Adwords Is A Very Evil Place
This guest post is from Clint Dixon:
Do No Evil - Google’s mantra as we all know, however they do not practice such a concept and here is why;
I am a internet advertising professional. Over the years I have always said that advertising with Google Adwords using their content network was a sure and painful way to drain your bank account quickly and make Sergy Larry & Jack much much richer.
Now while many think (keyword) Google is a great company, I have problems with any organization trying to pass it’s self off as an advertising auction retailer, that cannot make the most simplistic decisions and choices that are in the best interest of the Advertiser.
In this case the Advertiser is me. I have several domains I have parked and earning cash and as such decided I wanted to see if I could drive incremental traffic to one of my parked domains with Google Adwords Content Network of websites.
Now one would think Google being as large as they are would have some websites in the Content Network that would be related to Real Estate.
So I started a new campaign recently for a domain in the Real Estate category and under the niche of ‘flipping houses’. This is where someone buys an old house renovates it and sells at a nice profit. Currently a growing category within the Read more
ADWORDS: Finally not just a waste of money
After my spectacular Adwords Failure last month, I still have not given-up at trying to get rich from PPC. Over the last few weeks I’ve tried a few different Adwords campaigns and even tried AdCenter. After about a week I finally did give up on AdCenter due to it’s difficult user interface, high-priced keywords (I thought they were LESS than AdWords?!), and of course let’s not forget about the Terms Of Service that you can’t read if you use Firefox.
I first started seeing success (almost broke-even) with an Azoogle campaign for a free sign-up to win a trip to the American Idol tryouts. I chose this campaign because it was ‘free’ to the buyer, and it had a payout of $12 per conversion. I was averaging one conversion per day for several days when suddenly the offer expired. My total net-loss for this campaign was only about $25.
Last week I started a new campaign based on an eBay-related Azoogle offer. This offer is also free, but the buyer must pay postage (less than $4) - The payout is $25 per conversion. I set my AdWords budget at $50/day and wrote a few ads, and added about 1,000 keywords - most of the keywords were misspellings and variations so only approx. 25 were ‘real’ keywords. I started the campaign on a Friday night, and throughout the weekend the campaign broke even each day, and even had a profit one day. Monday morning however I awoke to unapproved ads and about 500 keywords that were disabled because their CPC went thru the roof.
After some “optimization” my ads are running again, and by raising my minimum CPC from .20 to $1.00, most of my keywords are now re-activated. Even though $1.00 is way higher that I’d like to pay, I’ve still managed to break even for the last two days. I’m going to hang in there for another two or three weeks to see if time really does help improve my quality score and reduce my CPC. If the CPC gets back down to the .20 - . 40 range, I can see the potential for some real profits. While I’m waiting I think I’ll brush up on my blogging skills..
My Google AdWords Failure
We have one page at the site with a pretty high paying (almost $80) affiliate. In the last month we’ve gotten 4 conversions on this affiliate from natural organic traffic. I figured that if I could drive some targeted or even semi-targeted traffic to the page I should be able to get dozens of conversions. And what better way to get targeted traffic than with Google Adwords ?
The first thing I realized was that all my keywords were expensive - in the neighborhood of $4-$5. The high price of these keywords did not matter to me though because I was confident that I would be getting conversions left and right. I set my daily budget at $80 (the cost of one conversion) and started my campaign.
Within about 2 hours, I had several clicks, and burned through my entire daily budget. My total number of conversions? ZERO .. After looking at my stats and keyword list it became apparent that a few of my keywords were too broad and were bringing untargeted traffic. There went $80 down the toilet.
Day two:
I narrowed my keywords and changed my ads a bit and unpaused my campaign. This time the campaign ran for several hours before burning the daily budget. Total number of conversions: ZERO. Another $80 gone
Day three and four:
This time I decided to look at my landing page. Maybe the page that did so well with organic traffic needed to be a little more spammy. I added a large banner at the very top and a few text links in the page copy. Total number of conversions: ZERO - Kiss goodbye another $160
Day five:
At this point I was a bit discouraged so I lowered my daily budget to $25. I fine-tuned my ads by adding a “call to action” as suggested at the DP Forums. For some reason on this day the cost per click was much lower at about $0.50 each - things were looking up! With this lower CPC I would be getting more hits than when my budget was at $80! Result: ZERO conversions
Conclusions:
The PPC game is harder than it looks! It was suggest in the DP Forums that losing money is a necessary part of making money with PPC. TEST TEST TEST, and TEST more until you hit on what works for you. Well guys, I just can’t afford to test that much! Last month my DP Forum buddy Tom tried using PPC to sell my eBook. To read how successful Tom was, check his bl0g at www.nextebizguy.com
