If you’ve been involved in affiliate marketing or AdSense for at least a year, you’ve probably received at least one free Google AdWords credit.
For those who don’t know, Google AdWords is a pay per click program (PPC) that allows you to bid on keywords, and you only pay when your site gets a visit from the phrases you bid on.
The more popular the keyword is (volume of searches), the more it will cost per click.
You can view the AdWords ads by doing a Google search for almost any keyword phrase. The “Sponsored ads” are the ones that show up on the right side of the page or directly above the natural/free results.
(See example for a query on “web hosting”.)
Many hosting companies offer free AdWords credits from time to time and Google has been known to send them out directly. In fact, this past December, they sent $100 credits to many AdSense members.
I don’t talk a lot about PPC and that is mainly because I’ve never taken the time to learn and master it.
So when Lisa of Christian-Single-Woman.com asked me to do a blog post about this, I was somewhat hesitant.
Then I decided to talk about what I’ve learned from my experience, and hopefully keep others from making the mistakes I made years ago.
Not to mention, others can chime in and discuss their experiences as well.
You Have the Free AdWords Credit. Now What?
When you get one of those free credits, it may be tempting to sign up with AdWords and use it right away.
Many people make the mistake of bidding on their most important keyword phrases and use up the credit without even tracking their return on investment (ROI). That’s what I did years ago.
Remember, the point of using AdWords is to make a profit. If you spend $200 on keywords then your goal is to make more than that on your traffic. So before you go and exhaust your credits, you need a strategy.
The Squeeze Page Strategy
Many people who’ve mastered PPC have done so with the squeeze page strategy.
Let’s say you promote a book on ClickBank where you earn $65 per sale. You would bid on specific keywords related to that book, and create a benefit-rich landing page that has a goal.
That goal could be to offer a related, free download (teaser) in exchange for an e-mail address. Now that you have e-mail addresses you can send them follow-up e-mails to help PREsell the ClickBank product.
Usually it takes multiple exposures before someone buys a product, so that’s why having an e-mail list can be so valuable. This is especially true if you learn how to use it to your advantage.
So if it costs you $35 worth of AdWords clicks/visits to get one sale for this book, your ROI is $25 ($60 commission – $35 spent on AdWords).
Congrats, you would be making a profit with this campaign!
Note: Google is big on quality and gives each page a score. So the days where you could submit a small page with nothing but a form to collect e-mail addresses are over.
If you are going to create a “squeeze page”, it should have substance and useful content. If your page is too pitchy, it may not receive a good quality score, which could hurt your ranking potential.
Why AdWords is Tricky
Google knows what they’re doing by sending out so many free credits. They realize the average person has to spend way more than $100 to return a profit with AdWords.
So that free credit is just to get you started. They know most people don’t figure out AdWords right away. After all, it takes a lot of campaign testing (headlines, copy, keyword selection, bid price etc.) before you develop the right ad to return a profit.
I met a lot of people at the Affiliate Summit who do PPC full time. Many of them earn 6 and 7 figures per year (Yes, seriously.) But they all told me they shelled out at least $1,000 before they began to return a profit.
They also spend hours per day monitoring every single detail about their campaigns. One extra word in their ad title may increase their profit by hundreds of dollars.
So if you want to master PPC, you have to be prepared to track everything and lose some money. And if you are fortunate enough to turn Google’s free gift into a profit, that’s great! You are definitely in the minority.
Is Using AdWords for Additional Traffic a Waste?
Many people use AdWords just to draw traffic to their site. They scope out long-tail (very targeted, low-cost) keywords to bid on and set a small, daily budget to minimize their costs.
If you can afford to do this, fine. Just remember, if you aren’t tracking what those visitors are doing then you could be wasting money.
All traffic is not necessarily good traffic and you really have to take the time to learn what keywords give you the best return on your investment.
Be Cautious of AdWords Gurus
There are a lot of people making a ton of money with AdWords. As I mentioned, some are earning up to 7 figures annually.
So this kind of success breeds many self-proclaimed AdWords gurus who want to sell you the “secrets to AdWords”.
