Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Search / PPC (Adwords, Bing, etc.)

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Google Ads - Should I have to keep this campaign alive? (8)

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Hello guys,

for this project I work mostly on SEO but I've wanted to test Google Ads.

I've set up a Google Ads campaign based on keywords like "online guitar lessons review", "best online guitar lessons" that brings to this comparison review page: https://www.fachords.com/best-online-guitar-lessons/

I've included negative keywords like "free, youtube, cheap" in order to exclude those who are looking for free stuff

Targeting US

I run the campaign for 10 days, here are the data:
Clicks: 442
Impressions: 29200
Avg CPC: 0.60 euro
Cost: 266 euro

and I've made only 1 sale (payout $30)

Here below you find other campaign data:


I wonder what should I do with this campaign.

I suspect that people, when searching for "online guitar lessons review" or "best online guitar lessons" or similar keywords, are still in the evaluating stage and not ready to buy yet.

Any advice will be appreciated, thank you!

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The results look pretty poor indeed and unless you can really get a much lower CPC, this won't work. There is one thing to consider here though, review sites (I used to run a number of them) often convert several days down the line. It's also quite common for the users to return to a review site and convert later on. So it would be a good idea to wait some time to see whether you're getting sales from return visits.

BTW: I had the best results with search traffic, when I was bidding on the terms that were either directly the names of the sites/services/products reviewed or closely related to it. Not sure if the guitar programs you're promoting are copyrighted or brand bidding is banned, but I'd look into it if I was in your shoes. The generic KWs such as "online guitar lessons review" are too broad and will be hard converters.

I would also recommend to setup a landing page and send traffic to it, instead of the website directly. Write some short copy that would increase the interest or at least explain the user what type of site they landed on. It doesnt have to be a separate LP either, an overlay with the basic info could work too.

Another idea would be to setup "niche" specific variations/landers of the site, so you could target specific music types... rock music, electric guitar, classic guitar ... and the design of the lander would reflect that.

Right now you are too broad with both the Ads/KWs and the website itself, which can work great for organic traffic, but with a paid traffic campaign it's gonna be hard to convert.

How does the site perform with organic traffic?

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Hey Matuloo thanks, great insights

Yes, using the exact same landing page for SEO and Ads is a mistake, the first thing to change is to adapt it a bit for the Ads

Organic traffic, considering the competition in this niche and the number of free lessons on Youtube, is doing good.

Most of the affiliate sales come from a funnel like this:

- people find my site via Google Search (searching for chords ebooks, tutorials, and the like)
- they subscribe to download freebies
- they buy a course by clicking a link in the autoresponder emails. Classic funnel

I was in the hope to scale up all this thing by promoting the reviews, but at this point maybe it should be better to promote the freebie downloads (also via Facebook Ads), feed the mailing list and let the autoresponder do the sales work

@matuloo, we exchanged some messages about this bloody guitar lessons niche, maybe you recall me, I know that probably there are more profitable niches, but I want to make this thing works :-) this is my passion

Revenue and traffic are steadily growing since I've launched the site, simply the growth is too slow and I'm looking for a fast way to improve it.

Plot of organic traffic:


On the other side, I'm working creating new content every week (I've hired a great writer) that should help with SEO, and I'm creating my own product, a complete software for learning guitar (my "real" job is software engineer, but I'm tired of office politics and the like, affiliate marketing to the rescue!)

thanks as always!

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I fully understand! It's great to pursue a model that is your hobby at the same time. And a review site in any niche can be very lucrative, it just takes longer to grow it.

Looking at the screen, your traffic is growing nicely, what's the time period this screen is for?

Since this funnel is working well for you, focus on it with your paid traffic efforts. Collect more leads, then try to upsell a course to them. It will likely yield better results than buying traffic for the review site itself.

You can also try to fish for cheap KWs and feed the review site with such traffic. There are keywords like this in every niche, but usually they are pretty broad... but if they are cheap enough, why not?

The thing with paid traffic such as google ads is that the traffic is quite expensive due to the competition and what they are selling, because the KW targeting makes it possible to find users with buying intent, so it's not the best source to feed a site with... but, FB might work for this... when you build a dedicated page, collect a solid fanbase, then you can boost posts to them relatively cheap. And that can result in interesting traffic, especially when some of them share your posts. Might be worth a try to increase traffic levels of your review site.

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I started this website in 2013, but I've put in real efforts starting from 2016

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Right, so that explains the sudden growth at the end of the chart I'd say you're definitely on the right track, the growth has been really significant lately, keep doing whatever it is you're doing

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ahah yeah thanks! I just add that I'm collecting reviews and testimonials, they will be useful when I'll start to sell my own products.

Please have a look at the link below to get an idea:
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/fachords.com

thanks again!

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Yup, reviews/testimonials can help a lot, especially if you manage to present them in a believable way. On some of my review sites, I had even commenting allowed... it took quite a bit of moderation, because of all the spambots out there, but some of the human replies had a lot of value and I believe they improved the performance of the particular review, especially when several people commented and engaged in a discussion.

I even tried to start the discussion by posting some comments myself and sometimes it worked

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