Second Attempt at PPC Affiliate Marketing
Introduction
A few weeks ago I had started my first PPC to CPA marketing campaign. Although I lost money (about 15% of my $500 investment) I gained valuable data and experience. Since then I have been doing research on my second attempt at affiliate marketing. Zac Johnson was promoting this Ultra Green Tea diet campaign through Advaliant and it looked very interesting.
I knew there was already a good amount of competition because Advaliant is running a contest that gives big cash bonus’ to the affiliates with the most conversions. I decided to go with the Ultra Lean Green Tea diet campaign anyways. This campaign was different than my first campaign because instead of a simple zip code submit as a conversion, a conversion would only count after a 2 page form including a credit card submit. Obviously this will have a much lower conversion rate than the zip submit but it pays $26 CPS (cost per sale).
Research
The first thing I did in the process was research who else was running the same campaign as me. I learned this strategy later in the process during my first go at CPA marketing. This is exactly what I meant by gaining valuable experience even though I took a loss. There were 4 or 5 other competitors in Google’s sponsored results running the same Green Tea campaign. They all had very similar landing pages that matched the advertiser’s page. I did some quick keyword research with Google’s keyword external and found that I would be paying between $1.25-$2 for the top 3 spots in sponsored results. I grabbed a bunch of keywords for my campaign and began the setup process.
Calculations
Next I had to set goals for my campaign. This is an important step in the creation process because without a goal, you will just be spending money and will not know how to tweak the campaign properly. Using the same formula as the first time (CPA/ROI * CR = CPC), I plugged some numbers in and got a general idea of my goals for this campaign. ($26/2 * CR = $1) Calculating this formula gives me a conversion rate goal of about 7.7%. I wanted to give myself enough room to hit my targets, which is why I went with a CPC of $1. This also means I will get less clicks because I will be in lower ad positions.
Creating the Landing Page
The next thing I did was get a landing page. It used similar graphics to the advertiser’s sales page. One thing I did not want to do with this campaign was iframe the form onto my landing page like I did with the last campaign. The landing page is important for “pre-selling” your visitors, which increases the conversion rate. I also included all of the normal components of a quality landing page: contact info, terms of service, privacy policy, about etc.
Setting Up Adwords
The next thing to do was setup Google Adwords. I used my previous method of creating an ad group for each keyword variation, which allows me to directly test the quality score of each keyword. I setup a broad match version and exact match version ad group for each keyword. After setting the campaign live I closely watched the real time traffic of the site and for each keyword that came through, I would create another exact match and broad match ad group for it. I would continue this process until I extracted all of the different keyword variations from my broad match terms. My goal was to have traffic only coming from my exact match keywords.
The Results
I will cut the suspense here and now, I made money on this campaign:). After talking to a few of my affiliate marketing buddies, they all agree that making money on only my second try at PPC to CPA marketing is rare. That being said, let’s get into the results:
The above image shows the data for the entire life of the campaign, including the time it took optimize the keywords. Overall, I had 60 conversions (according to Adwords, which I will discuss soon) at a cost per conversion of $17.84. Since my CPS (cost per sale) was $26, you can easily calculate my profits with the following formula: ($26-$17.84) * 60 = $489.60 profit. Keep in mind this is only according to Adwords.
Many of you will ask: why didn’t you just leave the campaign running if you were making money? When I started the campaign about a week and a half ago, I was making around $100/day profit. My campaign was converting at ~10% and all was going well. I hadn’t even optimized my keywords or CPC’s and I was already making great money. Obviously this was very exciting for me and I thought I finally could move up in the affiliate marketing world. Then, basically overnight, my conversion rate dropped from 10% to 1%. I am still not sure what happened. I kept optimizing my keywords and ad groups, and they were optimized well. My QS was good, my CTR was good, everything seemed to be the same or better but no one was purchasing the product any more. Maybe everyone had purchased the product and there was no longer a market for it, but that seems unlikely. I kept spending money for another 5 days or so, losing money every day. Finally, I turned off the campaign and was happy with the profit I made.
