Hi everyone
I've been a member of SSWT since August 2003, but took an "Internet marketing sabbatical" for several months. Anyway and anyhow, I'm back, and hard at work on a few new websites. I have been following Lynn's PPC experience/case study with great interest, and would like to ask a question related to Google Adwords...
Four days ago I purchased GoogleCash, and decided to run my very own test campaign. I selected a topic, picked keywords with the help of Wordtracker, joined an affiliate program related to this topic on Linkshare (wasn't too concerned about the not-real-time stats), and wrote two ads (in order to do a split test). I set my daily budget at $5, and launched the campaign.
The specific topic has demand numbers of over 100,000, so I thought it would be a good one to start with, and it has about five competing campaigns running on Google and Overture at the moment.
During the four days I've maintained a 4% CTR, and sent over 316 visitors to the merchant - and have not had a SINGLE sale! I am pretty upset over the $20 I've wasted - for nada, zilch, nothing.
My question is this - should I drop the merchant, and continue the campaign with another affiliate program, or should I just accept that this is perhaps not such a good topic after all, cut my losses, and move on to the next idea? I am really not sure why the merchant can't convert the visitors into buyers, because the website is pretty user-friendly, and I consider the products good value for money.
~Marlene~