Think about it.
Why would they sell the secret if it means creating more competition for them?
I’m not saying there aren’t good resources for mastering AdWords. Just remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it often is. You may get some general guidelines, but no real AdWords master is going to tell you everything.
The bottom line is, AdWords can be a fantastic program to help improve your traffic and sales. Just understand it’s going to take time, patience and probably more than that free Google credit to master it.
Don’t Be Scared
I am not trying to scare you away from using AdWords. It can really help your business if you use it right. Just understand you will probably have to spend more than what Google gave you before you make a profit.
Make sure to map out a strategy before you haphazardly bid on any ole’ keywords. Also, monitor your campaigns closely (see the Google Analytics Installation Guide) and set a daily spending limit.
So what about you? Have you ever used AdWords? What was your experience like?
Yep, got the $100 credit from Google and $25 from Yahoo. Blew through both in under 2 weeks and made exactly $0. Spent another $50 on adwords and made exactly the same thing. Then I tried 7search. They have cheaper keywords and deliver more traffic. I spent another $25, which gave me about 500 ish hits and made a whopping $1.86 in adsense. I guess if I were direct selling product versus just trying to monetize with adsense, affiliate links and amazon store then maybe, but I spend a lot of time and effort on my site and now have spent a few dollars on advertising — just doesn’t work for me, unfortunately.
I can’t believe people make 7 figures with Adwords. I’m going to try.
I have made a lot of money in the last 13-years marketing my products on the internet. I have seen several phases of the internet.
Websites giving information for free, earning money from secondary products that are complex or which the product does not have a high demand by the public, then I would not recommend PPC at all.
But if you have a high demand product, offer value, and give a unique guarantee, then I would recommend PPC.
If PPC is your direction, then test for two days. Revaluate what happened in two days, then modifiy your keywords, website opitization, product, bonus, and price. Then go back commit to 15-days. Then revalute and make your changes and commit to full time while monitoring your website and keywords.
If you are interested in organic marketing go to my website: http://www.OneWayLinkGuru.com
Rememeber: Stay focused and keep positive or you will lose track of your goal.
The Adwords voucher is great for getting started if you are planning to use Adwords anyways. If you do not plan to use it once the value is exhausted then it is probably not worht the effort.
Dear all ,
I have Google ad words vouchers 75$ voucher in 3$ Only if you want have an activated google adwords account we provide with credit card active account in 12$ with 75$ credit inside please feel free to contact me ithebest78 at gamil dot com
Free adword credits are nice, because you can test out your ad campaign without spending a penny, at least for the first $100.00. I get so many of them that I’m giving one away for free on my site.
http://www.thehostinginsider.com/free-100-google-adword-credit.html
Hi Lisa,
I’ve been following you for quite a while now and while I am learning new things all the time I’m sure that you would agree that this whole internet marketing thing can overwhelm a person quick if they don’t have a plan of action.
While I was reading some of the additional comments I noticed that you and Ian were talking about SEO. In your opinion, what is the first place someone should start in order to learn how to make the most of SEO?
.-= Rhandell Mitchell´s last blog … Network Marketing – Is It Really Better Than A J.O.B? (Pt.1) =-.
Hi,
I just recently built my first web site, and I have managed to get it on to all the first pages of the search engines. But find that even though I am on the first page my key words aren’t pulling the visitors I would like. I have tried following all the advice given on the Internet but find it all very confusing and difficult to follow.There is plenty of advice about Google Ad sense for keywords but how to get the key words I need escapes me. I was wondering if there was an easier way of getting good key words.
More about Vampire High
I appreciate your cautions about adwords. Throwing your money into adwords before doing at least a little due-diligence is like walking through a graveyard in the dark – you’re likely to stumble and probably get hurt. And like you say… tracking is important; if you lose money you had better understand why and how to avoid the losses next time.
These are very good tips on Google AdWords and about the so-called “gurus”.
Thank You.
.-= Angelo Beltran´s last blog … Google AdSense Ninja Tactics =-.
