Well so much for blogging every 2 days or so. Participating in a game that you’ve never played before can seem deceptively easy at the onset. And this one certainly caught us.

So I got my site up and posted about it on a few forums, submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools, did some basic SEO and then I launched a few different PPC campaigns to push traffic to my offer. I’m not going to say what it is or link to it from here, because I don’t want to pollute the data just yet. If you find it, that’s ok.

PPC can be a tricky game nowadays, because Google can snap their fingers and kill your account even if they just assume you’re trying something unethical. And other platforms don’t drive enough traffic and/or are really slow at reviewing and approving your ads. For example, despite over 400 keywords in Microsoft’s adCenter, I’m yet to get even an impression. I may be doing something wrong, so I’m about to shoot them an e-mail.

I’m generally frustrated by online advertising as a low-spend small fish for 3 main reasons:

  1. Ad platforms don’t really care about the folks spending $10/day. Can’t say that I blame them. From a bottom-line point of view, it makes sense to pay attention to your bigger spenders.
  2. Although they have laundry lists of guidance for both your ads and landing pages/products, it still boils down to the objectivity (or lack thereof) of a human. I’d much rather a computer did the approval based on very ‘digital’ parameters, and then you could know the answer to #3, which is…
  3. You never know why the *@&$ your ad was disapproved. It’s a pass/fail test. If you fail, then you can go back and continue shooting in the dark.

Well here’s hoping that some of these platforms read and address some of these concerns. I’m looking at you, Google, Facebook, & Microsoft. I also put up an ad on PoF (free dating website, Plenty of Fish) and so far I like that they’re pretty realistic about ads and what people advertise. It’s tough trying to be the ‘good guy’ broker.

I’m almost wish I had millions to spend on TV instead. At least I could talk to an exec and find out what was wrong with my ads.

Well back to the drawing board. After all, if I’m going to make any sales in the next few days, then advertising has to be on my list, because SEO takes a lot more time.