Hotels Combined – My Response

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your response. I understand your dissapointment, hence why I have asked you to respond. Is it OK for me to post your email on the blog?

I will be doing a final wrapup, and my assesment will be that Hotels Combined can be profitable, but it’s not EASY money and the profit margin is still slim. Furthermore scaling a campaign and maintaining a profit margin may not be worth the investment of time, or the possible risk.

Obviously adding hotels combined as an additional revenue stream from organic sources could be a nice way to make a bit of extra cash. But this experiement was never not intended to consider long term organic growth and the growth of web assests over time, which may counteract short term loses. I believe my readers are aware of these issues.

The main reason for the large loss, is dumping keywords on the foreign countries. I did not spend time managing this as I should have.

That said, I kept an eye on the Australian campaign and still lost money…

Take this example of the Byron Bay campaign

This table is the “all time” results from the PPC Australian targeted search campaign. This is the “search terms” report that shows you what actual keywords were triggered and clicked by the “byron bay hotels” broad match keyword.

Again please note: this is not the keyword list, but the breakdown of which keywords were triggered by the broad keyword “byron bay hotels”

caravan parks byron bay	broad	1	1	100.00%	$1.25	$1.25	4
accommodation byron bay	broad	1	64	1.56%	$0.75	$0.75	7.84375
accommodation byron bay nsw	broad	1	3	33.33%	$1.12	$1.12	4.666666667
cheap accommodation byron bay nsw	broad	1	1	100.00%	$1.30	$1.30	4
byron bay accommodation	broad	10	1241	0.81%	$0.87	$8.71	6.860596293
accommodation in lawson ave in byron bay	broad	1	1	100.00%	$1.27	$1.27	2
byron bay bed and breakfast	broad	1	5	20.00%	$0.52	$0.52	8
byron bay accomadation	broad	1	4	25.00%	$1.00	$1.00	3.25
cheap accommodation byron bay	broad	1	2	50.00%	$0.79	$0.79	10.5
byron bay	broad	1	31	3.23%	$0.77	$0.77	5.032258065
hostels in byron bay	broad	1	1	100.00%	$1.14	$1.14	4
gay byron bay holidays	broad	1	1	100.00%	$1.30	$1.30	5
byron bay hotels and resorts	phrase	1	4	25.00%	$0.72	$0.72	6
byron bay hotels	exact	1	7	14.29%	$0.40	$0.40	4.714285714

As you can see I had 23 clicks in total. In my mind only 4 of these are bad, actually they are not even that bad, just not GREAT.

So lets say I had 19 clicks from good relevant keywords. My ad text clearly states you will be landing on a page which will allow you to compare and book the best hotels in byron bay…

Now lets look at my transactions report and reference the labels which I installed on Day 2.

8119992	5/11/2009 18:17	220.245.114.189		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8120023	5/11/2009 18:25	220.245.114.189	RoamFree.com	Book Button	Tweeve	1.151	Byron_Bay
8120242	5/11/2009 18:49	124.186.164.173		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8120460	5/11/2009 19:06	124.186.156.80		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8191440	9/11/2009 18:57	120.155.254.148	RoamFree.com	Book Button	Tweeve	1.16	Byron_Bay
8222402	11/11/2009 3:23	122.148.114.190		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8222570	11/11/2009 3:30	122.148.114.190		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8561240	29/11/2009 4:12	24.76.161.223		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8561257	29/11/2009 4:15	24.76.161.223		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8561404	29/11/2009 4:22	24.76.161.223		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8616426	1/12/2009 19:06	122.57.7.164		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8684065	4/12/2009 20:17	122.109.33.215		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8684066	4/12/2009 20:17	122.109.33.215		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay
8721102	6/12/2009 20:27	220.233.104.53		Advertisement	Tweeve	0.14	Byron_Bay

I have a total of 2 book buttons and 12 adsense clicks

This is not a 50%-100% conversion rate…

It also reinforces my theory that the adsense units with a flat payout of $0.14 are bad. Since it would be impossible to buy a click to byron bay under $0.14….

I plan to continue my Australian campaign this month AND keep a good eye on it. I would be willing to take any advice you have. Using the above example how could I improve my visitor targeting?

Perhaps if you gave me a list of your top 10 australian regions with the highest conversion rates, I can run an even smaller isolated test on these?

I will supply some conversion tracking in the next few days.

Regards,

Robert Austin.

Hotels Combined Response

I emailed hotels combined and asked them to respond to my experiment. Here it is.

Hello Robert,

Yes, we noticed that you completed your test.

Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed by your efforts.  It doesn’t look like you did anything to optimise your keywords, text ads or bid prices, and you didn’t come back to me for advice once you started losing money.