First off happy birthday to Lisa I hope you have a great birthday. I did receive the $100 Google adwords coupon you have to at least set up one campaign its too good of a free offer not to. See if its profitable and if it is keep the ppc campaign going.
.-= Jason´s last blog … ShoeMoney System Money Program Selling Points And Benefits Joining =-.
Great post Lisa, as usual your advice was quite helpful. Thanks to all for sharing your experiences and tips. I will definitely develop a strategy before proceeding. Also I realize these credits are repeatedly appearing in my mailbox so there is no rush to jump right in.
.-= Lisa´s last blog … Funny Dating Stories =-.
I manage pay per click campaigns (AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and others) for a living. I’m now Director of Search Marketing at a large public company. The PPC career path has been extremely rewarding and challenging (the ideal mix, in my opinion). I like to equate it to Wall Street trading while putting my Stanford Computer Science degree to good use.
When you’re managing campaigns as a small affiliate, I must say things can be quite challenging! For this reason, I advise people to first master SEO. Once your website is established and generating income, it will be far easier to fund your pay per click efforts. As Lisa mentioned, PPC requires a tremendous amount of testing and upfront capital commitment. If you already have a solid website generating income, this makes everything so much easier.
At the end of the day, I’m a huge proponent of AdWords (but at the same time, I’m a bit biased). My advice: Go into AdWords knowing that it’s just as challenging as building your site in the first place. If you invest your time and dedication, however, the sky is the limit!
A few other quick tips:
-Google is very serious about the quality of their results. For that reason, unless your site adds substantial value and/or you have your own product, I’d be careful about leveraging AdWords (affiliates have been getting banned from AdWords at an increased rate).
-Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter provide two great (less competitive) alternatives.
-2nd Tier Search Engines such as AdKnowledge can be great alternatives as well, but are probably not the best place to start out.
-Start with lower budgets until you get the hang of things.
-Test, test, test your ad copy and landing pages.
-While a high click through rate is essential in your ad position, make sure you don’t compromise conversion rate (and your overall profitability). You are tracking conversions back to the keyword level, right? (Make sure you leverage Google’s conversion tracking.)
-Expect to lose money in the beginning. (I prefer to think of it as an investment in your knowledge while buying your way into the market.)
-Stay committed, just like you did in making your website successful on the SEO side.
What outstanding advice, Ian!!!
SEO before adwords is so important. As I understand it, site quality directly affects your adwords cost per click. And while SEO is demanding of time and brainpower, it is the first thing to do.
Does anyone know if http://pagebuzz.com allows adwords on the pages? I want to get a website from them but I can’t find any information about if they allow it or not.
Hi Ronald,
It’s been awhile since you posted. But checking the http://pagebuzz.com demo, they give full HTML access. So, adding adwords should not be a problem. Good luck
I received the voucher as well but as I have no experience
I didn’t use it. I don ‘t want to get started on something that I can’t control.
The problem is I am not sure where to lead the ad. To my site
as a whole or just to a specific product on a landing page.
And I am not sure if my website is monetized sufficiently to generate any income to get back the amount I have to spent on adwords.
.-= nobi´s last blog … Pull Up Bar makes you fit! updated Sat Feb 20 2010 7:56 am CST =-.
I’ve been squatting on my AdWords credit for about 2 months. It’s been an easy decision not to use it, because my site won’t be fully “live” for another 3 or 4 weeks, but this is definitely good food for thought.
Very interesting to see how much money people go through on AdWords. I wasn’t planning on investing additionally after my credit runs out, and probably won’t unless I see some sort of great results from the credit.
Hey Lisa,
I got my voucher through the door a few weeks ago and still haven’t used it and to be honest I’m not sure I will. I think social media and natural search engine traffic is good for my site as for PPC not sure really.
I should really use it but it’s choosing the right campaign to use it for, maybe I could incorporate it into my monetization methods, what do you think Lisa?
.-= TheInfoPreneur´s last blog … I Rank Higher Than ProBloggers, But Make No Money =-.
