*Question* Re: Jamorama affiliate program

Hi Mark,

I tried a campaign out for this on google adwords and dumped a few hundred dollars, but didn't produce any sales or conversions on the click-through rate. If you have some recommendations on how to successfully market this better, I am willing to invest.

My google ad reads:

Step-by-step learn guitar

Discover The Step-by-Step Secrets to learning to play guitar

http://www.jamorama.com/affiliate=guitar

What advice do you have?

Regards,

Paul

*Response*

Hi Paul. Thank you for your email, here is my advice for you:

1. Your maximum CPC is too high. Until you know what your conversion rates are for each search term you should bid no more than 12-16 cents per click. Also, remember that google doesn't solely rank ad position based on the amount you spend per click. Sites with higher click through rates rank higher.

For example:

You are bidding 48c per click on 'learn guitar' and have a 0.5% click through rate you may rank #5.

Yet Mr X is bidding only 22c per click and is ranking #1,... how does he do it?

Answer: His click through rate is 2.1% more than 4 times your click through rate. Hence he wins because he doesn't have to spend as much per click. And google wins because they make more money as more people click on his advertisement.

In short, work on your click through rate BEFORE you start forking out lots of money by raising your price per click.

2. Your url: http://www.jamorama.com/affiliate=guitar doesn't do anything to help your click through rate. I recommend purchasing a domain name from registerfly for about $10/year, and when you set it up, get it to forward to your affiliate link. Get a domain like LearnGuitar2Day dot com or something. People will be MUCH more likely to click on an ad with a url like that, than "www.....com/affiliate=......."

Remember, Google automatically charges you less money per click through AND positions your ad higher if you have a higher click through rate.

3. Remember to Capitalize the first words of the domain name and remove the www, this ALWAYS increases your click through rate, eg LearnGuitar2day dot com rather than www dot learnguitartoday dot com. We have split tested this on over 50 adwords campaigns, this is a proven winner.

4. For the title of your ad, try using: {KeyWord: Amazing Guitar Tips} - Make sure that you capitalize the letters "K" and "W" in keyword. And put in the { and } symbols. i.e. cut and paste the whole thing into your headline. What this headline does is place whatever the person searched for into the title of your ad, and if the what they search for is too long, it will simply display"Amazing Guitar Tips". This is another proven winning strategy for increased click through rates and hence lower cost per clicks.

5. Re word your ad to be more exciting, perhaps: Discover awesome tips and techniques to playing guitar like a star

6. Do not place your bid on All Countries. Our research shows that the countries that have a 1% or better conversion rate are: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Chile, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, Estonia, Iceland, Bahrain, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, Bermuda, Kazakhstan, zambia, Antigua and Barbuda,

South Africa

All other countries aren't worth worrying about, they convert much worse and at best you will break even on them. Worst is Philippines, we get about 2-4000 hits a week from there and never get any sales.

7. Always split test your ads. If you create 2 ads, google will automatically split test them against each other and will work out which ad is working better for you. This will help you lots as by split testing your ads, they are constantly getting better.

8. Email your Google Conversion tracking code to the webmaster. This way you can see which keywords are converting well, and which ones aren't. This will enable you to adjust your bidding amounts depending on which keywords you are bidding on. For example: "How to Play Guitar" has converted for us at 4 sales in 59 visitors (6.78%) this last week, whereas "Guitar Chords" has had a 0 in 1023 visitors conversion rate (0.00%). It is very important to keep track of this.

I hope these tips help you in your campaign. Apply these techniques to all your campaigns for whatever product you are promoting and you are guaranteed to get much better results. Remember, it's better to only sell 3-7 a day of a product and be making double your money back, than to be losing money or break even.