Strike 3! Google "fines" me $5.00 for not ensuring my Ads had a 0.5% CTR!

Google says:

We’d like to notify you that the AdWords system has slowed the delivery of some
of your ads because one or more of your keywords isn’t meeting the minimum
required clickthrough rate (CTR).

It’s critical that you review your ads as soon as possible. If your keywords continue to perform below this minimum requirement, the system may disable them completely.

According to our records, your account has been slowed twice already. Because this is the third time the system has slowed your account due to low performance, we will charge you a $5.00 fee to restore it.

That makes my campaign a break even. No profit and no loss. I got back what I put in! Doh!

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Well shit happens…. This is my 2nd time of my Google AdWords experience that this has happened.

Here’s the email Google sent me:

Hello Vincent,

We’d like to notify you that the AdWords system has slowed the delivery of some of your ads because one or more of your keywords isn’t meeting the minimum required clickthrough rate (CTR).

It’s critical that you review your ads as soon as possible. If your keywords continue
to perform below this minimum requirement, the system may disable them completely.

Also, please note that if the system slows your account due to low performance three times in a row, we will charge you a $5.00 fee every third time you restore it.

Please visit https://adwords.google.com/select/performance.html?hl=en_US
now to learn how to:

- Restore your account.
- Optimize your ads.
- Avoid this process in the future.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to send us an email by logging in to your account and clicking ‘Contact Us.’

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Please take this email very seriously every time you receive one of these. I got "fined" $5.00 for failing to adjust my ads the first time I got this email. It’s a little bit like baseball. You get 3 strikes and you’re out. Google is pretty strict about your keywords. Don’t be like me and place broad keywords that get searched on too much and nobody ever clicks on those keywords.

Here’s what I did to rectify this situation. I hope it works. I did pretty much the same as one of the previous posts where I deleted under performing keywords. Today, I added additional Ad Groups to store the promosing keywords. So I have 5 or 6 more Ad Groups with very closely related keywords.

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I had 1 disallowed keyword because it was an illegal item I think?

I also had 1 typo in my Ad copy… My mistake. I wouldn’t have known about the first error but the second error is totally my fault. Imagine spending 2 hours and then having the campaign disabled.

I also decided to do some housekeeping for Campaign #10, the one I made 2 sales with. I am shocked to find that I have over 380 clicks but still on 2 sales. Damn! I expected at least 1 more sale by now. My Google fees are catching up with the sales commission I made. I am going to break even soon but that’s not what I want. I want to profit.

The merchant was kind enough to remove the pop up and create another page specifically for Google AdWords for me. I recommended him to use a "pop over" or "pop in" as some people might call it. He has a pop up on his main sales page that has a limited time offer that entices the reader to take action immediately and some free recipe ebook or something like that.

I have been reading some Google AdWords blogs and I decided to follow Barry Stein’s rules for deleting under performing keywords.

1. Delete keywords with over 200 impressions and 0 clicks
2. Delete keywords with over 200 impressions and less than 0.5% CTR
3. Delete keywords with over 100 impressions and keyword positions of over 50

I hope this will increase my overall CTR and reduce my CPC….

Other tweaks I made were:

1. Reduced the max CPC to save some money in case it really doesn’t make any sale
2. Limited my countries to Singapore, USA, Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Virgin Islands (US), Bahamas, Babados, Ireleand, South Africa… I might have missed 1 or 2 more countries. I used to select ALL Countries and that might have caused a lot of unmotivated buyers?

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All right I made 2 sales within 100 clicks but now its stagnating. I made the 2 sales in the first 2 days. Now the campaign is at about 250 clicks. I’ll assume the conversion rate to be 1% now. So much for the 2% conversion rate the merchant mentioned eh?

I would expect another sale in 50 more clicks to make that a total of 300 clicks. I will test this campaign till I hit 400 clicks. If I don’t get at least 4 sales, I’ll pull the plug on this one or I might tweak it or even use the same campaign for another affiliate program while keeping the keywords and all intact?

Right now, I am pumping out new campaigns spending about 2 hours for each campaign. I don’t wish to spend 8 hours on 1 campaign if its not making me any profit. I will spend more time on a campaign that is making me money than 1 that isn’t tried and tested to work!

My confidence is up at the moment. I’m happy that I broke my sales limitation of ZERO! Hah! Now I can say I made at least 2 sales… much better than ZERO sales. I’m getting better and better after each campaign.

In the next few days, I’m going to talk about some of the emotional shifts in my mind that enabled me to make these sales.

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I found this fitness affiliate program and I decided to give it a go. The affiliate program claims to have 2.2% conversion rate but I didn’t believe it at first.

I created about 5 Ad Groups and got them up and running in less than 2 hours as mentioned earlier but hours later they were disabled because the sales pages has got a pop up window.

I emailed the merchant and asked him for another page without pop up and the affiliate link at the top of the page. Guess what? He did that for me within 12 hours! Fantastic! And he even gave me a copy of the ebook for free! Talk about customer service!

I made $18.50 from 50 clicks sent to his web site since I re-launched the campaign with the landing page without pop ups and affiliate link at the top! That’s about 12 hours ago. I can’t wait to see if the next 12 hours will give me a similar result!

