What to do with Low ROI?
You’ve set up a campaign, had your first initial loss testing traffic sources and keywords, optimized your campaign thoroughly and have finally started seeing a positive return on your investment. The problem is, though, that profit is miniscule, maybe even insignificant. If you can’t find a way to lower click costs and raise EPC, you’re stuck with a campaign that you’ve drained countless hours on and you’ll have to run for days, maybe even weeks to see a return on your investment back. I’ve had this problem happen to me, and I currently run several campaigns that bring in very little profit, ROI-wise. But just because it’s only turning 10% profit a day, doesn’t mean you can’t find other ways to break more rewards off of that. Here are some of the benefits I find from running some of my less profitable campaigns.
Google AdWords is an absolute demon, and aren’t the most friendly with new accounts. If I’ve spent 100 hours running and optimizing 1 campaign for AdWords, and finally roll some profit off of it, especially from AdWords, I’ll generally keep it running if it requires little to no adjustments on a daily basis. By keeping spending up, I age my AdWords account with a high quality score campaign and showing them I’m able to keep paying the big G. AdWords then rewards me with lower click costs and the ability to start up new campaigns with a lot more ease. This might even allow me to increase the profitability of the low ROI campaign, as well as new campaigns.
Building trust between ad networks is essential for any affiliate marketer. By sending leads and sales, you build trust between you, your affiliate manager, as well as the network. If the network loves the traffic you are sending, keep it up. Ask for a payout bump if you can because they love it so much. Many networks also offer rewards for reaching certain amounts of revenue acquired or leads brought in. Use these rewards as a bump to your profit.
Make sure you are spending money with a credit card with rewards or cash back. Several offers I run bring me in about 5-10% ROI. It’s money in my pocket and requires very little upkeep. It also gives me airline miles, which I can in turn use to fly back to America to visit my family whenever I want. For those spending a lot more on a daily basis, use a cash-back credit card. Many companies offer 1-2% cash back. With a 100K ad spend budget, that nails you $2,000 back. If you can spend 1 million, that’s $20,000 back – more than enough for a budget-class car or well deserved vacation anywhere in the world.
If you still can’t find a good reason to keep up a low-ROI campaign, maybe you are just looking at it incorectly. If I can spend 1000 dollars on a campaign that brings me 10% back on my investment, I make $100 dollars in 1 day. That seems pretty bad especially on the amount I’m putting into it. However, if I know it is a consistent $100 a day I’ll keep it up. After 10 days, I’ve made $1,000. In a month, I’ve made $3,000. After 12 months (if the campaign survives that long), that is over $30,000 profit! You try putting $300,000 into the bank and making $30,000 interest on it in a year. Good luck with that.
And don’t think it’s not possible to keep such a low ROI profitable over a long time. I currently have one campaign that I’ve ran for the past 6 months making 10-20% ROI consistently taking only 5 minutes of work daily. In fact, the ROI has increased lately, generating over 60% ROI on some days. It might just be the wrong time of the year for your campaign.
4 Responses to “What to do with Low ROI?”
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Justin, Nice article and a good read. I never thought about keeping a campaign going just to keep networks happy and build Adwords history. I’ve had several campaigns like that in the past. Thanks for the tip.
the main problem is that many marketers are just spoilt. you think think about the real meaning of the word ROI. okay if you just have 1000$ ready to spend and need to earn your daily cash in the internet you will have a problem but most of us are just looking for 100%++ ROI things which are serving our quick cash thinking. think the long run. if you have a campaign with 10-20% why just don´t let it run… if you have started your marketing carrier (like i did), you should still remember how happy you have been about just a few bucks you earned daily :)
Say wot?
Cheers for the tip..
I’m pretty new to AM and have a campaign running which doesn’t earn me much money at all, but it is consistent and I’ve been tempted to invest the money elsewhere and see if I can get a better return on a different product.
However, I see your point and agree, I’ll let it run for a while and see what happens :)