Using Adwords, still losing,,,,

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   Bill Manningposted 12 years ago

   I mentioned once that when it comes to actually USING adwords for your own products, not adsense, you often just lose money.
   
   Google sent me a free 100 buck offer to start using my adwords account again. So, I started it up a few days ago, targeting womens leather jackets in my leather site.
   
   As always, I almost have it all used and have not had one single sale. I don't understand how people make money actually using adwords, or any of the other dozen popular ad formats.

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      bgamallposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Maybe the big boys get a break.

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         Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Could be, I dunno. I just never have been able to make a damn thing using any of the online ads. I even have a big profit margin per item, meaning I can afford to pay more for ads.
         
         Most people only make anywhere from $5.00 to $20.00 bucks per item they sell. With ads going for an average of .50 to over a buck each I don't see how they ever justify it.
         
         However I'll gladly make money off them with adsense.

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            ThomasEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I think people work it out on a lifetime per customer. You lose money on the first sale, but if you can get them on your mailing list, you make money by sending them future offers, selling the mailing list, and upselling them.
            
            You also need to do split tests, and all that rigmarole.

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               Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               I suppose. It also goes back to how, IMHO, so many companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads and really don't make that up.
               
               So many places throw thousands away on advertising for nothing. I've seen fancy ads that clearly cost big bucks but I could not even figure out what it was for.
               
               How can they say ads like that work when you can't even find out their product!

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   ryankettposted 12 years ago

   I once spent £10 of my own cash on AdWords and it resulted in me getting 64 referrals for some website. Safe to say that I made far more than £10 and I am still making money now.
   
   I spent a max of £0.02 per click

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   Entourage_007posted 12 years ago

   Are you allowed to promote affiliate program websites through Adwords.  (Like affiliate websites that you dont own, but you want to promote?)

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      Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm actually not sure about that. The landing page is suppose to have solid content or products your trying to promote.
      
      At first they disallowed my leather site because I have a few adsense ads on the page. But for some reason they changed their mind and now allow my site.
      
      So I'm not sure.

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   Spacey Graceyposted 12 years ago

   So if I had my own site that had affiliate links on it liek 'you can buy this product here, here and here' with an affiliate link to the 'here', you can promote that with adwords???
   
   I still have sooooo much to learn. Lucky I've got you guys to teach me.

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      Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Like I said above, I'm not sure about that. I know you can use adwords to sell your own retail items.
      
      You also can use them for many other things, like travel packages, vacations, airlines and so on.
      
      But using adwords to make them land on a page filled with affiliate links, I'm not sure. That may break their rules, which you can find here:
      http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bi … y&rd=1

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   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   Bill, I have always seen usually a double my investment and I am a frequent user of adwords.
   
   sounds like you need to rip apart your analytics and see what keywords are really the buyers.
   
   I tend to not advertise on the content network or if i do only on targeted sites - like for example, if i sold leather jackets i would advertise on your site
   
   and adsense can be on your landing pages, there is no question about that

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      Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Hmmm, well perhaps I'm making the classic mistake of going for a too broad keyword term. But if I have a page of ladies leather jackets, I then make my ads targeted to:
      ladies leather jackets
      womans leather jackets
      ladies leather coats
      
      and so on,,, I don't see what more I can do?

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         sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         no way man!
         
         way too broad! for a small budget adwords publisher
         
         There are some aspects of online stuff that I just dont spout off on without a contract but I think before getting to involved in adwords you should get really really good at analytics as it relates to your site, learn to set up goal tracking with analytics and adwords also.
         
         In your case, assuming you are using a relatively small budget of 100-1000 per month, I wouldnt be targeting anything less than 5 words long and I would make sure buyer intent was implicit in the terms

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            Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I see. So in that case do you suggest going after individual items? I mean, what the heck else can you use pointing to a page of ladies leather jackets??
            
            I DID try a very targeted one for a ladies white fringe leather jacket. I tried to use the keywords:
            
            ladies white fringe leather jacket
            womans white fringe leather jacket
            
            And so on. BUT, then it said those keywords did not come up so they are disabled. I guess I just don't know how to do it right.
            
            Edit, just read your extra thoughts. I understand, I'm going to broad then, thanks.

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               sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               thats better - but no implicit "buy" words exist.
               
               
               At the least, it will keep your budget from being spent on the info seekers and high comp terms you suggested earlier.
               
               What works is different for each niche and i cant offer any magic term off the top of my head, unfortunately.
               
               I would start here (the source):
               
               http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/06/i … -into.html
               
               Goals are magic for adwords buyers

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                  Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  Good deal, thanks for the advice.

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               livewithrichardposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               I'm with SF on this. You have to target a specific product not a selection of products. Sending your clicks to a page of choices is no better than where they started on Google's search.  Find a product that will give you the greatest markup return and have your clicks land on that product offer where the only button to choose is the "buy now" or the back button.  Plus you need to play with the arrangement of keywords to get you the best value.  .50 cents a click will break you quick especially if there are few monthly searches.
               
