Some of you know that working affiliate offers includes running some PPC campaigns on search engines. Since I taught myself some things about PPC through reading forums, blogs and other various places, I figured I would give a PPC campaign a try.
With Mother’s Day right around the corner, I thought it might be a good way to try it out on a major holiday. The problem was I was already too late, it was about 2 weeks before Mother’s Day and I had some research and planning to do. Not to mention I needed a landing page and/or domain name.
I decided on doing a 301 redirect directly to an offer available through NeverBlueAds.com. It was an offer by DeLaFlowers.com. The offer paid out $12/sale through the website. The reason I chose to do a 301 redirect was because I didn’t have time to create a landing page. The reason I didn’t have time to create one? Because I have never done it and really wasn’t sure what work went into one and if I could get it done in time. Lesson learned, read on. :)
So, I registered the domain with GoDaddy.comand setup the easy 301 redirect, permanently. Once that
was all set, I was off to set up my campaign. I chose to do it on Ask.com thinking that I would be able to get some conversions cheaper than if it was with Adwords. I think I was right and even though less people use Ask.com for search, I think that enough use to make it worth my time.
I set up two ad groups, one with 5 keywords and the other with 2. Both of them were pointing to my domain name (www.mothers-day-specials.com) that was now permanently redirected to the offer. With keywords like “flower specials”, mothers day flowers and flower free shipping, I thought I had a pretty good handle on whatever people were searching for around Mother’s Day.
I loaded my account with $50 and turned it on about 1 week before the holiday, figuring people that needed items shipped to far away locations. Now that we have it turned on we can slowly watch as the clicks start to add up. The stats are as follows:
The campaign ran from 4/25 to 5/11, my average position for the ads were 1.11, with an average CPC of .42. The campaign had 119 clicks (23 of which were the day before) at a cost of $50 and ZERO conversions. Yes, zero conversions. I have no problem with that and I would have to say the biggest reason was that it may have been sales related. I am not sure if the 301 directly to the offer made any difference, but you just never know.
The point is that I tried and was able to see results. From those results I could figure out a couple of things for next time and I guess that is the whole point. I think the next type of offer I will try is a simple email or zip submit. Those tend to convert a little better, at the same time, are a little harder to make a lot of money on. If I can find one that will convert for cheap clicks, that will be the major difference.
good post, i havent tried ask.com yet. sorry you didnt get any conversions. was it your keywords or poor traffic from ask?
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I think I ranked well with the keywords, maybe I didn’t have enough of them, but it might have been the fact that traffic might have been international. Adwords has plenty of ways to target, whereas, ask.com doesn’t have as many options.
Thanks for the comment.
I’m not an expert on setting up PPC campaigns, but I agree that the main problem might have been geographically untargeted traffic, since the offer would only appeal to people living in the US.
Adwords have plenty of geo-targeting options. I’ve also used Bidvertiser before and you can get decent geo-targetting also.
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Thanks for the comment and I think that you are 100% right. I will have to use a search with more options. I think Microsoft Adcenter has options like this. Adwords is too flooded so for now I am staying away from them.
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