A Quick Word About (The Suckiness Of?) Adsense

February 17, 2007 at 12:53 am · Filed under Adsense, Internet Marketing

Now, I ain’t no Adsense expert, so this is just an observation for what it’s worth, for whoever wishes to read it.

On one of the sites I set up, I worked my butt off to get links, add articles, post regularly, setup a newsletter, and so on. For six months I worked on it. I’m now up to anywhere from 50 to a hundred visitors a day. Not a huge number, but it’s in a VERY competitive niche. I mean, I’m competing side-by-side with government agencies and .edu sites.

So in that respect, I consider my current visitor rate to be pretty good, I suppose.

After reaching this number, last month, I decided to finally monetize it by adding Adsense. Now, as I said, this is in a very competitive niche, with some very high-paying Adsense ads. I went ahead and targeted some keywords on each page to make sure only truly relevant ads showed up on each page. I blended the colors in with the site. I get a click through rate of around 5 to 15%; it varies considerably from day to day.

And each day it makes anywhere from .05 cents to $2 or so. In the month since I started it, it’s made a grand total of $26.70.

Disappointment? Hmm. Maybe. But what did I really expect from these visitor numbers?

The main thought on my mind at this time is not so much disappointment as what an insanely-uphill-battle into making money.

Now, I’m not saying Adsense is a bad way of making money. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But after my own experiences with it, as well as reading the blogs of others struggling in internet marketing, this is exactly the reason I’m moving into the world of product creation. It’s just more tangible. I make something, then I sell it to people. Maybe it doesn’t sell well, maybe it sucks, but at least I can get a grip on it.

Working with Adsense, at least in the “white-hat” way, involves writing and writing and writing. Endlessly. And then, IF your website ranks well for it’s best keywords, and IF you blend your ads in well, and IF there are enough relevant ads, and IF visitors click on them, you get paid.

Did you get that? Write 300 or so articles, and hold your fingers that people click your ads so you make some money. Who knows how much?

Or, write a 50 to 100 page ebook, sell it for $37, and market the hell out of it. The amount you make from it is only limited by the desperation of the niche you picked and the amount of effort you put into the marketing.

Which would you rather do?

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Screw Affiliate Marketing – I’m Becoming an eBook Merchant

February 6, 2007 at 9:34 pm · Filed under Info Product Creation

Well, so much for updating this daily. My plan was to use this as an actual diary to keep my thoughts straight, but I guess I’m not just the diary type.

So after much messing about with my two Adwords campaigns, I’m changing tactics yet again. Yes, I know. You’re supposed to take one thing to completion at a time otherwise  you’ll never succeed. And it’s true.

But I had the thought that, if I’m to be an “affiliate marketer,” am I not sort of back in the “dayjob” philosophy again? I’m promoting other people’s products. I’m still kinda an employee. I was always scared of having my own product, because it meant actually producing something and having to do customer service and so on.

But I’ve realized I LIKE creating. I like creating ebook covers from scratch. I like writing an instructional course and turning it into a polished PDF file. This is all fun for me. What’s not fun is writing article after article after zombie article for a website, and then even more to promote the articles I already wrote. Ug. It’s so… monotonous. Really.

So I’ve been diligently working on a sales page and a product. I’m going to become a merchant! Affiliate will be working for me! Maybe. Hopefully. It’s my first shot so we’ll see. But when I get bored with writing, I can switch to Photoshop. And when I’m bored with that, Camtasia. And so on. There seems to be so much more variety in product creation.

My ebook will be on something I know: website building. It’ll sort of be a PLR site. Sort of not. Complete packages. Guides to blogging and forums.

And for my sales page, I just stole it. Sort of. I downloaded another ebook merchant’s sales letter and wrote mine side-by-side to make sure mine hits all the same trigger points his does.

So we’ll see what happens. I’ll update again when I’m ready for launch…

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Update – Adwords campaign

January 11, 2007 at 10:23 pm · Filed under Wealthy Affiliate

Google is weird. My Adwords campaigns will sit there, for two days, with not a single impression. Then suddenly 1,400 impressions and 46 clicks! And $40 cost to me!

But no sales.  And I’m not sure I expected any. I’m still trying to just get something started, regardless of its success or failure.

I may pause this campaign soon as well, and begin doing more research. I’ve been spending the last few days reading the forums at Wealthy Affiliate. Holy shit! So much more information than you could ever get from a stinking ebook. ANY ebook. Forget Adwords Miracle. Travis from BumMarketingMethod.com frequents the forums, and he is INCREDIBLY helpful, and I’m already getting some new ideas, which I’ll expound upon in my next post.

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Whew! Long night!

January 10, 2007 at 8:00 am · Filed under Website Building

Spent alllll night making a “how to build a website” website: http://www.underground-trading.com

I’ve now got it running for variations on the term “building a website.” It’s a complete guide to making a webpage using open source templates and NVU, and then an affiliate link to Dreamhost for a commission. If they sign up with cheap Dreamhost, I get $97. There’s a residual option as well, but it’s 25% of the $8 hosting fee. Too measly in my opinion, allthough it could snowball over time, I suppose.

