amazonhunter campaigns = zero sales/commissions for July : result -  all switched off

software affiliate DJK campaigns = zero sales/commissions for July : result -  all switched off

basically I won’t be putting and more time, money or effort in to the Day Job Killer methodology as I’ve simply not managed to make it work for me…

my ppc campaigns from here on in will concentrate wholly on lead generation for products (inc. plr) of my own.

for me, DJK has not really proved to be a good way to make money, I have made some profit, but for the amount of time and effort it was hardly worth it, and it appears that you have to be constantly looking for fresh new campaigns.

Project Black Mask is Chris (Affiliate Project X & Day Job Killer) McNeeney’s latest product and concentrates on Black Hat AdSense Techniques, and it’s being released tomorrow (Tuesday 19th June).

It could well be good, but I’m not going to rush in to buying it myself, partly as I’ve been somewhat dissapointed with the results of my DJK testing and partly because I have quite a lot of Black Hat AdSense experience myself, having been involved in the creation of tens of thousands of “Cloaked” MFA’s (Made for AdSense Sites).

I know that black hat adsense stuff can work, but I also know from experience how difficult it can be to keep ahead of the learning curve needed to stay ahead of Google, and I also know first hand how painfully expensive it can be if you get it wrong.

With that said, what are the latest results from my DJK testing?

Well I’m not going to bother posting the actual results here, it’s simply not worth the time as they are even worse than they were last month.

I am on my way towards making a profit, but because of a couple of expensive campaigns that I didn’t switch off quick enough, it’s going to take quite some time, so it hardly seems like the ideal way of starting to “earn a living online”…

The basic methods of direct affiliate linking, even when using highly focused product keywords, just doesn’t produce enough profits for the amount of time and effort it requires in my opinion.

It is possible to make some campaigns profitable if you spend the extra time necessary to set up a squeeze/landing page with an autoresponder sequence behing it to repeat market to the visitors, but you also need a free report of some sort to get people to sign up.

In my experience, if you’re going to go to all that time, effort and expense, you really want to know it’s a good market before hand and you might as well go the extra step and sell your own product, PLR being the obvious way to achieve that quickly and easily, which is where my next set of testing will be.

So in summary, DJK is a great read and can generate a lot of enthusiasm, but it can easily cost you so much money in testing markets that it becomes difficult to get in to a significant profit level, and the amount of time that it takes for the level of return is just too high for me.

In my opinion there are far more profitable and less risky ways of making money online.

Of course it could just be me, maybe I tested the wrong markets or didn’t try enough, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.

There are two systems I’ve been using to look at keywords for these campaigns, undercoverProfits & XtremeConversion, and I’ve got very different opinions about the two systems…

One’s cool, and one’s way to expensive and far to much work for me!

The actual campaign tracking one is XtremeConversions, and it has helped quite a lot with some campaigns, although it does make it take longer to get a campaign set up.

If you’re serious about trying to make money with AdWords it’s well worth the investment.

the other system I’ve been using is UndercoverProfits, and I’ve just dropped the membership on this one.

It’s not exactly cheap, at $291 each month, and it takes a lot of time and effort to get any useful info out of it, and even then there’s no guarantee that the keywords it gives you are going to prove to be profitable.

Out of using it for a month I’ve ended up with one new campaign that I’ve just set up to try out, and that was after spending several hours going through the data yesterday..

So it’snot getting my recommendation, obviously, although I will include the results from the new campaign in the next PPC update.

It’s not all good, in fact I’m coming to a pretty negative conclusion on my experiences so far, with most of the campaigns I’ve tried proving to be little return for the work and time involved, and some being a total loss.

In fact there’s only a couple that are really looking like winners..

Product “B” (ClickBank) April’07

3 clicks, 152 imp, 1.97% ctr, $1.52 @ $0.50 cpc = 0 x $0.00

Loss for month = $1.52
total profit = $48.54

this one has gone real quiet.
I’m going to run it for another month, but if it gets no sales in May I will probably drop it.

Product “C” (ClickBank) April’07

17 clicks, 269 imp, 6.31% ctr, $2.48 @ $0.14 cpc = 0 x $0.00

Loss for month = $2.48
Total Profit = $42.12

This one had more clicks, but no sales, so same again, I’ll run it for another month and see if it picks up again..

Product “D” (PayDotCom) April’07

106 clicks, 1,998 imp, 5.30% ctr, $7.72 @$0.08 cpc = 0

Loss for month = $7.72
Total Loss = $25.92

I’ve managed to squeeze the cost of this one down by over 50% which is positive, but it made no sales.

