Adsense CTR

I completed my first affiliate website today. About ten more to go.
Currently, my Adsense click-through-rate is around 33%, which makes me very happy.

Now, if only I could find a low cost keyword that generates thousands of impressions per day.

New Ideas

A few new ideas are brewing. I've been ignoring my campaigns for the past week or so due to discouragement, but starting tomorrow I am jumping in completely.
My main problem has been that Google will not show two identical display urls per search, and as a result I haven't been getting very many impressions as there are more than a handful of people promoting the same products. The only thing I can think to do is build landing pages. I was hesitant about hosting everything on my photography website because of its URL, but this morning I found a way to obtain any display url I want. I wasn't sure if the method I wanted to use would be allowed, so I emailed the Adwords people & they said it was okay.

I am not giving up. This WILL work.

Discouraged

Earnings: $0
Adwords Costs: $58.72

Cheap Traffic

In one of my earlier entries I said that "it's impossible to make money with this unless you're willing to pay a few dollars per click." I couldn't have been more wrong. I've been paying up to $0.38 for some of my clicks and getting no sales because the product stopped being profitable by about 40 clicks. The best way to get sales is to get a ton of people to visit your site at a very low CPC. I wanted to give up because I couldn't find a produt that was both high in demand and had cheap keywords, but last night I found such a product. :)

I've found some other ways to generate traffic (free) - will post more about this later.

Found My Campaign

I didn't have time to work on my special campaign last night, but this morning I plugged in a few keywords just to test, and every single one can be obtained for $0.08 CAD - some even as low as $0.03! At $0.08 per click, it is estimated that I will get over 1,000 clicks per day - and that's with only about 10 keywords. I am really excited about this & think this may be the campaign I've been looking for.

My campaign that was getting 2,000 impressions a few days ago is averaging around 6,000 right now. I was getting a lot of clicks but no sales, so I decided to include the price of my product in the ad. My CTR went way down, to about 0.4%, but by doing this I am able to weed out the people who are looking for free information.

No sales yet, but hopefully soon. :)

Testing for Impressions

I threw together a few campaigns last night. I'm just testing for impressions right now, so I put all my keywords into one ad group. One campaign is averaging about 2,000 impressions per day and another only 400. I'm looking for a product that can bring in at least 10,000 impressions every day, so I will probably scrap the second campaign. I have another campaign in mind - I did some searching around last night and found a Clickbank product that can possibly bring in over 1,000 clicks per day at only 5-10 cents per click. I don't have time to work on this one at the moment, but will hopefully have a few thousand keywords running by tonight.

Google Adsense

I have been jumping from program to program these past few weeks - never staying with one long enough to see any results. I lack patience, so when Google Adwords didn't give me immediate results I moved on to Google Adsense. Not sure if I will have any luck with this one, but it's definitely worth a try.

Determined

I am determined to make this work. I refuse to get a normal job.

Stats

I've been comparing stats from yesterday & today. My average ad position is 4.2 right now, but I am only at 10 clicks and nearing almost 400 impressions. I've been kind of lazy with this campaign. I threw about 400 keyword phrases into one ad, and as a result I'm not getting nearly enough clicks.

35 clicks last night, but no sales. My CPC is a little high, so I need a minimum of 1 sale per 45 or so clicks.

Campaign Update

10:45PM

Clicks: 21
Impressions: 372
CTR: 5.6%
Avg. Position: 5.3

8:30PM

Clicks: 13
Impressions: 314
CTR: 4.1%
Avg. Position: 5.7

Getting Somewhere

I'm finally getting clicks.

There is a lot of competition, so I'm not expecting too much right now, but so far the campaign looks like this:

Clicks: 3
Impressions: 79
CTR: 3.7%
Avg. Position: 7.7

Email from Chris

Chris emailed me back.

--------------------

Are your keywords relevant to the ad you are placing?

Are these customers likely to buy or looking for something for free?

Are you split-testing different ad copy?

When you are comfortable with quickly making campaigns, try numerous ones and follow up on the ones that show promise.

