Nerdy Affiliate Adventures In Affiliate Marketing Land

Project Yahoo: Campaign Progress And Dating Niche Launch

Posted by JasperP on July 31st, 2008

So I’ve been trying to test out traffic on Yahoo with the purpose of taking the profitable keywords and moving it over to Google.  I’ve only been testing out the traffic for about 2 weeks using a specific method of testing broad keywords and text ads.

The general guideline is 10,000+ keywords (grouping <1000 keywords with 1-2 common keywords for each ad groups) and 10+ ads for each ad group.  The main purpose for testing like this is to get a broad view of what types of keywords convert as well as what types of ad copy converts best.

I optimize these campaigns every day by using the following criteria (These guidelines come from Artarmon42 and Keliix06 of ClickConsultants):

• Sort by clicks and delete keywords that make absolutely no sense
• Sort by impressions then by CTR and use the following guidelines
• Delete keywords with less than 250 impressions and no clicks
• Delete keywords with less than a 0.4% CTR

The exception to these rules is if the keywords appears to be highly targeted but I just need more data to verify.  I will let those type of keywords run until I reach 1-2x the commission.

So far I’ve learned quite a bit from this project.  I’m learning to micromanage a bit more and I’m paying close attention to the details of my campaigns.  I’ve also constructed my own keyword-level tracking script from the tips at the guys at ClickConsultants.

I might as well reveal the niches that I’m working on right now with Yahoo.  I think there’s no point in hiding the overall niche.  So instead of telling you Niche #1, Niche #2, etc, I can just tell you that I’m currently focusing on the following:

• Debt Consolidation
• Dating
• Online Games

Here is the summary so far:

As you can see, I’m still in the red with a negative ROI. I expected that because of the fact that when you’re testing a wide variety of things, it’s really difficult to pick out the good keywords and text ads on the first try (unless you’re either damn lucky or a super marketer!).

One thing that I noticed, though, after studying my debt relief offer in great detail was that my traffic was being sent to the Smiley Central International offer! Usually when that happens, it’s because the offer doesn’t accept traffic from a particular country.  In my case, I was sending traffic to Canada! I just changed that yesterday and now my CTR went from 1.0% to 0.5% overnight!  So I’m basically starting over again with the whole tuning process.  Oh well.  Lesson learned.

I did get my first lead for the debt relief campaign and this was after removing Canada from my geo-targeting options.  I’m probably going to re-import this campaign since the stats are all screwed up now due to the different traffic sources.

On another note, the dating niche that I’ve been working on is finally being uploaded to my YSM account as I write this.  Here are the stats on that:

• 16,665 Keywords
• 26 Ad Groups
• 16 Text Ads per Ad Group
• CPC: 0.10
• Daily Budget: $5.00

I’m probably going to let this one loose tomorrow as soon as everything gets approved.  I’m just waiting on my text ads to get approved.

Anyway, that’s the scoop on this project! Hopefully I can start making profits on these new niches soon!!

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New Affiliate Managers? Again?

Posted by JasperP on July 23rd, 2008

I don’t know about you guys, but affiliate managers seem to turnover like hotcakes!  Over the past year, I’ve seen my affiliate managers change several times across different CPA networks like in Clickbooth, NeverBlueAds, and MaxBounty.  I’ve had the same affiliate manager in AzoogleAds for awhile so it’s nice to see that he’s stable there.

NeverBlueAds is kind of weird too. I just received 2 managers – a business development manager and an affiliate manager.  One of them already disappeared and got replaced by a new one.

It might be because I haven’t really played with the CPA Networks in awhile, but I guess I’m getting passed around like salt and pepper on a dinner table.

Anyone experience the same things?

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Project Yahoo: YSM -> CPA Networks

Posted by JasperP on July 22nd, 2008

I just started working on a new project which involves working with Yahoo Search Marketing and CPA Offers.  I’m not going to state what niches I’m working on, but I’m going to share some of my experiences with it to see if I can make a profit from it.

I’m sharing this info with the guys in the ClickConsultants Forum.  So if you want more information on this project, you can follow along with me in more detail in the forum.  I haven’t made a profit with this project yet, so I’ll keep updating this blog and in the forums in the meantime.

Here are the project guidelines:

• Pick 2 Offers from the CPA Networks.  The network I’m working with is AzoogleAds and maybe NeverBlueAds.
• Generate a huge list of keywords: (at least 10k+ keywords)
• Group keywords with a common keywords 1-3 words long.  For example, if my keywords were “blue dog collars”, “red dog collars”, “black dog collars”.  Then my common keyword is “dog collars”
• Write at least 2 ads per ad group.  Use the common keyword for each ad group name and try to use it in the text ads.
• Upload to Yahoo Search Marketing and optimize campaign everyday.
• Write down impressions, clicks, CTR, # of Leads on daily performance.

Niche #1 Updates:

• 15,257 Keywords
• 36 Ad Groups
• 14 Ads per Ad Group
• CPC: 0.15 (now 0.25 after today)
• Daily Budget: $5.00

Niche #1 just became live today. I uploaded it on Saturday, July 19 and it barely just got approved today.  I guess they don’t approve anything on the weekends.

More updates soon!

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It’s Been A Month.. What’s Going On?

Posted by JasperP on July 21st, 2008

It’s been almost a month since I posted on here and it’s been a rough ride.  Google put the slap down on alot of campaigns.  Hit me pretty hard on one of my campaigns so it’s been tough trying to get everything back in order.

Anyway,  I got my Legalzoom.com stuff from my previous order and it’s very exciting to have my first offiicial LLC business!  There are alot of forms to fill out and stuff to take care of on the administrative side, but all in all, it’s nice to have some sense of organization in my marketing business.

One thing that I accomplished today was getting my business account from WaMu.  For those of you that don’t know, WaMu offers Free Business Checking!  I would have preferred to have Bank Of America but they charge monthly fees over there so I think I’ll try the free biz checking at WaMu first before I jump over there.

Here are a few pictures I took to show it off:

I still have some more forms I have to mail out and I still have to figure out the accounting side and how I’m going to transfer my business income and expenses from my personal account to my business account.  Hopefully it won’t be too big of a mess!

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