Pay-Per-Call: Goal = $100/day Net (15)
So I'm back on STM! 
I discovered affiliate marketing at the beginning of 2014 and joined that June. Following a guide, I jumped into POF but quickly got overwhelmed by analysis paralysis and quit without ever launching a campaign. In October or so, I looked into offline copywriting and SEO. I found my way back to performance marketing by promoting Clickbank products on Bing. I wasn't successful at all. But, I had actually launched a campaign and spent real money. Then I hopped onto the Teespring craze and launched a couple of Teespring + Facebook campaigns. Overall I didn't break even, but I did earn a few dollars. I could now see the power of paid affiliate marketing. At the beginning of 2015 an AdWords PPC job opened up at a local marketing firm. They try to help contractors get leads. I'm a complete newbie, but I was able to land the gig. I really want to immerse myself in learning paid marketing, and having my 9-5 gig help towards that goal is a win.
In the middle of Feb I launched my first AdWords + Pay-Per-Call campaign. I followed the MONSTER Guide by iAmAttila and promoted LiveLinks. I ran it for a week before realizing that the offer wasn't that good. Here are those stats:
Spend: $149
Revenue: $122
Net: -27 (-18%)
That looks like a pretty good first week.
Though, it turned out to not be a solid foundation. I had a 10% call to paid-call conversion rate. But, the network was posting a rate of twice that. Also, when the call quality report came back, the advertiser gave my calls a poor rating. I contacted the network to see how others were getting it to convert with quality. But, they didn't have any insights. I finally called the offer myself and went through the signup process. Livelinks is definitely geared towards guys who are willing to lower their dating standards. My ads and lander made it seem like a premium club. I could've change things around to have a better ad-offer match. But I decided to pull out of Livelinks towards the end of Feb. It all seemed to be a bait-and-switch. Coincidentally, it seems that Google started to believe the same thing and is now putting the offer on review.
So this last Friday, I applied to most of the offers on RingPartner (I just have the legal offers to go through). Once approved and have access to promo numbers, I will call each one to get a feel for which are the most compliant and actually provide a satisfying experience.
I already had the Empire Today flooring campaign approved. So, I started running it last week. Here are those stats:
Mar 5th - 7th
Spend: $81
Revenue: $15
Net: -$66 (-81%)
It's not a total bust. I have about 4k keywords and am going to add about 100 later on today. They're Google suggestions. I definitely need to get better at finding quality KWs at a consistent rate. That's one of my major weaknesses. I'll make a separate post about my process and ideas for you guys and gals to critique and tear apart 
Anyway, that's a good for an introduction. If you have any questions or critiques - fire away and don't hold back! I'm on 100% disclosure mode until I get to $1000+ days.
Oh AdWords, AdWords, AdWords...
As I finished up that first update, I noticed something strange with my stats for the day. NO IMPRESSIONS! It turns out my account went under review. So, traffic got throttled. No big deal really. You've got to have patience with AdWords and all. Here's an hourly breakdown of yesterday's and today's spend. It's probably going to be sporadic spending like this for a couple more days, as AdWords finishes up their due diligence. 
The good news is that I got another conversion today. So, here are the stats from the last couple of days.
Mar 8
Spend: $31.27
Revenue: 0
Net: -$31.27 (-100%)
Mar 9
Spend: $29.34
Revenue: $15
Net: -$14.43 (-49%)
Optimization Actions Taken Today:
- Reduced my max CPC to $3. I'm using a flexible bidding strategy to bid for the top positions. AdWords will automatically updates the bids up and down throughout the day to keep my ad in the top position. I think that's nifty.
- Paused KWs with Est. Top Bids > $3. Everyday, I'll pause KWs where the bid is over my max of $3. Combined with bidding for positions, this makes sure the keywords left over are those where I can get prime location and that have a price that works.
- Reduced my daily budget. I was @ $30/day. But I really only budgeted for $20/day for the next month or so. Lowering it shouldn't matter too much, as culling high CPC keywords will open up more of the budget for other keywords to get impressions.
After culling, I'm down to just under 900 KWs. To bump this up over the next couple of days, I'll take a look at the KW scraping technique Leonidas talks about in the Premium23 course. Currently, I'm just using Google's Keyword Planner to generate KWs. I'll put in a relevant landing page and see what gets generated. Like I said, this is definitely my weakness. Even at my 9-5 gig where I look at AdWords all day, there's not really a process down yet.
An interesting note - even on mobile, search terms that converted were really long tail:
Hypothesis for the Next Couple of Days:
I predict that more of my low bid/ long tail keywords will get traffic now that I've cut out the higher costing keywords. Specifically, I'll get at least 10 top impressions.
I guess I should talk about my milestones. I not a big fan of these, because they're goal oriented instead of process oriented. But, they're a start...
- Earn 1 best position impression each day, for a week
- Earn 1 click each day, for a week
- Earn 1 conversion each day, for a week
- Earn $1 profit each day, for a week
- Earn $10 profit each day, for a week
- Earn $100 profit each day, for a week
I'd like to turn these into no-fail actions that I can execute each day, such as "Add xyz Keywords" or "Rotate ads". But I'm not sure what being awesome at this takes yet.
