As you all know I’ve been experiencing some hell with my web hosts. So far Lunar Pages has refunded me 3 months worth of unpaid hosting fees but Globat has not refunded my 1 year hosting fees yet.

I will be monitoring my web site, Oasis Fanatic too see if my current Host Gator plan is able to handle the activity there. If not I might have to upgrade my hosting plan or look elsewhere again! I do not plan to pay more than 3 months hosting fees at a time after this experience. Paying monthly would be fine for me.

Categories: Blog Updates | 3 Comments »

On 23 March 2005, Oasis Fanatic, my other web site, was suspended from Lunar Pages, our web host for using too much server resources.

This was a shock for me because I didn’t receive any warning about it even though Lunar Pages said they told me 7 days earlier.

Lunar Pages did not want to restore my site till I upgrade my account from its current $7.00+ per month plan to $20.00+ per month plan.

I simply did not wish to pay more money when my account used only 9GB of 40 GB bandwidth. Well, I found out that it is possible that my account will get suspended because I use too much server resources while staying within the bandwidth limits of 40GB per month.

So I looked for another web host and found Globat. I signed up, uploaded all my files and did everything necessary and found out they had a server error. So my web site couldn’t work on 24 March 2005! I could have waited another day for them to resolve the issue but I was way too pissed to continue. Terrible support… I called all the way from Singapore to reach a voicemail after holding for over 5 minutes. Closing the account is also a pain in the butt. I had to call in to confirm and initially the close account form didn’t work too!

Therefore I requested for a refund of my Globat fees and signed up web hosting at Host Gator on 25 March 2005. Its a good friday…. Oasis Fanatic is up after 2 days of web hosting hell!

Then on 25 March 2005… VincentRich.com got suspended!

Last month VincentRich.com was suspended because of late payments. I signed up for Host Gator and it seems like the PayPal payment did not automatically charge my credit card for my second month’s fees (February 2005). Therefore I created another PayPal subscription payment on 25 February 2005 to let PayPal charge me on the 25th day of each month. Phew! I thought my problems were over!

Damn! I was wrong!

Host Gator did not update my monthly fees to be charged on 25th day of each month. My payment day is still the 10th day of each month. Therefore I have exceeded my payment for over 2 weeks and I got suspended! Now I just got over 2 days of web hosting hell and I thought I could get a good night’s rest… I woke up this morning and I was back in hell again!

I changed my payment method to direct credit card charges. No more PayPal. Host Gator seems to have some issues with PayPal and I do not wish for something like this to happen again. Other than this payment issue, everything’s great with Host Gator.

What I Learnt From This Web Hosting Hell!

1. Your Monthly Bandwidth Don’t Mean Nothing!

I thought I was using too of my monthly 40 GB bandwidth limit with my Oasis Fanatic web site. The truth is I have used only 9 GB out of 40 GB bandwidth in March 2005! Lunar Pages wasn’t concerned about the bandwidth but the server resources I was using.

Here is a copy of their email to me on 24 March 2005:

Hello,

Please be advised that all tickets are answered in the order they are received and when you reply to your ticket before we respond, it pushes it back to the bottom of the queue and delays being responded to.

8 days ago we moved your account to quantz and emailed you this message to vincent@oasisfanatic.com

"Your account is utilizing excessive resources, causing a significant
degradation of services on the server. This is a shared environment and we can not allow one user to utilize the majority of the resources on a server as it affects all users adversely. Because of this, you have been
temporarily moved to the Quantz server. Please note that as a load balancing measure we have moved you from Laffan to Lyra a few months back. Now your usage stats is not suited for shuttle plan. A detail of the problem is shown below:

User Domain %CPU %MEM Mysql Processes
oasisf2 oasisfanatic.com 3.58 3.46 0.9
Top Process %CPU 35.0 /usr/bin/php
Top Process %CPU 33.0 /usr/bin/php
Top Process %CPU 26.0 /usr/bin/php

We moved you to Quantz first to solve the issue of the degraded service on Lyra and second as a courtesy in order to prevent any downtime on your site to allow you time to rectify the situation. Currently, your site is not
suitable for a shared hosting environment.

