Launching an Affiliate Offer: From Zero to Profitability, Part II
September 11th, 2007 by 
Amit
Okay at this point, if you’ve followed part I, we have a campaign with a landing page that converts, and we’re bidding on the right keywords, and our campaign is either breaking even, or slightly negative or positive.
Now it time for the fun part, optimization!
Optimization is both an art and a science, the more experience you have doing it the better, and better, you get at it.
I’m going to discuss some techniques and thought processes I use when I optimize my ppc campaigns, but remember the best way to learn how to do this is through spending hours upon hours on one campaign after another optimizing!
Here’s what you need to focus on:
COST PER CONVERSION:
You see this column if you have Google conversion tracking turned on, and it is THE most important metric you need to track. Cost/Conv. tell you how much you need to spend to make 1 sale. So if it’s $5 for your campaign and the payout is $7, then you make $2 profit for each sale.
SPLIT TESTING ADS:
Your first goal is to get the Cost/Conv. of all your high traffic adgroups as low as possible while preferably maintaining your ad position on the first page.
The best way to do this is to split test 2 ads at a time. You’d be amazed at the difference in conversion rate of 2 different ads. Test different headlines, body copy, display urls, etc.
Find the ad with the lowest Cost/Conv., not necessarily the highest conversion rate since you can have a low CTR ad with a high conversion rate but your Cost/Conv may be high since Google will force you to more for click for an ad with low CTR. You need to find an ad the gets a good CTR AND a high conversion rate.
As far as quality score goes (including landing page quality score), please refer to this post. Remember quality score ONLY effects your minimum bids, nothing else.
As far as split testing ads, keep your focus on your top traffic adgroups. Remember the 20/80 principle
EXPANDING & TRACKING KEYWORDS:
A great way increasing your traffic is to go into your top traffic adgroups and use the Google keywords suggestion tool to add keywords directly to your adgroups.
Once you had enough data, start to monitor which keywords are converting to sales and which are not. Adjust bids, at the keyword level, accordingly.
ADJUSTING ADGROUP BIDS:
This is the main method you will use to optimize your campaign. The simple fact is some keywords just convert WAY better than other, and if you have your campaign setup with tightly targeted adgroups then you’ll know exactly what set of keywords convert and which don’t by just tracking the Cost/Conv of each adgroup.
Here’s some tips when adjusting bids, assuming you have an offer paying out $10 per sale, and your goal is 100% ROI, or Cost/Conv. equal to $5.
- Lower bids on adgroups by 10% that have a Cost/Conv greater than $10
- Raise bids on adgroups that have a Cost/Conv less than $5.
- If you have an adgroup where you spend $20 (2X payout) and no sales, pause it.
- If you have an adgroup with a Cost/Conv greater than $20, pause it.
- Repeat the above steps until you converge onto a Cost/Conv of $5
That’s it, some basic optimization tips you can take to the bank. 
WARNING:
If you use these optimization tips, PLEASE wait until you have statistically relevant data. Lose money for a while if you have to, but don’t make rash decision.
Optimizing your campaigns is REALLY easy as long as you can control your emotions and not freak out that you’re losing money.
Don’t be stupid.
Don’t be rash.
Don’t panic.
AND don’t be afraid to lose money while optimizing your campaigns. Losing money in the beginning is PART OF THE PROCESS.
Do you have the emotional toughness to be a super affiliate?
Posted in Super Affiliate Mindset, affiliate marketing | 
Losing money can sure seem worrying at times, especially when you see it going away with every refresh and not converting to anything for you.
You have some good tips here, thanks for sharing your expertise.
Great post Amit!
Now if you use your own landing page, will you be able to track the keywords down to the thank you page? Or do you have to link directly to the merchant to be able to do that?
Thanks!
Amit,
Referring to minimum bids and quality — I guess when you are using the google search network there is no such thing as quickly testing an offer to see if it converts due to the quality score requirement that will raise minimum bids to $1?
I know you had mentioned a frame redirect to quickly test an offer. How much time is there typically before this quality score issue raises minimum bids or is it necessary to add some content right away ?
Thanks
Great post. I getting real close to launching and PPC marketing a site built from a lot of your advice. I’m so excited to get started!
man, i was doing well for the past 2 months, i was living in heaven seeing 1k dollar days. but sadly today i got news from my account manager that my advertisers did not approve of my self built creatives and it did violate their tos.
my affiliate account is on hold till further notice, i think i might get the boot and not claim any of my money.
im now going to start new with another affiliate company.
lessons of life!
Hey Isaac, sorry to hear that. It may be advantageous in the future to have your affiliate manager look over your landing page *before* launching a new offer.
Yes, good post.
But what is ALWAYS missing is the information about what program you recommend to split test your ads, an real life example how to set that up and yes, basically some real life examples in general. That would make this post so much more meaningful.
Beside this missing info your post is great and your blog is one of the few that gets really to the point ( beside this missing information, lol) ;o)
Hi Peter,
I don’t use a special program to split test the ads, just have google conversion tracking setup and look at the stats from your Google accounts.
Sincerely,
Amit
Hey Amit,
Isn’t that what you wrote in the first post:
“I would recommend using a good split test program to set up a split test url for your Google campaign right off the bad.”
So what could one use to test that? Or would you recommend the new google landingpage optimizer
Hi Peter,
Try hypertracker.com, it a simple yet versatile program to do A/B split testing on your landing pages.
Hi Amit,
Thank you for sharing your techniques.
I am going to be passing the 10K a month mark in earnings, so I am trying to plan for the next step.
I am wondering at what point can I approach the affiliate manager of a merchant and ask for a higher percentage of commission.
To be more specific, I am currently promoting one of the top 3 in a certain industry, which gets 250K visitors a month. The average sale price is 215 dollars and I am getting them almost 100K in sales each month which is around 300-350 sales a month. Am in the position to reneg or should I wait till I am officialy a CJ performer (I’m on CJ)?
Many thanks,
D
Hey Amit, thanks for the tip with Hypertracker, will try it.
Question…Do you do much with clickbank products?
Great advice - my company produces really high end landing pages if anyone needs one. We really know how to optimize your traffic.