using PPC on google ? Which was against Googles original philosophy on PPC?

Thanks Dave, on adwords, I did drop them from this challenge for two weeks. I dropped them because you've got to take losses usually to start and that will last anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks before they'll magically drop your costs for you. I've seen it in other campaigns. It's their never talked about "time factor" that I am positive exists. They are still very much viable. If you take the slow approach from the start, you can get a great ROI. But in a situation like this where I was under a time crunch I had to go after higher volume keywords to get any kind of decent traffic.

I will still use adwords and will now turn it back on and take my lumps from them because I know in time, it will work with them.

[Donk]

I'm not sure that's correct - Beejeebers says his network pays 1 month in arrears.

I won't see the money until the end of the next month. So I'll see half end of this month and the rest end of next month.

The aim of a cash flow forecast is to expose your vulnerability not to paint a rosy picture (unless you are applying for a loan .

The payments are received at the END of the month.

If I included the £3000 payment for may in june it would have shown just a £300 deficit whereas your exposure in the last few days of the month (just prior to receiving the payment) would have been much closer to the £3300 that I quoted.

eg if you received the money on say the 27th june. You would still be behind by the £1500 spent in may and 26/30 *£1800 spent in june = £3060 on the 26th jun.

It's better to count your eggs when you are sure they have been hatched so I moved the receipts forward a couple of days to the 1st of the next month to be on the safe side (and to allow time for the funds to be transferred onto your 0% credit card ) .

Regards Bob