A Modest Profit
Yesterday I spent $11.56 on Google AdWords. I converted two sales totaling $67.80. Final profit to me was $56.24.
I have paused my (former) primary campaign indefinitely. It’s a niche in the financial industry which is very competitive; too competitive for me. I knew how hard it would be to be successful before I got into that market, but I still wanted to see if it was possible. And it nearly was! I ended up spending around $160 and made back $117 over a 7 day period. If I had been approved for the publisher I originally applied to - who offered higher commissions - I would be ahead by around $100. The fallback publisher I ended up with did not have nearly as high of a commission, despite the fact that my website converted at a high rate. One ad was converting at around 30%! It was simply too expensive to send PPC traffic there. It also didn’t help that my emailed questions to an affiliate manager went unanswered.
If I can’t earn back enough money to pay for even the advertising fees, there is no point in continuing the campaign. In the future when I have more capital to work with I’ll try again, because I think I can eventually get it working. I’m focusing on more profitable endeavors until then.
Today also marks my first foray into Yahoo Search Marketing. My initial impressions are positive. For this particular product I’m promoting I am receiving 1.5x - 1.7x more traffic than from Google. Although the CTR is slightly lower than AdWords, the fact that I’m getting more impressions means that my Yahoo ad has nearly twice as many clicks as my Google ad. It remains to be seen if the traffic converts, however I’m cautiously optimistic.
I may find myself using Yahoo PPC more - especially if I’m in the black at the end of the day.
