PPC has been a pretty good source of traffic for me and MaxWeb’s offers are a great fit for PPC, given their cost per action.
Here’s my regular PPC strategy, which has been very successful in my case:
Choose a product with a high CR and EPC
Start by promoting it on Bing Ads
Optimize and re-test the campaign (for at least 30 days)
If the campaign is successful, scale it with Google Ads
Throughout the time, I experimented a lot with ads (especially with Bing Ads, as they are cheaper and the competition is also lower). There are 2 types of campaigns that work best for me:
Reviews of specific products (that allow brand bidding)
“Best of” articles
I have seen lots of case studies on brand bidding - so for this one, I will focus on “best of” articles instead. So let me show you how I take advantage of non-specific keywords (with a high search volume) and promote specific products.
For this case study, I chose to promote Zenith Labs’ Omega Krill Oil - which is a MaxWeb offer I have had a lot of success with (in terms of PPC). I promoted it through an article called “Best Omega 3 Supplements” and I listed it as my top recommendation there.
Now, this is a profitable campaign that I run constantly. In some months, the sales are higher and in other months they are on the lower side. But since it’s really well-optimized, I have made a profit even in my weakest months.
Here is an overview of my experiment on Bing Ads:
Offer Name: Zenith Labs Omega Krill Oil
CPA: $90/sale
Average Bid: $0.25
Targeting Country: US
Total Spent: $106.56
Total Earned: $810
Total Sales: 9
Profit: $703
Landing Page
I promoted this offer through a “Best Of” list article. Here’s a scheme of this article:
Short introduction
#1 Recommendation (Omega Krill Oil in this case)
General Benefits + Advantages + Downsides + CTA
Option #2
Option #3
……..
- Final Thoughts
I created a landing page with a number of fish oil supplements that I talked about in detail. I pointed out their advantages and downsides, why they are a good option, and what health issues they would help. Zenith Labs’ product was the first one on my list.
Once my content was written, I made sure to optimize my page so that my calls to action and affiliate links were visible are easy to click on.
Creating The Ad
The next step was making the actual ads. I was planning to go with something simple and after
doing some keyword research, I decided to target 10 keywords with some small variations (they
were actually 5 different keywords, but I targeted both Phrase and Exact match type for all of
them).
I made sure to optimize my ads so that they have the targeting keyword in the title, URL, and
description. In this way, I managed to get some really high-quality scores (10/10 for most
keywords) and my average CPC was much lower than that of my competitors.
Next, it was time to set up the ad features. I only chose the United States as a targeting country, because the product I was promoting was only available for sale there.
I made sure to have my ad running between 8 AM - 11 PM, as most people that were really interested in my product would be willing to buy in that interval. From my experience, the traffic above 11 PM is not as high quality. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer to have my campaigns running until 11 PM.
When it comes to devices, I tend to have fewer conversions on tablets than on desktop and mobile, so I start by decreasing the bid for tablets. I sometimes decrease my bids for smartphones as well, but in this case, the campaign seemed to be performing fine as it was, so I just left the smartphone bid alone.
Bidding
I always make sure to go for manual bids, so that I can bid as low as I want. In most cases, I start with $0.3 per click and watch how my campaign performs for 3-4 days. In many situations, I was forced to raise the bid in order to show up on the first page (which is my goal).
But once I did raise the bid, I was able to slowly decrease it again, due to my high-quality score.
I started with a $0.3 bid in all of my keywords.
Results
I leave the campaign with the initial settings for a few days and then analyze its results.
In this case, I was able to go even lower with my bids and get an average CPC of $0.25. I did this by gradually lowering my bids.
At the end of the month, my results with this campaign looked great. I paid around $106 for 429 clicks, I had 9 sales and made a total of $810, which brings me a profit of about $703. The secret was optimizing my ads and decreasing my bids to the lowest level possible (that would keep me on the first page).
However, this campaign hasn’t been as successful in every month. In some months, it would make me a profit of $100, while in others it would make me $500. But on average, I would make a $300-$400 profit out of it. And most importantly - even in the worst months, I was still on a profit, so this campaign would never lose more money than it would earn.
I’m currently thinking about scaling it and starting to run it on Google Ads as well, for a bigger impact and some higher profits. But I think that’s possible with any ad, as long as you optimize it, keep testing and retesting it, and remain willing to work on it until it brings you (at least) some profit.
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