Tuesday, November 28, 2006

So What the Hell is Happening?

I am really surprised and not a little annoyed/frustrated at the moment.

For a start, we changed Telecommunication provider on our home phone. When this was proposed to us and all the 'benefits' were explained it looked like a really good deal.

I specifically asked if there would be any change to our Broadband internet connection and was told "No, there would be no change."

Our experience, in a word, is crap. Since the change-over we have not had any internet connection. I have not been able to do anything for two weeks and I am not happy. Supposedly it will all be back together today.

This means that I have not been able to monitor my Google Campaigns properly.

WARNING: Monitor your Google Campaigns daily.

I have spent several hundred dollars in clicks over the last couple of weeks with NO sales at all. This equates to several hundred people getting through to the Landing page and not going any further or, if they do, not making the purchase decision.

So what is the problem here? I am stuffed if I know at the moment, is the landing page not pre-selling well? Are they clicking through to the next step? Is the cloaking software causing a problem with the tracking of sales i.e. are sales happening but I am not getting credited for them?

I really don't know and I am not sure, yet, how to discover the point or points of failure. I have been thinking that what I might need to do is develop a php program to handle the linking and give me some way of tracking the clicks.

I tried crazy egg as a way of tracking clicks but didn't get much useful information from that. Fortunately the click numbers are still pretty low and therefore the cost is still manageable.

But I don't like paying for clicks which don't result in sales. This is supposed to be a profit making exercise, not an exercise in assisting Google to make money.

What I am happy about is that the Google Ads I have running are getting good CTR, some as high as 25% (as mentioned before) so I am obviously getting better at writing the ads. Now I have to get better at writing the landing page but I need to be able to track it properly.

Assuming the internet is available when I get home tonight I might be able to do something useful. If not, perhaps a rude letter to the telecommunications provider with demands for reimbursement of lost funds might be in order.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Some Excellent CTRs and Some Really CRAP CTRs

A little time has passed and still no sales. But, some of my Google Ads are really kicking butt WRT CTR I have several keywords which are getting ove 3% Click Through Rate (one that is 25% but I really don't think you can count 1 click in 4 views as a reliable indicator ;-) ).

I have other ads which, after 400+ views each are yet to record a click, now they must be really crap, still, no clicks means very cheap marketing. I have rewritten one of those Ads, hey, split testing means never changing the control and the new test at the same time.

I am not sure about the landing pages, the CTR might be quite good but the actual volume of visitors to the landing page is very low so I don't know yet if they can convert. Typically the conversion rate is about 1% so I would need to have several hundred visitors to even know if the conversion is reasonable and I haven't yet had that many.

However, it is very clear to me that the information I have learned from the Adwords Miracle book was well worth the money. This is the best CTR I have ever had with Google Adwords and has given me more confidence in my ability to generate an income from the internet.

Incidentally, I got an email from Chris at Project X recently with some interesting extra information and a couple of bonus books. You really get super value with this package. The package that keeps on giving.

How do you like the link cloaking I am using on this blog? The idea of link cloaking is to protect yourself from those people who take advantage of your information and marketing efforts to get all the information they want and then steal your legitimate commissions by hi-jacking your links.

I got this program from Jay but I had to make changes to the pages produced to make it work properly. I am not really happy with the package so I am not offering it here yet. I have asked Jay to make the required changes and he has said he would implement them. When he does I will post the link.

Time to close now but good luck with your own marketing efforts.

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