PPC = DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
Saturday, April 19th, 2008Disclaimer: If you are loaded or something ignore this!
I got an e-mail a couple days ago from a brand new reader. He had finally decided he was done trying to get rich quick and was following along with the 30 day plan so he could learn enough to really make it on his own. It wasn’t our first communication and I’m positive he was on his way to making something ‘real’ and ‘lasting’ for himself. I’d gotten the ” I made some money” mail from him as well. Sure it wasn’t 10k a day or anything, but it was several hundred dollars off of a few hours work… and it’s probably going to keep earning him.
But all GRQ (Get Rich Quick) junkies eventually have the monkey hop back on their back and screw stuff up all to hell. I’m being nicer here than I was to him in my reply…..
His problem: HE WENT AND TRIED TO DO PPC WHILE NOT HAVING THE MONEY TO DO IT.
O.K. not a sin or anything, but he spent the money he had set aside for domains and hosting and earned nowhere near enough back.
He had read up too: Explode your PPC Campaigns in 6 easy steps, and the Uber Guide, along with some reading over at Nickycakes, and Wickedfire. I read most of those blogs too – but I DO NOT (repeat – do not) allow whatever the flavor of the day is to distract me.
What broke the man? Well apparently this man REALLY REALLY wanted to get his hands on Nickycakes Xbox (really that is what started it…. I’m not just saying it to mess with nickycakes at all).
So he made his landing page, picked an offer from an affiliate network that will remain nameless (No sense making a good affiliate program look bad), and started trying to do PPC for zip submits. At a profit of negative 1200 he stopped.
All because he read that you have to spend to test… and I guess doesn’t grasp the difference between a couple hundred bucks and 1200.
Seems what really happened is he just didn’t understand the limits, didn’t keep enough of an eye on things, etc…
My take on PPC:
I suck at it. You will notice I don’t talk about it much. I do some sure – small campaigns that I’ve been playing with for years. I don’t make enough to brag about and I actually lose money most of the time directly (I make it up in later mailings since I’m always building a newsletter or something). It’s hard work, and it takes you paying attention, having money to spare to test, and a personality that likes tracking, and paying attention to the small details.
If I have to use a spreadsheet to see if I’m losing 30 cents a day, or 3000 a day, there is a problem and I’m not happy.
So unlike our little buddy here (who is back on track) focus on something till you are good at it. If you decide to go the PPC route – I gave you some links up there to help you. Don’t come to me about it though – I’ll probably pick on you and talk about it on the blog.
(other issues I’ll behave promise).
Popularity: 22% [?]
nickycakes says:
April 28th, 2008
8:54 pm
Sorry to hear that dude lost so much, but really man, spending $1200 to test some shitty zip submit? Where the fuck did he read that on wickedfire/my site/earnersblog/uberaffiliate.
When you start testing, you test a BUNCH of different offers.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
admin says:
April 29th, 2008
12:57 am
Nicky – the “big grin” didn’t really come through there – I’d just got done reading about your xbox contest – that part was a joke… so it’s nothing to do with you at all. I wanted your link in there to send folks over to you since you’ve been talking about facebook a lot lately.
You do a great job talking about facebook – so I don’t see how you could be to blame for this one at all.
In this guys case he just let the campaigns run to long with out checking for ROI and if things were working out.
But you have to admit – we all say it constantly…. you have to spend to test. I figure to get going with a constant revenue stream your going to have to spend 1 or 2k over a few weeks with a bunch of different offers.
I like my seo approach better – even though it’s more of a game where the rules keep changing, I always get something from every site, link, etc…..