PPC Newbie (Not Really) ;)

Originally Posted by Mike_01

Hi Guys,

I hope you all are doing really well . Being out of the affiliate marketing for a long time, I have now decided to make another entry. And this time it would be more of automated processes, except the constant manual PPC monitoring.

I did the same long back (a year ago or may be more than that) but somehow changed the track but now I am thinking of repeating the history with the new records and milestones for myself .

To get started, I would be concentrating on both SEO & PPC (Google) activities and hoping that I can make it work with both the cases. I will be keeping my main stream of traffic from PPC (Google to start with) initially and then later from the SEO along with the PPC (may be on other Search Engines too). Now to get the game started, I would be needing advice from the industry experts like you and any help or support would be very much appreciated

I have designed my PPC plan for Google Adwords as follows and any corrections/suggestions/advice’s to crack down the nut would be really helpful;

1. Find out a niche you have interest in, so that you should keep yourself attached to it and put the best of your efforts.
2. Get the list of the best selling products from the market research, affiliate networks, merchants, competitor’s websites research etc.

ok

3. Make a list of product names and find out the keywords (long tails too) using Google keyword selector tool and your general perception.

ok

4. Prioritise your keywords and start writing every search string you will try if you really wanted to buy it online. (Also not to forget, have the list of negative keywords too.)

blah...paying for keywords...

5. Write down the ads, titles, description for the ad groups.
6. Once ready with all above, go ahead and load the data into the Google Adwords.
7. Schedule the Ads + Turn off the content network.
8. Keep your eyes wide open & use your brain to analyse the data (clicks on the ads, clicks to the merchants, click to sale conversion ratio, total cost, total earning) & make modification in the Adwords Management Area accordingly.

How good or bad the planning is? Any suggestions appreciated.

Now I have set of questions and I would be seeking your advice on the same;

1. How to track the keywords as the visitor will be moved on to the merchant’s website by clicking the affiliate link and there will be no transaction on my website? (The website would be in PHP – if this helps).

keyword tracking? analytics,webmaster tools, backend scripts?tunnels?

2. How to decide upon the bidding value (CTC) for the individual keywords in the first attempt? Though the final CTC is dependent on many other factors but what should I first enter?

3. Any help on analysis of the Google Adwords data & sales report would be really nice? I don’t really have any template at the moment which I can use as the base platform for the analysis hence if would be really good if anyone of you can help me with it. Or I can also make one if you can show me some pointers.

tunnels. analytics and webmaster both have good keyword tracking.even on non click thrus


4. What is the minimum time frame do you suggest me to try the PPC, at least before I say “It’s not going the way I expected or I can’t afford the loss anymore”. Most of the time it depends on how much I can shell out but still what do you all recommends.
5. Should I try using “Keyword Inclusion” into my titles or keep it handmade?
6. Any special do & don’t which I have missed out in my planning or have planned it wrong?

At the moment, this is all I can think of and I would really appreciate if you can help me sorting things and moving towards the bright, sunny affiliate path.

Keeping my hopes high, I would be keeping you all updated with the progress of the PPC campaign.

Kind Regards,
Mike…