Hey Gio

A nosedive CPM drop is something I never thought would happen. When I started publishing sites a few years ago, the agenda was to rank and keep ranking. The higher the CPM, the more competitive the industry. Since my goal is sustainability anyway, I went after a pretty competitive yet undeserved niche.

Everything was done best of breed – from design to content quality. Another reason I started the site was to warn a family member about the risks involved with this niche. That led to the creation of a graphic tool like no other.

It was a fair trade-off with the search engines where I enhanced user experience and attracted organic links. No black hat techniques were performed. I was subtle with the ads, there were no pop-ups, cookies or spyware.

I began to get some traffic, things were good and dandy until the beginning of this year…

A 70 percent drop from last year’s average CPM can really sting revenue. It was something I never prepared for because CPM varied by industry and remained a constant. Page impressions and click through rates were the two variables of concern once a vertical is targeted. It’s beginning to not be the case because now we have to factor in micro-economic trends that may affect advertiser’s budgets.

ABSOLUTELY ACCIDENTAL.

It was a cheesy test campaign with a tiny set of KWs. It was organized incorrectly but I will admit that the landing page was conversion oriented and I wrote the copy myself. I have read so many books on conversion and I love making tweaks so I guess that helped out a bit. I still feel the 120% ROI was an anomaly because I haven’t done this long enough and I lack data.

I am anticipating a loss (cost of a new low-end luxury car) before I get the hang of this. Besides, advertising is considered a business expense so no real loss for me in the long run. Optimistic, no?

I’ll use this shite blog to record my progress.

High tech marketing – check!

Intellectual property licensing – check!

Product design – check!

(this one is OFF but led to the one below) Home remodeling – check!

E-commerce – check!

Clear hat SEO – check!

PPC and Affiliate Marketing – X

I have no plans on leaving SEO. It’s great but it does get a bit “YAWN” especially if there’s a backlog and we’re waiting on people. There’s something mystical and intriguing about these super affiliates using PPC. Unlike SEO, there is a great divide in income with Internet marketers pushing affiliate stuff. I see guys from digital point rejoicing from their $15 commission after losing hundreds of dollars on PPC. A poll on wicked fire put the majority towards the low-end of the earning spectrum. I guess this is true in most economies as well.

The super affiliates are the ones who perfected the art of testing rigorously, buying low, selling high, across a multitude of offers, against thousands of competitors with only THREE major advertising channels – Google, Yahoo and MSN. In other words, it’s f*ck*ng competitive and saturated out there. One super affiliate credited his ability to think out-of-the-box for his success. That makes a lot of sense to me because if you put in the numbers, it seems almost impossible to make a buck doing this. Then again you hear of folks making $5000+ a day, net, doing this exact thing.

Honestly, it boggled my mind and has piqued my insatiable curiosity. I want to learn this stuff but blind to know where to start. Should I focus on a certain geography, niche, offer, network, keywords, competition…..? I’m still in discovery phase and may or may not like what I will uncover.

Recently, I came across Adwords Course by KKSmarts and found it somwhat useful with the projects I will run.