In continuation of our series of articles on improving your Google AdWords campaigns, we look at creating test campaigns.
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Our focus this week is on creating test campaigns. First let’s make sure we are starting on a level playing field. As an affiliate marketer there are many ways to promote other people’s products and Google AdWords is a very popular way to do so. If that is your “weapon” of choice, you undoubtedly have at least one Campaign dedicated solely to ‘test products.’ It is that Campaign and that process to which we refer.
New products to promote are the lifeblood of building your affiliate business. They can either be your next big success story or a huge drain on your resources. We will discuss how to pick those products in a future newsletter. Today, however, we will touch upon determining whether your test product is worth the effort you’re giving it and how long do you run with it before cutting loose.
The first rule of thumb is how many products do you test at any one time? That depends, of course, on how much time you devote to AdWords itself. If you are a part-timer that devotes 3-5 hours a week then two or three test products will be sufficient. If you’re a full time AdWords devotee, the sky’s the limit, but eight is about the maximum we would suggest. By the way, if you are a full time AdWords devotee, we’d love to hear your stories. Even we don’t derive ALL of our income from Adwords. If you do and it’s supporting you full time, we’d love to publish some of your insights. Give me a shout at: scott@build-passive-income.com
The second rule of thumb is how much do I budget for each test product? We prefer a cut and dried approach to that question, so we’ve developed a very easy formula. We determine our daily profit on all AdWords and multiply that by 50%. That is the budget we give to our entire test campaign. Within that campaign Google splits the budget amongst the specific test products. Here’s an example. Let’s say we make $50 a day in commissions. We then set our Test Campaign budget to $25 a day. Within that Campaign, the five different test products will get roughly the same daily budget with the stronger performers being allocated more of the daily budget.
The third rule of thumb is how long do I let my tests run? That one is fairly easy. We need to say, however, that in the early days of each test product, keep and eye on the impressions and clicks that you are getting. Weed out those generic keywords that are skewing your results. If a particular keyword gets 100 impressions with no click throughs, that is a good sign to erase it. If a particular keyword has over 100 impressions with a click through rate (CTR) of less than 0.5%, erase it. Likewise, if your entire test product has received 100 click throughs and no sales, it’s time to end the promotion of that product.
The final rule of thumb is when do I give my successful test product its own Campaign? In other words, when does it stop getting tested? Once you get your first sale on the product, keep a weekly tab on how much you’re paying to promote the product verses how much you’ve made on the product. If that ratio is 0.75 or less, keep promoting the product. If you make more than one sale of the product and still have a good cost to revenue ration, remove the test product from your test Campaign and create a new campaign just for that product.
So, we’ve covered the ‘how many,’ ‘how much,’ and ‘how long’ aspects of creating test AdWord campaigns. These rules of thumb will serve you well in building your AdWords portfolio while limiting your losses on bad products. Keep an eye out for future AdWords articles on budgeting, how to choose test campaigns, and basic keyword maintenance.
Remember, be good to yourself and never underestimate the power associated with the intensity of your passion.
Wayne and Scott Foreman are co-owners of
www.build-passive-income.com
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