PPC Training Wheels So You Don’t Lose Your Shirt

“My buddy John tried PPC and lost $1,000 overnight and made no money…”

“PPC works but if you make one little mistake it can cost you a fortune…”

“Using Google Adwords is like attaching a vacuum to your bank account…”

These are the horror stories I hear people mentioning when PPC is talked about in the marketing/webmaster forums. Which kind of weirds me out because PPC is one of my favorite ways to spend money.

Like I would literally prefer to spend money on PPC over buying some new fun “man toy” or tech gadget.

So I got to thinking… carefully so I didn’t hurt myself

Why do my friends and I love PPC soooooo much but this other huge section of the IM world runs screaming the other direction?

Who’s Making PPC So Scary?

Well, my favorite and everyone’s favorite group to point a finger at is the “Guru’s!”

And they are partly at fault with their  ridiculous “You can make $50,000 a day with PPC… Just set your daily budget to $500/day… And bid on this ultra tough keyword”

Uhmmm… If I had $500/day when I first started using PPC, I WOULDN’T HAVE NEEDED TO USE PPC!

Most of us when we are just starting out online are fantasizing about $100/day or even just our FIRST SALE. To be told to have a $500/day budget on PPC is just straight up redonkulous.

So yes, some of the reason why rookies are so scared of PPC is because there is just some REALLY BAD courses for sale on the topic.

1-800-Sav-A-Guru

To their defense they really aren’t trying to target the “rookie” with their salesletters. Some of them definitely are and should be tarred and feathered. However, the good guys who are selling courses about PPC are targetting established business owners who want to learn and exploit a new marketing channel.

It’s kind of like the Dolphins that get caught up in the Tuna nets. The Tuna guys aren’t trying to catch the Dolphins but they get caught up in the dragnet.

AGAIN… Some guys are evil and purposely say things like “even a beginner” can do it. But a lot of the time it’s just the rookie seeing the big numbers and chasing a dream. Shame on the irresponsible guru and shame on the unrealistic rookie.

Who Else Is At Fault?

Dare I say it… GOOGLE!

OMG now I’m going to have my house broken into by the Google samurai ninja hitmen in the middle of the night… It was nice knowing you!

It’s true though and you really can’t blame them or be mad at them. They are running a business and Adwords is their biggest profit center. Sure they are going to teach you how to use it, even for free. However, you better bet your ass that they are going to teach you how to spend the most money in the quickest way possible!

Mr. Goog surely ain’t going to tell you to put up a $2/day budget cap, target only 3-5 keywords, and put the price of your product in your ad.

Because if they told everyone that then they wouldn’t be so dang rich!

However, I CAN TELL YOU THAT because I don’t have a vested interest in how much you spend. My vested interest is that your PUT DOLLARS IN YOUR POCKET.

Because when I teach you something and you make some money off of it then you’re prolly going to buy something off me, tell someone about me, or even just think I’m a pretty cool guy. That’s my secret, the bag is out of the cat… ermmm… maybe it’s the cat is out of the bag?

7 Steps To Making PPC Work For You

1. Set a super low daily budget that you can afford. I started out with just $2/day and you can go even lower than that if you want.
2. Research the cost of keywords before you make your campaigns so you can start with just the cheapest ones and work your way up AFTER YOUR MAKING SALES!
3. Don’t try to get lots of traffic… Traffic sucks… Sales is what you want… LOTS OF SALES! So put the price of your product or the product you are promoting in your ad. This will slow down the clicks and make sure people that DO CLICK are already ok with the price.
4. Target only product names – People are 10x more likely to buy something when they are typing in the actual name of a product or model #
5. Don’t use lots of keywords – Start out with just a handful that you can manage and that are cost effective.
6. Don’t target the whole world with your ads. When I start a campaign I target just the U.S. to start out with and then when I see things working I slowly start adding more countries while watching my stats closely.
7. TURN OFF THE CONTENT NETWORK – Don’t even think or say the words Content Network until AFTER you have a couple profitable normal campaigns.

What My Math Teacher Taught Me About PPC

Regardless of the cost of your keywords or how awesome your keyword is there is still a general conversion rate to worry about.

WHOA… What?

Ok so a good salesletter will convert 1 out of every 30 – 50 clicks into a sale…

If you are paying $0.50 per click and need 30 clicks to get a sale that’s $15…

And if you only make $20 per sale then well that kinda sucks but at least that situation made you money…

What if you had to pay $1.00 per click… Now you lost money!

So when you target cheaper keywords like ones that cost you only $0.05 – $0.25 it means you can afford more clicks to make it to that sale. Sure that awesome keyword your buddy told you about might get lots of traffic but it might be too expensive.

Give yourself a fighting chance and research your keywords costs first!

If you listen… If you DO what I’ve said in this blog post then you can effectively put training wheels on your PPC marketing until you’ve found your balance and can start scaling out. As with anything I talk about on this blog it just doesn’t work if you just read it.

All it takes is action and action builds confidence!

Go Bigger,
Justin Brooke

As always I’ll hang out and watch the comments on this post for a few days. If you have questions, concerns, want to chit chat, or just want to thank me you can do so by leaving a comment below. I read them all and try to answer any of them that need an answer.