"PPC for Life Yo!"

That's right. I'm back at the PPC game. I guess I'm hooked. I am doing it a little smarter this time around and actually collecting the email addresses as I go. This way I can send them all kinds of offers and product sales pitches.

This is a gamble though because my cash reserves are running on empty. I have to be smart about every move I make from here on out.

Tapped Out

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to curtail much of my PPC marketing for a while. I've essentially run out of money. While I was getting some returns, I wasn't always making a profit. So, until I can get my finances back under control it looks like I'm going to be doing the SEO thing.

While this is slower, I think that I can make it work by focusing on very special keywords and outsourcing backlinks like a madman. I spent much of the day at work developing the startegy. It centers around developing these sites with the goal of each them making $375 profit/month.

I have a handful of goodies I've picked up over the past few weeks and they seem to work. I've tested them on my product's landing page and it has gone up from middle 2nd page to #9 for the main keyword. This method is not going to be fast but it will have to do for now. While I will probably spend $2000 implementing this strategy, it is far cheaper than PPC has been lately.

The Missing Link...

There always seems to be one. It seems like I always miss some part of the puzzle in this game and it keeps me from making the progress that I should.

That has always been the result of my lack of patience. I want everything and I want it NOW. No time to waste completely following strategy, just get me to the part where the money comes in. Unfortunately, the money doesn't come in if you don't take each actionable step when appropriate.

In this case, it is the part where I don't jump into Google Adwords until I have a real site ready. If this sounds familiar, it's probably because I've had this problem before. I get excited, Yahoo & MSN don't bring in the flood of sales I want, and I end up trying to go to battle with Google unprepared.

I think I've FINALLY learned this lesson. It's literally cost me thousands of dollars but I think it's finally sunk in. So here it is. This is the strategy that will get me from here to $1000/day profit.

1. Find a market - Actually, I've tested and narrowed it down to 5 markets to focus on. Of the 5, all but 1 is in the major leagues in terms of traffic.

2. Find a product for each market - Check!

3. Test the product - Check!

4. Build a full site - I keep skipping this part. I think I probably need at least 15 original articles.

5. Get it indexed and backlinked - Not there yet.

6. THEN go to battle with Google.


See, what I've found out is that Google makes things very difficult if you try to slink by with a mediocre attempt at a site. This is obvious with the "Google Slap" but sometimes they do it more subtly. Sometimes, they slowly drain your traffic until you're no longer getting enough to make sales. This has happened again and again on the sites I just throw up with using EzineArticles for pages.

I could be wrong but I think that this may be the key. Only jump into Google AFTER you've built a real site with real backlinks. We will see.

Over 10 Campaigns...

Now is the time to focus on getting them all profitable. For some of them, I'll be happy with a few dollars per day. With others, I want to hit triple digit profits per day. This will all come about through ruthless split testing. All of the campaigns I have now have been proven to be able to make money. Now it is just matter of getting that money consistently and profitably.

Ruthless split testing - this means doing so for both landing pages and ads. With the ads, I'll give them a minimum of 200 impressions each. While this is not really going to allow for outcomes a statistician would be happy with, it will give me good approximations on what works.

For the landing pages, I'm going to change them out once per week. Again, a statistician may want to burn me at the stake but I'm looking to hit high conversion rates fast. Doing it the slow way really burns through your money. Trust me on that.

Anyway, that is the focus for now. I'd like to get an average $30 Profit/Day/Campaign. Some will do more, some will do less but overall it will mean $300 Profit/Day.

Losing Focus

The thing that has helped me most over the past 4 months is focus. I've stayed focused doing just Clickbank products through PPC. Now the urge to jump back into CPA offers has hit again!

So far, I've found one winner out of the several CPA offers I've tested. Now it's just a matter of generating more volume (reoccuring theme with me and affiliate marketing). The problem is that now I'm not concentrating as hard on Clickbank. Not really sure what I should do at this point.

I can say this though, I have completely revamped my testing methodology. Before, I would set each test campaign to $45-50/day as the budget and use hundreds of keywords. Now I set the budget at $25 and use only a handful of keywords that look like they have potential according to the spy software I'm using. This makes a world of difference!

I REALLY want to go full time this year. I can't even describe how much I want that. I'll keep plugging away.

Reevaluation Time

All it takes is one thing to make or break you. One thing that you should have known months ago. If you had this one thing, everything would be differnet right now.

For me that one thing is this - start small.

I've heard so many times that you should find the people who are where you want to be and do what they do. Makes sense, right? There is a problem with that, though. The people who are where I want to be have a greater level of means to back them up.

So when they advise you to start your PPC campaigns with 1000+ keywords, think twice about it. They have the money to ride out the bad keywords and wait for the good ones to appear. For you and me, that strategy may not be the best way to go about things.

Sigh, alas.

All I can do is adjust and learn the lessons. The new strategy involves keyword research, spy tools, and other nastiness to find the "most likely to be profitable" keywords before I even launch a campaign.

Live and learn...

Quick Update

I'm currently at 6-8 campaigns that are running at the moment. The problem is that only 2 of them are converting consistently. There are 2 others that I know should convert well because I see them advertised all the time, yet they don't want to convert for me.

Not sure what is up with that. I suspect that it may be something to to do with the affiliate link the merchant gave me rather than using the one the network provides. I'm going to change that right now! Hold on....


Back. We will see what happens today with that campaign.

I'm also testing 2 new ones. One has converted once and the other has converted twice since Tuesday.

I just need these campaigns to convert consistently on a small scale. I'm talking about only 3-4 conversions/day and I'm looking at very big numbers for income. I talked to my coach before work yesterday and he suggested implementing exit popovers to build a list. I like the idea. This way, you only collect the email addresses of those who need to be hit 5-7 more times before they buy. I'm working on getting that going now.

My copywriter and I are developing more bonuses for my products. Things should convert better with these new additions. I'm also toying with the idea of developing a product in one of the affiliate niches I'm in right now. The way it converts as an affiliate shows me that it would definitely be worth the effort to do so.

Anyway, that's all for now. Talk to you later!