Mar 10
So yesterday, traffic was still throttled. I got 1 click for a total cost of $2.04. It did turn into a call, but it didn't convert. What would've been awesome!
Actions Taken:
- None. Let the account get back up to speed.
Mar 11
So today, things are looking much better. My budget was hit around 5pm. I'm guessing that AdWords is still figuring out how to distribute my impressions.
Good news is that I got another conversion.
Spend: $22.48
Revenue: $15
Net: -$7.48 (-33%)
Actions Taken:
- Added about 2300 KWs after going through a manufacturer's website and using the Keyword Planner to generate KWs.
Milestones:
- Earn 1 best position impression each day, for a week
-- 1/7 complete
- Earn 1 click each day, for a week
-- 1/7 complete
- Earn 1 conversion each day, for a week
-- 1/7 complete
- Earn $1 profit each day, for a week
-- 0/7 complete
- Earn $10 profit each day, for a week
-- 0/7 complete
- Earn $100 profit each day, for a week
-- 0/7 complete
Observations:
- From the impressions and clicks I received, the distribution is much more even. Previously, a few KWs would dominate the budget.
- The fact that I'm still budget capped is a good thing. If I do find consistent profitability, then scaling is just matter of increasing the budget.
- I've got to figure out a way to manage bids better. I'm still bidding on KWs when the bid would put me out of the top positions. I've seen some scripts that update bids. But that seems like it's just another point of failure at this point.
Questions:
- Has anyone scaled to Bing? How do you handle call conversion tracking?
Thanks for sharing!
Negative keywords are definitely important, try to avoid customer service related keywords for sure.
It doesn't seem that you are using the new call-only ads. You have to add the ad text creatives manually right now, so could be difficult on 20k ad groups 
. But, definitely worth looking into as it will increase your conversion rates.
-MIke
Originally Posted by ringpartner
. But, definitely worth looking into as it will increase your conversion rates.-MIke
I don't have the (mental) resources for that yet
After I'm done with these first couple of experiments, I'm going to switch up my keyword strategy.
Instead of throwing up 20K Keywords, I'm going to choose a smaller number (<20) of relevant terms.
My question is which offer should I go with and focus in on - with the goal of reaching $100+ profit per day?
Here are my options, all from RingPartner:
*New* Credit Counselling
123LumpSum.com - Structured Settlement
Continuity Dental Plan - Health Care
Empire Today - Carpeting
Empire Today - Flooring
Empire Today - Window Treatments
Free 5 Night Stay in Florida (3 nights in Orlando and 2 nights Daytona Beach)
Sylvan Learning - Tutoring and College Prep
Unsecured Debt Relief - FCCM
Or, which ones should I stay away from?
Any tips would be mucho appreciado.
Out of these campaigns I would recommend Unsecured Debt Relief, but I would suggest the Credit Card & Unsecured Debt Relief Now campaign.
Some other recommendations based on what I know has worked well on Adwords:
Repair My Appliance Now
Pest Control for Homeowners
Lawncare for Homeowners
- Jon
This is by far the most informational and useful paypercall follow along. I have no doubt that with your data driven approach and great attitude you will be seeing green soon. I am running 5 different ppcall campaigns and lately Adwords has become a battlefield... We are not only bidding agains affiliates but also the advertisers... Really tough space but it's definitely worth sticking through the hardships. I'll continue following this thread, great job...
Originally Posted by ringpartner
I'm guessing that the Empire Today campaigns do better on other traffic sources?
Originally Posted by ilooley
It is definitely competitive. And some affiliates are really kicking-butt. But after reading blogs like Malan Darras and Charles Ngo, I realized that I shouldn't be afraid of competition. Instead, I should use my newbie perspective to find an angle (both creative and strategic) that hasn't been exploited yet. And, if there are a lot of competitors, that means nobody's cornered the market yet.
When I got home tonight and checked the mail, I found a nice little distribution check from the team at RingPartner.
That's my first every payout from PPCall! Nice! Nice! NICE!!!!
Awesome, congrats!
Great follow along. Keep at it, these experiments will pay off soon.
So last week was one heck of a week.
Sorry for the late update, we (not me) decided to try a new month-end reporting process at my 9 - 5. I was taking work home for the first half of the week.
Then I got kinda sick. Pro-tip for fitness folk: a pistachio + cold-press juice diet is going to HURT.
So it's a new week! A fresh week!
I launched that credit repair campaign. It's a simple campaign with 253 KWs. My plan is to get a conversion or two. If it doesn't convert, then analyze in a day and launch another campaign at the start of next week.
That's a good start to the macro-experiments!
Anyways, have a good week!
Good to hear you survived last week. The pistachio + cold-press juice diet does sound painful , good luck with that.
Hope the new experiment works out for you. Feel free to reach out any time.
-Kevin
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