Affiliate Marketing Forum

Dan1 · Guest

Anyone here sign up for Kanoodle either from Allan's newsletter or from the SBI newsletter?

I just opened an account.

I have used Overture and Google Adwords in the past with mediocre results. Conversion rates weren't bad, but the cost per click was too high for the terms I was bidding on to justify the expensive.

I have not given up on the PPC model yet, however, and maybe Findwhat and/or Kanoodle will work out well.

In any case, please share any success/failure stories here regarding these PPC's and especially if you are an SBI owner.

I am particularly interested to hear how people are approaching their campaigns.

For example, I am mulling over whether I should 2-step-it by sending visitors over to my SBI site(s) and then let them decide whether they should visit the merchant site, or whether I should just send them to the merchant site.

Here's the problem as I perceive it:

When someone finds your site (or page of your site) as a search engine listing, their frame of mind is very different than if they find your listing in the PPC's. That's because when people see you are a sponsor, they automatically have their guard up, or become more skeptical since they know you are paying for their potential business.

If they find your site thru the engines and know you aren't paying for their click, they are much more receptive to what you have to say or the information you're providing them.

SBI sites, as we all know, work exceedingly well at getting free traffic from the engines, and therefore, also come with an inherent advantage of bypassing the visitor's skeptical mind-set.

But this positive frame of mind may be altered or destroyed if they visit your SBI site from a PPC listing.

Therefore, perhaps it's more productive to send the visitor straight to the merchant site, since this way you won't lose much of the traffic you would if you 2-step it.

Anyone's feedback or experiences are appreciated. I know there are no hard and fast rules.

I'll post my results in the coming days/weeks on what works for me and what doesn't.

-Dan

AllanGardyne · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 2:24 am Post subject: Re: Kanoodle

Timothy Warnock · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 205 Location: Assisi, Italy

Hello Dan,

PPC engines in general have much lower CR% than SE traffic, my partners and I have extensively tested this fact with several different themes.

Except in rare cases, we have seen that PPC partner sites generally bring in very poor quality traffic, with abysmal CR% - zero or close to zero!

I currently have a free service on my site that should theoretically be very interesting for visitors looking for the service in question. Well, I manage to convert 8% of the visitors that come from Google search, but with Kanoodle and Findwhat (the same exact promotion - with very similar keywords) the story is much different (1/10th of a percent! from Findwhat - and so far ZERO! (out of 1000 visitors) from Kanoodle. This is for a free service!

In other words - I am taking it in the teeth with these PPC promotions!

Allan is right about trying to gather email addresses to hopefully follow-up in the future with these visitors - just make sure that you have something of real value to convince them to go for it.

I don't think you will have better results by sending these visitors directly to a merchant - but anything is worth trying, just make sure you track everything carefully.

Google Adwords, on the other hand, tends to have the best CR% of all the PPC - being the closest to a standard search. They may be costly, but they work.

Never invest too much at a time in any PPC test that you run - a $50 knock in the teeth won't kill ya, but A $500 knock starts to hurt - and again TRACK CAREFULLY.

Good luck,

Tim
_________________
Timothy Warnock

Copywriter

Dan1 · Guest

Thanks Allan.

Thanks Tim.

Appreciate sharing your experiences.

In my own personal testing, I've gotten better results with Overture than Google Adwords.

But this was before Overture's bids starting flying thru the roof. (They've gone up even more since then).

I will test a little with Kanoodle and see what happens.

Some people are obviously making PPC work--and work well.

Either they're smart, or I'm stupid. I just have to figure out which it is. Wink

I get great results with free search, but if I can make PPC work for me, I can obviously grow my promotions much much more rapidly.

Maybe I'll take a look at that Google Cash book that has been floating around recently as well.

Thanks,
Dan

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