In Experiments, Hotels Combined

Hotels Combined – My Response

Posted by: Robert Austin on Feb 24, 2010 | 5 Comments

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.

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5 Comments

  1. TalkingRhino
    April 22, 2010

    It seems that you would really have to spend alot of time on your keywords to even make a profit, and on that note do you think you would be able to scale it to make it worth wild?

    The $0.14 return for customers clicking on the link is just greedy on there behalf considering the cost of the customer in the first place.

    Will be interesting to see if you can tweek your campaign enough to make it work wild!

  2. Parleo
    February 15, 2011

    Hi,

    I am very interested in your experiment. Is the current tweeve.com site built using their basic affiliate resources? I am guessing you didn’t cough up $2000 for the API access.

    Has it ended up being profitable for you in any way?

    Thanks

  3. Robert Austin
    February 17, 2011

    Hey Parleo,

    Yeah it’s built using the basic hotels combined white labeling features available to all affiltates.

    No the experiment never made a profit, I did not continue with the campaign after I posted my final results.

  4. Jaelyn
    April 10, 2011

    Deniuo THX that’s a great answer!

  5. Mark Oliver
    November 4, 2011

    Hi Robert, I’m also looking through my options to make money from website traffic for accommodation search. Today, i’m looking again at Roamfree and finding so many of the links don’t work. I’m looking at commissions from HotelClub and wondering WTF. I’ve got some links to Hotels Combined and wonder if they will ever pay anything.

    I’ll continue reading thru your posts and see if you’ve actually noted anything that does work.

    I run an online booking system called Booking Centre. When I list these links, they do pay commissions, but then I am limited to only those accommodations that use my service and that limits my travel portals to a small base.

    If you would like any details on another booking system (http://www.webreservations.com.au). It pays 7% commissions. Mark

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