I'm held hstage by AW

Low clicks without adwords

[katdadi]

I've been advertising with aw since I started adsense two months ago. I've been using seo and link exchange for some time with no roi. My ad cost are much higher than my adsense returns. Will I eventually be able to leave aw and go solo?

[Atomic]

How old is your site? If your site is only a few months old you might find that it takes quite a while to build up traffic and it's even possible that no matter how hard you try the free traffic never appears.

My ad cost are much higher than my adsense returns

This says it all. I would consider stopping the AdWords campaign. This might have made sense in 1999 with investor money to burn but in 2005 you need to be in the black.

How much are you bidding? Is your AW ad well written and is it related to your site's content? There are a lot of variables to consider here but if you're consistently not making money you need to look at everything. Do you have a realy general ad that points to your homepage or do you have lots of specific ads directed at individual pages? That's how I do it and it works well. I don't have any that go to my homepage.

Do you have any affiliate banners or links on these pages? There's more ways to make money than just AdSense. If you get enough traffic and your site is designed right you can make an embarrassing amount of money from affilites.

[jomaxx]

AdWords could still be a good way to go IF you have reason to believe that getting your site some visibility will result in people bookmarking, linking to, and returning to your website. I bought traffic at GoTo/Overture when I was starting out; it was a loss leader but in retrospect it helped me get established much quicker.

If you have one of those no-content sites that exists solely as a life-support system for AdSense ad blocks, just give up.

[Atomic]

That's a good point. One reason I buy traffic from AdWords is the hope that people will tell their friends and add links to my site. And it may have worked as my traffic is 10x whhat it was when the site was launched in January but it's hard to tell for sure. But my content is solid and the subject matter lucrative. But if I couldn't at least break even in the short term I would quit buying traffic from AdWords without some indication it was helping.

[MediaSpree]

I used to break even with the adwords to adsense model. But now I make maybe $1.75 for every dollar i spend. The only thing I did was follow Googles own optimization tips.

Ads centered, above the fold, just before main content, blended into the site. CTR skyrocketed.

You've got "pre-qualified" clickers who with either read your content (a bonus) or decide to click away and pay you for the pleasure of stopping by.