$187.00 is what I have to work with. Stopped by the bank and opened a new checking account with many coin rolls. The associate who helped me open the account just happens to be a budding artist with a T-shirt business on the side... rest assured I'll be thinking about how to work that in to my little experiment. If there is one thing I've learned in the past 40 years is that when the universe talks, you listen! I opened the account at Citizens Bank where I have a couple of other accounts. They couldn't have been nicer! Big props to them all. As a side benefit they offer a program that gives a penny off per gallon of gas for every $50 you spend using the account. I didn't sign up for it yet but I will. A free tank of gas every now and again sure would be nice.
After considering a number of options I decided to start with something small and fairly safe. Affiliate programs fit the bill so I started looking around for a couple of programs I think I can make work. I didn't have to look far. The company I work for offers a very good program which I was already signed up for through the course of working on the site. This is another one of those win-win situations which I think could be the difference between success and failure. If I can drive an extra customer or two to the company site, the company makes a little more and I make a little more. Everyone's happy.
First order of business was to setup an AdWords account on Google. As it so happens, I had an outstanding $25 AdWords credit from a previous GoDaddy purchase which I was able to apply to my new AdWords account. Cha-Ching! In addition I seeded the account with another $10 from the Can of Change, minus $5 signup fee gives me $30 to start playing with and $277 left in reserves.
I then setup a campaign which I capped at $3/day for starters. I made a list of keywords and created an add. In an effort to keep costs low I decided to route traffic directly to the affiliate site for now. Once I get my feet a little wetter I'll register a new domain and setup a small site to help drive more traffic. It didn't take long to eat through the $3/day limit! In a matter of a few hours my ad got 6,812 impressions and 64 click through's with an average CPC of $0.05. I don't know if any of those clicks resulted in conversions yet since I won't be credited until product ships, but here's hoping! At this point I'm up $17.04 due to the GoDaddy coupon code, I've met an interesting character and gained some hands-on experience with something I only superficially understood... all-in-all a pretty good start!
Tomorrow I plan on setting up an account with Microsoft's AdWords equivalent, joining Commission Junction, creating a few more targeted ad groups and checking to see if I got any conversions. Stay tuned!
TTFN
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