Another week, and more updates. According to Matt Cutts and the WebMasterWorld forum, there was (finally!) a Penguin refresh. I, like many other IM’ers, have been eagerly waiting to see how this refresh would affect Penguinized sites. On my end, there appears to be very little change in any of my sites. I had tried various strategies: deleting links, diversifying my anchor text, and so forth, but nothing seemed to matter. From what I can tell over at WebmasterWorld, many others have seen the same.
There was also a Panda update rolling out over the past couple of weeks, but can’t say I’ve noticed that one at all. Google’s Panda’s have never given me any grief (Penguins, on the other hand, are another story!).
And onto more details about my current site project. I’ve decided to reveal the actual domain name here, since it has already been made public on another IM forum. I had been reluctant to post it here in part because I know another marketer was developing a similar site in the same niche in a certain forum I participate, and I didn’t want him to feel I was copying his site, but he’s aware of it now – for better or worse – so that’s not an issue any more.
But I also know that this means that I open up my site and marketing strategy to be copied by others. However, given that this is a niche that is already quite competitive (with many similar sites out there – such as pixelofink.com, manybooks.net, freekindbooks.com and many, many more), and I’m going to have to compete regardless, and letting others see the “real site” will undoubtedly make for a more helpful case study.
So, without further ado, here it is: EbooksAddict.com
This week I continued on with my PPC marketing strategy. Currently I’m purchasing $3/day in ads from Facebook and $2/day in ads from AdWords. The previous week I was at $3/day for Facebook and $5/day for AdWords, so as expected, my paid traffic from Google dropped a little this week. However, Facebook likes and Aweber signups stayed about the same. Here are the current numbers:
Facebook Subscribers: 1103
Hooray – over the 1100 mark! Last week = 1,027
Up 76 subscribers – which was exactly the same number as last week!
Aweber list subscribers (double opt-in): 77
Last Monday = 51. Up 26 from last week, which was down slightly from 30 new sign-ups the previous week.
Earnings = $27.26 (last week=$27.54)
Paid submissions = $20 (up from $10 the previous week)
Amazon earnings = $7.26. Clicks = 562; Items ordered=12; Items shipped=10
(Amazon earning last week = $17.54. Clicks = 718; Items Ordered = 57; Items shipped =56)
Amazon earnings were down quite a bit this week, which I will keep an eye on for next week. Clicks were down a bit too, but that is probably attributable to getting less traffic due to less ad purchases from Google.
Traffic: 106 unique visitors a day on average/25 returning visitors a day on average (Last week, I was getting 137 unique visits a day and 20 returning visitors a day).
Traffic from Google was down, probably as a result of my decreasing my AdWords budget from $5 a day to $2 a day. However, I am seeing an increase in returning visitors to the site.
My Plans for Next Two Weeks: The Battle Of The Ad Networks
I’ve decided to spend one week pouring all my advertising dollars into Facebook ads (a whole $5!) and the following week doing the same with Google AdWords – to see where I get the best returns. Hopefully this will give me a better sense of where my money is best spent.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments below!
Thanks,
Michelle
Thanks for sharing the URL, and I think you site looks good! It’ll be interesting to see whether Facebook or Google Ads are better, so thanks for doing this comparison. I’ve always heard Facebooks ads suck, but I guess it probably depends on how your are using them…
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Michelle Reply:
October 8th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Thanks Shawn. I’ve heard bad things about Facebooks ads too in the past, but I’m definitely thinking now that they are performing better than AdWords for my specific goals: getting more Facebook likes and more email subscribers. I’m not sure how well they would work for other sites I own however. Amy Porterfield’s book (FBInfluence) has definitely helped me with the Facebook ads side of things as well.
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Thanks for sharing your URL Michelle. I think the other guy who has developed a similar site is on Zenduck Pond? I remember seeing something like that there.
I have a suggestion… something which I would do, had I been in your place. I think using a tiny, non-obstructive pop up to new visitors of the site , which says something like in your ‘About us’ page i.e. “Did you know most free ebooks are only avaiulable at Amazon for just 24 hours? …Subcribe Now” would be a good idea.
IMHO as you are already in a testing mode, why not try it in a split-testing environment to see if it works or not.
Regards
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Michelle Reply:
October 9th, 2012 at 3:49 am
Hi Shekhar,
Yes, I learned about someone at the Pond developing a similar site within days of setting up mine (actually, there are at least two people at the pond already in this niche, it turns out). It was an unfortunate coincidence, but I didn’t want to abandon this project once I learned about his – even though I know it could be perceived as stealing “his idea”.
This niche is really saturated and competitive, without a doubt. There are literally hundreds of free ebooks sites out there. What it comes down to, I think, is how you drive traffic to your sites and promote it. I don’t mind more competition myself, but others clearly do.
Regarding the pop-up idea – it’s a good one. I’ve thought about it before, actually. I guess my fear has been that this would turn people off, but I’ve seen other sites use them with apparent success. One free ebook site I’ve studied (that has a huge following already) actually uses a welcome splash page that *requires* an opt-in to fully access the site (from the home page). This seems a bit aggressive to me, but I bet it does wonders for increasing sign ups overall.
Split testing would be key, of course, if I am going down that route. And thanks for pushing me in that direction.
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Well done Michelle, good to see you are getting the ‘likes’ and activity on site is increasing.
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Michelle Reply:
October 9th, 2012 at 3:52 am
Thanks Peter. Traffic was down on the site this week, but it’s good to see how adjusting ad buys is impacting this traffic. Unlike SEO traffic, which is very unpredictable, ad traffic seems much more predictable and testable!
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Hi Michelle,
Thanks for the updates on your experiments. I am particular interested as well with the recent updates from G I am leaning more and more towards PPC.
I guess if it is possible could you perhaps detail whether you are making a profit or not? I am sure ovrertime as you grow the revenue is expotential however it good to see the numbers.
Cudos on revealing your site. Well I am planning to reveal some of sites soon too in my blog, just waiting for the right moment.
Norm
Norm recently posted..My Monthly Report September 2012
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Michelle Reply:
October 10th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Thanks Norm. Good suggestion about being more explicit about profit v. expense – I’ll try to go into more details on this in the next update. But quickly, for right now, my ad expenditures are $35 weekly and my income is ranging around $27/week – so I’m not making a profit yet. (And, of course, there are other expenses as well such as hosting, my time, and outsourcing site features such as banners and other images).
My hope is that once I get a large enough base of active visitors – thousands, ideally – the income number will increase as well and largely eclipse my weekly ad expenditures. But of course this is all new to me as well, so we’ll see how it turns out. With Christmas looming on the horizon, however, I’m excited to see how this develops over the next couple of months.
And now I must go check out your blog…
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