Quantz is not a production server and is not guaranteed to run in the same
manner as your old server nor will it support all functions you may have.
This is a transitional server only and is not intended to be a permanent
placement. Please make a decision on how you would like to proceed within
seven (7) days. After seven (7) days, your account will be suspended if no other arrangements are made.

You have the following options:

1.You may upgrade your package to the Enterprise Plan. The Enterprise Plan is a larger package designed for current customers who have outgrown our published shared hosting packages. For more information on the features and pricing, please see http://helpdesk.lunarpages.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=202. If you opt for this plan, you should still reduce the usage.

2.You may look for a dedicated server or other hosting solution. Please
remember that propagation takes up to seventy two (72) hours so if you decide on changing hosts you should allow enough time for propagation.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. We value you as a customer
and want to work with you toward a solution that is mutually beneficial.
Please let us know as quickly as possible how you would like to proceed.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us, we will be happy
to answer them. We are committed to making your hosting experiences pleasant and fulfilling.

Best Regards,"

We have received no response so today your account was suspended and another email was sent to notify you. You likely did not receive it since the contact address on file is on the domain which was suspended.

Best regards.

–
If you have any more questions, or if we can be of further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
Katrina Kane
Senior Remote Support Representative (RSRlll)
support@lunarpages.com
Phone: 1-877-LUNARPAGES (Toll-free)
Phone: 1-714-521-8150 (International)

What I feel about this whole thing is simply this… BULLSHIT! I have used Lunar Pages for almost 9 months without any problems. Suddenly I have used too much resources and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me what is causing the surge in resources? I find it very rude to literally "force" to upgrade my plan. I was having none of this nonsense so I looked for Globat instead. Another big mistake on my part!

2. Don’t Fall For The Low Fees Hype Like I Did!

I signed up for Globat after searching around and reading positive reviews. They have a promotion at $4.95 per month but you must pay 1 year up front plus $19.95 setup fee. So its $79.35 per year… slightly less than Lunar Pages. Its the setup fees that takes up a big chunk of the fees so don’t be fooled by the $4.95 per month fees. Furthermore, they allow you to use your CJ.com account to sign up for your account. The affiliate commission is $65.00 and that means I will send only $14.35 per year for this web host! As people say, you get what you pay for!

One thing I found interesting is that the people who say so and so web host is great are usually the affiliates themselves. If someone wants to sell you something, would they say all the bad things about them? No way! They might tell you some of the flaws but not all…. these affiliate reviewers might never have used these web hosts! There are so many of them… How do you use all of them?

I didn’t know about Globat not supporting CRON JOBs. Its a feature to schedule your scripts to run at certain intervals. Great for backups, newsletter, autoresponders on your web site. You need them to run at certain intervals so that they will be automated right? Well, Globat does not have any CRON JOB support! It is something that I expect every web host to have but I found out they don’t have it once I was in their control panel!

By that time I had uploaded over 100MB of my files to their web host and I realized their server was down! I kept getting an error… Even their support site at support.globat.com was down! Lucky for me, there is a 30 day guarantee. I submitted my request 1 day after signing up!

3. The Risk Of 1 Year Contracts….

Most web hosts want you to pay 1 year upfront to "lock in" your fees at their low advertised rates. This is just a marketing gimmick. It binds you to them and if you want to quit using their service, you might risk losing all your unused fees if they do not have a money back guarantee on unused fees! They promise you 30 days money back guarantee no more no less!

My Lunar Pages account has 3 months worth of unused fees left in it. I do not have high hopes of them giving me my money back! They don’t even want to restore my site till I upgrade my plan to a more expensive one that will triple my fees!

Is There A Web Hosting Heaven On Earth?

