adwords to adsense

Using adwords to boost adsense

[jstar]

Hello. Long time reader, first time poster...

After about a year of effort, I have finally gotten to the point where my various sites' combined Adsense earnings consistantly hit triple digits before the decimal point on a daily basis, and I'm trying to think of new and interesting ways to boost this income further.

Since my sites are informational sites, and I do not have any products that I am actually selling, I have never used paid advertising to bring traffic to my sites before. Though I'm sure that using AdWords could be a good strategy for boosting affiliate earnings, are there any effective strategies for using AdWords to turn a net profit on AdSense earnings for a website? Or will you always necessarily end up paying more for the AdWords than you can possibly make on the AdSense for even the highest paying keywords?

[hdpt00]

It will work if you keep a close tabs on your ROI and bottom line. Give it a test run or you'll never know.

[sailorjwd]

It can work but it is painfull to have to pay up to 2 months of adwords costs before getting the money back from Adsense.

[whoisgregg]

As sailorjwd points out, the "float" between Adwords bills and Adsense payments is a hurdle. Depending on what value you attach to that time, it may make a tight profit margin actually become a loss.

For example, if you had to finance your adwords bills on a credit card with 10% interest, paying two months interest on a $30 adwords bill means you must gross $36.30 in adsense to break even. Even if you aren't "financing" your adwords bill, the float means you need to either have sufficient buffer capital or you need to ramp your spending slowly.

I realize my math is oversimplified and technically inaccurate. The point is still made. :)

[bakedjake]

Don't do it. It's not a good idea.

[Powdork]

My adsense earnings have never gone up as much as the adwords expenses. I do have some affiliate partnerships so I have been running adwords. Today my adwords exceeded the adsense so all campaigns were just paused.

[flood6]

I manage a site for a company in a fairly small industry where the potential clients aren't always very good searchers.

The site has been using Overture PPC with a $500 a monthly budget for about a year. It is very hard to find decent keywords that convert. We always seem to attract a lot of visitors we don't want mixed in with the visitors we do. I guess as close as I can get to giving a "wigified" example would be that we offer a service to wholesalers but there are many more retail buyers searching for the service; the retail and wholesale keywords are about the same.

So anyways, I suggested trying AdSense to the company because all the ads are targeted at the end-user (or retail buyer). And they are pretty high-dollar ads.

It's only been about 3 weeks since we added AdSense to the site but it looks like we're on target to make up for our Ov spending and maybe make another $100.

So they are getting decent advertising for free.

But like I said, this is a business site offering a service so the big revenue comes from sales. There is also, obviously, the issue of having advertising on a professional site; does it cheapen the site and "turn off" potential clients? This is the first month, so it will take some time to measure any negative effects.

Again, this is an unusual example and we're only talking about $500/month of spending. But I've been wanting to share this example as encouragement in case someone was considering giving it a try...so give it a try.

[Jenstar]

You made a really good point, whoisgregg, about the float issue. There are many who do "in with Adwords, out with AdSense" but I wonder if they take that into account when determining their profitability.

This technique is one that requires constant babysitting, but yes, some do have success with it.