The Curve Ball
One thing that really screwed with my profit margin was the fact that Advaliant was reporting 10 less conversions than adwords was. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the CPA was $1.20 like my first campaign, but since it was $26 per conversion, I really felt the discrepancy in my profit margins. I am still working with my account manager at Advaliant to try to figure out a way to level off the discrepancy, and hopefully they will do good by me. Since 10 conversions equals $260, that means my profits dropped from about $500 to about $240. Advaliant said that the discrepancy was caused by Adwords double counting conversions because of visitors reloading the page, but I do not agree with that. I proved that individual keywords that were converting were not being counted, so that meant double counting was impossible.
Conclusion
Overall, this was a positive experience. I made money and gained even more experience with PPC to CPA marketing. I spent about $1000 and came out with anywhere between $1300 to $1500 depending on whether I get the missing conversions. I am still confused as to what happened when my conversion rate dropped to basically 0%, so maybe someone reading this will have an answer. My experience with Advaliant was decent and I am still waiting to see if they make up the missing conversions to me. I will update everyone with whether they do or don’t. Keeping affiliates happy is very important, so hopefully they do the right thing. I would like to note that they were willing to wire me my money early so I can pay off the credit card bill I had accumulated, which was a big plus for them in my mind. I am already doing research into my third campaign, so check back soon for updates!
Twitter Me!
Raphael Says:
Nice work matt!
looking forward to hear the 3rd one
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Matthew Berman reply on June 30, 2008 5:07 pm:
thanks Raphael, you’ll be the first to hear about it
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Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Jeremy Waller Says:
It’s great to see someone who is transparent with their affiliate marketing. Hope your next campaign goes even better for you!
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Matthew Berman reply on June 30, 2008 5:07 pm:
thanks jeremy!
i hope my next campaign goes better as well:)
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Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
David Scurlock Says:
nice. not too many people will share their trial and errors, nice to see. keep up the good work. I will add you to my blog.
Thanks
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Matthew Berman reply on June 30, 2008 6:28 pm:
hey David,
thanks. yea, i figured since i was done with the campaign it couldn’t hurt to show how exactly i did it. i would have loved to read about someone else’s trial and errors before starting:).
thanks for the link! always appreciate it
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David Scurlock reply on June 30, 2008 6:33 pm:
I am looking to get into affiliate marketing myself but very few actually want to help with their experiences of trials and errors. I guess its a competitor thing, why would another affiliate want to help others, but it is good for you to share your trials and errors, i wish other affiliate marketers were more open and helpful.
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Neil reply on June 30, 2008 9:55 pm:
I don’t understand why you stopped the campaign… It’s making a profit and you didn’t even start to scale it yet.
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Matthew Berman reply on June 30, 2008 10:33 pm:
hey neil,
i stopped the campaign because after the 4th day, the conversion rate dropped to 1%. my CPC’s kept going up, even though i was optimizing everything. i filtered out all of the low performing keywords and still nothing worked.
i would be happy to hear an explanation or suggestions:) i am still not sure what happened.
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Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
David Scurlock Says:
I see stuff like this on DP all the time. How do these guys pull this off?
$92 a day is nothing to sneeze at congrats.
I on average make about $400 per day with CJ, and about $125 per day with EPN.
My original goal was $100 per day. Then my goal was $10,000 per month (which I will smoke this month). Now my goal is $1000 per day. My highest day so far has been around $725.
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Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
AffiliateObsession Says:
Good work Matt. Thanks for the information that you provide for the new guys
It really helps answer questions about affiliate marketing.
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Matthew Berman reply on June 30, 2008 8:47 pm:
thanks for the comment! i’m still a new guy myself:)
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Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
JamesH Says:
It sounds like the advertiser was scrubbing your leads. Look at this thread over at wickedfire, it explains what could have happened:
http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/33696-why-scrubbing-leads-legal.html
If you don’t think thats it, and figure out what happened, please let us know. The same exact thing happened to me on my first campaign.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 1, 2008 2:48 pm:
hey james, thanks for the comment.
