WebSiteNights

The good news is I finally started my main PPC campaign. If you remember it is in a very very competitive niche.
So what did I do?
I researched my niche. I researched my competition. I built a small site with an opt-in page. I even tested a small Adwords ad to see if I can get traffic.
Now…
Here is the bad news.
Prices for my keywords have shot to the sky… almost doubled.
It almost seems illogical to me. My competitors from 4 weeks ago are still there on google’s front page. But if my calculations are right - according to their ad costs they would have to convert more than 8% just to break even! I was dreaming of 5% and I simply can not compete with their prices.

So what happened was I finished setting up my ads with my original prices in mind and as the day passed I noticed I was not getting even 1 click.
Every hour I raised the price for my ads. I more than doubled my original price intention. But that had brought me no more than position 12.
So now… almost a day later I still have no click. No visitors and no commissions to report.

When I was investigating the competition I started suspecting that most of the ads in the front page were built by the same source. These ads and the sites that they were leading to were too similar in content. The design is different… the product reviews vary… but the basic selling principle is right.

The only way I can see these guys making a profit is if I was right. Someone, is building these sites and flooding google’s top Adwords position. This way they are inserting of their affiliate cookies to most of future buyers. Which site pushed the cookie really does not matter.
The other thing I noticed that all these sites are promoting various products through affiliate links EXCEPT for 2 products which had regular links pointing to them.

So now I’m thinking BIG conspiracy theories… I have a feeling that these product “sellers” are the ones flooding Adwords and their affiliate linking to other products was just meant to cover their advertising costs in case someone chose not to buy their product.

So what now?
It’s late at night and I had a disappointing day.
I will have to think of other ways to push this product on the NET or I will just have to try PPC campaign #2.
If #2 fails as bad… I will have total reevaluation to do.

These are not happy times at this challenge blog, but hey… nobody promised immediate success right?

Hoping to have something better to report later.
Nadav
PS
Content site’s highest day was $4.5 through adsense.
Still $95.5 short.
PPS
Carla is the latest to join our challenge blogroll, be sure to check out her site.
PPPS
Too many PS’s is a sign that I’ve been reading too many sales letters the last year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 at 1:08 am and is filed under $100 a day challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.