Case Study: $2673.60 in Zip Submits
As promised, I ran a one-month case study on a particular offer. In fact, it was this particular offer-
Consumer Incentive Promotions - $250 Grocery Gift Card - ZIP SUBMIT
This is offer #553 from NeverblueAds.
Here are the final stats for sales-
CPL: $1.20
Clicks: 9,689
Conversions: 2,228
Total Sales: $2,673.60
Advertising was done solely with Google AdWords on the content network to keep the study simple.
Here are the final stats for ads-
Starting bid: $0.50/click (Beginning of study)
Ending bid: $0.35/click (End of study)
Average CPC: $0.24 (Overall)
Average Ad Position: 3.3
Total Clicks: 7443
Total Impressions: 7,005,653
CTR: 0.11%
Total Spend: $1,758.60
And the ending total-
$2,673.60 - $1,758.60 = $915.00
And for the gritty details, here is the ad I ran:
Grocery Content Ad
As you can see, there's nothing amazing about the ad and the URL itself is a redirect. With a little updating, this ad can be improved significantly to increase the low CTR and increase the honesty factor of the ad (as it was slightly misleading).
Keywords: food stamp, food stamps, recipe, recipes
Popularity: 24% [?]
August 4th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Did you use direct link or a landing page?
Why did you chose the content network over search? Though content would have been a bad choice.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
@Steve: It was part of the case study. I wasn’t really doing anything with the content network and I wanted to test something most people could replicate with a lesser budget.
You could definitely try this on the search network and probably see higher volume, with a lower profit margin. I’m sure there’s a good balance in there somewhere.
This is definitely something you could take from $900 to $9000/month though. I have no doubts.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Oh, and I used direct linking.
August 5th, 2008 at 12:20 am
This sounds promising.. earlier i had tried some zip submit offers but it did not work this well., probably because i had done it in a very small scale, now i think this is a quantity game and with the increasing quantity the original results come
I have a NBA account and will surely give this a TRY!
August 5th, 2008 at 12:33 am
I saw your post at DP, so I had to stop by. You have given everyone a blueprint to duplicate this, minus the keyword list of course. I’d say this is a nice share! Thanks for the info!
August 5th, 2008 at 12:44 am
@Abhishek: Awesome. Good luck to you.
@VMOptions: Check the very bottom of the post. The keywords are there.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Thank you so much for sharing. You are giving away valuable information here. Highly appreciated
“there’s nothing amazing about the ad and the URL itself is a redirect.”
- What kind of redirect do you use? .htaccess?
August 5th, 2008 at 6:10 am
@BenSater: No prob. The redirect is PHP based.
< ?php header("Location: URL_HERE"); ?>
August 5th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I thought AdWords doesn’t allow a redirect? Or is it allowed only on the content network?
August 5th, 2008 at 7:45 am
@Dave: In general, that’s right. However, until the ad is reviewed manually, it should work just fine. In the meantime, you can create a really simple landing page to funnel the user in.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:00 am
So then in reality it’s not something that can go to a $9k/month campaign by keeping it as is….because eventually it will get slapped? To keep it going you’d have to build a landing page, which may consequently lower your profit as it may/probably require more clicks to convert the same numbers.
Would it be reasonable to say the above is correct?
August 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am
@Dave: If you were to do exactly what I did, you’d probably make about the same (because nothing would be different but the URL). It wasn’t meant to be long-term.
To really push this offer, you’d have to create a landing page which might increase or decrease your conversion rate. You’d need to test more keywords, test this on the search network, test it on content sites.
In other words, it’s all about testing. That was the point- I did the initial hard work and now it’s up to you to take it beyond that. There’s no reason this can’t be pushed to $300+ profit per day and beyond with the right volume.
Not only that, but you’ve got several other similar offers that you can do the same thing with.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:04 am
@ Scott Weaver
Did u use a landing page for this campaign ??? If yes then was it pre-pop ??
as IMO people seeing a landing page & then clicking & filling form the % of conversions gets lower isn’t it ?? whats the method ???
August 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
@Abhishek: No, it was a redirect.
And I’m not sure who says landing pages decrease conversions. In fact, the point of a landing page is to increase conversions. It’s a pre-sell opportunity. Not only that, but it’s a chance to grab their email and tell them about other exciting things. Work it, people!
August 5th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Thanks for an informative post. Who creates your landing pages?
August 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Hey Scott,
Great case study and it’s nice to see you posting again on here. I’ve had some nice success with the content network as well. It’s just a matter of testing all kinds of different things.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
@Kirin: I do.
