how to determine max CPC (for large amount of keywords)

[chemoul]

From what I've seen there are two camps under the PPC affiliate marketers:

• the ones that say to bid as low as possible and to then increase the bids for the keywords that convert
• and the ones that will bid high on keywords, collect enough conversion data to be statistically valid and then adjust CPC

I belong to the second camp, simply because I believe that low CPC prices will not attract a substantial amount of clicks, and the majority of the clicks that you do receive will be for low converting keywords (a few long tail gems that no one is bidding on aside), while the better (more expensive) keywords won't receive any clicks at all.

Having said that, the question now is how to best determine an appropriate CPC price for promoting a new offer?
Whilst I don't mind loosing some money to see which keywords work and which don't I don't really want to loose 1000's of dollars - and this is very possible, if I was going to collect a few 100 clicks per keywords for a big keyword list, while trying to keep all keywords on the first search result page.

Adwords offers a bid estimator, but again this is not very helpful for a large number of keywords.

Any thoughts?

[Linda Buquet]

This isn't directly answering your question - don't have an answer for that.

You said: "Adwords offers a bid estimator, but again this is not very helpful for a large number of keywords."

But are you breaking your KW into smaller related ad groups? This could help the bid estimator work better possibly, plus help you adjust your bids accordingly for the higher and lower cost words.

[Linda Buquet]

Here's a great blog that may help!

From Amit at SuperAffiliateMindset

"You know, there are so many aspects of ppc affiliate marketing that are incredibly simple, yet the average affiliate continues to mess them up. Let me give you an example, here’s how EASY it is to optimize your bid prices (once you have Google Conversion Tracking in place)"

TONS of good tips. Read the rest!
Do You Have Super Affiliate Nerves of Steel?

[chemoul]

Thank you for your reply Linda,
I know Amit's blog, that's how I found the 5 Star Affiliate Forum :-)
I think Amit's blog post relates more to already established keywords where you have enough clicks to make an informed decision on how to adjust your bids.
I was thinking more about when you first establish a list of keywords, where you want to make sure that you receive enough clicks to gain that information, without breaking the bank?

Steve

[Linda Buquet]

Steve, yep Amit's blog is great!

Sorry I just don't do much PPC and no affiliate PPC at all.
The way I read that blog though it's talking about initially
how to set up and test a new campaign, but I guess it
didn't directly answer your question - just thought it may be helpful.