I was reading through one of the early Shoemoney course PDFs today and came across a statement Shoe made about being willing to lose $100 on your first PPC campaign while learning the ropes. For some reason it struck me as odd that anyone would even think twice about losing $100. Especially when that represented valuable learning in the ways of PPC and how to ultimately make money online.
Related to this, I was searching for some new tips for running ads on Facebook and happened on a couple of threads where people were absolutely 100% swearing off ALL Facebook advertising because it was a crappy network with poor ad performance and was a waste of money. (As a side note, this is absolutely fine with me. Less competition for my FB ads!) Interestingly enough, these people were talking about sub-$100 ad spends.
All of this got me thinking about what people are willing to lose to learn a valuable skill that gives them the potential to earn far more money than they currently make. I realize, in the end, it boils down to your individual context of money, how much you have and how much a dollar is worth to you at that moment in your economic context. But sometimes I think people get way too hung up on $100, $500 or even $1000 spends.
I’m certainly not saying you should rush out and blow $500 just because it’s REALLY not that much money. But come on. When’s the last time you looked back on spending $100 in a month on coffee and said to yourself, “I really regret doing that.” I guarantee you that none of us is going to even remember spending $100 on crappy, burnt, overpriced Starbucks coffee a year from now.
Bring it back around to your desire to make money online. Instead of sweating a $100 or even a $500 loss on a PPC campaign while you’re learning, my feeling is I couldn’t spend it fast enough on traffic. In that case, I want to learn as quickly as I can. And I know I’m not going to look back in 5 years and go, “What in the world was I thinking?!” or feel regret for spending a grand learning how to do PPC. Most likely I won’t even remember spending the money!
I guess $100 or even $1000 just isn’t what it used to be for me. Sure that’s the context of $1 to me these days, but I also realize now more than ever that the chances are dang slim that I’ll look back and have regrets for spending that money…even if it was a big gamble that I’d even walk away with anything at the end of the day. The potential to learn based on that risk is just to great to ignore.
I’d like to see people stop bitching about a $100 ad spend and instead brag about “losing money”. And while they’re bragging, talk about the valuable PPC lessons they’re learning along the way. In fact, we should take the term losing money out of the equation and call it buying eduction. Heck, parents spend $40k A YEAR to send their kids to college. Surely we can afford to spend $100 on a PPC “education”.
You may or may not agree, which is okay, but I’m curious how much you’re willing to lose to learn something like PPC? Would love to hear from everyone what they think.
September 19th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Nice Post. Thanks for sharing with us. That's true about what the post all about.
September 19th, 2009 at 10:51 am
First off, great post. I completely agree with you. People just really look at that $100 as paying for education and not as losing money. I personally know a few people that blow $500 to $10,000 per campaign just to learn which keywords are working for them the best.
That remind me of a quote. "The only person that can hold you back is you"
September 19th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Yes, buying education gives it a positive spin rather than the negative connotation that losing money means. Very well written.
September 19th, 2009 at 7:11 am
You got that right, sister!
September 19th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Great quote Deneil. That's really true.
September 19th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Well PPC as I see it is a thing which will at first cause to lose some money, now for shoemoney it was $100 and for someone else it can be more.
There are very rare cases I've seen that hit the right mark in PPC from mere initiation. You have stated valid reasons in this post and I am sure they will help both the novices of the PPC and the average players too.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I don't see it as losing but investing. I've tried various online methods and I've lost money on a few. But each time I spend money I think of it as an investment with the change to make back all the money plus a healthy return.
September 20th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
It always amazes me what I learn by surfing the net. Thanks for your helpful articles.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:06 am
I donot want to lose anything from my pocket but it's depend on the situation man!
September 21st, 2009 at 11:28 am
I completely agree with you on this. You might need to put it on stake & loose it to learn the lesson, but the lesson is much more valuable than the money as money may come back but not the wisdom you have gained from it.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I don't know much about PPC or Google Adwords. I will be more than happy if I'm able to learn Google Adwords by losing $100 or so from my pocket.
