barney

I've been dabbling with Goodle Adwords and discovered something that is
very irritating.
My goal was to come up with cheap key phrases, preferably $.01. As you
all know, you'd need 100 downloads to get 1 shareware sale or somewhere
thereabouts, and who knows how many clicks to get a download.

Not one of the over 100 phrases I came up with came in at $.01. All
were marked inactive by Google Adwords with minimum requirements over
$.01 to activate them.

In frustration I started doing regular Google searches on some of the
phrases hoping for ideas. I had assumed that all of my phrases had been
thought of by everyone already and that I needed something unique.

I was wrong.

I discovered that many of the phrases had NOT ONE adword ad. Not one!
And yet they will not allow a $.01 bid?

So apparently, there is something else I need to do to appease Google
for $.01 bids.

Has anybody done this successfully? I could swear I read a posting
somewhere that someone had done this.

barney

When I initially set this up awhile back, I set the bid for $.10 and did
indeed pay $.10. But upon giving it thought realized that was too risky
a price for my product. As someone fondly said in another post,
shareware games often bring out tire kickers, or something to that
effect. I believe the lowest setting to activate some of the keywords
was either $.02 or $.03. So I may give that a try. Takes me awhile to
pull a trigger on expenditures :-)

On a similar tack, I've also attempted to set up an Adsense account to
make money from all of your ads :-) I do have several affiliate
programs that I subscribe to for the several websites I run. My
favorite has always been Commission Junction.

But Adsense looks pretty good so I tried to open an account. And
discovered more Google oddities. You cannot use the same account as for
Adwords. You cannot use the same email address either! At the moment I
have not successfully set up an account, but will probably have one
within a couple of days. This should be cake!

I do love Google however. They are good to me. Most of my actual sales
claim to find me thru Google. This is another oddity for me, as my
games are on most of the major download sites. Yet people who buy tell
me via the referral menu that they came thru Google. Of course, my
non-game products are a little harder to find as they are not showcased
on my primary websites.

But I ramble. And close with another,

Tom_Sean

I had been using Google's Adsense program to generate some revenue from my various web sites. Prior to Adsense, I was never previously paid to run these and did so for a hobby. Overall I was pleased with the income I was generating. The only drawback was that I was always looking for ways to get people to my sites. I enjoyed working to bring in more visitors but felt that if I looked at my earnings vs. the hours I worked, the economics weren't making sense.
Then I figured out that certain sites were paying way more than the minimum .05 cents per click. I reasoned that if I could get pay visitors .05 - .10 to visit. Then if they clicked enough ads that paid much more than I paid, then Adwords could be a viable way to increase traffic to my sites.
That same day my traffic jumped dramatically and as I thought. Visitors who came in via Adwords were more likely to click other Google ads on my site. My conversions went up and I thought why not put all my sites on Adwords.
This was where some careful research was needed. I found that some sites I run had adwords sponsors who were only bidding the minimum. Remember the concept was to under bid the advertisers on my sites. While my traffic skyrocketed, my expenses for a few sites seemed to outweigh any benefit. When my reports came in it was clear that I needed to use Adwords for only the sites that featured high bidding advertisers. This creates margin for those visitors who come in via paid ads but do not click to my own sponsored ads.
The exception would be if my site was offering a product or service. Then it would be well worth sticking with Adwords on those sites just to get more buying traffic. Because my sites are purely informational I had to watch carefully to ensure I was putting money into Adwords where it was working for me. In some cases I upped my bid on some keywords that were clearly bringing in steady traffic that converted well.
Google's new offering called Websense may change this a bit. By allowing you to put Google's search form on your site and then paying if your visitors search off your site and click other sponsored links it may make those underperforming sites profitable again. Time and further research will tell.
The moral of the story is that Adwords is a great way to dramatically increase your profits when using Adsense. Care needs to be taken to see that you are putting your money where it is most effective.

__________________
Mareli.biz - Free Ads & Classifieds. Advertise your products and services online.