PROFIT
FINALLY, I have made a profit with ecommerce. Below is my case study / story of exactly how I achieved this.
Back Story
Just a few months ago, I decided to branch out from affiliate marketing and expand my business from mostly focusing on affiliate marketing and expand to other areas - such as ecommerce.
One of the main reasons why I decided to branch out from mostly focusing on affiliate marketing was because I figured that it would be a lot easier to run a legit ecommerce site on PPC engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) vs trying to be an affiliate for them and [attempt to] bypass Google's "slap happy affiliate hands."
To be honest, I thought it would be simple at first. Then, I realized it wasn't going to be so easy.
Finally Hit A Profit
I'm thankful to say that December resulted in a NET profit (after advertising expenses and product costs) in the $x,xxx range. Sure, it's not much, but we're now profitable and ready to start pressing forward towards scaling.
I've received a lot of questions about how I built my PPC campaigns and so I figured I would do a case study on it and show you exactly what I have done to make my profitable ppc campaign.
How I Built A Profitable PPC Campaign For My Ecommerce Store
Building my ecommerce PPC campaign was actually relatively easy... time consuming, but still easy.
- We went into one category of products and listed every keyword we could think of for that set of products.
- We also listed negative keywords that we would NOT want to be showing up for. This is an important step that many people overlook. For example, if you run a "job" website, you probably would want to have a whole host of keywords that would bring visitors that are certainly NOT looking for a job... (e.g. blow). This can have a huge impact on your overall success. If you were selling TV's you would probably want to negative keyword things like "replacement parts," "stand," etc. You get the idea.
- We then Google searched some of the keywords we thought of to see what ads came up... Competitive analysis... (Pro tip: To find if they are bidding on broad or exact/phrase only - try typing the keyword + aksljfdlaksj9. Assuming most people won't be bidding exactly on "yourkeyword aksljfdlaksj9", their ads will show if they are bidding broad.)
- Finally we had enough information to begin building our campaign.
My Secret Weapon For PPC Building
Ok, so imagine how long it would take for me to manually go through 30,000 categories and repeat the above steps. I'm sure we can both imagine how mind numbingly awesome that would be. Thankfully I didn't have to. "I have a softwares that does all that."
One of my long loved secret weapons for building PPC campaigns is using a tool called SpeedPPC (yes, I've worked out a special discount for you all - and yes, it's my affiliate link).
Basically, I took all the information above, plugged it into the software, and it generated a complete campaign file for me that I simply uploaded to Google desktop tool, made some changes and poof - done.
How It Works - How I Did It
Ok, you probably don't believe me, so let me explain it in more detail. The way the software works is through a method called Seed/Expansion keyword list building.
You have your list of seeds (in my case all my product categories), and your list of expansion keywords (keywords that would be added onto the seed to make a complete keyword).
The software automatically combined the two, sorted the list into adgroups by seed, made ads based off the ones I researched using the seed (autoreplaced so they seed was in the ad copy), and then exported it to a Google desktop compatible CSV.
Sample Pictures Of The Process:
Amazing, I know.
Seriously, I have not made a PPC campaign without this tool since like 2008. Highly recommended if you're looking to build PPC campaigns.
WHY it works...
The reason WHY this tool works so great is because I no longer am stuck bidding on keywords like "generic keyword". You know, the expensive, almost no profit, keywords that are extremely broad but take no work to setup.
This tool made me thousands of adgroups, perfectly grouped and resulted in numerous 10/10 quality scores and tons of traffic without the price of the good ol' "generic keyword". Those quality scores are what allowed me to reduce bids, get more traffic, and ultimately make a profit.
Rockin' the 10's
After the PPC campaign was rocking the 10's (10/10 Quality score), it really came down to making the buyer process convenient and exuding signs that say, "TRUST ME!".
Combine a well built, well targeted PPC campaign with these and you'll probably find yourself very close to having a winning campaign.
Full Disclosure and Being Honest
Building the PPC campaign was extremely efficient and easy. Building the entire website, finding the wholesale distributor, coming up with a sales process, optimizing the sales process, finding the right pricing, etc, etc, etc was not easy.
While running an ecommerce store can be extremely profitable, it is by no means affiliate marketing. It's a real business that requires a lot of attention and work. Regardless of all of that, I love running an ecommerce site. Fun stuff!
I'll continue to post updated (good and bad) about my ecommerce progress as I continue working away on this new venture! 
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