Benefit from My Online Business "Lessons Learned" #002

byJustAPerson

264 followers

Updated 4 years ago

Just sharing some brief summary of things I have experienced. I save the detailed accounts for my own blog on my website.

I am back again from another journey into the Valley of the Shadow of Death (a.k.a. online marketing stuff).

This is Lesson #2. #1 Was my experience hiring article writers (which btw I actually tested again with different writers a week or so ago and received the same results lol)

Don't Set Up Any Paid Ads Until You Are 100% Ready... It Can Wait

A few weeks ago I logged into my Bing account. It has been a long time. I went through the set up an ad campaign process which ended with a submission for approval.

Because I didn't even have a landing page created... not even started... I entered IDontHaveTheLandingPageDoneYet. com/SomeFolderThatDoesntExist/AnotherNotExist ... that isn't exact but the domain I entered was exactly that. It was my way of letting them know hey I am just testing this out. IT IS NOT READY YET! That domain truly doesn't exist or at least it didn't and still doesn't at the time I am writing this.

Two days ago I received an email for charges for Bing that were much higher than normal. I thought "Don't tell me they actually made that ad live? No way!"

I logged in and yes... yes they did. And the cost per click had defaulted to $1.

Honestly, I was very suprised because I thought they would certainly check the page people would be visiting after clicking on the ad. Obviously that wasn't the case here. I contacted support. They refunded 25% of the cost. I absorbed the rest.

I am always testing traffic sources and many times they are a waste of money. Test 4 to 5 and find 1 that is a keeper.

I KNOW Bing is legit. Just saying losing some money on this didn't bother me too much because I am used to it from testing traffic sources that are worthless.

I bid on highly specific key phrases to get laser targeted traffic. Because of this I didn't end up with thousands of clicks to pay for. I got a good amount but not thousands.

It is unfortunate those people all went to a non-existent domain. That was a very poor experience for them. But it is what it is. Things happen in life. And life goes on.

The Lesson Here...

Anyway... I wanted to share this so someone else doesn't do the same thing.

Be sure you get everything set up first before setting up your ad campaign. Even if you are just testing and expect there is no way they will approve your ad.

Or don't get so busy testing other things you completely forget to log back in and check your account "just in case". Which is exactly what happened to me. Ha ha :)