So far I have used 5 web hosts for Oasis Fanatic. And 3 web hosts for Vincent Rich. Now both my sites are on Host Gator. Host Gator isn’t the cheapest web host out there but I like their service even though I got suspended twice in 2 months! They were very quick in responding to my suspension. In fact, I got a response within 1o minutes!

I pay them once a month at $9.95 without any contracts at all. I can quit anytime without losing any unused prepaid fees. I hope this is my last web host. I find it very troublesome to change a web host. And I lost 3 day’s worth of advertising revenue from Oasis Fanatic and 1 day’s worth of affiliate sales from Clickbank.

Some must read tips about the hosting industry, and how to avoid being taken for a ride!

This is from Host Gator’s web site… You can read the full article at their web site. You will find a lot of practical advice on how to choose a web host…

This one sounds a lot like what I have experienced!

2. Scam Plans

If it sounds too good too be true it usually is! All hosts have the same basic limitations when it comes to server resources and specs. There is no magic server that has a never ending supply of ram and cpu. If a host ever claims to give unlimited space or bandwidth DO NOT JOIN THEM. The thing to remember is that the average web site uses about 50 Megs space and less then 1 gig bandwidth a month. So what hosting companies do is they lie! They make up scam plans with tons of space and 50 gigs bandwidth for around $8 bucks a month. It’s a numbers game…. Only one or two of every 100 people that signup on the plan are going to use the 50 gigs bandwidth. So what do they do? They usually terminate the sites that use it saying "your site is using too many resources." They aren’t lying about the resource usage it’s the truth! Most people don’t realize that bandwidth and space used have nothing to do with the server resources being used. Resource usage has to do with the amount of cpu and ram a site uses. If a site uses their 50 gigs bandwidth they aren’t kicked for using their bandwidth they are kicked for using up most of the servers cpu and ram. Another thing to remember is that the cheaper the plan is, and the more space / bandwidth included the more sites per server the host will have to pack in to make their money back. So going by the above numbers which we would say is pretty accurate from our numbers… If a company hosted 200 accounts per server and 2% of the server used the 50 gigs bandwidth that would equal 200 gigs bandwidth a month used on the server. Guess what If they don’t kick those sites using it those 4 sites are going to be using more resources then all 196 sites on the server combined. So think about it would a hosting company boot 4 people paying $8 bucks a month in order to double the amount of sites they can hold on the server? You bet they would! We only put a few 100 accounts per shared hosting server, our pricing and packages don’t force us to jam sites on to a server in order to be profitable. If you think most hosts put less then 200 accounts per server your living in a fantasy land. Most hosts put 1000’s of accounts per server. Making it all that much more important to kick the 2% or so that use what their plan comes with.

Well now you know the truth about bandwidth and server resources….. Better luck next time in your web host hunt!

Categories: Blog Updates | 9 Comments »

I am still "lost" with my affiliate site creation. Even though I joined the Affiliate Classroom membership site, I don’t feel like its going to work for me. Its not that the Affiliate Classroom isn’t good but I feel like I don’t need them to "mentor" me. I don’t say this out of arrogance but I feel that they can’t really help me much with their tutorials, interviews and emails.

I know the steps outlined in the tutorials, I seem to know what to do but not how to do it… A common problem with all the stuff I read. I feel the same way when I start anything new. I feel overwhelmed at all the things I need to learn and do to make it work. Once I got started, I learnt a lot more and I can really relate to the tutorials there.

I take responsibility for the results I have right now. I believe its because I am looking to see results in a few days or weeks instead of months. I want to see how its done but its hard to get someone to show you the way. I find it pretty hard to read vague advice and then I have to learn through a lot of trial and error to get there even though its a lot easier. What I need is a blueprint that works for me - My marketing preferences, my budget and talents.

