7search

Case Study – Massive 250% ROI Increase in 3 Days

March 26th, 2012
7Search, Affiliate Marketing, Traffic Sources
11
10,842 views

The following post is a case study written by WarriorForum user and PeerFly publisher Fary. Fary owns and operates his own affiliate marketing blog, Up Web Traffic. He was nice enough to write up a case study of his own 7Search campaign for my blog :)

One of the main reasons why many affiliate marketers do not make money online is the lack of insistence. They read too much and when it is time to put what they learned into practice, they start to feel bored. When it comes to the CPA marketing industry, everything should be tried and tested many times. This is the case with 7Search traffic as well. To successfully establish a profitable campaign you will need to do a lot of testing and learn the best ways to make money from it. That’s why affiliate marketers should take their time, put forth a good effort, and spend money too! This is also the main idea behind my UpWebTraffic Affiliate Blog, which gives valuable information about affiliate marketing in general and how to make money from PeerFly specially.

This case study explains how to choose a good offer from PeerFly and then use that offer to establish a profitable 7Search campaign. The end result for this example was a massive increase in conversion rate and ROI within a few days.

How to choose a winning PeerFly offer

Well, I know that many successful strategies suggest that you would search for a high converting offer so that you know other affiliates are using it and you can use it too. But, I suggest a totally different strategy in which you look for an offer that has a winning keyword. Remember, keywords are the real money making opportunities out there!

How to do this? As usual, we will choose Email/Zip offers as they are the easiest to convert. Now, filter those offers by payout. Simply click Value as shown below. The highest payout offers will appear at the top of the list. It is very important to choose an offer that pays you well so you can see results faster and gain more confidence.

Now, look at the offers with an “expert eye”. We are all experts only when we believe we are! Try to find the most important keyword with this specific offer. In the screenshot below, I have included some offers so we can consider: what keywords are the best? After a few times of practice you can decide which keywords are better with a single deep look.

Did you notice the highlighted keyword in the Delta Airline Tickets offer? This is a perfect example of finding a keyword that many people are searching for and is directly related to our offer so we can guarantee a high conversion rate.

Decide which keywords to use

Go a head over to the 7Search Keyword Suggestion Tool and paste the keyword Delta Airline. You will see useful suggestions that can help you make your decision.

suggest bids for 7Search keywords Case Study Massive 250% ROI Increase in 3 Days

Result 1 – The first one has a good search volume (more than 25k) but there is more competition too as the top 2 bids reach $0.11.

Result 2 – The second, third, and fourth have average search volume (3k to 5k) but almost zero competition.

Result 3 – The fifth one has low search volume (1k) with medium competition.

TIPS: You should not exclude result 1 just because the competition is high and you should not decide to use result 2 just because there is no competition. Think about it: is this keyword exactly fitting the needs of my visitors? Are they more likely to click on my link and submit their emails? If the answer was no, never use it. If you find it might be suitable then think about other factors: will I get steady traffic from this keyword so I can further optimize it? If the answer was yes for all previous questions then you have a winning keyword!

Setting up a new 7Search campaign

If you do not know how to make a new 7search campaign please read this first: Setting up a 7search campaign.

When you reach the Add keywords step, please hold on. This step can determine if you are a winner or not. Simply paste the same keyword that we used in the suggestion tool above, Delta Airline, and press enter.

delta keywords on 7Search 550x233 Case Study Massive 250% ROI Increase in 3 Days

Using the same rules of step 2, pick some keywords that are closely related to the offer with sufficient search volume so you can test if it is working or not. I usually choose 3 – 10 keywords according to the availability of keywords for this specific campaign. When you try to think as the user you may discover additional keywords that bring you traffic and conversions. You may even consider spelling mistakes as they are very common. For this, I might also use the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Once you are done, submit your keywords and it is now time to set Phrase and Exact bids to get rid of any non targeted traffic.

Using “Phrase” and “Exact” matches

Targeting too broad usually results in poor conversion rates. The 7Search team is aware of this fact so they allow us to target very specific people within any given keyword. There are 2 options available:

Phrase match
Your ad will be only shown if the complete phrase is entered by the user. If you are bidding for Delta Airline Tickets your ad will be shown if the user types in how to get Delta Airline Tickets and Delta Airline Tickets free but will not be shown if the keyword is interrupted. Examples of this are Delta Airline two Tickets and Delta for Airline Tickets.

Exact match
Your ad will be shown only if the exact phrase is entered without any other text. In the previous example, your ad will only be visible when the user types: Delta Airline Tickets.