I have been reading that thread actually, but I just dont think that is it. The green tea campaign wasn’t actually leads, it was real sales. They have no reason to scrub sales in my opinion…right?
A sale is a sale, no matter where the traffic comes from. Correct me if i’m wrong.
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Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Greg Says:
why not try another CPA company with a similar offer? i think Hydra has some green tea offers.
and its not unheard of for a CPA company to blatantly shave even real sales…more $ in their pocket.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 1, 2008 3:30 pm:
ahh…so shady!
I was thinking about trying another green tea offer, but would i be able to use the same keywords? if not, i might as well try any niche right?
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Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
zip code info Says:
[...] [...]
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
JamesH Says:
Yea, try the same offer on a different network: split test it. See what happens then. If you generate a good amount of leads, I think it makes sense to say that the guy was scrubbing yours leads. However it could really just be something else; I personally have no other ideas as to how or why that happened.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 1, 2008 7:03 pm:
no one else has the same offer…they all have similar wu yi offers. i am just wondering if the same keywords will convert for the differnet offer.
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Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 6:17 pm
linkdan Says:
Were you keeping an eye on your competitors? It could be that someone else came into the niche and stole your market share…
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Matthew Berman reply on July 4, 2008 9:29 am:
yea, i was. but the thing i didnt understand was that i was still in the same ad position.
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Posted on July 4th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Kirby | Pinoy Money Blogger Says:
Hey Matt!
Came here from Zac. You two have two things in common, you sincerely help other people. I mean that with utmost sincerity.
Im on my way of searching my own gold with affiliate marketing. Once i do, I promise to follow your lead.
Keep it up buddy!
-Kirby
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Matthew Berman reply on July 4, 2008 9:28 am:
hey kirby, thanks for the kind words:)
i hope you do well with your search, let me know if you need any help.
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Posted on July 4th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Niche Affiliate Marketing Says:
I don’t know why you’re sharing this info with the world. This is valuable data you should keep it to yourself. That’s my advice when it comes to affiliate marketing. I could run with this data and start the same campaign with some other network. Obviously I won’t do that but you should definitely keep this thing to yourself. When you do hit the campaign with +ve numbers you will look back to your blog post and think i shouldn’t have made it public. Trust me there are tons of copycats and freeloaders out there. Just gotta be careful. You don’t want anyone to know if this campaign is doing bad or good for you. That’s should be kept private. That’s why you will never see any affialites blogs sharing their campaign. niche or offers information.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 8, 2008 11:30 am:
I was done with the campaign, so I decided to share my experience. I wouldn’t share the data if the niche was still profitable, but it is. Plus, I like to help noobs:)
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Niche Affiliate Marketing reply on July 8, 2008 1:39 pm:
Sure, that’s not a bad idea and helping others should also be the goal. It all depends on the person. This is part of the reason why I made my blog, to share my experience with others. But I wouldn’t share my niche or campaign info there. I have already had someone steale my ads and landing pages. I wouldn’t want that to happen again. Lot of headache. I try to keep things generic on my blog. But niche blog you have here nonetheless. I’ll put it on RSS feed.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 8, 2008 1:42 pm:
thanks! appreciate the kind words.
i took a look at your blog, great info. looks like you just started it, have you been in the “game” a while? i started my blog a while ago but just started in ppc -> cpa. shoot me an email, we can talk. my contact info is on my contact page:)
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Posted on July 8th, 2008 at 10:33 am
cyberkiller Says:
Did you start the campaign back up? Saw your landing page under some green tea keywords.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 9, 2008 9:16 am:
yes, just wanted to test the waters again, nothing really there though. i am going to buy a new LP and try facebook ads however. hopefully it converts well
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Posted on July 9th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Kirby | Pinoy Money Blogger Says:
Mat!
Youre running the ads again? Maybe some more tweaks? Wish you all the best. Hope everything goes well. Ill be coming back to check on this.