For example, there are some free ways to drive traffic to your web site like:

• Including your signature at forums
• Exchanging links with other web sites
• Competitions on your web site
• Free classified ads
• Submitting articles
• Search engine optimization

It will be the best for you if you do all. The biggest challenge and mistake I feel I have been making is that I have been trying to do too many of the above at the same time and I have become "crappy" at all of them. I have not tried submitting articles because its the least favourite way of mine. Some people say submitting articles is the best way, while others say exchaning links is the best way etc… What is most important for me right now is to find the best way that works for me!

Each of the 6 ways above is a seperate topic by itself. I find it very hard to become great at any one of them by doing all 6 at the same time. I believe it would serve me better id I simply stuck to 1 way and become very very good at it before trying out another way. I feel the search engine optimization is the way for me and I shall focus on that to drive traffic to my web site.

Search Engine Optimization

What I know and understand about SEO is that you need to target some keywords and build you web pages around those keywords. I’ve heard stuff like you need to have a content based web site. I want to know how I can drive 100 visitors a day to my web site through the search engines for free. No PPC and paid listings! 100% free traffic from search engines. I would also like to learn how to do it within 2 weeks not waiting a few months for that to happen.

I’ve been doing some research and I know of this "Blog & Ping" method to get the search engine spiders to index your web site within a few days! Once they have listed you, its all up to your SEO stuff on your pages to see if they will rank high enough to get a substantial amount of traffic to your site.

Another way is to use page generating software like Traffic Equalizer to build hundred or thousands of pages with some pre-filled content from RSS feeds and stuff.

Google AdSense

One of my blog readers emailed me about his post at the WebMaster World forum about his quest to make $300 a day with Google AdSense ad revenue. I was inspired and this is something that I really want to know how to do because it don’t cost you anything to make money from the text ads! They’re 100% pure profit. You just need to make it easy for people to click on the ads. I have them at the top of every page here but they are not making me a lot of money.

My first web site Oasis Fanatic is struggling to make $300 per month. I know this is possible and it will really work with all the SEO optimized pages I plan to build. I just withdrew over $80 from my Overture account and I am going to invest that money into an ebook that covers making money with Google AdSense. Some people can make $500 per day with Google AdSense. That’s an outrageous amount of money to me and I want to become one of those guys too!

Therefore my new direction would be…

Affiliate Product in high Google AdSense CPC "niche" + Google AdSense text ads + SEO (Blog, ping and page generators).

Some Google Adwords keywords cost a bomb and if I could display those ads on my web site through Google AdSense text ads, I could make quite a lot of money if someone clicks on them. If my visitors do not purchase my affiliate product, I woudn’t mind them clicking on my Google AdSense ads.

So if someone reaches my web site, he has a few choices….

• Buy affiliate product
• Click on Google AdSense ads
• Join newsletter/autoresponder
• Leave…..

This is where I plan to focus my energy on at the moment. I feel its something I genuinely would like to learn instead of writing articles….

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing, Google AdSense | 1 Comment »

In one of my previous post, I mentioned that I made a goal to create 20 campaigns this month. Right now I am at at campaign number 19. 1 more campaign to go before I hit 20. I guess I was right when I predicted that I would find 1 profitable campaign after testing 10 campaigns.

So far I have found 2 profitable campaigns out of 19 campaigns and the funny thing is they came from the 1st 10 campaigns. From these 2 campaigns, I have made 2 sales from 1 campaign and 3 sales from the other. Now I know these items convert well, I need to look at my current keywords and think of ways to expand on the keywords to see if it will explode my sales.

My 1st profitable campaign started as an “underachiever”. Its a bit like growing a plant. You need to add fertiliser, water and sunlight for it to grow. I kept testing different keywords to see if they helped to add more sales. I even paused my first profitable campaign in the beginning because it wasn’t making money when I first started it. I relaunched it after a while when I had new ideas on how to promote it.

Some of my campaigns take about 10 minutes to set up, other take anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour depending on the number of ad groups I set up. Usually I will set up 4 ad groups, but I simply create 1 ad group for some of them.

I have 1 more week to create my last campaign for March 2005. Once I have created campaign number 20, I will focus on all the campaigns that are making me money now and think of ways to improve them.

