Planning to make an MFA site

just to find out how much these MFA sites make

[saraah]

Hi guys

I was blocking so many MFA sites yesterday. Some of them were ridiculous. Just one paragraph text and 3 ad units.

I am curious to find out how much money these people make. I'm sure they are making some profit, otherwise why would so many MFA sites keep coming up.

Here is what I am planning to do. Buy a domain name and have a one html page with some text and 3 ad units.

Then I'll advertise that page through adwords and pay around say 2 cents a click. In one day I should be able to find out how much I spent on adwords and how much I made through Adsense.

My only concern is - By doing this will I jeopardize my current good standing with AS because I'll be using my existing AS code to display on that site. In other words am I doing anything against TOS.

Thanks
Sarah

[jomaxx]

Only you can read the TOS and decide whether you're in compliance or not.

[andrea99]

I think the acronym Made For AdSense is not precise enough but I can't think of a good substitute that is descriptive enough to catch on.

These are actually "sites made to trick searchers into clicking AdSense."

A site's actual utility versus its ability attract traffic from search engines is the fine line that separates a fraudulant site from a genuine one. There has to be some actual value added by the site to justify its being a search result.

Whether or not it is actually made for AdSense is beside the point.

That said I expect them to continue being called MFA's.

As for saraah's intention, it's probably safer and easier to rationalize than picking pockets or robbing banks...

[milanmk]

Instead of making an MFA site why don’t you use AdWords to advertise and promote your existing content rich website and plan for a long term profit? This way you also maintain your good standing with AdSense.

Moreover, don’t you think what you did yesterday (blocking those MFA sites), the same thing other people will be doing blocking your MFA site?

Milan

[saraah]

Oh no I'm doing this as a full time business. I just want to get an idea of how much profit these people make with MFA sites.

I'm just going to experiment for a couple of days and will post my results here :)

[jomaxx]

Frankly I think you're just trying to wind everybody up anyways, but what makes you think you can toss up any old site and have any idea what others make? Instead of reporting back here and trying to stoke the fire with some meaningless statistic, it would be better to forget about it and let the whole MFA business die down for a while.

[ishika]

you can definitely try out doing so on experimental bais.no harm as you are not only focussing only on mfa sites.u also have one content rich sites .so definitely it is not against tos rules.make one page but just try to have some 3 4 paragraph of content.no harm in that.
and do posat the result here.

[david_uk]

Intersting, and I'd like to see the results.

However, it may not be that representative of what the full-time MFAer's (if that's a word :) ) achieve. I did read somewhere that the longer your site is advertised on adwords, the better the advertising rate you pay. Therefore if your site is only up for a couple of days you may be paying more than they do. I guess that they also have the skill to manipulate adwords for their benefit in the same way that we are all trying to get the best out of adsense.

[saraah]

Yes thats true David. I was just checking on Adwords and for some keywords, its asking me to raise the bid to like 10cents.

So i'll have to find keywords that are priced around 2 cents. Cos I know if I pay 10 cents to get a person on that page - if that person does'nt click, its a loss and even if he clicks, there is no guarantee that I'll be getting more than 10 cents on that click.

Anyways I'll keep you all posted.
Thanks

[martinibuster]

You may have to bottom feed many terms, like in the hundreds if not thousands, to see a meaningful return.

And to make it a meaningful test, make sure you split your AdWords campaign into search AND content, and bottom feed the content sites.

If you sit down to think about it (and I only thought about it for about two seconds) this has to be about numbers, so you have to imagine you are dragging a huge net across the bottom of the ocean and picking up whatever falls in, as opposed to dropping a fishing line with a worm on a hook.

I'm not sure what strategy MFA bidders use, but I imagine that's what they're doing because it has to be pretty much like most any AdWords campaign that is targeting a specific niche.

[saraah]

Thanks for the tips.

I'm not sure what you mean by bottom feed. Does it mean just putting a list of 100 keywords at the bottom of the page. Just guessing :)

[martinibuster]

bottom feed = buy traffic at rock bottom prices.

Doesn't matter that you get 1 click per day. If you are bottom feeding a thousand terms, and three hundred click through at two cents or whatever, that's three hundred really cheap visitors, right?

It's possible to do the same with a site targeted campaign, but this is getting off topic for the AdSense forum and maybe you should start a thread over in Adwords forum for bidding strategies and tips.

I'm getting the feeling that your MFA campaign won't be much of an experiment if you need to get up to speed on squeezing ROI from an AdWords campaign.

[humblebeginnings]

"Doesn't matter that you get 1 click per day. If you are bottom feeding a thousand terms, and three hundred click through at two cents or whatever, that's three hundred really cheap visitors, right?"

