I recently passed a milestone. A campaign I created on Oct 2, 2006 has been running every day for 2 straight years. More importantly than that, it has been making money for 2 straight years. Its not the first campaign I launched, I think I started in Feb. 06, but no other campaign has ever lasted that long.
Why am I sharing this? I think people think too short term about their campaigns. If they can get a month or two of profits they seem happy. I have always advocated building something that lasts. It is possible to establish long running and profitable campaigns.
Was it easy? No way! It has been a constant battle to keep this running and in the black. The campaign has been slapped, offers switched, network switched, domains changed etc. In fact I think I have been through about 8 domains with this campaign. But through it all, the PPC traffic kept coming and the conversions kept rolling.
With the speed at which our industry changes, you have to be very nimble and pivot quickly to keep things running. No campaign can be set on auto-pilot forever. They are like plants, you can leave them alone for a while, but eventually you have to keep watering them or they will die.
The major benefit of a long running campaign (other than profits) is historical data. I now have 2 years worth of data so each day I can go back to the previous years and see what happened. Then I can use that info to forecast where I want to focus my attention regarding trends and bid pricing. That’s an advantage that 99% of the competition does not have.
I recommend always keeping great daily records in a spreadsheet or database as your campaign runs. Don’t just rely on the networks data because most networks only hold if for 3 months. Keep at it, pick a solid niche, and start building that long running campaign today!
I think long term too Chad, except, every time I do that, Google slaps that campaign.
I hear you, Google has been a real bastard to me too. Thats why I have had to switch domains…
WHat kind of things do you keep for daily reports? The usual Impressions, clicks, CTR, ad content, CPC?
Clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions, and conv rate
How difficult would it be to do this with a campaign that is direct-linked?
Impossible.
Agreed, pretty much impossible.
You can use a php redirect script to track a direct linked offer. Just capture the referrer before redirecting to the offer and don’t forget to add a tracking id.
Hey Chad,
Congrats!
Can you share with us a little more details about this campaign like -
What PPC Engine are you running it on?
What Niche is it?
What’s the format to maintain all the data in spreadsheets?
Thanks
Wow, that’s a pretty big milestone. Has this been a fairly profitable campaign for you?
Yes, its been great!
Gratz Chad, truly an accomplishment in this day and age of fly by night affiliates.
One Question:
How do you track conversions at the keyword level? Do you get the merchant to put up your pixel or do you just track “soft” conversions (the last click on your site before they go to the merchant’s site)?
This might be better answered in a full post on conversion tracking that you mentioned to me you were thinking about a while back… As you’ve just illustrated, having data is invaluable and no data is more important than the almighty conversion rate.
Two years it’s long a long time I think the company will live much more and bring profits