I have eight ad groups running in Adwords, all variations on the main term, and I have eight different variations on the homepage that they link to, with keywords matching the ad groups. For example, design, create and make all link to variations on the web page that emphasize those terms. This is hopefully to keep in line with Google’s relevancy algorithm.

Let this run for awhile.

As for the seduction ad campaign, not even a single impression yet, despite Google’s traffic estimator telling me I should have 60 to 90 CLICKS a day. !!!!!! Ah well, that was more a way of getting my feet wet to get over the initial hump of starting.

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Another Niche to Mess Around In

January 9, 2007 at 9:31 pm · Filed under Niches

All right, web hosting seems like a good affiliate way of making money. Many times you’ll get paid over and over again as long as the person you referred stays signed up. A percentage of their monthly fee. Unfortunately, this makes it very competitive as well.

So, I’m approaching it from the “consumer needs a problem solved” view. Consumer needs a website for their business, hobby, whatever. How does consumer do this? Consumer doesn’t know. Consumer types “build a website” or some such term into Google.  They see a link to my Ad on the side about free guide to building a free webpage.  In this link they’ll find a very quick guide to building a website, and after that, a suggestion for web hosting.

So no bidding on any terms to do with “web hosting.” We’ll see how this goes.

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Experimenting

January 8, 2007 at 11:02 pm · Filed under Adwords

OK, it’s time to get my feet wet. I’m going to play around with direct linking; this means putting your affiliate link directly into an Adwords ad, with no landing page in between. The problem is that Google only allows one display URL per keyword. So if the merchant or another affiliate are already bidding on a particular term, I won’t be able to do the same. Or more accurately I’ll have to bid more than them to “win,” and I’m trying to be profitable here. So I’ll have to use less popular products.

So, I’m going to gank a niche right from Adwords Miracle that Chris uses as an example: seduction. I’m stealing this niche from his book to get over the initial fear of starting.

I’ll be bidding on terms related to getting a date, attracting women, and so on, and direct link to three different seduction ebooks from Clickbank.

I’m adding three keyword groups. The best way to use Adwords is to separate your keywords into related groups, so I might have one group like this:

  • spyware
  • download spyware
  • spyware removal

and then another one like this:

  • computer problems
  • problem with computer being slow

and so on. This allows me to better target my ad. Even though the product is the same for all, I can write the first ad to include the keyword “spyware,” and the second ad to include the keyword “computer problems.” The more targeted the ad, the higher the Click Through Rate, or how many searchers actually click on my ad. The higher the CTR, the lower my bids can be. So I’m also starting with an expensive 20 cents per click to keep my ad high, more users will click on it, my CTR will be high, and I should be able to slowly lower the cost per click while being able to keep the same position.

So I’m running a campaign with a few broad keywords, right now only about four terms that get a LOT of searchers per month, and sending them directly through to one of three seduction products.

I’ll write another post when I see what happens.

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Looking for that Niche

January 8, 2007 at 8:20 pm · Filed under Niches

OK, this is a completely different nut to crack than SEO. And a pretty large learning curve as well. After spending months learning about directories, and articles, and backlinks, and anchor text, and H1 headers, I now turn my attention to ad groups, and gravity, and broad match, and of course, the daily budget.

Ug. I may be stupid for trying to get into this game when I have no money, but hell, even in the SEO world I spend lots on paid directories and article and link outsourcing, so in the short term this may actually be even cheaper. Too bad I still owe that Indian firm $250 for doing my recip. linking for me…

Anyway, I’ve finished reading Adwords Miracle and I’m getting closer to actually doing something. According to Chris McNeeney, the author of the book, soon-to-be-hot Clickbank products must be chosen. The book actually contains a pretty “scientific” way of finding Clickbank stuff that’s on the way up. Products that haven’t reached market saturation, but are becoming more and more popular. Already more than I ever learned in the past when I briefly played around with Adwords/Clickbank. Back then I just picked something at random.

The niche-picking is different too. In natural search content sites, you pick a good “interesting” niche where people are looking for information. Preferrably something somewhat interesting to you because you’re going to have to write a ridiculous amount of informational articles on the subject. You’re gonna be in it for the long haul, and you’re gonna become an “authority” on the subject.

In the Adwords/Clickbank game, it’s more: go where the money is. Period.

You have to cover and hopefully make more than your ad costs.

So, that said, I’m perusing Clickbank for “hot” markets to promote, following his guidelines on picking a good product. I’m using www.cbtrends.com to see which products are on the way up.

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First Things First – Adwords Miracle

January 7, 2007 at 8:20 pm · Filed under Adwords Miracle

OK. So I purchased Adwords Miracle. It’s four ebooks and three camtasia videos. It seems to be one of the more in-depth Adwords courses, especially if you want to promote Clickbank. I discovered it through Andre Chaperon’s blog, where he does his own case study of a Clickbank campaign. Mine will be similar and in fact I’ll use his techniques on my campaign. You can check his out here: http://www.andrechaperon.com/category/clickbank-case-study-1/page/2/

This is going to be a lot more work than it seems. People like the Rich Jerk say in their ebooks: well, you know, just write some quick reviews of Clickbank products and pay for the keywords and you’ll make money in no time!!

