Today is the last day of the PPC challenge over at Matt Levenhagen’s forum and my last update. It’s going to be a short, one, as I haven’t been able to add any more campaigns this past week.

Taking a look at the image to the right, you’ll see :

Impressions: 87,922
Clicks: 889
CTR: 1.01%
Cost: $182.17
Commission: $115.82
Profit: - $66.35

So, I ended up spending more than I made, but that’s OK: now it’s time to go back and analyze things and make adjustments. As a matter of fact, I already paused a few ad groups.

During this challenge I found some amazing merchants that I want to explore/promote further: some I realized would do better with video promotion, some with bum marketing, and some by even creating sites around some of the products. In the end, that is the reason I blasted in the first place: to find merchants and/or products to promote.

Am I disappointed I didn’t reach my goal of 50? Yes, a little. But honestly, my first inclination was to set a goal of 20 blasts (one for each business day of the month), knowing I was going on vacation, and would miss some time. And I ended the challenge with 23 blasts.

Now it’s time to pick a challenge for the month of April, and I am not sure what to do. Here are my options:

- create sites for my existing domains just sitting there (probably 25 or so). This would be intense, but the results would probably be awesome!

- organize some of my PLR and use it to update several sites I have but really neglected for the past several months

- work on creating links and revenue for 2 sites I have and would love to flip, but not in their current state, as I want as much as possible for them.

Any thoughts? What would you like to see me do? Please comment below.

It’s time for another update on my PPC challenge. Last week I was on vacation in Jamaica, so no I made no progress in adding more campaigns, but my existing campaigns continued to run.

So, let’s see how I am doing.

So far, I started 15 campaigns

- 1 to  a landing page

- 8 direct to a merchant on CJ

- 6 direct to merchants on SAS

Here are my starts as of now:

Impressions: 56,342
Clicks: 435
CTR: 0.77% (this went up a little bit since my first week, but it’s still to low)
Cost: $99.68
Commission: $72.34
Profit: - $27.37 Yep! I am in the red, but that’s normal during the blasting. As I learn more about what my market is looking for, I’ll add more negative keywords, remove key phrases that are not performing, etc.

What is important is that out of 15 campaigns, I had 4 sales: 2 from the same campaigns, and one each from two other campaigns. this means I have 3 winning campaigns, which I can tweak and improve once my blasting is done.

My 3 FaceBook ads are yet to get a click, but I received an email from them, with suggestions for improvement. I didn’t have time to apply their suggestions yet, but it’s on my list for this week.

Also for this week: I need to step up my blasting, or I won’t be able to do 50 campaigns. I am going to try 15 campaigns this week, and I’ll be back next Monday with another update.

If you’d like to learn how to successfully learn PPC marketing, check out Matt’s Campaigns blast report.

As promised in my original post about this PPC challenge, this is an update on what I’ve been doing to meet my challenge goals.

Just as  a reminder, I am shooting for 50 PPC campaigns before March is over: that means 2 campaigns a day, 5 days a week, and this past week, I haven’t met that goal. I did 7 campaigns:

- 1 to  a landing page (I purchased some domains a while ago for specific products, and never did anything with them, so built one small site and I am directing some traffic to it with PPC). This page is monetized with a specific product from Amazon.com

- 1 direct to a merchant on CJ

- 5 direct to merchants on SAS

My ads are getting too many impressions, and not so many clicks, which makes for a very low CTR (see image above). That’s not good, and it means I probably have to tweak my ads.

Here are my starts as of now:

Impressions: 19,427
Clicks: 96
CTR: 0.49%
Cost: $34.52
Commission: $61.18
Profit: $26.66

This week, I need to get more serious, and start even more campaigns, as next Sunday I’ll be heading to Jamaica for a few days, and the following week I won’t be adding any campaigns.

I’ll let you know how I am doing next week.

If you’d like to join me and others in this challenge, there is still time: check out Matt’s Campaigns blast report before you get started: it will save you from making many mistakes.

The clicks are good because they’re clicking on your URL and heading on over to your website where you can close the sale and make a profit.

There are different PPC programs through various search engines and companies however the most popular PPC service is Google AdWords.

It’s free to participate in AdWords however, before you to sign up there are a few questions you’ll want to answer including:

1. How many people are looking for your products or services? Keyword tools will help you find this information and it’s key to creating an effective PPC campaign.

2. How much will your click’s cost? Google’s traffic estimator will tell you how much it’ll cost you each time someone clicks on your ad. This is important because you can quickly spend thousands of dollars and if that’s not in your budget you need to design your campaign carefully.

3. Who are your competitors? Using Google, search for your keywords and pay attention to the ads that pop up in the right hand column of your search results. These are your competition. Study them carefully. Scan through the first couple of pages. When you see an ad that’s a repeat, you’ve gone through your competition. If there are more than 50 ads, you may want to reconsider a PPC campaign with those keywords.

