Comments on: What Recession? Why Year Over Year Profits Are Up 75%

By: Cool Baby Gifts

Cool Baby Gifts — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:13:54 +0000

Hi Steve!

I really agree with you on AdWords this year, for this reason, I dropped all of my broad match keywords. Google is just getting too broad, and it’s jacking up bid prices. If you do decide to stay with broad match for some keywords, definitely try this Adwords/analytics hack from Get Elastic: http://www.getelastic.com/video-tutorial-hacking-google-analytics-for-keyword-research/

The Search Query report in Adwords is useful–it tells you what keywords triggered your ads. But the above hack tells you what the user actually typed in–those are two different things.

Great blog! Keep up the good work!

By: Evelyn Lim

Evelyn Lim — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:03:06 +0000

Very inspiring! I have got lots to learn from you in doing adwords and operating an online store! To your continued success!

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:55:03 +0000

Hi Steve,
More power to you and your wife on your store’s success! Just to let you know, your blog has been inspirational to me. I’m the wife who wants to quit her job! I haven’t done so just yet but am starting to explore my options thanks to the experiences and valuable tips and advice you share in your blog! Just noticed that you do not have a link to your online store from this blog. Would love to visit your online store.

By: Xurxo Vidal

Xurxo Vidal — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:05:44 +0000

Hey Steve,

Checking your adwords campaign more frequently is highly advisable as Google is constantly tweaking the system and sometimes a negative impact can occur in a very short period of time.

On that note, keeping a close eye on your analytics solution is also a very good idea so that you can spot opportunities quicker and integrate them into your campaign.

Don’t hesitate to let me know if you’d like me to take a quick glance, we often offer free campaign reviews to show potential clients where opportunities and problem areas are before they begin working with us on a more regular basis. This gives them a chance to see what we can do for them before they pay us anything.

To your continued success!

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:16:22 +0000

Hey Xurxo
Good to hear from you again. I’ll definitely check out the search query report sometime this weekend. Most of my analysis was spent pruning adwords rather than adding new ones so perhaps I may be missing some high paying terms. I used to monitor my adwords performance monthly. But as time passed and I got lazy, I started checking in only quarterly and now bi-annually. I really need to check more often. Thanks for your offer! If I find my campaigns need improvement, I may take you up on that:)

By: Xurxo Vidal

Xurxo Vidal — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:39:01 +0000

Steve,

Congrats on your growth and success. I found your feedback on AdWords’ automated bidding options of particular interest as we’ve had similar experiences with such automated features.

To date nothing beats manual manipulation and management of a PPC campaign even though certain tools may facilitate some tasks, so you’re right on the money here.

One other area you might want to take a closer look at is the search query report that Google has now integrated in the new interface (on the old interface you had to go into the reports section to see this data). Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of irrelevant search terms creeping in to various client campaigns especially through broad keywords. That said, we monitor this frequently and regularly update negative keywords and make other necessary adjustments to bids and keywords.

You’ll also find this feature very useful in identifying additional keywords that convert well for you that aren’t already in your campaign, but for which you’re getting traffic because of broad of phrase match keywords you do already have.

That’s another strategy to employ – keep refining your keyword list based on actual search queries so that over time your campaign relies less and less on broad matched keywords to drive conversions for which you may be paying a premium on while triggering many unrelated search queries.

I’d be happy to take a closer look under the hood for you to give you some more insights to further improve performance if you’d like.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:16:29 +0000

Whoa! Hey Shea! I had no idea you guys had access to internet out there. Hope everything is going well for you. Be safe!

By: shea

shea — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:43:13 +0000

That’s awesome, Steve. Congratualtions!!!
And hello from Kabul Afghanistan!

By: Chiko777

Chiko777 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:24:04 +0000

Congrats on the success. I totally agree that we are not in a recession because if we really were than this kind of growth will not be possible. Also I’ve been able to grow my stock portfolio 4,000% in the last six months. Trust me, we are not in a recession!

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:55:05 +0000

@B7
Yeah, it could be competing ads, but it was the conversion rate that went down, not the click through rate. It had been a while since I had updated my adwords last. Looks like I have to check up on it on a regular basis to make sure that I’m not flushing my ad dollars down the drain.

@Lin
Thanks for the kind words. I’m not going to worry about Page rank too much. As long as my site traffic continues to increase, I’ll be happy.