One of the most important things I learnt from this 20 campaigns is that you do not ASSume what will sell and what won’t sell! I used to look at the Clickbank rankings and tell myself in my head “Nah! This won’t sell…. Its too expensive! The sales page is ugly!” or “Who the hell wants to buy an ebook for that?”.

Barry Stein once gave me a hint. He told me the things that sell well on Clickbank are the products that teach people how to make money…. To narrow my focus, I only choose the top 20 products in each category. Some people say they can spot “emerging products” that are new and sell like hotcakes but I somehow have not succeeded in doing that at the moment.

What I am doing now to select my products isn’t the most “scientific” way to do it. To increase your chances on finding a profitable product, you might want to use CB Engine and have a table of statistics on each product’s ranking history on Clickbank.

Categories: Vincent's Updates | 2 Comments »

I’m taking a break from Overture for now. I turned "OFF" my account and requested for them to refund me my money. I will turn it "ON" at a later date when I have better knowledge on how to use it properly. I fear if I go on learning this way, its going to cost me a lot of money. I’m looking for some kind of ebook on Overture…. I’m not sure if I can find one. Most people talk about Google AdWords and not Overture.

I was recommended by someone to purchase John Reese’s Traffic Secrets course because he covers Overture in detail but the course costs too much for me at the moment.

One of the things I can’t stand about Overture is the way they make it sound like they are doing you a great favour by charging you money. Here’s an email to show you what I mean…

Dear Overture Client:

Great news! You’ll be happy to hear that your site has received a
large amount of targeted clickthrough traffic from us!

As a result of this traffic, your Overture account balance was low. We
processed a new credit card transaction on XXXX and
deposited $30.00 to your Overture acct: XXXX.
The credit card transaction was successful. The details of your
transaction are as follows:

Username: XXXX
Account Number: XXXX
Card Holder Name: Vincent Liaw
Credit Card: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX
Expiration Date: XXXX
Amount: $30.00
Date: XXXX

Please retain/print a copy of this e-mail for your records. If you
have any billing questions, please contact us through our Support
Center Tab found in DirecTraffic Center® at http://dtc.overture.com.
For questions regarding specific charges to your credit card, please
call our Account Services team at 1-866-999-6837 and we will be
happy to assist you.

We appreciate your business!

Sincerely,

Your partners at Overture

Well, I really need to understand their system inside out or else I would be at their mercy. I would rather use Enhance or Findwhat at the moment because I feel they are more honest, straight forward and less "sneaky".

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »

Man… This hurts big time. I incurred some losses in Overture due to my own stupidity and carelessness and I hope you do not do the same thing as me to save yourself money, time and a lot of frustration. Its funny how I talked about being a gambler and now I have done the same thing that I encourage people not to do!

Beware of Your Max. CPC BEFORE You Submit Your Ads

Overture works slightly differently from Google AdWords. You will have to create a category (similar to Google’s campaign), select a bunch of keywords to belong to that category, and create 1 ad for each keyword you listed.

The default CPC is set to the MAX. This is where I screwed up bad…. and it hurts. Once you submit your ads, your ads will be placed in a "pending list" and it takes me 5 days to get them approved by Overture. Once your ads are in the "pending list" you cannot change them anymore till they are approved!

Just because I forgot to change the default MAX CPC price, I had to wait till Overture approved or disapproved for me to change that CPC price. So what happened was Overture approved my keywords with a CPC of $4! It got clicked on a couple of times till I realised my account balance was ZERO and they started charging my bank account $30 to top it up! Ouch! That’s the highest CPC I have ever bid on. Take a look at my screenshot below..

Questions To Overture…..

Hi,

My budget wasn’t set above $32 per day?

Why is it on:

Mar 04 2005 12:00 PST online survey Standard 4.01 2 564 8 32.08

I had a $4.01 CPC? and it somehow went through?

How can I see how much money I have topped up for this month and how much i have spent for this month?

