I’ve recently dipped my toe back into the world of Google Adwords!

Recently I have concentrated my efforts on Miva & Yahoo PPC campaigns because they are still affordable for particular sites, whereas Google is not. But, with so many UK users only using Google for their internet searching, is it worthwhile; how many potential customers are going to my opposition?

So, I have once again bitten the bullet & decided to run a campaign on Google for Cashback Shopper, with a daily limit of £5. But, as the minimum bid amount quickly went from £2, to £2.50 & then in some cases to £5, is this value for money, or just a rip off?!!

Although the minimum bid to activate the keyword [cashback] is £5, the actual average CPC over the last week has been £2.35. However, this is still taking half my daily budget for clicks – two clicks & my campaign was off / With a CTR of 4.28%, maybe it’s not worth running this phrase & working only on longer tail keyphrases which will leave the campaign running longer and with a higher CTR. The table below shows how many clicks I’m getting for my £5 over the last 7 days & Google reckons I’m not receiving 82% of my eligible impressions!!

18 Aug Campaign activity: 4 Clicks 5.24
19 Aug Campaign activity: 7 Clicks 4.99
20 Aug Campaign activity: 6 Clicks 5.10
21 Aug Campaign activity: 4 Clicks 5.01
22 Aug Campaign activity: 7 Clicks 5.00
23 Aug Campaign activity: 6 Clicks 4.75
24 Aug Campaign activity: 5 Clicks 5.26

Google suggests a daily budget of £27.34!!!! Is this beyond the reach of many affiliate marketers? It certainly seems beyond mine!! But would those clicks convert to “sales”? This is the choice that has to be made & for many new PPC advertisers, it can be an expensive one – I know, I’ve been there!

My overall CTR for the last week has been 6.98% at an average CPC of £0.91, so this isn’t too bad. Purchases made through the site have increased substantially over the last couple of weeks & the new £50 prize draw competition I am running should create more sign ups from friend referrals, at much better value than PPC!!!

Because of the decent ROI I seem to be getting from the Google PPC campaign, I have suspended all my other search engine campaigns for now & have upped the daily Adwords spend to £10 (not yet the £27.34 recommended!) and will keep monitoring the CTR & ROI closely.

Naturally, if spending continues to grow, it would certainly be worth re-investing the income back into further advertising!

In the financial world, the FTSE has key figures that the market use as pointers to whether the market will rise or fall over the next few weeks. If the FTSE hits the magical figure, then confidence rises etc.

So, I’ve decided to announce that Cashback Shopper has reached the milestone (albeit modest) membership total of 5000! Naturally, the membership of cashback sites is fairly fluid, with people switching from one to another to get sign up bonuses etc. but I’m pleased to have reached this total & plan to celebrate by running a competition on the site!

I will be offering a (also modest) cash prize draw – every pound earned in cash-back by members will qualify them for an entry into the draw. Luckily, eDealsUK have all the tools to be able to offer and administer this, built into their white label system & so I just have to offer & publicise the competition.

As soon as the competition details are finalised, I’ll advertise it both here and on the site, as well as by newsletter to the members )

Durrrr! Like me, have you been looking over your website and wondering what you need to do to increase your sales, leads or sign-ups?

In a new competition Google are offering you the “chance of a lifetime”. Imagine having the Google team give your website the once over, and undertake all the testing and tweaks to improve your site’s conversion!!!

For some lucky people it’s no longer a dream. The team at Google are running the “Website Workout” competition which will see a handful of business/website owners win the opportunity to have their websites optimised for more leads, sign-ups and/or sales.

According to the Google Website Workout page:

“Our consultants will work with you to discover ways in which we can increase site performance. Using Website Optimizer, our free website testing and optimization tool, a team of experts will work with you to determine the page layout, headlines, images, and text that will drive the most business from your site.”

To give your website the chance of winning an conversion overhaul by the team at Google, enter the Website Workout competition before June 17th 2008. You can submit your entry here.