Learning not to Waste Money on Adwords

I know I’ve made a lot of posts about Adwords lately, I guess it’s something I’m playing heavily with at the moment so I’m trying to give you an idea of what’s working & what’s not.

One of the hardest things about Affiliate Marketing is finding a campaign that profitable. There’s nothing worse than throwing 100 bucks into an affiliate only to realise that the market is too competitive or they just don’t convert.

The problem however is many Affiliate Marketers prefer to “Set & Forget” campaigns & get stuck right in, instead of doing the research & groundwork first. Thus wasting money instead of time (I know which I’d rather waste).

So what are the top techniques to make sure you’re not wasting money on Adwords:

Competitor Research: If you’re planning to bid on a particular keyword you should be watching the Adwords Ads for a high turnover. I.e. Do the top ads change often? If they do chances are they’re not profitable & have a high turnover. If the top ads stay similar over a 1 week period chances are they are profitable for the advertisers & you have more chance to profit aswell.

Bidding: When bidding it’s best to initally go in around position 3-4. You can outbid someone by $0.01 if you play smart. Once you gather up a decent CTR you can then start winding back your bid but still keep your position. Many people fail to do the second part & let the inital bid run. Winding back the bid is what makes the campaign profitable, you may need to however take a hit to outbid the compeititors initally.

Bad Keyword Choice: I never bid on broad keywords. I almost always use Exact or Phrase Match. See my last post on the difference between Broad, Phrase & Exact Matching. Never go too broad, try to keep it as targeted as possible. For example you’re selling an affiliate marketing ebook I wouldn’t bid on “make money online” I’d bid on something like “affiliate marketing guide.”

No Negative Keywords: Many people make the mistake of not utilising negative keywords properly. There are the keyword phrases you don’t want your ad appearing for. For example “free affiliate marking book.”

Here’s a small list I use:

guide
serial
hack
cheat
hacked
maps
set
cheats
install
nude
soundtrack
crack
installer
patch
torrent
demo
iso
preview
trailer
desktop
item
registration
tutorial
download
key
release
uninstall
keygen
release date
walkthrough
exploit
review
wallpaper
free
reviews
warez

You can obviously add your own to that depending on the product & service.

Conversions: If you’re not getting a conversion within 100 clicks pull the campaign, for gods sake. You want to at least be aiming for a 3%+ conversion rate. This also depends on how targeted your ads & keywords are.

Bidding Wars: Never enter a bidding war if you know you can’t win whilst still staying profitable. Again I normally try to keep my ads around position 2-4 there’s no point going to number 1 unless there’s little competition.

Have a unique Display URL: This will mean that you don’t have to outbid the other URL to get displayed. Sometimes you can get away with things like www.ebay.com/uk/ or www.ebay.co.uk/us/ & the editors won’t catch you out. Sometime they will & that’s when you need to change things up a little.

What’s working for me at the moment?

At the moment I’m trying to concentrate outside the US market at less competitive niches & countries. I can still make the same amount per conversion but the competition is less & I’m paying less per click but getting a far better CTR.

Good example of a less competitive affiliate: Amazon Canada

For those that are new I’m still accepting Reviews of the Blog so get cracking if you want a chance to win. There’s been some good submissions already, but not nearly enough. It’ll be a good chance to get yourself some exposure on a blog that has more than 500 regular readers (according to feedburner).