               Plug these into the adwords estimator and see what you come up with: I get 70k searches for mens and 33k searches for womens with an average cpc of 0 and signals a whopping .01 cent per click to me. A $10 a day budge would get you roughly 10k cliks over a week and a half.  With a 1% CTR you're looking at 100 sales.  Can you make back your $100 investment with 100 sales.
               
               mens jackets leather
               leather mens jackets
               jackets leather womens
               leather womens jackets
               
               I targeted content not searches when I ran a campaign before Christmas on the term "print tattoos" which my ad led to a clickbank product.  I bid only .05 cents a click when the average cpc was .55 and I still hit my targets of 12 sales a day for a 10 day long campaign.  The product paid me $14 per sale and there were only 6 total returns out of 126 sales. 
               
               .01 cent bids will not get you where you need to be on search but it will get you plenty of what you need placed on content.

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                  Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  I have no idea what you just said. Any keyword term with mens leather jackets, womens leather jackets or any variation of them show an average of .95 to 1.85 cpc just to be found on the first page.
                  
                  I think the whole buying ads stuff is just a bit over my head. It's marketing, and I am clueless about that.
                  
                  I better stick to what I know best, SEO and website making and making money off adsense, not adwords. 

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                     livewithrichardposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                     You really have to have to allow for a monthly budget of around $100 and for at least 3 months to get the hang of it.
                     
                     But, the point I was trying to make was that it makes a big difference on how you arrange your keywords to target.  For instance, the following all have the same exact search volume:
                     
                     womens leather jackets  33,000 global and 22,000 local
                     jackets leather womens  33,000 global and 22,000 local
                     leather womens jackets  33,000 global and 22,000 local
                     
                     However, 'womens leather jackets' has an average cpc of .95 cents where the other two have a 0 average cpc.  Same search volume but nobody bidding on them.  This makes it a great deal for you as a buyer of adwords, and not so good a deal for writers trying to target for those keywords.
                     
                     You want to use the traffic estimator tool to find your bidding price and the Placement tool to locate the best content for your ads to be placed on.  And NOT the keyword tool, that has a whole other purpose.

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                        Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                        Ohhhh, I see, I had no idea it worked that way! Yeah I need to spend more time figuring the whole thing out. Thanks for the tip.

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   Spacey Graceyposted 12 years ago

   Filled??? How very dare you
   
   Anyway I have been mulling over an idea. Since the blogs that I have seen rise after the algo apocalypse don't have affiliate links in the text but do have banners, I was thinking of doing the same then linking at the end of the article to a separate domain where I plonked my affiliate links or maybe a price comparison. That would protect my main site from Google wrath at affiliates but still drive traffic through affiliate links.
   
   Your thoughts please my mentor

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      Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Well, I have seen that used, and it does work. However your going to lose a percent of customers due to the extra steps.
      
      Every time you make a customer click a link, you lose a percent that gives up and goes somewhere else. I am sure there are still many millions of sites ranking very well with affiliate links in them.
      
      So don't let that scare you into changing your site. You can always try that with a few links and see what happens. That's how we learn and come up with better ways after all.

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         Spacey Graceyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I was thinking of setting up some pages with links and some without and see what happens but I dont know whethere the presence of affiliate links on the site will stop a page without the links ranking well? I know we're still only in the speculating stage but I just don't see many pages with affiliate links ranking well. I see a lot of old forum posts with no ads at all, I see a lot of big company websites and I see a lot of OK blogs that are badly structured, difficult to navigate and have very little monitization.
         
         Stop me now I am starting to moan.

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   frogdroppingposted 12 years ago

   Bill I wish you knew my dad. I never saw anyone sell like he does. And he hates advertizing, wouldn't part with a dime for it. That man can sell oil to an Arab, coal to a Geordie.
   
   I wish I had a fingerful of his motor mouth
   
   Are you writing the ads?

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      Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Sounds like I'd be happy to meet your dad and get some advice!
      
      Yup I write my own ads. As Sunforged said above, it seems like I'm going much too broad with my ads. I will start linking to individual items, like:
      
      mens black leather duster
      mens brown motorcycle jacket
      
      and so on.

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   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   "And so on. BUT, then it said those keywords did not come up so they are disabled. I guess I just don't know how to do it right"
   
   
   as in your landing page did not pass muster? Thats a whole another area to heavily research, your budget goes a lot farther if Google considers your landing page to be relevant and quality.
   
   
   I always create specific landing pages for my campaigns and I split test and I happen to be successful in a sort of clothing campaign - I use style terms - and I make sure to use common language more than technical or industry language

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      Bill Manningposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      No no, my page is fine. It says this:
      
      "This keyword has generated very little search traffic on Google properties. Therefore, we've suspended your keyword."
      
      Guess it was TOO targeted.

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   frogdroppingposted 12 years ago

   I guess you employ the usual tactics - cross sell/upsell, appeal to greed, need and envy. Or something like that, I forget some of the stuff I was taught at uni

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