Using PPC for eBay affiliate sites at A Mogul To Be

Using PPC for eBay affiliate sites

December 28th, 2007 by Robert

I have several eBay affiliate sites now and while some are starting to get some organic traffic, I decided to do some experimenting with PPC ads to drive traffic.

For this experiment, I chose ABodyAuctions.com for my guinea pig. It was getting about a half dozen or so visitors a day. A couple from organic searches and most coming from a signature link via a forum. My dad is a member of a highly popular chevelle forum and he graciously agreed to ad a link to his signature pointing to the site.

Quick History

For those that aren’t car nuts, the A-Body is the car platform from General Motors in the 60’s and early 70’s upon which the Chevelle, Pontiac GTO, Buick Skylark and Oldsmobile Cutlass were built.

The Experiment

So for the experiment, I needed to decide which keywords to target. I could go generic with ‘ABody’ and its variants, but there is such little traffic on those keywords, according to Google anyway. I then started experimenting with slightly less generic words like ‘chevelle’, ’skylark’, etc. The problem with these was the amount of advertisers targeting these words. Too much competition meant it would take a higher bid than I was willing to give for each click.

Going to Wordtracker, I quickly found a keyword phrase that was highly searched, but not highly advertised. That phrase was 1970 chevelle. I should have known. The ‘70 chevelle is by far the most popular year for the chevelle so it only stands to reason that there would be lots of searches for it.

I put in my bid for the phrase along with a little money and let it run to see what happens. To my pleasant surprise I started getting traffic right away. My ad usually appeared in the number one spot when doing a Google search and led to a quickly spending my daily allowance for the ad.

Results

So, it definitely got the traffic, but did it convert? Afterall, spending money for advertising with no one buying doesn’t do any good does it? Well, yes and no. In my case I was after three things. One, how well would the ad generate traffic. Two, generate awareness of the site. Three, with any luck generate some sales.

Let me explain. I’m not totally sold on using PPC for advertising an eBay affiliate site. For one, the commissions aren’t that high for each item sold, which means that the relative cost per click is pretty high. Unlike a commission system where the commission is based on the product price, eBay commission is based on what eBay gets, which isn’t terribly high. With that in mind, I wasn’t looking for a straight monetary return on investment for this test.

For this particular customer base, there is a pretty big community that actively stays in touch with each other. Mostly through forums, but also through car shows and such. So if I can get a few visitors and hopefully those visitors will pass along the site, then I’m a happy guy.

During the period that the ad ran, it did indeed bring in traffic as I mentioned. It was sticky traffic too, meaning that users spent some time on the site and visited a lot of pages. They may not have bought something, but they did stay and look around, which means they might come back to look some more. In that sense, the ad campaign was a success.

Did anybody buy anthing?

As of this writing, yes. Not a car, but a decal for a car. Not as glamarous, but it is money in the bank. Given the lead time for auctions to end, I’m hoping there will be a few other things bought as well.

What did I learn?

Definitely target your keyword phrases. I found a highly searched, but under advertised keyword phrase, which gave me a higher probability of being clicked. The downside is that I ran through my budget pretty quickly.

Don’t spend too much on a per click basis. Remember that eBay commissions aren’t all that high, so your return on investment will be much lower than other PPC campaigns.

Have you tried PPC for an eBay affiliate site?