Sure. There’s SO much more to it than that. And the two above resources go into great detail about it.

So, first things first. I’m going to read every word of these books, and watch the videos. Not doing a thing before that.

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Transition from Content Site to Adwords

January 7, 2007 at 7:48 pm · Filed under Adwords

So, I’m going to try something. After focusing on building a content site for natural search rankings, and realizing that I only care about the money and not the topic, I’m going to do something that will probably turn out to be equally difficult.

Promoting products via Adwords.

Scary. Because I don’t have much money to spare. So I’m going to have to be diligent. I’m going to start by reading the hell out of the ebook Adwords Miracle.

This diary will track my efforts, and hopefully keep me motivated.

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What I’ve Learned About SEO

January 7, 2007 at 7:40 pm · Filed under Bitching, SEO

This is going to be stream-of-consciousness and unorganized as all hell. A brain dump. I just gotta vent.

I created a website. I finally did it. After months of reading about doing it, and reading about Seach Engine Optimization, I just did it.

Almost six months of adding content, submitting to the Yahoo Directory which cost me $299, submitting to smaller paid directories, writing articles and submitting them to ezinearticles and goarticles and articlecity and so on. I paid an Indian firm to do reciprocal linking for me.

And where am I?

A whopping 30 visitors a day. I refuse to monetize the site until I have more than that. During the link building process, I want to be taken seriously. In all fairness, I perhaps should be praising that amount of visitors. I restructured the site recently to be in compliance with the magic bullet known as “siloing.” Read about it on Charles Heflin’s site: http://www.seo2020.com

I’ve used a blog to create the site, and I’ve used Rapid Niche Websites to make it look like a real site. Why? Because if you blog and ping, you’ll get better search engine traffic. It’s another magic bullet. Read about it on Jeff Walter’s site: http://www.rapidnichewebsites.com

In case you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic.

Not that I have anything against the above “gurus,” but it seems to me that they all make it seem so much more simple than it is. Siloing and blogging are not magic bullets. I don’t know that there IS a magic bullet.

But I digress. So restructuring left me with a lot of dead links in Google. Also, I’m in a VERY competitive health niche. And it’s “only” been six months. So perhaps 30 a day isn’t that bad.

But you know what? I don’t really care all that much about my site. It’s vaguely interesting to me; it’s not utterly painful to write about. But I just don’t care all that much. The ONLY thing I’ve EVER cared about is making money. In fact, I chose my health niche ONLY because of the high paying Adsense potential.

Is that really a reason to create a site? It’s a health niche, for godssake! I’ll be competing with the NIH! And doctors who do research! And hospitals! I have nothing new to contribute, except what I read on these sites THAT ALREADY EXIST!

I’ve found a few others out there trying to do what I’m trying to do, in the exact same niche. One guy has hundreds upon hundreds of articles submitted to hundreds upon hundreds of article directories. And yet, according to Alexa, which is very very rough admittedly, he’s getting a miniscule amount of traffic.

What the hell am I doing?!

How the heck am I going to get good, authority sites with .edu and .gov domains to link to me? I got all my information from THEM!! Ug!

My articles on ezinearticles aren’t going to boost my rankings unless a reputable site republishes them. BUT I HAVE NOTHING NEW TO SAY in this health niche. I haven’t done any research, and all my articles say are “the symptoms of blah blah blah are this and that.” Nobody’s going to care.

I’ll let it fester for a while. I’ll keep adding an occasional article.

But it irritates me that people like Colin McDougall can get top rankings for, of all things, “credit card applications.” !!!!!!!!! And you read his book, The VEO Report. He basically says just make a good site, and say something controversial, and engage in a little viral marketing; don’t submit too many articles to the article directories; buy a Yahoo submission.

And you pick apart his site. I found a few articles on Digg that were not digged because they were dry financial information. I found him in a few directories. Doesn’t seem like any huge PageRank sites linking to him when I use one of my myriad of research tools. He’s not saying anything controversial. He has two articles in ezinearticles.

BUT HE RANKS ON THE FIRST PAGE FOR THE TERM “credit card applications!!!” He’s getting good Alexa rankings! What the heck is he doing?! An “allinanchor:credit card applications” search brings up his site near the top of google. That means lots of sites are pointing to him with the term “credit card applications” in the link text. HOW?! WHERE?!

Are these people not telling us something in there ebooks?! I mean, if they were cloaking they obviously couldn’t reveal it. Maybe that’s it. Yeah.

I just don’t know. It’s all turning out to be more of a let down than I though it would be.

But that’s bringing me back to my main point: all I care about is making money. Because I’m broke and in debt, I can’t live where I want to, I can’t buy a Sony Reader, I can’t travel. I can’t do anything I truly want to do. Now give me money (that’s what I want), that’s what I want.

So if that’s the key, then shouldn’t I refocus my efforts? Shouldn’t I dump the idea of creating a content site? Should I try a different, more directly capitalistic approach?

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