By default, any 7Search campaign is set to target broadly but when you want to enable phrase or exact matches you can do this easily by selecting certain keywords then click Edit and type 0 in Broad bid to enable the phrase targeting or typing 0 in both Broad and Phrase bids to enable the exact targeting as illustrated in screen shots below:

Blocking bad traffic sources

If you are tracking your campaigns, it would be easy for you to compare your traffic sources and stop any bad traffic that is not converting. The Reports page in PeerFly should be revisited on daily or even hourly basis in order to make quick decisions like adding more keywords or blocking certain SubIDs. If you are not familiar with blocking SubIDs in 7Search please read this post first. As soon as you are ready, go to the Reports page and review your traffic sources. If you find that certain SubID sends you too many clicks with no conversions then you should block those.

The offer below has been running for a long time so I can now say which SubIDs are bringing bad traffic. The SubID 65285 is associated with 35 clicks with no conversions. It is clear that I should not permit this SubID to send me traffic any longer. You will immediately see more improvement of conversion rate as soon as you block it.

peerfly campaign stats 550x433 Case Study Massive 250% ROI Increase in 3 Days

Repeat the previous steps with all your new campaigns

This was a long post! Happy earnings for all of you.

Live 7Search Campaign

March 5th, 2012
Affiliate Marketing, Traffic Sources
20
10,866 views

I decided to create a LIVE 7Search campaign to show you the campaign I am testing. I am showing the keywords I am getting clicks on, the the AFFID for that source, and the RID for that source from 7Search. I am also using a postback script I created so I can show you the total amount of leads generated from this campaign as well as recent subids that have generated leads. I will not be showing the offer I am promoting or my ad copy, but I will tell you it’s a good converting email submit from PeerFly :)

If you are interested in setting up your own 7Search campaign like the one shown below I suggest taking a look at my recent guideline posts. I am following these exactly:

Setup a 7Search Campaign (get $25 to advertise with FREE!)
Optimize your 7Search Campaign and PROFIT

Of course, please let me know if you have any questions. I will keep this campaign running and live for as long as possible.

View the stats

Unfortunately, due to some limitations with WordPress, I had to remove the stats from this post. However, you can view them here.

Blacklisting Bad Performing SubIDs on 7Search

March 1st, 2012
7Search, Affiliate Marketing, Traffic Sources
48
26,582 views

Once you have setup your 7Search campaign, have everything tracking properly, and are generating some traffic the next thing you can do to help yourself push towards profitability is optimize that traffic. If you followed along my article on how to setup a 7Search campaign you should have everything tracking properly. If not, please go take a look at that article before you continue.

Read This First! Setup a 7Search Campaign

Analyzing Your 7Search Traffic

The thing I like most about 7Search is the fact that it’s search traffic and it’s so cheap. After you setup a campaign you should start to see traffic almost immediately as long as you bidding enough to get you in the top positions. Depending on your keywords and bidding, you should have a nice amount of data within your first $5-10. I am going to go ahead and share my Lids campaign data. Now, you’re going to see that a majority of my traffic came from one keyword and although I do plan to do a follow up post about that keyword specifically, I do not want you to get the impression that this is your million dollar keyword and you’re never going to have to “work” again. With that said, here is a screenshot of my PeerFly stats for my Lids campaign in February.

That campaign did not do great. However, I do have enough data to try to optimize. 7Search shows that I got 1,212,705 impressions and 1,056 clicks. I spent $19.06 in total with an average CPC of just $0.02. Unfortunately, I only made $4.80, so my net loss was $14.26. However, there are quite a few different sources that sent me enough clicks to know that they are not going to convert for this campaign and I have gone through and blacklisted those. I will explain how to blacklist in a minute, but for now let’s take a look through all of the different sources I got traffic from and which ones can be blacklisted.

Getting the ability to Blacklist added to your 7Search account

The ability to blacklist sources is not automatically available in your 7Search account. 7Search decided that in order to stop abuse, they need to manually turn it on in each account. As long as you have deposited in your account and setup a campaign that is driving traffic they have no problem enabling it though. Even better, I’ve included a form at the bottom of this post that you can fill out and once you do it’ll automatically send a nice email to my contact at 7Search asking him to turn on blacklisting within your account :)

How to Blacklist on 7Search

Once the ability to blacklist has been added to your account (you will get an email letting you know that it has been enabled) you can access the blacklist feature by going to My Account, Preferences (edit …), and then click Manage SubID blocks >> under your Account Tools.

After you click Manage SubID blocks >> you will be taken to the page to add subids you’d like to blacklist.

Again, you will not be able to see the Manage SubID blocks >> link until you have had the ability to blacklist subids enabled on your 7Search account. Please use the form below to request that ability.

