Forum Moderators: martinibuster
This is going to be a little test i always wanted to do but was affraid to just go in and lose the money but you have to try it something. What do you guys think? should i do it or not bother with it?
why not save the trouble, and just post the money you spend straight to google. It will save all that frustration with visitors clicking ads to get to more ads, and electricity?
I've followed StuntasticAudi into Adwords (mostly for a play). Haven't had the same success unfortunately - the adwords clickers seem to think they've found what they want on my site - they look at an average of 15 pages each and provide 25% of the adsense CTR that I'd normally expect. But the forum has become busy, so I'll probably keep spending my dollar a day.
The fun is in tracking. I'm giving adwords folk a 30 day cookie so I can keep an eye on what they are up to.
Well the thing is with my site is that i believe that if they visit it once they will return so it doesnt matter if they click on adsense right away. I have other affiliates published on my sites and if they dont click on any of them now they might on the next visit or so.
There's been a lot of threads here and in the AW forums (and on other sites). My experience, and the experience of others (not everybody, but many others I've talked to or read their posts), is that you will get a nice little AS bump, however it starts to diminish after awhile.
Now some people talk about running your AW campaign right before certain events (say a holiday, or a major travel period), and I'm sure it helps, but over the long run it seems that time spent on SEO and perhaps third party articles, provides a better payoff (i.e. money you would spend on AS, if you paid for others to write new articles or whatever for your site, it's a better payoff over the long term).
If your site is new and not ranking too highly yet, AW can be very helpful in increasing awareness, and if you look at it from that point of view, you can get a good return, especially if people see your site and email it or post about it elsewhere (although that kind of return is hard to measure).
I've run AW campaigns briefly for new sites (and then only on Google search and not on third party websites), and some I've made my money back, and some I haven't, but I got the traffic and mindshare, which is what I wanted, similar to a new store running a flyer in the local newspaper. but I think that you will do better working on ranking in the top keywords, as most people will see those links first before seeing the ads.
Also, many sites will block ads that direct visitors to competing sites, as well as MFA sites. I do this, and as others have said in the thread, they do as well, so if you run AW, you're best leaving it on Google.com's search results.
If you get a too large of increase of clicks because of an AdWords campaign SmartPricing will hit you hard. Even if you stop buying traffic with AdWords it will take time to build your click prices back up again. You had better be really hurting for traffic before you buy traffic and clicks with AdWords or you will pay the price for it with lower click pricing because of SmartPricing.
Jumps in clicks trigger SmartPricing, so don't use AdWords unless your traffic has really fallen off.
It is best to slowly build traffic with natural search results, and not attempt to buy traffic with AdWords. SmartPricing will get you if you jump too quickly.
Thanks, never thought about that. Traffic is not the problem...being greedy and trying to make more money is. Once you get to the point when you start making $2k then $3k then $4k a month you just want to continue going up in numbers. Thats why i'm trying new things to get more visitors. SmartPricing is the last thing i would want now...hmmm now you got me scared!
It's called advertising. Brick and Mortars have been doing that for ages, I think it's okay to do it online (based on my experience).
For a certain key search phrase, core to what one of my sites is about, I sit at position two organically, but I still buy an adwords ad to show up North and get good traffic from it, trumping a major gorilla sitting in position 1.
For that campaign I'm not so much interested in tangible ROI as I am in the more intangible benefits of building name recognition and loyal visitors. Imo, the roi is manifested in more inbound links and more word of mouth. Obviously some visitors are worth more to your growth so choose a highly targeted phrase to bid on.
>>>SmartPricing will get you if you jump too quickly.
I've always been happy with the campaign I have for another of my sites. I bottom feed relevant visitors who are looking for what my site offers, and felt I was getting a good return as my income went up once the campaign was properly tuned. Campaign is tightly controlled, and the words chosen and positions staked were researched and refined over a period of a couple months, with nominal refinements afterward.
So one month I decided to drop it all for a MONTH, just for kicks, and go 100% organic for an entire MONTH. My income dipped far below what I had been spending on the campaign. So the campaign is back on. ;)
Now mind you, I don't spend a ton on this campaign because anything more and my ROI goes down. I've spent a couple hundred dollars a day to see what life was like at number one, but the ROI tanked. So I believe I've found an optimum campaign for this particular site spending a modest amount per month.
That site could go on with only organic traffic and make a tidy income, but the advertising traffic brings in additional income and so it makes good business sense to advertise and make more money rather than leave it on the table. A no brainer.
I think spending two hundred bucks over the course of a weekend won't yield satisfactory results.
Building the campaign over the space of weeks seems more reasonable, tweak the words, dial them down slowly, and over the months keep refining it. Like any other business venture, you might initially lose money, but if there's profit, it may be revealed a little later rather than sooner because you'll have to search for it- unless you're lucky or super talented. ;)
As my normal EPC (when not using adwords) is significantly higher than the minimum ppc on adwords for the terms I'm using, then it works out ok.
On the upside I see:
a) A surge in clicks from the get go
b) Higher overall net revenue
c) Increased visitor rates
On the downside I see two main factors:
a) A slow but steady decline in EPC over a month or so the decline can be as much as 50%.
b) A fall in number of pages viewed -- the latter is normally around 12-14 pages per visitor, and in the past when I've used adwords for a few months this value has dropped to around the 8 mark (again over a month or so)
I do this occasionally, though wouldn't do it all the time as am concerned the spread (between EPC and PPC) would become neglible.
I agree that using a lot of terms may not work, which is why I only bid on a select few.
To me this strategy has always seemed like plain stupidity. But, I've followed many of my competitors that have implemented this strategy for 12+ months, and they don't back out....and to me that must mean that some people can make it pay!
I prefer to spend my time gaming the free SERP's, but, from what I see from my competitors buying cheap Adwords to sell high value clicks via Adsense must work!
just want to share my testing experience here on adword and adsense thing.
i did that on the adword for certain keyword. unfortunately, not all will hv good conversion rate. some i pay $100 and only earn $5. so becarefull and set the max limit if you want to try.
i hv an experience that within 5 hours i got more than 20k clicks and paying big bucks. and at the end adsense only pay me less than $10.
