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Testing and Evaluating Clickbank Opportunities
gfmarais
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 May 09
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22 May 09 10:18 am

Testing and Evaluating Clickbank Opportunities

Hi Guys,
So, I located a high gravity Clickbank product that supplies good affiliate support including long tail keywords. I stuck to the first world English-speaking countries (to avoid siteseers). In AdWords I've set up 2 Adgroups, a Direct Link as well as a landing page in my product review website, using the same Ad and Keyword set. To discourage Freebie hunters, the Ad tells them straight out that this concerns an e-book and the pricetag.

I then started shooting PPC traffic at it - only on Search mode (not Content) so I could see which keywords perform. I gave them a solid daily budget for a start to see what Google will do in terms of Impressions. Being in South Africa, if you set the budget too low then the Ausies, New Zealanders and UK have used it all up before the sun reaches the US and Canada!

Guess what, Google favours the website almost 3 to 1 above the Direct Link. The Clicks, however, seem to favour the Direct Link - but that could be happenstance as it is exactly the same Ad and Keywords in Search Mode.

The reason I tried Direct Link is because then I am sure the visitor saw the Merchant's Pitch Page so I can gauge conversions. At the moment I don't know whether the visitor to my Review ever clicked on the link to the Merchant's Pitch Page! (I saw somewhere in Affilorama a code you can insert on your Landing Page to set up a Hit counter for click throughs - I still have to set this up if I can find it again).

But here is the crunch - conversions, conversions, conversions! When do you know that you are on the wrong track? You obviously need to give your campaign sufficient click opportunities to prove itself.

Just look at the mechanics - Iet's take an example: The merchant pays $32.53 per basic transaction. If you want a 100% ROI then you will need a conversion rate of 2%which means that you can only afford to pay $0.33 per click! As you drop you Max CPC, however, AdWords down grades the position of your ads to the point where they don't use up your daily budget!

Continuing with our example, at a conversion rate of 2% you need to get a sale every 50 clicks. On so small a sample, however, your sampling error is + - 3.8% (@ 95% confidence level). To be sure that you have a 2% conversion rate you will need to increase your sample to 200 clicks. At $0.33 per click this amounts to $66 which is a heck of a price to pay only to find you are backing a lame horse!

How do you guys go about testing and evaluating Clickbank opportunities before you abort?

Francois
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wollowra
Posts: 869
Joined: 14 Mar 08
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23 May 09 1:22 am

 Wow, for a first time poster what a post..lol
In answer to your question, I think people will have a different tolerance to the amount they test before moving on.
I also think people need to go wider/broader on their keywords.
Then narrow down the ones that work for them.
Yes this does cost money, but your either in the game or not.

Let me give you an example of a campaign I used..
200 clicks @ .32 = $64 adspend
1% conversion ( 2 sales ) @ $32 each sale = $64
=$0 profit
so my goal would be to get my cost per click down through ultra targeted and relevant content, good keywords and testing and increase my conversions later on.
so..
200 clicks @ .29 = $58 adspend
1% conversion ( 2 sales ) @ $32 each sale = $64
=$6 profit

Now we need to work on the conversion rate.
Now lets increase the conversion to 1.1%
I will increase the clicks to 1000 as its easier to see for the example.
This would be over a week or so.

1000 clicks @ .29 = $290 adspend
1.1% conversion ( 11 sales ) @ $32 each sale = $352
=$62 profit

I agree PPC can be very tight with profit margins and probably 5 out of 6 campaigns will be losers... but once you find a winning campaign you can at least build on that.
That's why people quit PPC so soon because they can lose money before making any profit.
Also, you need to spend the money on your PPC costs and may not see your affiliate sale checks for 1 to 2 mths... so you need some cashflow.
Personally if someone spends $100 on testing a campaign and does not break even or close to it anyway..then I would pause the campaign and move on.
Hey its not as easy as it looks but the rewards are definitely worth it.
Of course people could just give up and work till they're 70..
I hope not..
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jpastorizo
Posts: 629
Joined: 01 May 09
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23 May 09 5:29 pm

 Hey Francois,

What a post considering it's 1st! And what a reply from Troy! Nice to see you again buddy.

Yes PPC can be expensive! I should know because I started affiliate marketing doing PPC! The amount you allocate to testing a PPC Campaign depends on what you can afford to lose. PPC gets fast results but if you don't have it right you can easily lose your shirt and hundreds and hundreds of dollars without breaking even.

The sample size of 200 clicks to test a campaign is good provided you can afford to lose the money to pay for the 200 clicks. Remember there are niches that has a CPC of more than $1 and there are some that have less then $0.30.

I dont know which niche you are marketing to, but if you are in a niche where you can do geo-targeting then I suggest you test geo-targeting. The reason I say this is because when you do geo-targeting your ad will rank highly in the sponsored listings while paying a low CPC. This way you can geo-target maybe the top 10 States in the US (top 10 in terms of searches for your targeted keys) and be able to pay less for the 200 clicks as compared to targeting the whole US. When I was into the "Home sale" niche doing a CPA offer (zip submit), I tested geo-targeting for my adwords campaign and I was paying half the CPC.

Just my 2 cents...or maybe it's worth 4. LOL


Renato
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gfmarais
Posts: 2
Joined: 12 May 09
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25 May 09 10:44 am

 Hi Troy and Renato
Thanks for the advice - will give it a try.

What range of conversion rates should one expect?

I also noticed from Google Analytics that I get a fair amount of traffic other than from Adwords. My bounce rate, however, in horrible being 70% plus. What would be an acceptable bounce rate?

Francois
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Site Admin
maryt
Posts: 3224
Joined: 16 Apr 12
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10 May 12 9:31 am
gfmarais wrote:Hi Troy and Renato
Thanks for the advice - will give it a try.

What range of conversion rates should one expect?

I also noticed from Google Analytics that I get a fair amount of traffic other than from Adwords. My bounce rate, however, in horrible being 70% plus. What would be an acceptable bounce rate?

Francois


Hello,

70 is really high. Do you have an update on your bounce rate? If you are still having problems on that, you may want to check your keywords selection. Perhaps use keywords that contain "buying intentions" such as dog training books, dog collars for sale, etc. Aside from that, you may also look at the way you present your content. Always write content that are very useful (of course use your keywords here as well).

Mary
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sjustify
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12 Sep 12 6:28 am

 how can i made this thing can people here help me please
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maryt
Posts: 3224
Joined: 16 Apr 12
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12 Sep 12 9:44 pm
sjustify wrote:how can i made this thing can people here help me please


Hi sjustify,

Welcome to Affilorama. :)

May I ask where do you want help on?

It would be good to tell us more so we can better assist you.

Regards,
Mary
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