Listen, I might need some help with starting my first PPC campaign, I was wondering if youre kind enough to lend a hand to a noobie.
Way to go buddy! Keep it up!
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Matthew Berman reply on July 12, 2008 9:46 am:
hey kirby,
i’ve been trying a couple things out here and there. i also have been experimenting with facebook a lot because of the $250 in free coupons.
and sure, i’d be happy to help you out. shoot me an email with any questions.
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Posted on July 12th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Chris Williams Says:
Matt,
This is really great. I read and enjoyed each of these two articles.
I have never done this, but I now plan to try it soon. My question is, what is the timing like?
Google drafts your bank account twice a month for their fees? Is that right? So how long did it take for you to get the proceeds of the sales you had made?
I am just curious about what kind of budget you need to look at on this.
Thanks,
Chris
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Matthew Berman reply on July 12, 2008 8:39 pm:
hey chris,
I think they charge me every few days. I could be wrong. I charge it on my credit card and pay it off at the end of the month. I get paid once a month but every network is different. If I get to $1500 per week I can get paid each week.
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Posted on July 12th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Dave Fitzpatrick Says:
Hey, nice job. I still can’t get a single conversion, but I am direct linking. That is a really nice landing page. How do you design them?
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Matthew Berman reply on July 13, 2008 9:30 am:
well, what are you promoting? where are you getting traffic from? if you are getting zero conversions from a decent amount of clicks, it is time to test something new.
i have been looking what other’s people’s lps have been like. but i have recently found a guy who i purchased my most recent LP from. if it converts well, i will write him a good review.
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Dave Fitzpatrick reply on July 13, 2008 12:05 pm:
Well I just got 1 e-mail convert. I’m a bit more optimistic now and I started promoting something else. I don’t think the product I was promoting had a good landing page.
BTW, I’d appreciate not receiving an e-mail every time I comment on your blog.
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Matthew Berman reply on July 13, 2008 12:48 pm:
hey dave,
you need to manage your subscriptions (in the emails you receive) to stop getting notifications of replies. if you dont want this in the future, just don’t check “subscribe to comments”
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Dave Fitzpatrick reply on July 13, 2008 2:31 pm:
i don’t subscribe to comments, i get an e-mail saying thank you for commenting and there is nothing to say stop sending it
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Matthew Berman reply on July 13, 2008 2:41 pm:
oh, that’s my comment relish plugin. i dont think there’s a way to turn that off unless i remove it all together.
Posted on July 13th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Martin Says:
Hey Matthew, I’m just feel little sad on your CPA, I used to promote some of these offers too but i didn’t get that much volume.. That’s nice but mine paid $38 per leads… i guess it’s the same offer tho. that could even get higher if you ask for increasing. My network pays bi-weekly too, you don’t have to wait monthly. And how did you get that landing page? It looks nice… hit me up on facebook if you want to talk.. waiting for ur reply
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Matthew Berman reply on July 30, 2008 9:25 am:
wow, who were you getting $38/sale from? same campaign?
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Martin reply on July 30, 2008 11:22 pm:
I don’t think it the same cause there’s one that also pay $25 in my network. Anyway, how did you get that landing page and keywords? What tools did u use for it? My conversion rates sucks…Just turned of the campaign lately.
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Posted on July 30th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Jason Says:
Hey Matt,
Did you try running that offer on the adwords content network? You don’t have to worry to much with the QS and your CPC are lower compared to the search network. You get lots more traffic, but you deal with a lower CTR, but gain higher conversions in some of my testing.
Another thought, is to run the offer on Yahoo and MSN and TEST $100 on each search engine for conversions.
You may already know this, maybe not, but one way to find the same offer in the cpa networks that has the highest payouts is to go to offervault.
-Jason
[Reply]
Matthew Berman reply on August 11, 2008 9:55 am:
hey jason,
i didnt try running it on the content network because i really couldnt figure out how to get impressions, clicks, CTR, or conversions…nothing was working.
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Posted on August 8th, 2008 at 8:16 pm