Details:
1. Duration of experimental campaign: 10 days
2. Adwords Ads: 1
3. Keywords: 20
4. Daily Adwords budget varied between $2 and $20, as I adjusted to get near breakeven point
5. Closest breakeven point was at $5 budget
6. Total (over 10 days) adwords cost: $105
7. Total impressions: 431,407, Clicks: 1752
8. 97% of impressions and 88% of clicks come from the content network and the rest are from search
9. Max CPC for all keywords were set to $0.10 at all times.
10. Highest adsense revenue in 1 day: $7
11. Total (over 10 days) impressions: 95004
12. Total Clicks: 307
13. Total revenue: $23.28
The question is how can I make this site profitable?.. other than introducing affiliate programs or selling stuff. This site basically provides over 3000 original photographs for free download and usage.
Please Note:
- The site only got indexed by the search engines right after the 10-day trial ended.
- Keyword matching technique was not used (hence the small list of keywords).
I don't understand why people think this would work and they would make a profit. It's so logical. You pay for traffic using keywords that (should) relate to your page. You therefore have a good idea of how much it costs, say 25 cents a click. Google will then display ads based on your page's theme, the very same keywords you pay 25 cents for. And you expect Google to pay you the same or larger amount on clicks from your site? You also know your CTR and you think that more people are going to click on ads on your site, some which may be the same they just saw on the other site? I know I'm simplifying but arbitrage just doesn't make sense.
=> Get Organic Traffic!
=> Get Referral Traffic
=> Sign up for CPM Display Ad Networks
=> Cross your fingers
Very few people can actually make arbitrage work for them.
The reason why I mentioned "Adwords vs Adsense" (which I now understand is taboo) is that I hope to avoid or at least minimise the costs of adwords in the beginning stage of promoting a new website. I am actually spending much time trying to get organic traffic, backlinks, submitting articles, blog comments, etc.
The thing is, no one knows how long it takes for a specific new website to survive on organic traffic, so it's of course best to optimise ad campaigns so that adwords costs are minimised. How my campaign is lacking in this case is what I'm asking actually.
If I understand correctly what is arbitrage in adsense, I think it's not something I want to do, because the meticulous adjustments based on keyword values are highly tedious and increased profitability is far from assured for all that labor. The process involving all that technicality with keywords and their costs really kills any gratification in content creation (to me, at least).
If you are selling your own products or services, why have ads on your site? You just run the risk of getting a visitor, whether free by SEO or paid by PPC, and have them leave immediately to a competitor. For what? A few cents? You'd make a bigger profit convincing them to buy from you. Instead, you are inviting them to go elsewhere and they may never come back.
You say the site gives away photos. I'm not sure how you are monetizing giving them away, but the principle is the same.
Ads are good for forums, blogs, article and news sites, any kind of site that provides information and not trying to sell something.
