If I had a site that consisted mainly of free content, would Adwords be a cost-effective means to drive traffic to the site? I have adsense ads and links to affiliate programs weaved into my content. If yes, can anyone give me ideas as how to go about doing it without running into the risk of spending more on ads than I'll be making from ad clicks etc. Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Using AdWords to send traffic to a site who's sole method of monetization is AdSense (or other CPC programs) is a poor business model that rarely works. Run a small test yourself...results may vary.
I have been earning very good $$ with my content web site and Adsense and recently started an adwrods account. I have a travel content web site that converst at about $8 CPM with Adsense and I setup my adwords account to get clicks from the content network for $0.01 cent per click. I have 1500 keywords targetted to race and I get about 3000 clicks daily. I spend $30 to get the 3000 clicks from Adwords and I am guranteed to earn more than $60 with my Adsense, I use a channel to track it separate. I am only willing to spend $50 a day right now so I set my sister up with an adwords account to promote my web site and she is also doing very well with it too, as a result of her success I have set up a 90% rev share program for my site. It's very cool to watch the stats as they are in realtime. I work with 2 screens so I have the adwrods in 1 screen and Adsence in the other. YEs... it works
It's possible to make money with this combination... I do. You can make money with one or the other stand alone... but understand there is a learning curve to doing this. And you may have to spend money before you make money. And no guarantees... The problem is many people tried it... failed and assume everyone will fail or heard it doesn't work and.... Tragic really. I'm just guessing, but I'm willing to bet that Craig I'm sure has done his share of testing to optimize his site in order to make the revenue he does. And the success he is having has a lot to do with the niche market he has uncovered. He might even have gone through 5, 10 or more sites before he found one with the right combination to make that kind of money - or he got lucky. You have to optimize your page for Adsense and Affiliate Programs... You can get lucky and start making money right out of the gates, but in any case, you need to do keyword research and find keywords that will make you the most money in Adsense... Then you have to try and find aff programs that are going to bring in revenue for your particular niche. Your success in affiliate marketing is determined by a wide range of factors. Besides on page factors like layout and copy, you could have 3 identical merchants selling the same exact thing with the same business model and only one converts. There is a lot to building profitable landing pages. And there are a lot of approaches to monetizing them.. And there is a lot of testing involved. In this business you will fail far more often then you will win... But the winners ad up! And this is all assuming that you can even break into your current market with a reasonable bid that will allow you to be profitable... I'm rambling. The answer to your question is that it is possible, but no one is going to tell you in one post how to make sure you don't lose money. There are to many variables involved (markets, merchants, ads, keywords, bid prices, layout, copywriting, etc...) And you might get lucky... The only way to know for sure is to dive in and gain the very valuable personal experience. And maybe find some materials out there to help you do it right. How do I know this? This is what I do. As much as some might think, you're not going to learn how to work this business in a forum. As much as I love forums, there is no substitution for 'action'... diving in and doing it and studying the methods of those that are successful doing it. Good Luck! -Matt Levenhagen
Could you please elaborate more on how you get traffic to your site for 1 cent per click from the content network. I have tried it, using content bids, but I can't seem to get any impressions. Am I doing something wrong?
I know Google has to review the ad and press a button to let the ad go live on the content network. It takes them about 3 days to review my ad, or 2 days if I email them. So I reccomend you set up an ad campaind with at least 1500 keywords. Bid .02 cents ofr search and .01cents for content, when they review the ad and approve it you should see clicks for 01. cent... make sure your keywords relate to your ad text.
So you're getting an average of about 3 page views per visitor? Your site must be very successful then, even sites such as about.com barely manage to get this count. You said in another thread you also enabled ads for Google search, what % of your visitors come directly from Google? Also did you measure your Adsense CTR by visitors coming from the content network vs those coming from Google search?
Web Brief case, Thats nice Idea. And you see you can make a killing out of combination of Google adsense on others site and Adsense on your site. How? Bid on the content in Adwords only. You see the minimum CPC is way low than the search Keywords. Try it. I am sure you can make tyhe CPC 1 cent if you find good words. Arvind Kumar
if you type in "pornographic" in Google search before 11am you will se my ad that says "Julie is a Sexy Girl". My $50 a day budget runs out by 11am and I get 5000 clicks. My credit card is almost maxed so I have to increase my budget slowly over the next few weeks. I started using adwords a few weeks ago but I have been advertsing the site with Adbrite prior to that, and still do. Right now 60% is from adwords, but that goes up weekly. "pornographic" is the only search term i have active in the search network and it sends me about 200 cliks daily.. the conversion sucks compared to trafffic form the content network. I cant afford search. If pay more than 3 cents per click for traffic from any source I loose $$. 3 cents breaks me even, so I stay at 1 cent or less.
Did you use an automated program to get all 1500 keywords quickly. What is the name of the program? And I always thought you couldn't adverise Porn on Adwords, boy I was wrong. I am glad I didn't say that out loud.