How to use a Google Adwords Voucher | Google Coupons - 60DC

Have you ever opened your email to see an interesting message from Google informing you that you have just received a $100 Voucher towards a new  Google Adwords account?

Or perhaps, you recently purchased a hosting account and were offered vouchers as part of your deal?

If you havent received an offer for an Adwords voucher then you may want to sign up for a new Google account , email accounts, calender, notebook etc. all of these services could trigger the mailing of a voucher.

If you do any activity that is benefited by receiving more traffic to your online locations then you should take an hour and set up your first adwords account and campaign.

The sign up process for your new adwords account is intuitive, you should have no problem filling in the basic information.

The only possible snafu I can imagine is:

Why do I need to enter billing information for a free voucher?

You will in fact need to enter a valid credit card, this is used for future campaigns and at the least allows Google to be sure that the adwords voucher is being used only by new Adwords account holders (or new credit card numbers). You will be required to make a $5 deposit to prove you have a valid card, this deposit is credited towards your campaign.

Be sure to find the field titled promo code (check image below)

Congratulations, you now have your first Adwords Account for only $5.

If you dont have a credit card or are super careful about using it online, just stop by your local convenience store, pharmacy or supermarket and grabbed a Visa or MasterCard branded Gift Card, they usually run around 3.95 plus whatever you choose to load on it. If you have received a Redgage card then you have found the perfect use for it - reinvest those funds into more traffic.

Using Adwords successfully, especially, once your using your own funds depends on knowing your target audience and search terms and being comfortable with keyword research. You can also blatantly steal your competitors adwords terms using a Firefox plug-in such as AdSpy. Luckily, you can learn the ropes using a voucher.

Finding terms to use is exactly the time to start delving into your analytics , especially if you have your analytics and adsense linked, if you can determine what search terms have been leading to conversions then you have adwords gold (as long as you are not overbid by bigger pockets)

Going through the Adwords process is a great learning experience towards becoming a better adsense publisher.

Adwords is all about bringing targeted traffic to your sites with the purpose of conversion - so you need to have a goal that includes one of your affiliate partners.

Using Adwords without your own site:

If you are partnered with affiliate networks already then you can actually create ads that lead right to the partners squeeze pages. It is important to pay attention to the service terms of your partners as many are protective of certain search terms or dont allow any direct paid search linking.

Gain more affiliate partnership options: Top ten Affiliate Networks for beginners

Becoming a Clickbank partner takes no more than filling out an application, so you may want to consider that option if your working with a short time line. With commissions in the $20 range on average its not impossible to make considerable profits.

Both eBay and Amazon are examples of programs that disallow direct linking from Paid Search. In order to work around this it becomes necessary to create a landing page - a page you can link to in paid search that includes your affiliate links.

The terms landing page and squeeze page are not perfectly interchangeable, but for the purposes of adwords and this basic overview they can be.

Adwords gives your landing page ( destination URL ) a quality score based on its relevance to your selected keywords. This quality score can effect your placement/bidding ratio in results.

Adwords does not appreciate or condone any misdirection or false advertising. So it is in your best interest to create a specific landing page that is ripe with appropriate terms and also very specific tp your traget audience and terms.

Since you have  a goal for this traffic - which could be as small as just visiting and reading your hubs or as large as buying a vacation around the world - and this traffic costs you, you want to include some basic techniques - let the visitor know they are in the right place - use some bold headlines and work them down the page towards your intended links. Keep external links to a bare minimum, this is a good attitude to keep in mind with any writing or page that is conversion based.

The video shows a quick way to make a wordpress self hosted site into a squeeze page but this same method can easily be adapted to any format including free blogspot blogs.

Send Traffic to your Hubpage:

You could just set up a campaign that leads right to your hubpages. You can follow basic arbitrage techniques, bid on a bunch of very low cost terms and optimize the page for related high return terms.

The 60/40 share you have with HP on your affiliate partners isnt a real drawback especially if your using free vouchers, but, the ever increasing amount of related links, forums and what not that appears in your sidebar is - all these distractions are designed to keep visitors on the Hubpages site - but not necessarily on your own pages. I like my fellow Hubpage authors but i dont want to pay for traffic that may divert to them. Although, If you have a focused approach many of the related hubs may in fact be your own. HubPages is NOT a good squeeze page or landing page and they dont want to be! Squidoo would be a better resource if you cant be bothered to build a real site.

Send traffic to your Blog or Site:

When composing your ad copy if you use the keyword terms you are bidding on they will appear in bold during a search that triggers them. Jeremy Shoemoney shows a great technique for using this bolding to create an 'arrow" that attracts your visitors

ex)

Title: {keyword:Best} Ringtones
Headline1: Get The Latest Ringtones By {keyword:Artists}
Headline2: {keyword:New} Ringtones Instantly Sent To Your Phone!

The adwords tutorials show off all these features quite plainly - or read Shoes simple explanation below.

Read the Adwords Arrow Tutorial by Shoemoney

There is a field for budget per day, if your Voucher is to expire, make sure your daily budget is high enough to be used up BEFORE expiration date. Use the estimation tool during your campaign set up to get a general idea of what you can expect to 'spend' per day.

Usually,the content network is far less likely to deliver quality traffic, if you bid on the content network, keep it considerably lower then your search bids or use the managed option and select some sites that you know or expect have visitors that would be along your lines.

If your advertisers only pay for traffic from certain geographical areas, go ahead and make sure your campaign only targets those countries.

I like to use Hostgator combined with Thesis Wordpress theme to make and host my squeeze pages.

HostGator gives you a $100 voucher when you sign up ( this can cost you as little as $4.95) and Thesis is completely customizable, skins and tutorials abound to make your Wp site into a landing page in under 5 minutes!

So stop reading here and get that Adwords account started!

Adwords Vouchers can be found on eBay and Internet marketing forums, its not uncommon to spend around $5 for a $100 credit - not to shabby!

Since it has to be a new account, its not something that helps everyone -