Been there, done that. If you bid 1 cent per click most of your keywords (or all of them) will remain inactive for the search network. You might get some impressions for the content network (= AS publishers) but that generates very few clicks. Even if you bring in the max of 2000 keywords per Adwords adgroup. And then of course, these few clicks have to "convert". Otherwise, Adwords will just cost you money.
Gaming the system with arbitrage or MFA-related stuff equals very hard work, monitoring your campaigns day and night, risking to lose a lot of money, risking to lose your account. If you are ready for that, then give it a try. However, spending all that time and energy to make content will always pay, without the risk. It's your choice...

[saraah]

My little experiment with an MFA site:

I'm not sure how much detail I can give - but here is what I did.

I created a simple one page site. Had several images of products and text describing the product. Had absolutely no links on the site except for the 3 Ad units.

I had the site up for about 6 hours.
Adwords - Spent about 4$ - got around 220 visitors
Adsense - Generated about 80 clicks and approximately 11$

A profit of 7$ in 6 hours :) - Thats pretty neat I think

--Sarah

[europeforvisitors]

$7 in six hours is just under $1.17 an hour. Sounds like a tough way to make a living!

[idolw]

$1 an hour.
nice if you multiply it by 100 :-)

[saraah]

Well if you think about it $1 an hour makes about 700$ a month. And if you have a network of 10 MFA sites - you are making 7000$ a month - enough to make a luxurious living :)

[buckworks]

Had absolutely no links on the site except for the 3 Ad units.

That kind of deceitful manipulation is exactly why as an advertiser I'm not willing to pay nearly as much for clicks from the content network as I am from the search network. If I run any ads on the content network at all, that is.

[idolw]

sure, buckworks.
no one who spends their own money would pay for content advertising if it is not site-targetted campaign.
of course, the big guys like ebay do not care.

[jomaxx]

I'm with buckworks. Any page I see with no navigable links is against the TOS and gets reported as AdSense abuse. Saraah, factor that into your cost/benefit analysis.

FWIW here's how to report such sites:
[google.com ]

The email to send complaints to is [e-mail]. I'm not convinced that clicking the "Ads by Google" link sends the email to the most appropriate person.

[saraah]

Thanks jomaxx :)

Maybe I'll spend some hours doing that today. I've seen so many sites like that - no navigation links, no menus, the only way out is clicking on an ad or close the browser.

[flobaby]

Oops, nevermind. I was going to be up in arms about "no navigable links", but now realize you meant browser links, such as a back button.

[fischermx]

Well if you think about it $1 an hour makes about 700$ a month. And if you have a network of 10 MFA sites - you are making 7000$ a month -

AND ... remember she did ONE page. What about a MFA with hundred of pages!?

[joeking]

Doesn't ring true this "experiment" - and to project six hours worth of testing to 100s of sites over a month adds to the hilarity

[europeforvisitors]

AND ... remember she did ONE page. What about a MFA with hundred of pages!?

Yes, but it wasn't a static content page that she could "set and forget"--it was an MFA page that required buying AdWords.

[andrea99]

But true arbitrage is a lot of work, if I were going to invest time in that I think I'd work with Euros, dollars, oil futures and porkbellies.

On the other hand, congratulations Sarah on spawning a new generation of MFA's with this thread...

[hdpt00]

Don't worry. She'll be hit with smart pricing soon enough. The true winners are the ones who can go a few months and really succeed ;-).

[toomer]

>> I had the site up for about 6 hours.
Adwords - Spent about 4$ - got around 220 visitors
Adsense - Generated about 80 clicks and approximately 11$ <<

Will be interesting to see how that evens out over time. When I was first launching a couple new sites, I thought I'd give AdWords a try to generate some traffic and test my system under load ... for the first half of a day or so, I was actually *making* a small profit - 10% to 20% on the arbitrage between what my AdWords clicks were costing me, and what my AdSense clicks were bringing in.

But that disappeared over time... don't know if it was smartpricing or just the numbers going my way for a brief period of time. In the long run, it has not worked (but it's still a worthwhile investment of a few bucks to bring in traffic for me).

On those numbers - $4 for 220 visitors, sounds like you paid $0.018 per click to get someone in to your experiment?

And at hitting 80 clicks out of your site, if you made $11 that's roughly $0.13 per click.

I'm curious - what topic did you use (in general) that produced such a large arbitrage?

[jetteroheller]

I had the site up for about 6 hours.
Adwords - Spent about 4$ - got around 220 visitors
Adsense - Generated about 80 clicks and approximately 11$

Would be interesting waht smart pricing would do with it in some month.

Since smart pricing works account wide, You maybe influence Your income on this site, by a good smart pricing.

[idolw]

On those numbers - $4 for 220 visitors, sounds like you paid $0.018 per click to get someone in to your experiment?

$4 divided by 220 makes 1,8 cent a click.
or i finished school without maths?