Anyone got a ADWORDS > ADSENSE success story to tell?

I'm curious if:

The idea of using ADWORDS to drive traffic to your own sites to
increase targeted/relevant ADSENSE clicks makes sense???

Is anyone here GETTING MORE ADSENSE $ than they are spending on ADWORDS?

* I am NOT an ADWORDS user - so I'm not quite sure if this even makes sense.

Stupid idea OR are there people "out there" making $$$$$ doing this?

Thanks,
Mike

 

An Adwords to Adsense strategy can work. It would work well on a topic/keyword that has a relatively high top bid and a relatively low number of bidders. This would allow you to bid the minimum and still get some ad impressions.

Examples:
Mortgage has a high top bid and a high number of bidders. You could get the chance of getting a high PPC from Adsense but you might 45 on the list of bidders.

Poker Site Software might have a high bid but a few number of bidders so you could get good CPC and get a high postion in Adwords so you might get decent traffic and payout.

At a minimum bid of $0.05 it is worth a try if your Adsense payout per click is good. Try it on a few topics.

 

It'd be pretty difficult. Assume a CTR of 1% -- you'd need to have an average AdSense CPC of 100x that of your average AdWords CPC. The only way you could acheive that would be to be advertising on virtually uncompetitive keywords for a site on competition -- in which case, chances are you'd have slightly untargetted traffic, and therefore a lower CTR.

Of course, AdWords could get you repeat visitors which obviously could pay off in the end (word of mouth spreading, etc.). Directly speaking (ie. person clicks from Google, then clicks an ad), I doubt it.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

All GREAT points.

Mike

 

Good topic, and one I have often pondered over myself. I do well with AdSense and have often wondered whether I could do better through buying AdWords traffic.

Just out of interest, what would you say is a "good" payout per click on AdSense?

Aaron

 

For me if I see an eCPM above $20 ($0.20 per click) I start considering it a candidate for some purchased traffic. Technically, anything that pays you in Adsense more than you pay in Advertising is good. To be cautious, I usually look for 2:1 ratio of revenue to cost.

 

Just keep in mind that you're only paid a portion of the actual adwords bid. I should imagine that if you have enough money to spend, and your research is good, you could make a sweet penny indeed.

Another minor point. You need to understand traffic/bid CYCLES too. For example, it's not uncommon for the big bucks to drop off toward the end of the month, to be refreshed again at the beginning of the next. Common patterns etc - RESEARCH.


All the best with it if it appeals.

JL

 

It is just a useless idea...

I know a few themes where ads pay quite nice. If I wanted to drive traffic to those sites with Adwords, I would need to bid quite a lot for my ads to show up or they would get disabled. Remember Google's new feature, if you don't bid enough, your Adwords ads just stop showing.
So, ads would end up costing more than my Adsense clicks.

 

Useless...??!

I don't think so at all. I imagine there's a few out there making a merry sum by buying ads on AdWords and then effectively selling that traffic through AdSense. If the latter outweighs the former, then they can just keep on buying and keep on making money...

That's an interesting way of looking at it, but is $0.20 per click good enough? Let's assume you buy a visitor for $0.05... you still then need that visitor to click on AdSense. If 1 in 4 of those visitors go on to click on AdSense, then you break even... any worse than that, though, and you're making a loss... given that most AdSense users no doubt perform at well under 25% CTR, don't we probably need to be looking at eCPM's well in excess of $20...?? Or have I got the maths all wrong?

Aaron

 

Before the new adwords change I was actually doing this with some success. I had a word which was very cheap to bid on and searched for a lot. My site was serving up ads related but much more expensive min cpc and I never ended a day losing money.

Then came the changes and now I just don't get the traffic and bearly break even or lose as the minimum cpc is too high.

 

Let's imagine I have one site/channel that's doing around $80 eCPM.

That means each visitor is worth 8 cents, right...?

So, if I spend anything up to 8 cents per click, I SHOULD (assuming I don't sponsor 'britney spears' for a site about insurance, and other daft things like that) be "quids in" (English phrase meaning "in profit") if I spend anything up to 8 cents per click.

Have I got this right?

Sorry if I'm sounding a little dumb, but I'm very familiar with AdSense but not quite so familiar with AdWords...

Thanks

Aaron

 

It doesn't work.

By doesn't work I mean the % you can make long term is tiny...and it requires a ton of work to monitor and adjust your Adwords account. Spend a $1000 on Adwords to make $1001 with Adsense....lots of work for an insignificant return. IMO there are better ways to spend your time monitizing your site(s).

 

Cheers, GuyFromChicago.. (how are you doing? long time no see.. ) this is what I've been starting to think myself. Having said that, I suspect there are some out there that have found a small niche that does, for whatever reason, work well for them. I just suspect it doesn't work all that well for the majority.

Furthermore, I don't think my earlier post was quite right... I was assuming that one visitor would be responsible for one AdSense ad impression which of course isn't necessarily the case.

Aaron

 

Howdy Aaron, welcome "back" to dp. I meant to pop in your intro thread yesterday but the day slipped away. Glad to hear things have been going well for you.

I went down the path of looking for niche markets where this would work and was able to find a few. The problem was just what I stated above....lots of work for a tiny return. I tried mapping out a revenue plan and quickly realized the amount of work I would have to put in to make any $ was way out of balance...unless I like working for about $0.50 an hour

 

Interesting stuff... do you think there's anyone out there that has found something that does justify the time, though? Obviously, I don't expect someone to come out and say what it is, but it'd be interesting if there was someone out there, to have some kind of idea of figures, if they can do that whilst still being within the TOS.

Aaron

 

I would imagine that if someone was able to find this loophole it would be a gaurded secret. I know I wouldn't let the cat out of the bag if it were me

At the same time, I would be somewhat surprised if someone had found the "secret". I spent what I consider a pretty significant amount of time analyzing and testing potential markets and kept running into the same thing again and again.

 

Yup. I doubt it is even possible.

 

I think it was possible.

I've got a new site with no traffic and I was spedning 1 and getting back about 3 to 4 before the recent adwords update, then I started thinking what if I spend 10 and get back 30 to 40?...admittedly I found a very cheap word related to something that paid quiet well.

Anyway after the update my cheap word wasn't cheap any more.

[/loophole]

 

So the only traffic the site was ever getting was directly from Adwords?

How scaleable was it - i.e. how many times a day was that term being searched?

 

it was "water"