See how I made $39 in 20 minutes using Adwords

Adsense makes up only about 10% of the income, my ads, keywords, and landing page all promote the affiliate. This falls within the google guidelines for landing pages with adsense on them. I'm considering removing the adsense altogther, but not because I'm worried about getting banned.

Here is the relevant text:

"This new policy requirement doesn't mean that you can't use online advertising; it simply means that if you do, you need to be sure that the way you advertise meets with the guidelines, whether it's through AdWords or through any other advertising program."
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http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/06/policy-updates-and-its-not-even.html

Getsmart ended their affiliate program last week, that's why you get an error page now. Lendingtree, loansweb, and eloan are alternatives I'm testing. Right now, lendingtree is converting well and profitable. Loansweb and eloan are in the red.

Having 337+ phrases is a common way to start a campaign. Many people do that to weed out all the unprofitable keywords and discover new profitable keywords that they otherwise would have missed.

But I wanted to very tightly focus in one area of refinancing. I've expanded my keyword phrases these weekend to 24. However, it's really still only like 6 base phrases. For example:

I started with broad match -mortgage refinance-. I expanded that to 4 phrases with adding "ing" and then put the phrases in quotes and brackets.

"mortgage refinance"
["mortgage refinance]
"mortgage refinancing"
[mortgage refinancing]

I also split my new list into different adgroups and adjusted each ad and landing page to focus on the individual groups.

As far as "...if they click they click...", Google will let you bid on any keyword to any landing page. But your ad copy, landing page, and keywords all need to be tightly matched to improve your quality score and lower your cost per click.

Try to have the main keywords in the title of the ad, and in the url. Then have your landing page title, header (h1 or h2 text), and the content in your landing page have the keyword distributed around 5%. I also like to put them in bold.

Most of my keyword quality scores are "good" and a few are "great". 99% of my traffic is comming from the content network which is much cheaper. I tried bidding higher ($6.00 !!!) on Saturday, but I got burned. Barely got on to page 1 of the search network, and a few clicks ended up costing me $25. I dropped my bids back down to $3.00 today.

In practice, I get about 4 times as many clicks on the content network for the same price I paid on the search network. So for now, I'm keeping my bids at $3.00. When I generate enough profit, I'll consider testing the search network at the $8-$9 range again. Hopefully my actual cpc will go down from $9 to less that $4, I just don't have the bankroll to test that right now. Bit too rich for my blood.

I'm very flattered some of you have requested extra help in some of the pm's I've received. But honestly, I'm no expert. I'm just putting into action the things I've learned in this forum and others. But keep in mind this campaign is still in it's early stages. I only have a few hours invested into it. I've actually spent more time posting in this forum than I have on that campaign. LOL

I'll be happy to answer any questions on this campaign as long as there is interest. I won't have all the answers, but there are many more experienced members here who will. Please post them here instead of a pm so we can all learn together. I've actually have a few myself now.

Thanks again everyone for the positive feedback and the reps.

P.S. > HAPPY FATHERS DAY

 

I"m a mortgage broker also. Is it better to do what you did with just 7 phrases? My campaign has 300 related phrases to the main phrase. Obviously my landing page (home page) can't be optimized for all these phrases. I started my campaign earlier today and I havn't had any impressions yet. There's suppsoed to be 1200 over 30 days. (budget optimizer) I wonder why it's taking so long for the impressions to start.

 

Thank you for sharing this info. I really appeciate this as very few people disclose this much details in this Forum. Everyone will post that they made $$$ but they wont disclose how it was made. Reputations Added!!!

Also, I have also done like this once. I used payday loans affiliate and made a sale. I got $17 and it cost me just $0.13 in MSN adCenter. I have never made sale using AdWords, but adCenter is good as its traffic quality is the best.

 

Well, post here if you made a sale.

 

It's just how I do my campaigns. I've tried doing hundreds, sometimes 1500 keywords, but I don't think that works as well anymore. Since the quality score variable was added, I try to tightly match each ad, landing page, and keyword together.

Sometimes it takes 24 hours for a campaign to start, particularly on the weekends. The standard answer I hear is that google wants to review your campaign manually before letting it run. I really don't know, but if it's not working after 2 days, go into the tools section and run the "Ads Diagnostic Tool". https://adwords.google.com/select/DiagnosticTool (you must be logged into your account)

If it's still not running, send an email to google and ask them to review it.

 

Lucky conversion, that's all. lol

 

Kinda like the lottery. You can't win if you don't play.

 

wow, $3 per click in content search and you still make profits?

 

I think you have done really well but I guess you've been at it a while. How long have you been running adwords campaign's.

I'd never have considered that level of investment, $3 per click I pay at most 3p and still get traffic that makes money. Is it really necessary to pay so high a click fee or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?

Please continue to post your progress I find it really interesting and will be utilising the approach in a campaign soon although I will have to create the landing pages first that shouldn't take me too long.

Thanks for the thread

Paul

 

Even though I bid $3.00, my average cost is $1.47 on the content network for 300+ clicks. The search network has only 11 clicks, so it's not statistically relevant at $4.63. I bid $6 this weekend and stopped. see previous post above for more on that.

Yes, so far I'm profitable bidding at $3.00. Be interesting to see what happens by end of month.

 

you mean 300+ clicks per day? so content network traffic converts?

 

Content network converts pretty well actually. But it's about 300 clicks over two weeks, not per day.

 

Good post, as always proving it takes cash to make cash.

 

Rigged, jeez. Content never converts for me too well

 

It doesn't take so much cash 625enterprises, as you see he didn't use too much cash to make what...double/three times ?

It's great to know it's possible

 

Thanks for the tips

 

Thanks for sharing this with us, well presented and helpful information!

 

Hi,
I like the opening thread. I like the attacks too. They help the poster to make any corrections to mistakes he made, it makes us newbies get qualitative info and respect this forum as the place to be for real answers. All appreciated.

 

MIght consider putting an ad on content as well, great information you're giving here thx

 

Hi,

I would like also to thank you for sharing your experiences.
Not everyone is an expert, many people (like me) are eager to read about Adwords results, particularly when actual results are presented.

Thanks,