I feel this is quite outrageous!

I forgot to set the max CPC when i submitted my ads and when i tried to change the info in the "pending" list, i couldn’t do anything to it so I set a low daily and monthly budget hoping it would not exceed my budget once the keywords got approved! What’s the point of my budget if it can be bypassed by Overture?

What if i do not spend $20 a month? What happens?

Sincerely,

Vincent

Seems like I forgot to read the fine print on the pages of Overture. They seem to give me an impression that "When I tell you something it isn’t the full story. Too bad you didn’t ask me for more information? Its your fault!".

In that case I fully deserve it but I still don’t like that. I have to pick up the pieces and move on from this and be very very careful with my money next time!

Let’s take a look at the fine print at the "budget page" of the "Money Manager" section in my Overture account.

Account Budget

Check the "Budget On" box and enter a daily budget amount. You may make changes to your approximate daily budget at any time. But note, once you make changes, your target monthly budget will be recalculated and a new 30-day period will begin. **

So what do the "*" mean?

*Please note: Your approximate daily budget is a target only. You may see fluctuations in your actual daily click charges due to changes in search volume, but your total monthly click charges should be close to your target monthly budget (target monthly budget is calculated as 30 times your approximate daily budget, for a rolling 30 days). If your total monthly click charges exceed your target monthly budget by more than 15%, you may be entitled to a refund.

**Refunds are calculated every 30 days. A 30-day period begins when you select or modify your budget amount. If the budget amount is modified within any 30-day period, you will not be eligible for a refund for the partial amount.

� “Low�? means when your account balance falls below the prior 3 days of click charges. Please note that the prior 3 days of click charges must be available in your account at all times in order to keep your listings online. Each time your account balance falls below that amount, your credit card will be charged the amount you specified until your account balance equals at least the prior 3 days of click charges.

This explains everything…..

They charged me a $4 CPC even though my Max CPC for the whole category was set at only $0.12. Why? My budget was $10 on that day when they charged me $4 a click. Therefore my monthly budget was $300 according a 3o-day period. As long as my charges are below $300, its 100% OK to charge me over my $0.12 Max CPC according to Overture’s rules!

Official Overture support email reply says…

Hello Vincent,

Thank you for your inquiry.

I have reviewed your account, please keep in mind that the Daily Budget is a target only. You may see fluctuations in your actual daily click charges due to changes in search volume, but your total monthly click charges should be close to your target monthly budget (target monthly budget is calculated as 30 times your approximate daily budget, for a rolling 30 days). If your total monthly click charges exceed your target monthly budget by more than 15%, you may be entitled to a refund. Since the term online survey was set to a bid of $4.02 the term received 13 clicks before the budgeting system was able to place the keyword offline. However they system will compensate over the remaining 29 days of the 30 days cycle to ensure that your budget stays within the targeted amount.

To view the amount spent for this month you can run the Account Summary Report in the DirecTraffic Center. Simply login to your account and then click on the Reports tab.

Overture requires all accounts to incur a minimum of $20 a month in click-through charges. At the end of each month, we compare your account’s click activity to the minimum $20 requirement. If you haven’t met the minimum, we charge you for the difference, and withdraw the amount from your account deposit.

For example, your account received $1.94 in Feb., 2005 in click-throughs. Therefore, $18.06 (the difference between the $20 minimum and $1.94) should have been subtracted from your account. However since this was your first month of activity the monthly minimum charge does not apply. You have also met the requirement for the month of March. However if you do not meet the minimum in April, this debit is reflected in the Billing Transaction Detail Report in the DirecTraffic Center®. Please note that this was a debit to your account; your credit card is not charged to meet the Minimum Monthly Spend.

There are easy ways to help you receive $20 worth of clicks each month and avoid this charge:

1) Bid your listings higher
2) Add new listings to your account
3) Make sure your account doesn’t go offline before receiving $20 in click-through charges for the month
4) Use the Advanced match type to get more customer leads

Please note that if your account is offline for the entire calendar month, it is not subject to the $20 minimum. However, if your account goes offline at any time during a calendar month, it is still subject to the $20 minimum monthly requirement.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Client Services using our Support Request form which is located in the DirecTraffic Center(R) (http://dtc.overture.com).

