My first $1,000 day was unconventional from most internet marketers, because I didn’t earn it as an internet marketer. In fact, it was my $1,000 day that inspired my internet marketing career. It was the biggest influx of cash that I had ever seen… and it came on the day of my high school graduation party.
The $20 and $50 checks from family members and family friends all added up, and most of my friends blew their grad money on guitar amps and parties…
Unlike them, I bought a website hosting package and invested in PPC.
I clung onto that money as tight as possible. Heck, my limit on Google Adwords was only $5/day, but I made it profitable until I felt comfortable to spend more.
Once, I posted in a forum that I had a major problem: my ROI was so high that I was running short on cash to pay my Adwords bill before my first Clickbank check came in. The replies went something like, “Ha! Nice PROBLEM you got there, Ryan.”
And when the checks did arrive, my mother asked me what type of illegal activity I was involved in.
Today, PPC is still the single most profitable investment that I make on a daily basis, and my strategy has barely changed.
There’s two ways that I approach the PPC game:
When I am testing a market, the conversion ratio of a product, or just don’t have a lot of money to blow on a certain project, I only bid on product names. This makes it easy to write very specific ads, make very specific landing pages, and achieve high conversions. When I first followed the method of bidding only on product names, I had my first $100 day in only four days.
When I’m scaling a project, I bid on more general keywords, and I actually lose money until I eliminate the terms that do not convert and optimize my click through ratio enough to get my costs down. You should avoid doing this unless you’re prepared to lose $500 before you start to see a profit.
Here is what has made the difference in my campaigns, and I ALWAYS follow these tips:
1) Create very small ad groups with only a few keywords. Do not attempt to target more than a few keywords with the same ads. Your click through ratios will suffer and it will be harder to track your progress. Focus on a few keywords in each group and monitor their CTR and conversions.
2) Always split test different ads against one another. I recommend having two to three ads rotating at a time to test their click through ratios. I often have one ad that serves as my constant, and I test one to two ads against it. When you find an ad that beats your constant, you can ad it to the mix or use it as the new constant. Always strive for higher click throughts on your ads.
3) My most valuable, profitable PPC tip that I can possibly provide: Do what others aren’t. For a long time, I did very well with ad headlines that said, “Do Not Buy This Program.” This got crazy high CTRs and made me a lot of money, but the market caught up to me, and soon there were a ton of ads that looked just like mine. As a result, my CTRs started to drop, and I had to find a new highly-profitable ad.
You’ll often hear it said that you should get the keyword into your ad as much as possible so that it is bolded and stands out from the other ads. I’ve found this to be true only when other people aren’t doing it. If your ad is bold and other ads aren’t bold, then you stand out. But if all the ads are bold, and yours isn’t, then your ad also stands out. Remember, you’re in competition for clicks, and you need to stand out from the other advertisers.
Strange as it seems, you don’t always need to have a profitable campaign in order to consider PPC a success. The key is to see which keywords are bringing in sales, and to see if the market is buying at all. Even if you are reaping a loss, it is a very good sign when you are seeing sales, because the campaign can be adjusted as time goes on.
PPC is the most profitable investment that I make in my business, and it shouldn’t be something that is feared. That is, of course, unless you do it carelessly. If you create small ad groups that stand out from the other advertisers, and your landing pages are targeted for the keywords in your campaign, then you put yourself in the best position to see positive results. And even in the scenario that you turn a profit, you can still refine it if there are sales.
Folks, we are building businesses here, and PPC has been the best money that I’ve spent into my business. If you ain’t nervous about it, then you ain’t growing. 