My initial experience with Adwords was NOT very profitable, but now that I understand the complexities, I would only reserve using it when I’ve got a serious strategy and goal. Casual use to draw traffic is just not wise in my opinion. I even know some people who’ve thought of doing it just to draw in more Adsense revenue – in most cases what you’ll make in Adsense will be far less than what you invest in Adwords.
I prefer to just do my best to optimize my site for search engine traffic, but when the time is right I might return to Adwords with a worthwhile campaign. Right now I just have money to gamble with.
.-= Kiesha @ WeBlogBetter´s last blog … Introducing Kiesha =-.
I do subscribe to some of these Adsense/Adwords gurus and they are very funny indeed. I saw a YouTube video 2 weeks ago, I guess, the man claimed that his 3 DVD’s sell for $2000 but only today, 2nd edition anniversary he was giving them for “only” $100. I posted a question asking how is this possible and was removed.
Great Post Lisa!
.-= Avraham Saltoun´s last blog … Every Dream Has a Message =-.
I have been using Adwords for about 30 days. Initially I was averaging 50-70 unique visitors per day. I made the decision to invest my my business through Adwords so I initially allocated out $5 per day at 5 cents per click. It generated about 165-195 unique visitors per day visitors.
After about 10 days the $50 initial bonus offered by Google was spent. After evaluating which sites were actually producing the most hits and clicks, I then chose to increase my daily limit to $15 per day for the following 30 days. I did this to not only see if my clicks would increase but to also identify if the same sites would continue to lead in hits and clicks.
After 15 days of Adwords I’ve noticed that goolge has never reached my $15 limit. It has remained between $9-$12 per day and I am averaging 290-375 unique visitors per day .
The challenge is that my google ads are not generating enough income to support the expenditure of Adwords. I have seen a good increase in my ebook distribution. I have increased my mailing list 10 fold through my ebook distribution and newsletter signup.
I am planning to target the specific sites that are consistently generating hits and clicks for Adwords advertising at the end of the month. I am also planning to request link exchanges with those site owners.
I figure at the end of this evaluation I would have spent about $350 of my own money. It is important to spend as much as needed to evaluate the data provided by Google. It can be extremely valuable to all of us…
I have been using Adwords since January 2010. My site had been up and running for a year and I hadn’t gotten much traffic so I decided – hey why not – I have a free voucher.
I set my word cost at 5 cents and a daily total of $1.50. My traffic (naturally) has increased. What I have noticed is the daily traffic is double what I am actually paying for. (I pay daily for 30 clicks to my site, I’m getting about 70-80) A lot of people (seem to) bookmark or save my site and come back later.
So far I have made back the money I have spend in adwords through advertising on my site and google adsense. I don’t expect to make any money initially, breaking even is fine with me. I expect that the returning visitors will increase each month and eventually I won’t “need” adwords for my traffic anymore.
I think you need to be smart about adwords. Figure out your “purpose” of adwords and work accordingly. I am happy with my result and will continue a monthly cash investment paid for by the revenue I generate through advertising and adsense.
That is a good point regarding tracking, as you quite rightly said if you are not contently testing and tracking your conversions you may as well stay away.
Adwords is a cool tool, but you have to be really focused on your campaigns to get the benefit and turn a profit.
Nice post, thanks.
.-= Wayne Vassell´s last blog … Twitter Marketing Strategy – 3 Effective Ways To Drive Blog Traffic! =-.
Like many of you, I received the voucher from Google for $100, and set it aside until I had time to think about it. When I finally dived into Adwords, I’d made up my mind that I simply wanted to drive traffic to my website to raise awareness about my services. I’m a local business, not an affiliate marketer, so my goals might be different from most of the others who follow Lisa’s blog.
Athough I’m “brand new” to Adwords, I can still offer a tidbit of advice to others after spending countless hours trying to tweak my ad campaign. And that advice is….build a large keyword list and slowly weed out the non-performing keywords. The Google Analytics Tool is great for finding good long-tail keywords for those “ultra-targeted” ads.
