My Bing PPC Journey (First Journey!)

devbrah · Sep 21, 2014

How new/old is your account?

User bing2525 sells vouchers/accounts.

I got $500 worth of coupons from him, so far i've used around $250 and had no problems.

I think it depends how aged the account is though.

I'm also going to be doing an update tomorrow, i've made two sales finally, and I also attended an inbound marketing conference in Toronto, and Andrew Yang (Bing search guy) was there on a PPC panel, so I learned a few things that i'll be sharing.

flipzseo · Sep 21, 2014

^^ Look forward to that update! And congrats!

mangobajito · Sep 21, 2014

devbrah said:
How new/old is your account?

User bing2525 sells vouchers/accounts.

I got $500 worth of coupons from him, so far i've used around $250 and had no problems.

I think it depends how aged the account is though.

I'm also going to be doing an update tomorrow, i've made two sales finally, and I also attended an inbound marketing conference in Toronto, and Andrew Yang (Bing search guy) was there on a PPC panel, so I learned a few things that i'll be sharing.

R u using old account?
can't we apply coupon for newly made account
btw congrats for the sales

devbrah · Sep 21, 2014

mangobajito said:
R u using old account?
can't we apply coupon for newly made account
btw congrats for the sales

My account was just over a month old, and i've used around 4 coupons on it so far and have had no issues.

I'm planning on putting 20 bucks or something onto the account from my credit card to offset the coupon usage a bit, not sure how effective it will be.

The coupons that user bing2525 is selling can be used on new or old accounts.

devbrah · Sep 21, 2014

UPDATE #2 - 09/11/14

First, I apologize for the delay in updates - i've been extremely busy with my 9-5 and other commitments outside of IM.

Since my last update, I have paused the ad group that's pointing to the landing page and decided to just try out direct linking for a while.

I finally got around to figuring out how to get Prosper set up properly in order to track keywords efficiently, this was today, so i'll be hopefully able to work towards optimizing for sales now.
(thanks to flipzseo for the help!)

As i've said in previous posts, I had setup my campaign initially to run in every available country, and just started throwing in keywords I was finding using either Google's adwords keyword planner, or keywordtool.io.

This method was a lot more costly than it needed to be for sure, but it also helped me weed out some of the really expensive keywords that I didn't need to be bidding on.

I attended an inbound marketing conference last week, which Andrew Yang of Bing spoke at, on a PPC panel discussion they had.

A few of the key takeaways I got from that were:

Break out your campaigns into smaller sized ad groups - and keep all keyword within an ad group relevant to that group specifically.
Ie. If you have a campaign targeting a weight loss product, one of your ad groups could be "Belly Fat", and within this ad group, you'd want to be bidding on keywords that only closely relate to that phrase, tailor your ads towards them, and optimize your landing pages for them.

This will allow you to have a smaller amount of keywords segmented within the group, as apposed to having thousands and just going for broke.

I implemented this yesterday, and my average PPC has gone from around 0.50/click to 0.10/click, because my keywords are more relevant to the ads and landing page i'm linking to (it's the affiliate's lander since i'm direct linking).

As a result, i've had three times the amount of clicks, and it's cost me far less. One of those clicks actually made me a sale today (before I got Prosper working unfortunately!).

Have geo-targetted ads/keywords inside of their own adgroups - at the end of the day, with PPC, it's all about optimization, and ensuring you're using as much data as you possibly can to lower cpc and raise ctr, by having any kind of geo targeted keywords in their own adgroups, it makes it much more effective in figuring out which ones are generating leads/sales, as well as lowering cpc as mentioned above.

The final takeaway, is really to just keep testing, testing, testing!!

My PPC journey is really just beginning, but i've seen 3 sales so far this month, and that is an awesome feeling for sure, and confirms with me that this is definitely a viable method.

My next steps are to create more adgroups, and try to find some more relevant keywords to test out. Now that I have prosper installed, i'll be able to effectively track which keywords are sending me sales and start making changes based on that.

Here's my stats so far: (simplified - if anyone has any questions at all, just post in the thread)

Total spend this month (coupons): $250
Total gross revenue: approx $300 (3 sales)
Total revenue: approx $50 (300 - 250 coupon spend)

That's it for now, but again, if anyone has any questions, just post in the thread and i'll answer them as soon as I can.
Take action, and don't quit until you make it.

flipzseo · Sep 22, 2014

Thanks for the post. A lot of good tips in there. Are you still just using CB or have you moved to some CPA offers? Just curious due to the $100 per sale commission.

Tightly themed Ad Groups is how I do it as well. Increases relevancy to the searcher giving you a higher QS which in turn lowers the CPC. You could go as far as to break it out into match type as well although I haven't gotten that granular with it yet.

devbrah · Sep 22, 2014

flipzseo said:
Thanks for the post. A lot of good tips in there. Are you still just using CB or have you moved to some CPA offers? Just curious due to the $100 per sale commission.

Tightly themed Ad Groups is how I do it as well. Increases relevancy to the searcher giving you a higher QS which in turn lowers the CPC. You could go as far as to break it out into match type as well although I haven't gotten that granular with it yet.