The commission pay out on this one is over $40, so I’m going to also let this one run one more month before deciding.

Product “E” (ClickBank) April’07

494 clicks, 8,848 imps, 5.58% ctr, $143.70 @ $0.30 cpc = 1 x $41.60

Loss for month = $102.10
Total Loss = $69.34

This looked like it was going to be a winner in April, as there were 4 sales in total, which would have given a profit of $55.46, but 3 (!!!) of the sales were refunded.

I am going to let this run a little longer, probably only a week or two, and keep a very close eye on it.

Product “F” (ClickBank) April’07

12,504 clicks, 2,973,387 imps, 4.20% ctr, $622.69 @ $0.05 cpc = 19 sales = $112.39
Loss for month = $212.80 [Ouch, again!!]
Total Loss = $429.46

Hmm, this one went a bit FUBAR.
I set up a couple of extra keyword ad groups and forgot to switch off content match, and I got bitten in the arse..

Through the tracking I have managed to now cull the keywords down to a more effective list and it now looks like this group should make a profit in May, although it’s going to have to do well to wipe out the deficit that it’s already running in…

It’s also slowly building a list as well, which should allow me to start pulling back more profit over time.

Note to self: Always check you’ve switched off Content Matching!!!!
:}

Alternative Affiliate Source (software) Trial

Still no sales, so I’ve now killed both groups at am overall loss of $11.95.

Amazon Test Groups

I’ve been testing out a bit of software called AmazonHunter for this and it looked awesome.

I was able to set up six campaigns with adgroups for hundreds of products in just a few hours.

However, whilst the ads are getting some impressions, the CTR is pretty lousy (varying from 0.03% to 2.33%) and the campaigns as a whole are running at a loss of $4.56 so far.

I’m going to let them ride for another couple of weeks, but it’s looking like they’re a loss.

If I find time this month I may give AmazonHunter another run, but choosing more mid ranged price products instead, as the current ones were all high ticket items (over $400 each).

Summary: -

I have to say that trying to make money with PPC campaigns is proving to be harder than I anticipated, and so far the test groups I’ve set up have actually made a loss overall, as well as taking up quite a lot of my time.

Personally I’ve made more money from less effort with Niche affiliate sites and SEO work.

If I can’t turn it around this month I’m probably going to go back to using PPC primarily to promote my own products and my PLR products.

Having said that, in fairness to Day Job Killer, I am not using all the advanced tactics covered in the DJK manual.

For most of these campaigns my methodology has been quite simple, specifically: -

1. Register a similar domain name to use for a cloaked redirect affiliate link

2. Gather some keywords and split them in to groups to track them separately where appropriate (not really relevant for “product name” campaigns)

3. Split test ads and tweak them for maximum effect.

I’ve only set up a squeeze page and freebie report for Product F, and although that is running at a loss so far, it has turned around in May and I’m interested in seeing if these extra tactics are what is needed to make the difference.

If it is then I will stick to products where I can implement these extra steps, although it does make the process far more time consuming..

I guess I’m unconvinced by this PPC tactic as it does seem to be a heck of a lot of work for someone as lazy as me.

I’m also starting some new campaigns for Amazon in April using what seems to be a very neat bit of software to automate the process and set up hundreds of ads very quickly..

Product “B” (ClickBank) March’07

25 clicks, 369 imp, 6.77% ctr, $12.04 @ $0.48 cpc = 1 x $62.10

Profit = $50.06

Product “C” (ClickBank) March’07

12 clicks, 162 imp, 7.4% ctr, $2.40 @ $0.24 cpc = 2 x $23.5

Profit = $44.60

Product “D” (PayDotCom) March’07

127 clicks, 3341 imp, 3.80% ctr, $18.20 @$0.14 cpc = 0

Although there’s no profit in this one yet, the potential profit on a sale for this group is around $40, so I’m going to let it run for another few weeks to see if it redeems itself, but it’s starting to look like a loser.

Product “E” (ClickBank) March’07

35 clicks, 613 imps, 5.70% ctr, $8.84 @ $0.26 cpc = 1 x $41.60

Profit = $32.76

Product “F” (ClickBank) March’07

6,093 clicks, 130,987 imps, 4.65% ctr, $329.05 @ $0.05 cpc = 6 sales = $112.39
LOSS = $216.66 [Ouch!]

There is a lot of traffic in this market and some of it converts, so I have now revisited the market with a full blown review style landing page, with a free report and optin/sign up to see if I can convert at a higher rate through a list.