I spend about $1 on adwords for every $4 to $5 I earn in commissions.

It takes most people $250 in adwords charges learning the ropes before getting to profits.

Brainstorm things that you have been involved in throughout your life: businesses, clubs, hobbies, interests, etc. etc.

The profits are in the small specialized niches that not everyone knows about, but that have their own subculture, their own language (jargon), their own following.

Many of my most profitable campaigns are in little niches that most people have not even heard of.

Also, try this:

Join an affiliate program provider like CJ.com and then when you are searching for advertisers, search for the keyword: lead.

And that will show you all the advertisers that will pay per lead.

It is easier to get people to fill out a free form than to buy something, so your conversion rates are higher. - and you can get really good commissions: $20+ per lead for some programs.

So find some merchants that pay for leads, then do keyword research on these merchants and their competitors. Research their company names as keywords, and other keywords you can come up with. Also think about misspellings and keywords combinations.

Also make sure to download the new Special Report I just released that you are entitled to as a Google Cash customer. I think you will find it real helpful.

It is from a student of mine who is now earning over $1000 a day using the Google Cash techniques. He has slightly adapted them and has included some extra tips and tricks in this special report. I am really excited about it and think it is excellent. I think you will agree.

Thanks,
Chris

Losing Patience

I emailed Chris from GoogleCash. I don't think he'll write back, but we'll see.

My campaigns are not doing well. I am having a hard time finding a product that isn't already being promoted by everyone, and as a result many of my keyword phrases aren't being triggered due to not having a high enough cost per click. I've only tried to promote maybe 5 or so products so far, but I am losing patience and am starting to think that it is impossible to make money with this unless you're willing to pay a few dollars per click.

Drunk

Working on ads while you're really drunk might be a bad idea.

Campaign #3

I've been working on campaign #3 today. I have a feeling it's going to be a good one. I'm hoping to have at least 10 ads ready to go for tomorrow morning.

Break

I took a break for a few days from Google Adwords, but I think I'm ready to begin again.

New Strategy

I think I rushed into this a little too quickly. I need to spread out my keywords over several ads and be a little bit more selective.

I signed up for Google Adsense last night.

Ad Delivery Slowed

I'm about ready to give up. I received an email from Google this morning saying that my ad delivery has been slowed down due to low performing keywords and that if this happens two more times I will have to pay $10 CAD to restore my account. But how can I fix what's wrong when my ads aren't even showing yet? Perhaps they are refering to the two ads from campaign #1, but I saw right away that those ads weren't doing well so I deleted them last night. I am so frustrated.

Itchy Hand = $$$

My grandmother used to tell me that when your left hand itches it means that you will be receiving money. Mine has been itching like crazy for the past thirty minutes.

I've been working on campaigns 2 & 3. I've added about 100 keywords to each one since this morning. However, they are not showing yet and I have yet to hear back from Google.

I reactivated an ad from campaign #1. My CTR for one of the ads was 1.1%, so I'm going to let it run for a while.

Dreaming of Riches

I set up three campaigns:
Campaign #1: 2 ads (Sunday night)
Campaign #2: 1 ad (Monday afternoon)
Campaign #3: 1 ad (Monday night)

The only one running is campaign #1. I emailed Google because I don't want to wait over a day for my ads to run - it's supposed to be instantaneous. The two ads received 2,412 impressions but only got 9 clicks. My CTR (click through rate) is at 0.3%, so I am pausing these ads for now. My ads were geared towards women, though this particular market is dominated by men. Campaign #2 has a lot of competition, so I am going to focus on campaign #3 for now.

I had a dream last night that I was promoting purses and wallets. In my dream I had three sales from only about 30 or so clicks. If only it were that way in real life.

Google Cash

I've read Googlecash by Chris Carpenter three times in the past week or two and have finally decided to do it.

Tonight I signed up for:
Google Adwords
Clickbank
Commission Junction

I set up two ads, but the keywords in my second ad were put on hold. That was disappointing.