Out of fear, I lowered me daily budget to $2.00 per day ($60.00 per month) and now I am not eligible for any refund because I changed my budget within a 30 day period! Oh well….

What I Have Learnt From This Experience

1. Your Max CPC must be set at your desired level BEFORE you submit your ads
2. You must spend $20 per month in click throughs or Overture will deduct $20 from your account.
3. Your category’s Max CPC doesn’t mean that all your clicks with be at that price and below because you have to factor in your daily budget times a period of 30 days (monthly budget).
4. Your monthly budget is your daily budget times 30 days. (e.g. $10 x 30 = $300).
5. You will not be entitled to a refund once you change your budget within a 30 day period.
6. You must read the fine print and if you are in doubt, please email the Overture support!

The only consolation is that my initial $30 deposit and $25 bonus credit has been used up since I have spent $58.59. So my "honeymoon" period is over with Overture and now I’m back into the real world of paying money for clicks!

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | 3 Comments »

I recently recommended a friend to affiliate marketing with Google AdWords and he told me he made over 5 sales on 1 product. I was very happy for him but I also asked him how much did he spend for his advertising and what’s his profit. He couldn’t really give me a concrete answer but he did say it was merely breaking even. The next time I asked him, he told me he was losing money on that product with a maximum CPC of over $0.30.

This is great lesson for everyone who bids without calculating your profitable range of CPCs!

Last December, I posted about my dog campaign. If you skip this step on calculating how much money you are going to spend, you’re going to enter your CPC bid price like a gambler who puts money into a slot machine and hopes to hit the jackpot and have a lot of money to fall out. Coincidentally, my friend has a gambling habit of betting on football matches so its a hard habit to kick!

How Much Money I Am Going To Spend?

Let’s say I have Product A, which has a commission of $23.50, a conversion rate of 2% and a number 1 position at the PPC search engine at $1.00 per click.

Gambler Goes Like This….

He doesn’t know how well the product will convert. But he does know if he bids $1.00 per click, his ad will be displayed prominently at the top of all the other PPC ads! So what does he do? He bids $1.00 per click for the number 1 spot and hopes it will be profitable. 100 clicks later… this is what happens:

No. of clicks = 100
Converstion Rate = 2%
No. of Sales = 2
Commission per sale = $23.50
Gross Profit = $47.00
Gross Proft per visitor = $0.47

Expenses = $100.00
Net Profit = -$53.00
Net Profit per visitor = -$0.53

So gambler loses $53.00 on 2 sales. He goes around telling people this PPC thing is a scam! It doesn’t work anymore like what the books say.

Smart PPC Marketer Goes Like This….

No. of clicks = 100
Converstion Rate = 1%
No. of Sales = 1
Commission per sale = $23.50
Gross Profit = $23.50
Gross Proft per visitor = $0.24

Smart guy assumes that the conversion rate is 1% so he expects to make 1 sale in 100 clicks and if it doesn’t work out, he drops the campaign and looks for another product to promote.

While everyone else is bidding on very targeted and expensive keywords, smart guy does his homework and finds out what his target consumers will search on at the search engines. Smart guy decides that he wants to make a 50% - 60% return on his investment.

