
Conversion Optimizer: AdWords, Done Right: MicroISV on a Shoestring - rfreytag
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/10/conversion-optimizer-adwords-done-right/
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patio11
Wow, a blog post of mine from late 2007. Wasn't expecting that on HN this
morning.

Here's the update for 2009: everything I said earlier remains true to a first
approximation. AdWords is far and away the largest expense for my business and
it also has the most predictable ROI of anything I do. Day in, day out,
_without my intervention_ it continues making me money. I really can't bang on
that enough -- in 2007 prior to Conversion Optimizer I was having to log into
AdWords and adjust _daily_ , now the thing just runs on autopilot and I check
back, oh, a little less than once a month?

If you've got questions, fire away.

~~~
gfodor
How hard was it to rig up your conversion tracking to Google? Was there any
fear you had putting such a thing on auto-pilot with your wallet? Any ways you
would have wanted it to be easier? Are there changes you'd make that might
improve your ROI?

~~~
patio11
Conversion tracking:

It is close to trivial to get a basic level of conversion tracking established
-- copy/paste some Javascript into a page which probably already exists in
your conversion funnel. Back in 2007 Google's conversion tracking had some
accuracy issues (i.e. it was nowhere close to what my numbers were -- counting
50% of transactions whereas I expected 90% of customers to see the page I was
counting at). That has since cleared up.

Fear of autopilot:

They have pretty comprehensive budgeting control (you set it in terms of a
per-day thing, but that is basically a marketing-friendly wrapper around a
per-month budget). That lets you sharply limit the risk -- I think at the
start I had a daily budget of $10, which means if the process went out of
control for a month I'd be out at most $300 when I got the next bill and
terminated it. They've since performed well enough that I've adjusted my
budget upwards several times until they were unable to spend most of it. (The
default for AdWords is to adjust your bidding to spend up to your budget --
for example, if you have $500 unspent, they'll adjust your bids upwards to get
you more clicks and spend that last $500. This default is in Google's
interests, but not in yours, because it will result in you paying absolutely
stupid per-conversion costs at the end.)

For this Halloween I'd feel comfortable authorizing them to spend several
thousand dollars. (Halloween is my best season and its the only one where my
ads ever get budget-constrained.)

Ways it could have been easier:

Conversion Optimizer is about as easy as I could want it to be. AdWords,
hmm... I'd like there to be a clone of me who I can get to write creatives
(that is advertiser-speak for ads and landing pages) and check if they're
performing well without me having to actually do it. Everything about quality
score could be more transparent, particularly for newbies to the system.

Changes to improve ROI:

I've always got ideas for this, I just don't have nearly enough time to
implement and rigorously test them all. My big project right now is turning my
desktop application into a web app, which I think will result in a substantial
across-the-board increase in conversions due to the elimination of the
download, install, execute cycle and the possibility to collect email
addresses to implement an autoresponder & etc.

~~~
gfodor
thanks for the reply -- do me a favor, if you have time, I'd like to chat more
offline, email me at gfodor at gmail if you're up for it!