Once you have gone through and blacklisted bad performing subids you may need to go through and add new keywords. Your traffic is going to increase, but at least you’ll know that the traffic you are getting is from sources that are performing for you. Keeping a close eye on both keywords and the sources of traffic you’re generating traffic from using those keywords is important. With this combination though, you can setup a successful and profitable 7Search campaign. Like with any campaign, it simply takes research and testing.

I look forward to seeing how your 7Search campaigns perform! Of course, please let me know if you have any questions and let’s make some 7Search affiliate money!

SubID Blacklist Ability Request Form

Setting up a 7Search Campaign

February 28th, 2012
Affiliate Marketing, Traffic Sources
123
51,351 views

Yesterday I sent out an email to everyone who has joined my newsletter, Affiliate Manager Exclusive, with a quick example and walk through of setting up and tracking a 7Search campaign. Today I am going to go into a little more detail on how exactly that is done, give you some example offers you should run on 7Search, and I have even included a screencast going over my example campaign. Later this week I am going to do a follow up post on how to optimize your 7Search campaign by finding and blacklisting losing sources.

Join 7Search and get $25 FREE!

Of course, before you can setup your 7Search campaign you need to join as an advertiser. Use the banner above or click here to join under my link. Once you create your account and deposit at least $50 you will get $25 added to your account for free.

Once your account is setup simply click the Create Campaign link on your Campaigns tab and you’ll be taken to the New Campaign form.

The form is pretty self explanatory, but there are a few things I’d like to note. To insert the keyword that you are bidding on that the user has searched for in order to see your add simply add the variable ###KEYWORD### to your ad title, ad description, display URL, or destination URL. This can really help your CTR.

For your destination URL you need to pass 3 variables into your link so you can track everything properly. Those are:

###KEYWORD###
###AFFID###
###RID###

As I explained above, the ###KEYWORD### variable will pass the keyword as a subid into your link. The ###AFFID### is the affiliate’s ID number from 7Search that you are getting traffic from. The ###RID### variable is that affiliate’s website ID that they are generating traffic from. Obviously, each affiliate has their own ID, but each affiliate can have many websites so each website has it’s own ID as well. It’s common to see that one website from an affiliate on 7Search may be generating conversions, but another may not. Later I will explain how you can blacklist a certain website an affiliate is sending you traffic from if it is not converting for you.

You will want to pass these variables into your PeerFly Affiliate Link as subids. I suggest passing them in the following order (this is what the end of your Affiliate Link should look like):

&s1=###KEYWORD###&s2=###AFFID###&s3=###RID###

With those variables added to your link you will be able to see a subid breakdown for each click you get from 7Search on your PeerFly Reports and then track which keywords, affiliates, and websites on 7Search are generating leads and which ones are wasted clicks.

Finding Keywords

After you create your campaign you are taking to the page to add keywords. 7Search has a very nice keyword search tool with all their data built right in.

Type in your main keyword you would like to work with. For each campaign there should be a main keyword obvious. For the one I used in my example screencast above, that is scrapbook. So, I type in scrapbook and 7Search returns suggested keywords with some very cool data:

The keyword
Estimated searches per month
Estimated clicks for the top position
The top 3 bids for that keyword

Using this data you can access how much volume is possible and how much it’s going to cost you. The actual keyword scrapbook gets about 200 clicks a month and it looks like I’m going to have to bid at least $0.05 to get some traffic. That’s not very much traffic at all and fighting for it at $0.05 a click doesn’t seem worth it. As you go down the list you’ll see there’s less and less volume available for those keywords and apparently zero clicks. This is a little disheartening, but I’m sure there are other keywords that I might be able to get some traffic on if I continue my keyword research. Just for example purposes, I am going to choose 10 of those keywords and explain in the video below how I go about bidding for them.

Place Tracking Pixel

The last step to setting up your 7Search campaign is placing the 7Search tracking pixel on the offer on PeerFly. You can find the 7Search tracking pixel by clicking the [Track It] link on your Manage Keywords page, the Conversion Tracking link on your Dashboard, or by clicking here.

Just copy the pixel code and then place it on the offer on PeerFly. Placing the tracking pixel on PeerFly is easy. Once you get your first lead your tracking code will be “verified” on 7Search. No need to do this manually. By adding the pixel you are helping 7Search optimize your traffic for you.

With that information you should be able to setup your 7Search campaign and start getting some traffic. I will be doing a follow up post on how to optimize your campaign based on the traffic you have gotten. I will also be doing a case study from my own campaign.

I suggest to get started you run some of our top email submit offers. Please let me know if you have any questions. Let’s make some money!

Setup your campaign? Learn how to optimize and PROFIT