September 21st, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Great post Ryan. We are always happy to 'try' out new ads as we have been advertising on adwords with excellent ROI for years. We did recently run some trials on FB and LinkedIn but unfortunately those didnt work well for us this time around but then we may well revisit those options after reviewing. As with all online marketing spend its about gathering stats on conversion, improving your ads, improving landing page and then testing again…
I hear alot of bad press about PPC advertising but used in the right way and with careful attention to testing and improvement they can represent an excellent ROI.
Joe
September 21st, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Its funny that you mention people swearing off facebook advertising. I used it for a little while with my company but I found it to be a waste. I think people think that because of facebook's insanely huge numbers, youwould be crazy not to get your ads in front of all of those eyes. The thing is, no one goes on facebook to be sold on a 6-week abductor routine. They log on to socialize with their friends.
September 21st, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I would never waste $100 on an advertising scheme.
September 23rd, 2009 at 9:04 am
I hear alot of bad press about PPC advertising but used in the right way and with careful attention to testing and improvement they can represent an excellent ROI.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I would be happy to spend $100 on Adwords if it resulted in me knowing what keywords converted and were worth the cost. In my experience you have to spend a whole lot more than $100 testing keywords, ads and landing pages. It's very easy to spend a lot on Adwords and never get to the point that you are consistently making money.
Mike
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I agree with Rotator Script. That $100 could be the difference between making a ton of money and losing the same amount. If I spent the money to find out that my keywords were all wrong, it could be the best $100 I ever spent.
September 27th, 2009 at 8:29 am
I do not want to loss anything, just want to gain,
September 27th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Good post, but it's important that you do actually learn something though. It's easy to blow $100 on ads and be none the wiser about what just happened
October 8th, 2009 at 5:35 am
I have nothing to lose. therefore, your blog is useless for me.
October 8th, 2009 at 11:03 am
You do have to invest in your business to see it grow, but throwing money away on something that is not yielding a result makes no business sense.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:57 am
If you have no money to spend, there is an internet..their is no limitation in the internet..searching for the information and patience is the key. But honestly, it hard for me sometimes to learn more in the internet without a person to guide me for what i should do to implement that information..
October 28th, 2009 at 3:30 am
I’m not too crazy about the ad text – it seems a bit awkward. It could be shortened to “Hottest Phone, Lowest Price. $399 + Free Shipping from the Apple Store.” Easier to read, capitalized letters are proven to convert higher in PPC .When Mini-Feed first came out, members weren't sure if they wanted to be updated each time a friend added new photos, changed their status or even wrote on someone else's Wall. As an advertiser, though, you can track your Mini-Feed to find out what your friends have been up to and more closely study your target audience.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Everything is relative- a hackneyed phrase but true. A $100 bill may mean lunch AND dinner to a cab driver, but does it mean anything to Bill Gates?
November 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Internet is such a place where one can earning money or loosing too. PPC is one of the best technique to earn money as online advertisers do this very wisely. But its costly too so, if its not done properly.
January 25th, 2010 at 12:04 am
There will be a learning curve whenever you undertake a new advertising program. For our part, we just started advertising on Adwords, and dedicated a few thousand to the effort. We broke it up into 3 phases so we could do just that – test the service out, learn from the results, refine our program and then re-test in the next phase. We had a negative ROI in both the first & second phases (-80% and -25% to be exact), but then had a positive return (35%) in the third phase. Through continued testing and refinement, it is now our second largest source of income after our organic search revenue. If we hadn't been willing to lose $2,500 to test the program out and learn from our mistakes, we would have been missing out on a large (and vital) revenue stream.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Investing money is really a risk.. there is a big possibility of loosing it..
July 26th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Yes, its true. What is $100 if you will get all the information that you need to get you in the business. For sure, you will not only earn $100, this can be doubled as many times as possible. You can instead consider and thing that the $100 is one of the investment for your business.