@ClarkeW: Glad to be posting again. Hit me up on chat and we can trade war stories.
August 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Hi Scott, thanks for sharing, it’s been a valuable resource. How do you do to redirect and not get a low QS, whenever I try to direct linking or redirection, AdWords always rises my minimum bid to $5 or more
August 5th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
@LiamGallagher: When it comes to the content network, you’re less likely to get dinged for it. As I was saying, once you step into the deeper waters (search network), you’ll want to make a decent landing page.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Great guide.
I was looking for the same complete guide.
Never seen anybody posting all the details.
Thanks very much.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
@BenStater: I like to post what others would charge you for.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:00 am
@Scott
In my Opinion as i have seen in Google Adwords, Redirect pages just decrease the ranking(score) of the page & they ask huge amount per click ?? Isn’t it or it will work @ around 25cents per click & what budget u had kept per day ??
August 6th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Interesting choice of keywords. Most people would have picked “grocery” or “groceries” etc.
August 6th, 2008 at 8:46 am
@Abhishek: It worked for over a month but I wanted to post the one-month earnings, so .. does it work? Yes. Will it decrease your page score with Google? I’m not sure. It seems to vary from person to person. For me, it’s worked.
@Think Like An SOB: What do you mean? It says “groceries.”
August 6th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
@Scott
What I meant was you got creative and targeted the right audience with your keywords food stamp, food stamps, recipe, recipes and didnt use the obvious competitive kws like groceries etc.
August 6th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
One thing about Google is that they will charge more for bidding on keywords that are not in your ad and landing page. Those were great keywords, but one nice optimization would be to put “recipes” in the ad and landing page somehow. Then, Google will give you discounted CPC – while your competitors who don’t know this will pay premium.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
@Think Like An SOB: Haha.. yeah, I was still waking up when I read your comment, sorry. Makes sense now.
@Tim: Yeah, that’s actually a really good point to make.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:59 am
@Tim – he didn’t have any control over the landing page. He was direct linking.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Hi Scott,
I think you can charge $4997 ebook for this kind of information. How do you come up with the foodstamp and recipe idea?
August 8th, 2008 at 12:33 am
@novel: Thanks, but I definitely like to keep things free here.
For the foodstamp/recipe idea, I was just trying to think outside the box. It usually ends up paying off. It helps to just take a step back and look at a campaign from a different angle to see if there’s some way it isn’t being approached yet.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Thanks for the info Scott. Nice to see the blog come back to life!! Let’s hope the forums do too
I tried replicating this with a different offer, but google slapped me straight away and disallowed my ad because the display url was ‘wrong’. I own the domain that the display url points to, but when the user clicks on the ad there is a php redirect that takes them to the direct linked offer. How did you get around that??
August 8th, 2008 at 7:21 am
[...] Zip Submit Case Study [...]
August 8th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
@Richard:
Haha.. exactly. I’d love to see the forums spark up in this place.
To get around the slap, you can either start with a landing page and move to a redirect or start with an iframe with content around it.
Eventually, you should end up back at some sort of landing page though, as that will ensure a long-term campaign.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Thank you so much for sharing this priceless info, I have a question how do I redirect a landing page ?
is their a html code I could use or should I just type this code on my index.html page
would that work?
thanks , for time reader , just became a subscriber.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
@Edgar: No problem. If you want to redirect a landing page, you just using an index.php to redirect people like so:
< ?php header("Location: http://www.affiliatelink.com“); ?>
August 16th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Awesome post, you definitely should do a post on how to make landing pages, or where you go for resources on them. Your blog is quickly becoming one of my favorites. You actually SHOW people how to make money, not give them a pipedream.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
@TipJar: Wow, thanks. That’s decent of you. Also, yes – that landing page idea had crossed my mind.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:40 am
They got wind of your keywords and have since changed the criteria.
This is from Hydra – No bidding on the terms “FEMA” or “Food Stamps” or any misspellings. Traffic from these keywords will not be paid for.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:47 am
@Geiger: That does suck but then again, this was an exercise in clever advertising as well as a good way for people to see how a campaign works.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:59 am
[...] means offers like the ones discussed in this post would generate money based on a simple zip submission from a unique US-based IP [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
This is pretty cool. I’m actually tempted to try it for myself. I would be a little too afraid to try it on Google though, they’re a little too slap happy these days.
Probably will try it on MSN first.