It’s a great start… I screwed up 9 campaigns and this 10th campaign is finally reaping some rewards for myself! Yeah, keep it up!

Categories: Vincent's Updates | 1 Comment »

There are quite a number of Affiliate Networks you can join to promote the affiliate programs in their directory. Without a doubt there are thousands of affiliate programs in the directories but which one do you select?

From my current understanding, I will only promote an affiliate program if they meet this criteria:

• They pay at least $15 per sale to make it worth your time and effort
• Look at the merchants 3 month and 7 day EPC (Earnings per 100 clicks) to get an estimate of whether the affiliate program is worth marketing for you. Naturally the higher the better. Divide the EPC number by 100 to get the gross profit per visitor (e.g. $58.39 / 100 = $0.58 -> Each visitor will give you a gorss profit of $0.58)
• Focus on affiliate programs that offer one product or various versions of 1 product instead of promoting a shopping mall with tons of products that will confuse the visitor
• Their sales letter is professionally written and design without too much HYPE
• Affiliate program link is not too obvious or better to not display it at all sometimes

So far I’ve used a few affiliate networks but I still prefer those that allow me to sort the affiliagte programs by EPC. Seeing all the categories isn’t very useful. Affiliate networks that I know of that allow you to view affiliate programs by EPC are CJ.com & ClixGalore.com. There might be more. I am still looking for them.

Too bad most affiliate networks don’t really do much to help the affiliates sort through the rubbish affiliate programs. Its like searching for a needle in a haystack to find a profitable affiliate program.

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I left Campaign #9 as it was for the last 2 days. I think I’m beginning to understand why I got such low number of clicks.

When I bid on the keywords, Google gave me an estimate of around 1 - 2 clicks a day for the amount of money I was willing to bid. So why the heck am I trying to get 30 clicks a day? Stupid isn’t it? Too get 100 clicks… I might have to wait 20 days! Almost 1 month for testing 1 campaign. Now that’s a great lesson for.

I looked around on CJ.com last night and I couldn’t find any program worth promoting. I still do not how to look for programs and that web site. Can’t really sort the affiliate programs properly in their list like ClixGalore.com does.

Anyway, I found a fitness related ebook and I created a Campaign in less than 2 hours! I don’t wish to waste time on testing the campaign. So looking at the estimates, I should get 100 clicks in about 2 days if all goes right. I only created 4 Ad Groups for this trial. Don’t wish to spend over 8 hours like the previous Campaign and go nowhere with it. If this doesn’t work I’m pulling the plug and I’ll look for another affiliate program.

I’m learning lots ever since I took the plunge and became "hootless". I don’t really care if I make it or not. Seems like the more I want it, the more it eludes me. The Sedona Method book was right. You must learn to let go of your wants, once you do that, things become more effortless when you’re actually doing it. Now I have learnt to stop focusing on the struggles and actually take massive action without the usual amount of resistance.

I’ve got screenshots of Campaign #9 for 17 August 2004 and 18 August 2004 for your viewing pleasure.

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I’ve decided to leave Campaign #9 to run its course till it hits 100 clicks. If I get ZERO sales, then its goodbye to that affiliate program.

I’m scouring CJ.com right now for affiliate programs to join. Not so sure how to do it properly with Clickbank.com and I heard ClixGalore.com is a rip off! Maybe that’s why I lost money promoting 2 affiliate programs there?

I stumbled upon some great Google AdWords blogs and resources lately. I will compile a list of all of them and put them up in the "Resources" section. I don’t think I have a reason for not profiting from Google AdWords from now on. I’ve met people who have made money with it and they’re sharing it online for free! Just wish I found them earlier!

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I think I made an error in my last post.

In Rodney’s report Eye on the Gold, he mentioned that "make sure that you disable the ad optimizing option with Google when you are launching your campaign. This option from Google is supposedly “smart�? and will show the ad that performs better more times. The problem with this Automatic Optimization feature is that it really does not allow your ad to truly and accurately be tested for performance. I call it the “lazy & uninformed mans�? optimizer. I have also done extensive testing with using this option and have found it to not work very accurately."

In one of my posts at Phil Wiley’s forum about Google Adwords, Dave Brown said "First of all, you’re right to uncheck the box. But when you say that ‘They will try their best to display the ads 50/50. That is not what we want when we are split testing the ads!’ that’s not correct.
If the box is checked, Google will NOT display your 2 ads 50/50. They will display the one with a higher CTR more often. In fact, if you’re split testing, you DO want your ads displayed 50/50 in order to get the clearest picture."

What the heck… I probably misunderstood what Rodney was talking about, a big thank you to Dave for clarifying it for me! He has a Google AdWords Checklist at his web site. Be sure to check it out.

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I learnt something today after reading Rodney’s report! I now know why I find it hard to test my ads!

In every Google AdWords campaign settings, you’ll see "4. How often to show my ads" and by default the option "Automatically optimize ad serving for my ads" is checked to allow Google to optimize the display of the ads. They will try their best to display the ads 50/50. That is not what we want when we are split testing the ads!

Today’s tweak of the day… Turn off Google’s Ad Optimization!

Like yesterday, I’ve taken a snap shot of my campaign in a PDF file. You may download my campaign PDF to visualize how it looks like.

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