ROI = 50%
Max. CPC = 50% x $0.24 = $0.12
Expenses = $0.12 x 100 = $12
Net Profit = $23.50 - $12 = $11.50
Net Profit per Visitor = $0.12

ROI = 60%
Max CPC = (100% - 60%) x $0.24 = 40% x $0.24 = $0.10
Expenses = $0.10 x 100 = $10
Net Profit = $23.50 - $10 = $13.50
Net Profit per Visitor = $0.14

Smart guy calculates how much he should bid on before he creates the campaign. So he now knoes if he bids a maximum of $0.12 per click and it sells for $23.50 per sale with 1% conversion rate, he will get a net profit of $11.50 after $12.00 expenses. The most the can lose after 100 clicks is $12.00. He is prepared to lose $12.00 and move on if it doesn’t work out. 100 clicks later… this is what happens:

No. of clicks = 100
Converstion Rate = 2%
No. of Sales = 2
Commission per sale = $23.50
Gross Profit = $47.00
Gross Proft per visitor = $0.47

Max. CPC = $0.12
Expenses = $12.00
Net Profit = $35.00
Net Profit per visitor = $0.35

Smart guy discovers that Product A has a converstion rate of 2%, 1% more than the he expected. Therefore he received 2 sales. He spent $12.00 to make $35.00 in profit. He is happy and now he can expand this campaign with more keywords to see if he can squeeze more money out of it.

The Moral Of The Story Is….

1. You have to do your numbers before you enter the game
2. You have to track your sales and expenses during the game
3. You mustn’t treat this PPC game like a gambling game!

Here’s my Google AdWords Excel Profit/Loss Spreadsheet. The last time I posted a link to this spreasheet only 5 people downloaded! Please get it and get your campaigns tracked to know exactly how much you are making with your campaigns, which campaigns you should drop and stop being a gambler. And if you’re interested in learning how to bid on cheap keywords and avoid the competition, please get yourself a copy of Google AdWords 123.

Categories: Affiliate Program Marketing, Pay Per Click Search Engines | 3 Comments »

I just checked out my campaign records. In December 2004, I created 14 new Google campaigns. In January 2005, I created 12 new Google campaigns and last month in February 2005, I created 10 new Google campaigns.

Therefore my monthly average for the past 3 months is 12 new Google campaigns per month. And do you want to guess how many of my 12 new campaigns are profitable? About 1 to 2 out of 12 of them are profitable! The rest of them are money losers not money makers.

80% of my income comes from 20% of my campaigns. This is very true because I have created close to 100 Google campaigns so far and only about 5 - 6 of them are still making money for me at the moment. Out of that 5 - 6 campaigns, I have 1 - 2 big time earners.

20% of my income comes from 80% of my campaigns. I have about 4 campaigns that are like "underachievers" but they still make money. That’s why I still keep them.

As you can see my success rate with my campaigns is only about 5%. At the rate I am going just isn’t going to cut it. If I create 10 campaigns per month, I will only find about 1 new profitable campaign and that 1 campaign might not even be a big time earner. That 1 miserable profitable campaign might just be another "underachiever".

Its time to step up and create a minimum of 20 campaigns per month. So that would be 5 campaigns per week for the month of March 2005. I will report on my progress at the beginning of April 2005.

Categories: Vincent's Updates | No Comments »

I got my Overture account confirmed by calling Overture at about midnight (Singapore time) sometime in the last few weeks. The process was pretty painless but I didn’t really like the call centre’s automation system "For xxxx please press 1 etc." because there wasn’t any instruction to press a certain number to get my account confirmed! I called in about 3 times to get it right because the automated message didn’t repeat itself and I was left wondering "What number do I press now?".

The Overture Advertiser Workbook

In my previous post about Overture, I wanted to post a link to this PDF file but I couldn’t access the web site then. Visit Overture’s Advertiser Center to read all about how to use Overture.

Framed Landing Pages Don’t Really Work With Overture…

I tested using my framed landing pages and I only got 3 or 4 of them approved. I got then approved because the keywords I was bidding on was the URL / site title of the web site I was "framing". All the other keywords I put in were rejected so I had to create a simple landing page to redirect my visitors to the merchant’s web site.

Consumer Keywords On Overture

I have not tested this yet but I will do it because my targeted keywords do not seem to be getting anywhere with Overture. They are just too expensive and it will not be profitable for me to bid high on those keywords!

Categories: Pay Per Click Search Engines | No Comments »