Can you get a click for less than 5 cents now?

"Gurus" ebooks seem to disagree...

[dirtyc]

I just read "Keyword Masters Course" - one of those free ebook from the company that makes KeyWord Analyzer. In it it says that you can now (after 8/19/05) potentially get a Adwords click for less than 5 cents. Is this true?

On a slight tangent, the book also says that for any given keyword phrase, if there's less than 8 ads on the 1st page of results, then that means that you can definitely get your ad on the 1st page for 5 cents - is that true? It hasn't played out in practice for me, anyways. I've bid on terms where it was a minimum of $1.00 to even be active for search and there was only 1 ad displaced when I did a search on that exact phrase.

[poster_boy]

In it it says that you can now (after 8/19/05) potentially get a Adwords click for less than 5 cents.

This is true. After that date, the offical minimum CPC was reduced from a nickel to a penny.

...for any given keyword phrase, if there's less than 8 ads on the 1st page of results, then that means that you can definitely get your ad on the 1st page for 5 cents...

This is false. Minimum bids still apply, regardless of the number of advertisers.

[La_Valette]

Indeed. Nowadays if you have send users to a landing page containing affiliate links you get slammed with a $10 minimum bid even if there are no ads showing.

[caliqueen]

what if your affiliate links are on the conversion page instead of the landing page? does this also affect the cpc? thanks

[Eurydice]

Yes, it is true. For a number of clients, we get many clicks under 5 cents.

These are highly-optimized, well-managed accounts, with heavily tested ads (A/B splits) and landing pages (A/B splits). If you work at it, it can be done.

[joelgreen]

I think you can get clicks even for less then 0.05 if publisher configures ads correspondingly (like forcing image-only ads, putting too much in the "filter out" list, etc.)

[sailorjwd]

I have an ill conceived site, with ill managed adwords account and keywords that don't appear on the landing page. The landing page is smothered with adsense, AMZ and chitika ads. I get several thousand 1c visitors a day. But they all suk.

[Celicaphile]

This thread [webmasterworld.com] covers my case where, even though there are no ads showing for some keywords/phrases, Google has set a minimum bid requirement (making certain claims on their site false) at $.15 or $.20 even w/ no affiliate links whatsoever. With no ads on the search results page, I should only have to pay $.01, but that's not the case.