I'm Joe Dirt
Master Don Juan
Alright, let me tell you guys about something I tried on google. Maybe you guys have done this before, maybe you have some tips you can offer me.
Basically what I did was I signed up for affiliate programs that pay a commission per sale, around $20-$29 (lets say $25 average). The products are either software or informational products like eBooks (they even have dating eBooks).
The way it works is usually if you're a webmaster, you put their ad on your site and then when someone clicks through and buys within 60 days of the click you get money.
What I did instead was I signed up for google adwords and created an ad for whatever product I was advertising and made the URL my affiliate URL. I offered 10 cents per cilck and google automatically put my ad on people's sites. The idea is that I cut out the need for having a website to promote affiliate programs.
I figured if I get a conversion ratio of 1/2 a percent, meaning 1 out of 200 clicks results in an average of $25 commssion, at 10 cents a click I make $5 profit.
Raise the conversion ratio to 1% (which is typical online from what research I conducted, mostly reading about this kind of stuff), and every 100 clicks, or $10 spent, I make ~$15 profit. Not bad!
I set my budget to $50 a day, figuring that should get me 500 clicks a day and therefore anywhere from $25-75 profit depending on the conversion ratio.
....
Few Days Later...
....
The problem is that google showed my ad ~45,000 times, I got 11 clicks, so I had to pay google $1.10 and that resulted in no sales. Not suprising for 11 clicks since I figured it would take 100-200 to get a sale, but what upset me the most is that google didn't utilize my maximum budget I set.
The other thing that seemed odd to me was the low click through ratio. Since I was not paying by the impression I didn't mind so much that my ad was shown 45,000 times (normally at $1 CPM which is typical online those impressions alone would've cost me $45), but what made me think was that only 11 people clicked through.
That means one out of roughly every 4,000 impressions yielded a click, a click through ratio of ~0.00025%..... pretty bad.
So yeah, my clever scheme fell apart due to google's adwords. I am very disappointed, I really hoped they'd deliver the clicks for my daily budget, but they didn't.
Lessons I learned here are that for online advertisers, google adwords are a great way to build brand awareness, much more than deliver sales. Its also more cost effective to pay per click than per impression through adwords, if this click through ratio holds throughout other advertising campaigns.
Think about it, some sites charge $1 to $5 CPM (Cost Per Thousand, the M is Roman for 1,000 for those who arent familiar with internet marketing or marketing in general), so 45,000 impressions would've cost $45-$225. If that only yielded 11 clicks, that'd be $4-$20 per click. Ouch!
With google adwords, if $1.10 is the cost per 45,000 impressions, thats a CPM of just 2.44 Cents! Wow! That's like 97% lower than even the minimum CPM when you pay directly for impressions only.
At that rate, to get your advertisement shown on 1,000,000 websites - pretty significant coverage - it would only cost roughly $25.
I wonder if this click through ratio holds for banner ads and not just google adwords, because banner ads are more catchy and can be used to display a message more effectivley. If it does hold, then a banner ad campaign through google on a click through basis would be wonderful for raising brand awareness.
If the click through ratio is higher, then sabotaging such a campaign and purposley omitting call to action phrases so that the banner is noticed but not clicked would get that job done also.
So yeah, that is my lesson in online marketing for now.
If anyone has any other experiences with google adwords let me know. Maybe I am just writing the ads wrong or something or google is screwing me over.
I am planning on experimenting a bit more once I get some ideas so I can really learn about online marketing for one, and two to make some money.
Basically what I did was I signed up for affiliate programs that pay a commission per sale, around $20-$29 (lets say $25 average). The products are either software or informational products like eBooks (they even have dating eBooks).
The way it works is usually if you're a webmaster, you put their ad on your site and then when someone clicks through and buys within 60 days of the click you get money.
What I did instead was I signed up for google adwords and created an ad for whatever product I was advertising and made the URL my affiliate URL. I offered 10 cents per cilck and google automatically put my ad on people's sites. The idea is that I cut out the need for having a website to promote affiliate programs.
I figured if I get a conversion ratio of 1/2 a percent, meaning 1 out of 200 clicks results in an average of $25 commssion, at 10 cents a click I make $5 profit.
Raise the conversion ratio to 1% (which is typical online from what research I conducted, mostly reading about this kind of stuff), and every 100 clicks, or $10 spent, I make ~$15 profit. Not bad!
I set my budget to $50 a day, figuring that should get me 500 clicks a day and therefore anywhere from $25-75 profit depending on the conversion ratio.
....
Few Days Later...
....
The problem is that google showed my ad ~45,000 times, I got 11 clicks, so I had to pay google $1.10 and that resulted in no sales. Not suprising for 11 clicks since I figured it would take 100-200 to get a sale, but what upset me the most is that google didn't utilize my maximum budget I set.
The other thing that seemed odd to me was the low click through ratio. Since I was not paying by the impression I didn't mind so much that my ad was shown 45,000 times (normally at $1 CPM which is typical online those impressions alone would've cost me $45), but what made me think was that only 11 people clicked through.
That means one out of roughly every 4,000 impressions yielded a click, a click through ratio of ~0.00025%..... pretty bad.
So yeah, my clever scheme fell apart due to google's adwords. I am very disappointed, I really hoped they'd deliver the clicks for my daily budget, but they didn't.
Lessons I learned here are that for online advertisers, google adwords are a great way to build brand awareness, much more than deliver sales. Its also more cost effective to pay per click than per impression through adwords, if this click through ratio holds throughout other advertising campaigns.
Think about it, some sites charge $1 to $5 CPM (Cost Per Thousand, the M is Roman for 1,000 for those who arent familiar with internet marketing or marketing in general), so 45,000 impressions would've cost $45-$225. If that only yielded 11 clicks, that'd be $4-$20 per click. Ouch!
With google adwords, if $1.10 is the cost per 45,000 impressions, thats a CPM of just 2.44 Cents! Wow! That's like 97% lower than even the minimum CPM when you pay directly for impressions only.
At that rate, to get your advertisement shown on 1,000,000 websites - pretty significant coverage - it would only cost roughly $25.
I wonder if this click through ratio holds for banner ads and not just google adwords, because banner ads are more catchy and can be used to display a message more effectivley. If it does hold, then a banner ad campaign through google on a click through basis would be wonderful for raising brand awareness.
If the click through ratio is higher, then sabotaging such a campaign and purposley omitting call to action phrases so that the banner is noticed but not clicked would get that job done also.
So yeah, that is my lesson in online marketing for now.
If anyone has any other experiences with google adwords let me know. Maybe I am just writing the ads wrong or something or google is screwing me over.
I am planning on experimenting a bit more once I get some ideas so I can really learn about online marketing for one, and two to make some money.
