John Reese Traffic Secrets Review

So far, the results have been less than stellar. I used John's suggestions for split testing ads in Adwords, something I'd never done before. He also made a couple of suggestions regarding how to word your headlines in those ads. My results were quite different from his.

For the most popular keyword phrase, "how to write a book", using the method he said always gets the best results for his ads, generated the lowest results for me. That ad generated a mere
0.8 CTR (click-thru ratio) although it did offer the lowest CPC (cost-per-click) at .78 per click of the three ads I tested.

What I would say was his 2nd strongest recommendation (which is what I've been doing myself for quite a while) was the winner with a 6.4% CTR although the CPC was almost double at $1.47. The 2nd place ad got a 1.7% CTR and had a $1.35 CPC. All three ads used a negative qualifier, which was displaying the price in the ad to limit the CTR to serious buyers. Without that negative qualifier, the costs were getting out of control.

This particular campaign to date (and this includes the period before I added the price to the listings) has generated the following results:

[How to write a book]
Total Clicks: 188
Avg. CTR: 6.0% (CTR=Click Thru Ratio)
Avg. CPC: $1.51 (CPC=Cost Per Click)
Avg. Rank: 2.0
Total Cost: $283.50
Total Sales: 0 ($0)

The 2nd most productive campaign (in terms of traffic), has generated

[Internet Marketing]
Total Clicks: 102
Avg. CTR: 0.7%
Avg. CPC: $1.13
Avg. Rank: 7.6
Total Cost: $115.59
Total Sales: 1 ($79)

The entire Adwords campaign to date for http:www.create-ultimate-ebooks.com has generated:

Time Frame: Dec 8-21
Total Clicks: 441
Avg. CTR: 1.2%
Avg. CPC: $1.10
Total Cost: $486.48
Total Sales: 1 ($79)
Net Gain/Loss: -$407.48

The lion's share of the costs went to the first two campaigns. The other 40 or so campaigns have generated very little traffic or expense so far.

I have not been able to spend as much time on this campaign as I'd like and I have not finished the course yet. As you can see, the results so far, have been less than satisfactory.

Let's compare these results to my regular monthly Adwords campaigns for my one of my other websites.

Time Frame: Dec 8-21
Total Clicks: 498
Avg. CTR: 3.7%
Avg. CPC: $0.51
Total Cost: $253.64
Total Sales: 41 ($704.20)
Net Gain/Loss: $450.56

Now this campaign is for a lower price product and it's a group of campaigns that I've been testing and tweaking for 2 years so the results should be better. It's also sending traffic to a sales letter I've been testing and tweaking for almost three years, too. The sales letter at Create-Ultimate-Ebooks.com isn't bad but it hasn't been updated at all since I wrote it a few weeks ago.

I have to say, though, that after 3 weeks, my tests using what I've learned from Traffic Secrets have cost me over $400, while my existing campaigns generated $450.56 (and that's not counting the additional backend income from that site).

Hopefully, with more testing and tweaking and adding more keywords, we can turn this around.

That's all for now...

Bill Hibbler

I've started creating my Google AdWords campaign using John's recommendations. It's very tedious using John's methods as opposed to what I've done in my AdWords campaigns in the past. I get it, though, a lot of marketers setup campaigns for the obvious keywords and leave it at that.

What's John's recommended means a lot more work but should mean more profitable campaigns that are easier to track. It also means including a huge number of keywords and phrases. I've got a list of over 1,000 using techniques from John's Keyword Discovery CD-ROM.

So far, I've created campaigns for 50 different keywords or keyphrases. I should also add that even though I've been using AdWords for two years, John taught me some new tricks that I was totally unaware of.

The results have been unimpressive so far but there has not been enough traffic yet to get accurate numbers. Out of 2,973 impressions, I've gotten 45 clicks for a very weak 1.5 clickthrough ratio. 0 sales against a PPC cost of $32.40.

Half of those keywords have been up for a little over 48 hours, the rest about 24 hours. I'll be adding another 25 keywords over the weekend.

That's all for now...

Bill

This first DVD ran just over 90 minutes. The primary focus is pay-per-click. and, to a lesser extent, other forms of paid traffic. I've been using PPC search engines for three years now so a lot of what Reese covered was familiar to me. However, he makes some excellent points and I still learned quite a bit.

If you're new to PPC, this is really solid info. In addition to John's strategies, there is quite a bit of audience participation. And I'm not talking about newbies asking questions. People like GaryHalbert, Perry Marshall and Bob Silber are adding solid advice, too. One tip that came from Bob Silber was simple but brilliant and I can't believe I never thought of it. Don't ask me to reveal it, though. As I said at the beginning, I'm testing and reviewing Traffic Secrets, not giving all the secrets away.

Also, as you listen to these DVD's, you'll be amazed by the people in the audience and they're not speakers that just happen to be there, they are paid attendees. Besides the names I mentioned, Jimmy D. Brown, Jeff Alderson and several other well-known marketers are in the audience.

John talked quite a bit about negative qualifiers and PPC in this video. If you're not familiar with the term, you will be after watching this video. And I can verify that his suggestions work because I've been using a couple of them myself for quite some time.

As I'm getting into this program, I've got a clearer idea of how things are going to work. After the quick start CD and the testing and tracking DVD, we're supposed to watch the five DVD's that make up the live event. Then we start on the CD-ROMs. The next DVD in the series is Volume 2 - Web & Email Advertising Success. I may cheat a bit and start working on some of the PPC strategies on the CD-ROMs so we can start generating some traffic.

That's all for now.

~Bill