Shoemoney the $10,000 PPC Experiment
Jeremy Schoemaker (aka Shoemoney) is quickly becoming a marquee name in the SEO world. He's just put up part 1 of The $10,000.00 experiment with ppc . In it he details his PPC learning experience where he goes from losing $75 a day to turning a profit.
I then created my ads on Adwords and put a budget of 100$ a day. The first day I only made 25$ and spent the full 100$...
... After editing my campaign I now was ready to rock again! The 2nd day I spent 100$ and made 85$ uggggg closer…. I guess….. Man there is a lot to this! Now it was time to re-evaluate my bids ...
...The next day I spent $45 and grossed $65!! WAHOOOO now we are on to something. I made a profit without even hitting my $100/day budget. The next few weeks I let this roll and see what happened. I spent $1400 and made almost $2000. There must be something to this after all...
Get the full details in The $10,000.00 experiment with ppc . If you're looking for more tips be sure to check out the Shoemoney interview on SEO Rockstars (mp3 format).
Way to go
There's money to be made in PPC, no doubt. Clearly even in competitive arenas like ringtones (and in insurance for sure). If you can bring in leads or sales for $15, and only spend $12 doing so, you've got a profit center you can automate.
The best PPC book I've ever seen is still Andrew Goodman's Pay Per Click Ebook. It's what got me started years ago; I still read it once a year.
There's no big secret with adwords, it's all mechanical. Well, the secret is figuring out the mechanics. After that, it's fairly straighforward process of bottom feeding (finding a gazillion targetted terms where the competition isn't so high) and testing ads to get your click through rate high.
The biggest point of failure with adwords advertisers is not sticking with it long enough to get your CTR high enough to make it profitable. Your campaign will almost certainly crash and burn and lose money at the start. Almost everyone stops there. More knowledgeable folks will persevere and keep testing ads and search terms until the find the hot stuff.
Oh, the one secret to adwords? Don't advertise on the no-content network.
>> Don't advertise on the
> Don't advertise on the content network.
One of my campaign makes most of its money from the content network...
sometimes thinking in a different direction from others can bring success...
Yeah, there's something for everyone
My exerience is in the insurance sector where 99.95% of the content network is MFA's and scraper sites that provide absolutely 0 traffic. The incentive is too great on the higher paying terms...plus, who the heck in their right mind puts up a decent life insurance site? Nobody, because it's not a topic anyone's interested in. (actually,I've got a variety of insurance sites and blogs, but I don't advertise on them).
Perhaps if you're in a field where there's lots of hobby sites, or the bid amounts aren't so high, then the content network has sites that are actually interesting, relevant and trafficked. But I'd not know anything about that.
Anyone experienced care to chip in and suggest what sorts of areas the content network actually does work?
Content Network can be ok if
Content Network can be ok if you get to bid low enough, and adjust your ad text to be much more specific.
For my campaigns its the search network that can kill a budget – Google really needs to do some quality checks on those search partners or offer different bid amounts.
Ministry of Truth strikes back!
Some one edited their post...
which is it?
or
I always felt that advertising on other people's websites == big waste of money, yet if every one did as I do I personally would make no money via AdSense :-/
Content advertising
Seems to be totally industry, niche, and even site specific. A good example would be advertising gardening products on a gardening blog or forum. There is a very good targeted demographic, and if the click price is low enough it potentially converts quite well.
Content network CAN work, it's just generally a bit tougher to find the stuff that works imho. I have SEEN it work, but I've turned it off probably 75% of the time as well. Finding successful content network opportunities is very similar in theory to finding successful arbitrage opportunities.
Site Targeting
I'm sure there are exceptions but generally I won't go anywhere near content networks. Site targeting however is a whole 'nother ballgame
Content Network
I have seen some industries where content network can be profitible. However, they are few and far between. I usually turn it off if I'm on a budget simply because it takes so much time to track, point out fraud, and deal with inconsistent conversion rates.
Unfortunately, Adsense is what I make good income on. If I'm turning it off, I'm guessing more and more people will do so over time. It's a matter of Google putting some quality control and fraud protection on content network.
Someone help me. I am a
Someone help me. I am a newbie. How does he make money by giving ringtones for free?
Ta,
basic Craps strategy
make them for less than free, and sell them for free. Basic supply and demand ;-)
As for the PPC experiment, I can't wait until his spend hits several thousand. You know how you feel when your SE traffic disappears... well it's a lot worse when your impressions are rising and you've got several thou of spend on the table and the clicks stop or the smart pricing gets stupid on yo ahzzzz.
Some Comments
> where 99.95% of the content network is MFA's
MFA's may work in competitive industries, but you have to play with much lower bids than search and with a pre-qualifying ad text...
> Site targeting however is a whole 'nother ballgame
Yup, it work great for general interest products!
> How does he make money by giving ringtones for free?
Its not really *free* , you get a free ringtone for joining a ringtone or horoscope SMS club which cost like 19.99/month and SMS billed thro your phone company.Its not a clean industry and i guess future legislation/customer compaints will force them out just like the pill sites, But its a gold rush until then...