I’ve also installed a keyword tracking script to try and work out exactly which keywords do convert to help me cut out all the crap keywords..

Alternative Affiliate Source (software) Trial

Still no sales, but total cost is under $3 and the potential commissions on both the products is in the hundreds of $’s, so Im happy to let them run a while longer.

Amazon Test Group “1″

Not enough traffic/searches, had no clicks in a whole month!

This one was a total waste of time, but it’s my own fault, I didn’t check the search/traffic numbers for the product/market before setting it up, so it’s a great example of the “7 P’s” rule: -

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance..

Take the time and do some research before you just jump on something because you like the look of it.

New Tests for April: -

6 New Amazon Campaigns

For this new Amazon test I’ve set up 6 campaigns with several hundred ad groups covering several thousand keywords, using a neat new tool that I’ll share if it produces the results.

The tool has allowed me to select products of over a specified retail value to select for the campaigns, ensuring the maximum chance of a tidy profit..

I am a little excited about this one as if it works, I should be able to set up several thousand more fairly quickly using this tool, so fingers crossed!

As I’ve no had time to find another “product” for another test using Amazon as an affiliate (see PLR Product test Post) I deciced to re-visit the “Niche” I’d chosen and see if I could give it a breath of life.

Having taken another look (paying attention this time) at the sets of keywords I chose for the 5 adgroups it looks like the main problem is using the particular “Brand Name” I chose, which ws based on the product, so I’ve now added the “market” keywords without the brand name to the individual adgroups to see if this makes a difference..

I’ll post again when I know whether this will make the difference or whether I need to drop the market altogether.

I did however set up a couple more different test groups.

The first was for 3 different IM products (2 from clickbank and another from a guy who I’ve met who’s fairly well known in the IM market). Each has it’s own adgroup so I can track the results seperately.

I used a “similar” domain name for each one with a copy of the merchants page, but with “Order” links that take the visitor through to the merchants page, which is not ideal as they then have to click on the order link again.

A cloaked redirect would probably be better and I may well update them with this if they are still profitable in another weeks time, as it could well have a significant (positive) impact on the results..

They’ve been running for aa week now so here’s the results so far: -

Product “A” – this was one of the Clickbank products and was getting very few clicks (6 out of 311 impressions, 1.92% CTR) at a total cost of $1.94 with no sales.

I checked the site yesterday to find that the program has actually closed, so their sales letter saying it was a limited offer was actually true for once, and I’ve now stopped the adgroup.

Giving me a net loss of $1.94

Product “B” – This is a higher price point Clickbank Product ($97) and was fairly high profile on launch, but seems to have trailed off somewhat, I use CBTrends.com to check the gravity and popularity over time, very useful.

It is a product that I signed up for but didn’t get to grips with simply because I haven’t found the time to look in to it in depth.

The results? Well it’s had 13 clicks out of 618 impressions (2.1%CTR) at a cost of $7.42 ($0.58 per click) which has resulted in one sale (commission of $62.10) giving me a net profit of $54.68

Product “C” – This is a simple report on a currently topical/popular subject and is very well written with an excellent sales letter (I’m actually using the guy who wrote it for my next product).

The product costs $47 and the commission is $23.50.

The results so far..

In a week I’ve had 13 clicks out of 206 impressions (6.31% CTR) at a total cost of $3.52 ($0.27 per click) which has resulted in one sale, giving me a total net profit of $19.98.

So the total net profits in a week for the three adgroups is just $72.72

Now that doesn’t look particularly impressive does it..?

But you have to bear in mind it took me less than 3 hours to find the products, get the affiliate details, buy the domains (choosing the domain names was probably the most difficult part) and set up the AdWords campaigns.

So for just 3 hours work, once, I should get an extra $250-$300 profit each month.

Now think about what would happen if I did three a day, five days a week for a month..

That could/should/would (depending on your outlook on life and IM) give me an income of between 5 and 6 thousand dollars a month after the first month!

Which makes me ask the question “Why am I writing this blog instead of getting on with it…?”

Now you should realise why I don’t post to this blog very often, I prefer to get on with the work itself, it pays better..

Based on this test group (of IM based products) the Day Job Killer tactics work. they’re not spectacular, but they can bring you significant results, although the question remains as to whether they will be long lasting, so I will report on this test group again in another three weeks or so.

I should also mention that I did use the same DJK techniques to promote DJK itself and managed to make a profit of over $100 on that as well.

OK, so on to the second new test group.

