Ever considered leaving adsense to run your own cpc?

[brakkar]

Hello,
i'm running a niche business directory, and doing pretty well with adsense, in terms of CTR %.

I'm thinking i may make more $$ if I would run a script similar to adsense by my own. Of course, this would require hunting advertisiers which may in the end, turn out to be less profitable.

Any one with experiencein running their own adsense like campains?

[diamondgrl]

I think it's a pretty collossal waste of time and money, frankly. Not even a close call. You'll spend a lot of time and effort trying to market your advertising and developing the systems to allow the advertisers to do what they need to do.

You're much much much better off using Google and spending your effort and money elsewhere.

The question you have to ask yourself is that if it's so easy, why don't advertising/publishing powerhouses like the Washington Post or New York Times take that strategy if they already have such a vast network of advertisers at their disposal. They don't because it's much more efficiently done elsewhere.

[creepychris]

And then you have to also worry about collecting payments. On more than one occasion I've been stiffed by supposed media buyers.

OTOH, when using something like phpadsnew, it is easy enough to have an in house ad server which I use when someone contacts me looking for ad inventory. I'll take ad buys, but I won't actively seek them.

[HughMungus]

I think you might also have to worry about patents on the CPC model.

While I laud your initiative, do you really want to run a CPC network?

[mack]

The main advantage of the large networks is the removal of the leg-work. No need to sell and very little chance of being ripped off. Having said that there are cases where you will make more by selling your own ads. As you said you are in a niche, perhaps eventualy other players within your niche will approach you wanting to buy ads. If this happens then you may be able to sell out all your ad space for a little more than you currently make through a third party provider.

This situation though, is pretty rare. I would be tempted to stay with the money just now. The time you will spend tracking down sales would far out weigh any additional ad revenue you may make.

Mack.

[local]

The private-label PPC model can work well.

We launched our first portal site that way (pre-adsense) and were very successful with it.

When we went PPC, the key things for us were a niche industry with a small # of 'core' advertisers, and our site was high ranking in its space.

The advertisers we targetted intially were all competitors for the top 10 in google, so they knew who we were when we called.

[MichaelBluejay]

I think there's another way to approach it: Look at the ads which display to see who your advertisers are. Write to a few of them directly and offer them the space on a *monthly* basis, for X% more than you were getting from your AdSense account.

What's in it for the advertisers? Guaranteed placement, fewer competitors' ads on the pages, perhaps custom-designed image ads, the same ad repeated down the page -- plus things you can't do with AdSense, such as giving ad an endorsement and encouraging visitors to click. Or you could promise to mention their company/product and link to them from within your content. Finally, your link to them is "real", not Javascript. Some advertisers like that.

[novice]

"I think there's another way to approach it: Look at the ads which display to see who your advertisers are. Write to a few of them directly and offer them the space on a *monthly* basis, for X% more than you were getting from your AdSense account."

Careful with that one. Contacting the advertisers is against AdSense TOS.

[diamondgrl]

Why would an advertiser want an ad seller to encourage a visitor to click on an ad? It would just raise the rates and cause disingenuous clicks. This is precisely why advertisers are ATTRACTED to Google.

Seriously, this is such a bad idea, unless you really can't think of anything else to do with your time. In which case, it's an even worse waste of your time because if you can't think of anything better to do, you're not going to be able to dream up what is going to be necessary to sell ads effectively.

[Visit Thailand]

If you have people coming to you and asking to advertise then it could be a viable option. We have considered it ourselves (creating a bid system such as AdWrods or Overture) for advertising on our sites but have never implemented it.

If though you are thinking of creating a new AdSense or whatever then good luck, as that is something else entirely.

[Broadway]

I sell adspace directly to advertisers on a monthly basis like MichaelBluejay suggests. My arrangements were in place a long time before Adsense came along, however I do see that these advertisers do participate in the AdWords/Adsense program. The Adsense ads I run on my pages that have a similar topic helps me determine a fair price for the ad space I sell on my own.

I don't do it but at least one of the advertisers I sell to has in the past repeatedly asked if I would place "contextual linking" on my pages, meaning sentences of my text would be links to their site that sell the item the link sentence discusses. I think a lot of advertisers would desire this and would make direct advertising with a site more desireable than with AdSense.

Things come and go, including Adsense accounts and Adsense effective CPM (mine is currently down 1/2 from just last month). Diversifying income sources is smart. Creating your own CPC seems it would be a head ache. Selling month to month for a flat rate is more of a headache than Adsense but not so bad.

[MichaelBluejay]

Careful with that one. Contacting the advertisers is against AdSense TOS.

Darn. Should have guessed. Good thing I haven't actually acted on this one yet.

What if I sent a *green Martian* over to the advertisers and the *green Martian* asks them whether they want to advertise directly? (Just kidding.)

Why would an advertiser want an ad seller to encourage a visitor to click on an ad? It would just raise the rates and cause disingenuous clicks.

Simple: If the adspace is sold by the month, instead of by the click, then advertisers *want* clicks. And a click caused by an editorial recommendation of their product or service (vs. "Click my ads to support this site") is even better than a visitor-motivated click.

Selling month to month for a flat rate is more of a headache than Adsense but not so bad.

Depends on how you do it, I guess. I make most of my income right now from monthly flat-rate ad sales and you definitely get more efficient at administering it the more of it you do.

[MichaelBluejay]

3. Communications Solely With Google. You agree to direct to Google, and not to any advertiser, any communication regarding any Ad(s) displayed in connection with Your Site(s).

Yes, but I'd be contacting advertisers not about the *AdSense* ads on my site, but about buying *completely different advertising directly from me*. (Notice that "Ads" is capitalized, referring specifically to Google ads exclusively.) I don't think this is twisting the words (like we see in a lot of these threads), I think this is exactly what the TOS says.

Still not sure whether I'd act on this, I'll probably check with a contract attorney first. Yes, I could ask Google, but they might say no even if their contract doesn't really prohibit it. If I haven't violated the contract and Google cancels my account anyway then I'd have the possibility of recourse.

BTW, it turns out that I had business dealings with some of my advertisers a couple of years back prior to Adsense.

[jasonlambert]

Interesting topic.
I know of several sites who use this method (a lot of business news sites come to mind).
IMO to do this most successfully your site(s) must have a lot of traffic that the advertisers want to reach, and to earn the big bucks idealy will be selling high goods/services with a high profit margin.

Lets summarise some good & bad points:

GOOD
- Reduce dependance on a single 3rd party for your income
- Allows you to have much more control over your earnings
- You set your own limits on how/where ads can be placed
- You can have ad's on pages that you wouldnt be allowed adsense on
- Can be a very good source of income

BAD
- You need to develop a solution to manage the advertisers
- You may need to edit/verify ad's before they go live
- Risk of chargebacks if accepting credit cards
- If you dont have much traffic you wont have many advertisers, which means you wont make a lot of money
- You may need to invest time and effort into signing up advertisers
- You need to convince advertisers that you activly detect and ignore fraudlent clicks

Basically I think for very high traffic sites in a competitive niche, serving high quality content this sort of thing can work well, anything else will be better off with adsense, or a similar product.