Overall, your Leads were very good quality, but your Visitors seemed very poorly targetted.  I can tell this because your Visitor-to-Lead conversion rate was only around 7.5% for hotel Leads, and also because around 37% of your Leads were from clicks on Google ads.  Most good Affiliates have an average Visitor-to-Lead conversion rate of 50 – 100%.  Also, most Affiliates only earn less than 5% of their revenue from Google ads, so your high percentage shows that your visitors just aren’t interested in our hotel comparison service.

My suggestion would have been that you used the Label parameter to track the performance of each of your keywords or text ads.  You could even have provided me with your Google Analytics conversion tracking code, so I could’ve placed it on your conversion page.  My experience with AdWords tells me that this would’ve helped you identify poorly converting keywords that you could’ve removed from your adgroups.  For example, the keyword “hotel” appears good at first glance, but if you had it on Broad match, it would attract traffic from searches such as “hotel employment opportunities” or “buy a hotel for investment”.

One of your conclusions was that our Google ads don’t help your profitability.  This is not entirely correct.  Each Visitor can generate multiple Leads, so it adds an extra revenue stream.  Consider an end-user who clicks on a hotel link.  The provider’s website appears in a new window, so when they complete their reservation, our website is still open in front of them.  If they then decide to book a flight or hire a car, they might well reach their next website from one of the Google ads on our page.  In this case, even though you only earned $0.14 from the ad click, you actually earned two commissions from the one Visitor, which should serve to increase your overall Visitor value.

Your comment in week 3 doesn’t give me confidence that you tried very hard at this when you said:

“To be honest I didnt really keep an eye on things this week. Just let it run away.”

If I found that I was losing money each week for the first two weeks of an ad campaign, I would not have simply “let it run away”.  Even if I did, I would not have expected there to be any marked improvement in the situation at the end of that period.

Anyway, I apologise for the negative tone of this email.  You probably tried your best, based on your current experience with paid search and affiliate programs.  I hope that in future you make more effort to reach out to possible sources of assistance.  For example, in this situation I was more than willing to offer my many years of AdWords and affiliate program experience to you in the form of advice and technical support.  If you decide to continue with our Affiliate Program, that offer will still stand.

Regards,

Adam Zebrowski
Business Development

Roamfree Disabled Property Page – Let’s Make It Better

Here are some suggestions to improve the page that appears when a Roamfree AP link has been disabled.

The disabled AP page has always erked me. It really sucks, and I know I lose user confidence and bookings everytime one of these bad boys pops up.

Current Page In Use

• There is no attempt to “upsell” this situation. It just errors.
• The link to “see more properties” is tiny and useless.
• I think this is some sort of javascript popup? Is this accessible?
• The private branding DOES NOT show underneath.

A Very Quick Upgrade

• Private branding remains intact
• A friendly message explaining what has happened
• A big button which the user can click to see similar properties in that same region
• A link BACK to the referring affiliate website
• An automatic redirection to similar properties in that region in 5 seconds with a feedback indicator

Email Alerts ( Current )

It is important that the affiliate is alerted when a property is disabled. So they can remove the listing. No user wants to see broken links. You are supposed to receive an email alert, I believe this is triggered only once when a user loads this page. That may be wrong, but it doesnt matter. The email alert system is broken. I often ring Roamfree and tell them this, my email alerts work for about 2 days, then they stop forever.

Email Alerts ( Improved )

• Alert the affiliate via email. Optionally alert the affiliate via rss or twitter.
• Make sure the email alerts work.
• Add an option in the control panel to A) send me alerts everytime a user reaches a disabled AP B) send me alerts only the first time a user reaches a disabled AP.

5 Things The Roamfree Affiliate Program Needs To Fix

My ongoing love hate relationship with the Roamfree affiliate program continues.

Here are 5 things they need to fix. These are all items I have discussed with the Affiliate support team several times over the years.

1. Enable AdWords Conversion Tracking: Can I get a “hell yeah”
2. Properties With No Availability: Properties with NO availability, that NEVER ADD availability but are still listed as ready to be sold.
3. Duplicate Properties: The same property that has multiple affiliate links… Which one am I supposed to use?
4. Incompetant Handling Of Disabled Properties: When properties are disabled, a really useless popup error is displayed to the user. NO ALERT is sent to the affiliate. The Email ALERTS DO NOT WORK. They RANDOMLY BREAK.
5. We Hear You, But We Don’t Care: Feedback is never, ever implemented.

In my mind, these are not difficult issues to fix, and they would make my life as a Roamfree affiliate so much easier. I have no doubt that sales would also increase.