Setting Up Your First Ad

Once you’ve determined the keywords you want to include in your ad, it’s time to write your first PPC ad. AdWords has a strict character limit. You get 25 keywords for your headline, 35 each for the next two lines of text, and then your URL. This means it’s time to get creative. You want a headline that captures attention and hopefully promises a benefit and then two sentences that inspire curiosity, evoke emotion, and motivate clicks through to your website.

Each PPC ad you create will be optimized for very specific keywords and should thus send readers to a relevant web page. If, for example, you have a PPC ad selling a dog training eBook and people who click through land on a page that sells dog care information you’re not going to have the same conversion rate as if you sent them directly to a sales page for that dog training eBook.

Once your ad is written, the rest is easy. Simply log onto or create your Google AdWords account and follow the steps. Set your budget low (you can always adjust it), create your ad, enter your billing information and you’re good to go. Oh, one final thing. Track the success of your PPC ads. You can fine tune them for optimal results, delete them and start over or add to your campaign.

So, one of your campaigns is doing well: you have a few sales, and wonder what’s your next step. Can you take it to the next level? Make it more profitable? Let’s talk about expansion, as Matt Levenhagen calls it.

If you are using the Adwords Editor, you can view your stats for that campaign and even search for specific parameters. Do you see lots of keywords that have no impressions? Remove them. Do you have keywords with  lots of impressions, but very few clicks? Delete those too, since they’ll pull down your CTR, unless they are making sales. If they are making sales, you need to figure out why your CTR is so low, and take steps to improve it.

Next, you’ll need to see if you have keywords that are getting clicks but no conversions. How do you do that? Well, hopefully you set up tracking at the keyword level when you first started your campaign. If a keyword is getting lots of clicks but has made no sales, it’s time to pause it.

After you you prune your keywords list, take a look at your ads, and start split testing your ads. Here is a little tip for you:  create 3 copies of the original ad (so you’ll have 4 of the same ad), then create a new one by just changing the headline or one of the description lines. Now you’ll have 5 total ads running, but you’ll only be showing the new ad 20% of the time, preventing you from losing too much if the ad will not perform.

You should also figure out how much you earn per click. This is easier to do when you promote a product with a specific price, but it’s important to at least get an idea of your even if the products you promote have different price points. To learn how much you earn per click, divide your profits by the number of clicks you paid for. Now you know how high you can bid to break even. If your ad position is low, you might want to try increasing your bids to get your ad higher on the page, since ads at the top of the page usually perform better. Of course, always test: your specific ad may do better in position 4-6, rather than 1-3. Each campaign and product is different: one size does not fit all.

Go check on your campaigns and see if you can expand on your winning ones. If you want more information about how to tweak your affilaite PPC campaigns, check out the Campaign Blasts Forum: it’s absolutely full of excellent information, and everyone there is willing to help.

Did you know that PPC can help your business grow tremendously?  Of course, you need to take the right steps in starting your campaigns, but it’s  possible. Read on to  discover how pay per click can help your business grow.

1. It Provides Results-Driven Marketing at an Affordable Price

Using PPC ads allow you to target your specific audience
- Its pinpoint accuracy can reach a local clientele within a 20-mile radius of your business, if that is your best market.
- You can design ads using specific keywords selected to reach those online buyers already interested in your products or services.
- The price per click is totally determined by you and dependent upon the popularity of the keywords you choose.
- There are no ugly surprises, no hidden fees, simply pay for those whom you draw to your ad and convince to click through.

2. It Equips You with Tracking Tools

Depending on what software you choose for your PPC campaign, there are a wide variety of available tracking tools designed to let you see just how pay per click can help your business grow.

For example, Google AdWords can help you identify the most effective keywords or keywords phrases that will give you the most return on your investment. You may also use Google’s contextual targeting technology that automatically matches your ads to similar ones within their network for greater ad performance.

Placement Performance Report enables its users to see exactly where their PPC ads appear and supplies proven results for future ad development.

Using one or all of these tracking tools lets you hone your PPC ads and help your business grow far faster than yesterday’s traditional, and much more expensive, marketing methods.

3. It Builds Brand Awareness

For as little as a few pennies per click, you can build brand awareness as effectively as your larger, richer, and more experienced competitors. Pay per click actually helps your business grow by equalizing the playing field. You no longer have to take a backseat to the large chains with deeper pockets because your name is less known.

4. Get Results From Day One

Once you start your campaign, you can see results almost immediately: you’ll know within days, if not hours, how your offer is performing. Rather than competing by size or experience, you can now position your business at the top of the market based on quality, performance, price, and ongoing customer service.

5. It Teaches You to Create a Buying Atmosphere

Not only will PPC ads help your business grow by showing you how to reach your targeted consumers, but it will also teach you how to convince interested prospects to purchase by selling the benefits of your products and services. PPC ad campaigns help your business grow by suggesting strong selling words as well as emotionally charged keywords. Words like “free,” “discount,” and “limited weekend offer,” will help you move your prospects to make a buying decision.

If you want to learn more about how to grow your business with PPC, learn form the best. Matt Levenhagen created the Campaign Blasts system, and hundreds of people learned how to build their businesses with his method, me included. Here is a link to Matt’s Campaign Blasts system.