I decided that as most people using the DJK techniques would probably be concentrating on ClickBank products (and possibly Amazon and PayDotCom) I would dig out another less known affiliate network and try that out.

I chose one that primarily lists software products to see how well it does. I’ve had some fairly significant success setting up mini sites for software affiliate programs using SEO over the last couple of years, using techniques similar to those detailed in “Niche Marketing On Crack” (see NMOC Test Post).

This time I spent over two hours finding the products, it wasn’t as easy as I’d expected with this particular affiliate network as the commission rates on many of the programs were lower than I prefer (less than 15% for many!), bt I eventually found 5 that I felt are worth testing.

The products are all software, but other than that they vary a great deal, they are in different markets and have different commission levels and price points, so I really wasn’t sure what to expect, especially as most were in markets that I’ve not “played” in before.

now this is turning in to a longer post than I had anticipated, so I’m not going to detail all the results, but just give an over view.

In summary the test is not in profit so far, in fact there hasn’t been a single sale to date..

The test as a whole has received 161 clicks out of 8,318 impressions, with a total cost/loss of $25.95

The CTR varies from 1.48% (on the biggest market product) to 6.85% (on the highest priced product).
When I set up the project I decided on a total budget of $100, but on the results so far I am going to stop some of the adgroups after one more week if they have still not resulted in a sale.

The highest click rate products have both had 50 clicks so far, if they still have not had a sale in another week (which should also be around 100 clicks) I will stop them.

At the moment I am planning on just keeping the two higher priced products running to give them more time as they would bring in far higher commissions if the result in a sale, so I feel it’s worth giving them more time, although I will not go over the original budget I set.

AS a general rule of thumb I look at closing a test/adgroup if it costs me more in clicks than the product itself costs or twice as much as I would make in a single sale commission, although for the higher priced products I sometimes lower that limit..

Well, I’ve gotta go do some real work now, hope you found this useful.

Bit of a school boy error really, I only briefly looked at the traffic figures when I did the keyword research and it didn’t occur to me that they were a bit to low, as I wanted to err on the side of caution for my first test, but let it be a lesson, a campaign will not be profitbale if it gets no clicks at all.

So tomorrow I’ll spend a little time digging out another product group to test and setup a new campaign..

I do have two longstanding AdWords Campaigns for two of my own “product” sites that are profitable, but then it’s a lot easier to be profitable with AdWords if you’re promting your own product as you have a higher profit margin, although that is no guarantee.

I have run a few successful AdWords campaigns for affiliate programs before, but now for a couple of years, so reading the ideas and techniques outlined in Day Job Killer (DJK) got me interested in revisiting it as a traffic generation system fr affiliate programs.

I’ve decided to start with a couple of fairly high ticket items and one low price item from Amazons “Associate” (affiliate) program.

Sorry, but I’m not going to specify exactly what the items are just in case the campaign does turn out to be profitable..

I’ve picked the products simply by having a browse through the Amazon market place looking for things that I’m interested in and trying to find some with a fairly high price. To be honest it didn’t take very long (probably less than 15 mins), but that may be because I’m a bit of a fussy git..

The products are a cross over of electronics and health, so should attract some serious buyors and although I’ve targetted a particular supplier of the products (simply because they seem the best), only one adgroup will actually be focused on a specific product ID for it’s keywords, the others are using keywords that cmbine the manufacturers brand name and the “type” of product, which is fairly tightly focused.

I have searched on the keywords in Google to see how much competition there is and what sort of ads are running and the majority of the ads appear to be fairly unspecific to the keywords and therefor untargetted, hopefully giving my ads the edge they will need.
I have set up a single AdWords Campaign with five seperate adgroups to track the groups within the product range seperatly to see if any perform better.

I’ve set up the campaign with a $50 daily spend to start with and the 4 high priced items with a max bid of just $0.15, which may need raising once I get a better idea of the competition and ROI, whereas the lower price item has a relatively high max of $0.10.

I’ve been a bit lazy and only set up one ad for each adgroup for the moment, once I have a better idea of the traffic levels and CTR for the single ads I will lok ad setting up variations to try and tweak the CTR as high as possible so I can reduce the max bid spend.

For the moment I have set up the campaign using Amazon.com and focusing on the US market, although I suspect it is one that will also do very well in the UK market, possibly even better due to the nature of the product.

and of course I have switched off “Content Network” and just gone for search for the initial test. I may consider testing the Content if the Search traffic converts well enough.

The Campaign has just gone live – 6am GMT 20th Feb 2007

I’ll report on the results as and when I have anything significant to report, which will really depend on the searches for the “market/products”.