PPC Case Study #3 – Same Campaign, Mor...

I’m back with another case study. As you may remember from my previous ppc case study, I was working with just Yahoo for that campaign. With this new ppc campaign I instead went with Bing, Yahoo and Bidvertiser because I had a bit more money to drop on this test and wanted more data across the networks.

Note that these numbers are from November 2009 through Jan 2010, and I’m still working on this campaign so I still won’t be telling y’all what I’m actually running with. Look for a new case study coming up in the next few weeks or months. Probably months knowing my slackass style.

For this campaign I ran things a little differently. If you remember from my last post, what I did was have about 600 keywords spread out over a few ads in one ad group. This time though I did it differently and set things with a new method. I went with;

• 20 ad groups
• each ad group having 1 keyword
• 3 ads based around those keywords.

I ran with this formula on Bing and Yahoo, but with bidvertiser I just ran with the highest performing ads from the two networks combined with some simple math to calculate which was the overall best ad.

So, on to the numbers shall we?

BIDVERTISER

With Bidvertiser, as with all my previous attempts with them I had horrible click through’s with relatively high impressions. I know some people love bidvertiser, but I just haven’t figured it out yet. I probably won’t try much more with them till I’m baller like some of you guys and can afford to throw away money

Bidvertiser Spend: 12.54 Bidvertiser CPC: $0.96 Bidvertiser Impressions: 75,291 Bidvertiser Clicks: 13 Bidvertiser Sales: 0

Bidvertiser Statistics

YAHOO

As with the last campaign, I started out with Yahoo, and then once I started getting traffic and clicks I paused the underperforming groups and migrated the performing ones to Bing and Bidvertiser. I did see one sale, so I made some of my investment back on this one, but not nearly as much as I had hoped, especially with my highly targeted ad groups, and ads per ad group. I am still confident in yahoo though because I had relatively high impressions over this amount of time, however my CPC was way high, I wished it would get down to what BING was doing, but apparently not.

YAHOO Spend: $156.92 YAHOO CPC: $0.71 YAHOO Impressions: 37,193 YAHOO Clicks: 220 YAHOO Sales: 1

Yahoo Statistics

BING

This was hands down my best experience ever with PPC. I had 3 sales getting me around $144 before removing my initial investment of $2.12. This is simply awesome. I don’t know why it dried up but I will be going back and revamping the campaign to hit BING with again because I haven’t seen sales like this ever before, especially with limited impressions and very limited clicks. Fucking awesome.

BING Spend: $2.12 BING CPC: $0.30 BING Impressions: 198 BING Clicks: 7 BING Sales: 3

Bing Statistics

SUMMARY

So let’s total it all up.

Total Spend across all networks: $171.58
Total Impressions across all networks: 112,682
Total Clicks across all networks: 240
Total Sales across all networks: 4
Total Commission amount: $192
Total Profit: $20.42

As you can see, I was profitable. Not very much, but I was profitable. So, this campaign was definitely a win for a PPC newbie like me. If you remember last time, I was still 80$ shy of actually turning a profit, so even $1 would be a win for me at this point.

What have I learned off this one? Bing apparently fucking rocks, or I just hit the right market at the right time – I guess we’ll see on the next test. I do think I’ll drop bidvertiser indefinitely and probably yahoo too since my spend was so high compared to Bing. Yahoo, nothing much, same old shit – I just need to refine my process with them, and probably develop more ads along the way – I just ran out of money to keep testing.

Now on to more testing.

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ASW 2010 Reflections & Ad:Tech San ...

It’s been just a little bit over a month since my return from Affiliate Summit 2010. I was embarrassingly slow writing this post because of business picking up. This did give me an opportunity to somewhat sit back for the past 30 days, and think about what I learned, what changed me and best of all how it affected (or, didn’t affect) my business.

Last summer was my first visit to an Affiliate Summit, which I went to in New York City, I thought it was a great time, and a lot of people to meet – however, I was still pretty newb at that point so I really wasn’t sure what kinds of questions I was supposed to be asking, who I should be talking to or even the right lingo to use. So, I mostly sat back and just absorbed like a sponge and used that knowledge to further my business over the next few months.

Affiliate Summit West was completely different, this time around I knew who to talk to, what questions I should be asking, and most important, how to make myself more money and enjoy the entrepreneurial lifestyle of never setting an alarm, and working when, and where I want.

This time around I met a lot more actual business contacts, and discussed things with them. However, I will note that the partying in Las Vegas is a little crazy – if you really want to conduct business I would suggest New York over Vegas – while there may be more people in Vegas, there’s also a lot more opportunity to get yourself into trouble and not pay attention to the real reason we’re there – monies.

Also, I know this has been said before, but the amount of paid women in Vegas is pretty much disgusting. Who cares if you get a shitload of pictures with your arm around some woman that cost 1000 bucks an hour, if you think that’s baller because of that then you need to give your head a shake. Sorry guys. New York has a lot more – REAL – women, that don’t charge by the hour and are more than happy to talk to you about your nerdy business. Trust me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting down Las Vegas, or ASW – it was a great time and I’ll be going next year for sure. I really do feel that more business can be conducted in a little more relaxed environment like New York though.

Contrary to the previous summit I went to – I already knew a bunch of people this time so it was a lot easier to get around and go see the town, and meet more people in the extended circle of internet marketers that I chill with. So that was a definite plus to the whole experience, and the meet market was absolutely huge in comparison to what I remember from New York – not to mention the exhibit space. There were so many exhibitors present, that I had to go back 3 times to pick up all the free shwag (yes, we all are suckers for the free tshirts that fall apart after 3 washes aren’t we? – hint hint – buy better shirts exhibitors!) and to meet all the interesting companies that were showing off the latest and greatest products that we can help them sell.

To me, that was the biggest benefit of Las Vegas and Affiliate Summit – was that the sheer amount of people, exhibitors and speakers surpassed that of New York. Basically what I’m saying here is, go to Las Vegas to find a shitload of offers, and then hit up New York to conduct more business and get those offers sending dollars to your bank account.

But, what if you still don’t know where to get traffic for these wonderful offers?

Enter Ad:Tech. I wasn’t familiar with this conference until early last year – remember, I said I am still considerably newb compared to other folks out there. Anyway, I heard it time and time again, if you’re looking for traffic hit up Ad:Tech.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing this coming April with a few friends. These two conferences put together, from what I’ve heard anyway – are the best stepping stones into really ramping up business in this industry. Affiliate Summit for the products and ideas, and Ad:Tech for the traffic to run to your shiny new offers. It’s really a simple concept, but nobody ever said it to me like that so maybe this will help someone else out too.

I hope to see a bunch of you again at Ad:Tech, and the coming Affiliate Summit East in New York City.

Fun times brah’s.

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