And Lisa…your comment regarding the squeeze page and landing page forced me to re-think the layout of my landing page. Since I have only ONE chance to secure the visitor’s business on my website, I’ll be optimizing that page to get the most out of each paid click.
I agree about staying away from the gurus that try to make money off of teaching adwords. You can learn about adwords for free by reading what Google has on the site. I mean it’s their program right?
I got a free Adwords ticket too and I was just like you Lisa, I put it to the side until I devised a plan. I understood that if I set up a campaign just to draw traffic to my sit, I would probably stand the risk of wasting it all. A couple years ago I spent money on one of those self proclaimed “Adwords Secret” gurus that you mentioned and until this day I often wonder If it’s such a secret why is he letting the cat out of the bag? Anywho, great post! Thanks for sharing!
.-= Jarrod Clark´s last blog … Give Lovingly; Not Grudgingly =-.
I’m glad to see a post on this topic; I’ve had £150 worth of Adwords vouchers thrown my way these past few months — one sits on the desk in front of me!
Couple of issues — Google is very much about quality of search result, even with Adwords. They’ve actually issued in their guidelines that pages erected simply to capture an email address with a squeeze page then it actually provides little value to the visitor there and then. Google dislike this; possibly a reason for wiping out thousands upon thousands of Adwords accounts last November (well documented on search engine forums).
A squeeze page is easily measurable, but don’t try and use Adwords just to drive traffic to a sign-up form. Incidientally, you should give a compelling reason to sign-up anyway beyond the value of the freebie. They want to hear more from you!
RE: Avoiding Adwords Experts, creating more competition in a world where choice is almost infinite? (Read Chris Andersons ‘The Long Tail’) Sure, an expert in the field of weight loss isn’t going to share their winning combinations easily, but there are billions of other niches people can dominate.
It isn’t about showing people how to do the industry; it’s about showing people how to “do Adwords”. Run a campaign, create keyword groups, A/B split test each ad, increase ROI etc.
If you haven’t already come across Perry Marshall, Google him (or just Google “Adwords”). His book “The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords” is a must-have in my opinion after reading it. You can start wasting money very quickly with Adwords, so knowing how to run an Adwords campaign properly is somewhat priceless.
.-= Ed Fry´s last blog … Scam: Mobliec.com =-.
I guess a lot of us that signed up for Google Analytics recently got the AdWords offer in the mail. I sent out a tweet asking if anyone had some good video tutorials on the topic. I didn’t get much feedback from the tweet, but I didn’t think to ask you about it. I’m glad that Lisa was smart enough to ask you. I didn’t realize that so much research was needed, so I’m on my way to take care of business. Thanks Lisa and Lisa.
.-= ileane´s last blog … Build an Online Profile for Your Blog with Retaggr =-.
Yes, ladies. It definitely takes a lot of work and patience. And after talking to people at the Affiliate Summit who make a living from AdWords, I have an even greater appreciation for what they do because I realized I was going about it all wrong when I first tried it.
Like you Carla, I blew through my money in a heartbeat. That part really intimidated me. You have to literally test and track EVERYTHING. From different title and ad combinations to what links people click, how long they stay on the page, etc. Some of the AdWords full-timers had my head spinning talking about the detailed tracking systems they have setup. LOL Many people even write their own tracking programs. It’s serious stuff!
I admit it…adwords (even with the free credit) scares the willies out of me!!
I have a free voucher from adwords, I just don’t know about using it. It does seem like a lot of fiddling, time and effort for possible no return (or even a negative return once you start using your own cash).
Will think about it some more!!
.-= Michelle´s last blog … Feb 12, Time Management at Home: House Cleaning and Organizing Work =-.
When I received my AdWords credit, it learned that it takes a tremendous amount of time to really use and benefit from it. I tried the most long tailed, low-cost keywords and everything else out there and I still blew though $102 in a little more than two weeks. I honestly don’t have time to do everything else I do for Green and Chic AND throw AdWords on top of the heap. Time is what you need for that.
.-= Carla´s last blog … Naturity Organic Babyhood Products – As good as it gets =-.