I am actually promoting a product that used to be on Clickbank back in the day but moved to a different network.

The niche is extremely competitive as well, so if i'm able to make this work and get it nice and profitable, it should be a great motivator for anyone looking to try out PPC!

I'll try to keep the updates more regular, my schedule is kind of leveling out so I should be able to.

Scurzo · Sep 22, 2014

Hey brah
one question
did you spend $250 on coupons, or $250 "coupon" money?

devbrah · Sep 23, 2014

Scurzo said:
Hey brah
one question
did you spend $250 on coupons, or $250 "coupon" money?

I've spent $250 coupon money - I purchased $500 worth of coupons for around $80 from a user on BHW.

It's a lot more pricey than buying on Fiverr, but the coupons are usable on used accounts, which I needed.

A Quick Update:

I made another sale today - which brings me to around $400 in revenue for the month.

Since I have Prosper set up, I was able to determine which keyphrase brought in the sale, and it ended up being a phrase that I was not currently bidding on directly - it was as a result of a broad match search.

I have just added the keyword in, and it was a nice and cheap one, so i'll see how that goes.

Something to keep in mind guys, PPC is not a set and forget it method by any means. You must be willing to check your campaigns daily and put the time in regularly to monitor, tweak, and test.

Tonight I am planning on trying to discover some more keyword opportunities, as well as trying to get my CPC for one of my ad groups down by removing some pricey keywords.

jntarnold · Sep 23, 2014

I just burned threw a 100 coupon zero leads zero sales on a pretty nice looking landing page

devbrah · Sep 23, 2014

jntarnold said:
I just burned threw a 100 coupon zero leads zero sales on a pretty nice looking landing page

How many keywords do you currently have?
How many ad groups?

What's your average CPC?

I've found that PPC definitely takes time and money (thankfully we have these coupons for now

), but if you stick with it and keep tweaking, you can make it work.

devbrah · Sep 24, 2014

Quick update:

My account was disabled today without any kind of warning, or communication from Bing.
i had spent around $350 in coupons, and my only guess is that I was getting a little too liberal with them.

I'm a little bummed because I've lost all those keywords, but I'm going
to look at this with the glass half full and take what I've learned and apply
it to a fresh account, which I'll be setting up tonight.

I'm sure some of you may have gotten frustrated at this point and felt like quitting, but persistence is key if you want to succeed.

That's it for now.

psychosimo · Sep 24, 2014

Great Journey btw , so can you please tell me the maximum number of coupons we can us on a single account before they disable it ?

mangobajito · Sep 24, 2014

devbrah said:
Quick update:

My account was disabled today without any kind of warning, or communication from Bing.
i had spent around $350 in coupons, and my only guess is that I was getting a little too liberal with them.

I'm a little bummed because I've lost all those keywords, but I'm going
to look at this with the glass half full and take what I've learned and apply
it to a fresh account, which I'll be setting up tonight.

I'm sure some of you may have gotten frustrated at this point and felt like quitting, but persistence is key if you want to succeed.

That's it for now.

It makes me scary
I think it is better to buy old account and continue with it

devbrah · Sep 24, 2014

psychosimo said:
Great Journey btw , so can you please tell me the maximum number of coupons we can us on a single account before they disable it ?

To be honest, i'm not sure.

I have contacted Bing support, as I was told by a friend that they'll most likely reactivate the account.

I'll wait to see tomorrow and find it if i'll get the account back or not.

Stay tuned.

devbrah · Sep 24, 2014

mangobajito said:
It makes me scary
I think it is better to buy old account and continue with it

This is a good idea for sure.

dentawor · Sep 24, 2014

nice journey, will follow this.
How u do ur keyword research?

jntarnold · Sep 24, 2014

devbrah said:
To be honest, i'm not sure.

I have contacted Bing support, as I was told by a friend that they'll most likely reactivate the account.

I'll wait to see tomorrow and find it if i'll get the account back or not.

Stay tuned.

I figured if this happened to me I would just explain that I was working on getting conversions, after I'm successful they will have a customer for life (and they will). Thats all most companies want to hear $$$$

Some stats from my last burn

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[TR="class: grid-header-row"]
[TH="class: grid-selectall grid-header-cell grid-unresizable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5, align: center"][/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Campaign
[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Delivery

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Qual. score

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Budget

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable sorted, bgcolor: #CCCCCC"]
Spend

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Clicks

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Impr.

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]CTR

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Avg. pos.

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Avg. CPC

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Avg. CPM

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]CPA

[/TH]
[TH="class: grid-header-cell grid-undraggable grid-sortable, bgcolor: #E5E5E5"]Conv.

[/TH]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR="class: grid-altrow"]
[TD="class: grid-cell grid-selectone"][/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]**********

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

Campaign paused

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]6/10

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]10.00/day

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

100.21

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

222

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

12,728

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

1.74%

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

4.01

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

0.45

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

7.87

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

-

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-cell"]

0

[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="class: grid-aggrow"]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"] [/TD]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"]

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"]Search total

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"]

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"]

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"]

[/TD]
[TD="class: grid-aggcell, bgcolor: #FBFBFB"]

97.68