Arbi Campaign - 1000 impressions, no clicks?

[Aveligand]

I'm running an adwords -> adsense arbi campaign. I have 2 adwords separate campaigns to drive traffic to my site: 1 for content network and 1 for search network. The content network has made 1000 impressions, but no clicks (search network has 300 impressions and 2 clicks). I don't know if this is to be expected from the content network, but either way I need more traffic to my site.

Right now, I've allocated $600 per day to the content network. Should I up it even more? Any advice?

 

[MerlinK]

I'm guessing you should re-evaluate your landing page if your CTR is so low..

I wouldn't pump more money into a campaign which is failing. :error:

 

[glowleaf]

I'm running an adwords -> adsense arbi campaign.

That is your first problem. Send the traffic to another ad network...

For the other one, if google can't give you enough traffic, that is truly remarkable... I could have bet on putting any word, and google will eat up at least 1000$ per day.

Seems like, either you dont have enough keywords, or your ad sucks.

I suppose its the latter.

As you can read elsewhere, you need to make the ad stick out. Put the keyword in the header (Solution to your debt), ask questions (Bad debt?) and swear at your readers (Are you fat?/ Does your PR suck?).

As a hint, I will write an ad that made impossible clickthrough for me:

Naruto Secrets
What you never imagined
Find out here

New Dragonball Movie
Coming in August
Find out more

Hope it helps

Edit* It just hit me. 600$ and you dont have any experience? WTF? stop that, you will lose money pretty fast. Use smaller budgets, and larger keyword lists. Then see the google analysis on your ad, to see what keywords got clicked.

 

[Aveligand]

Thanks for your reply, Glowleaf.

What other ad networks do you like to run on? 7Search? MSN? I actually did try MSN, but my keywords were rejected for some reason. Like wtf.

I've pretty much been following the steps in Dekalog's Full Disclosure Thread step by step. I have a selected keyword list of about 200 keywords using Keyword Country and set my max CPC to 8 cents. When I didn't get any clicks, I upping the daily limit figuring it probably wouldn't hurt. I do have a question about keywords, though. So I have a massive keyword list generated by Keyword Country, what's a good criteria for determining the good ones from the crappy ones?

Thanks for the ad copy suggestions. I'll try that out.

 

[sleepylee]

what's a good criteria for determining the good ones from the crappy ones?

The only way to be absolutely sure is to track, test, refine, track, test, refine. Repeat.

 

[emp]

There seems to be something seriously wrong with your landing page.
Some troubleshooting:

• Is it really arbi? Do you drive the visitor to the ads?
• Does the page content pick up what is priomised in the ads?
• Does the page load at all?
• What adsense ads does the page show? Do they fit the content?

::emp::

 

[Dirvan]

Second that

Add more keywords, add more ad variations.

The only way to be absolutely sure is to track, test, refine, track, test, refine. Repeat.

 

[glowleaf]

I use msn, for adcenter to affiliate arbitrage. They are bitchy about everything, but I get much better conversion rates.

You got it messed up. I was talking about the way you earn money, not spend money to buy traffic...Adsense is fine, but I got banned. Try Yahoo ads.

I guess the problem is with your bid price. 8 cents is low. If your ads dont show, the problem is not that your daily budget is low, its that your bid price is low.

Ill try to explain.

You bid on credit, and suppose the competition bids 1$ for it
If you bid 8 cents, and there are like 7-8 competitors, your ad will almost never show. You will need to bid at least 80 cents to get some impressions.
Now, if your Quality score (relevancy of the landing page to the keyword) is good, the bid price you need to stay on the same spot is lowered, say 75 cents. Also, if your Click Through Rate is good (clicks divided by impressions), then you also pay less, 65 cents.
Daily budget has nothing to do with all of the above.


I guess what you havent understood yet is that you need higher bids, not higher budget. Higher budget allows you to get more clicks(and spend more)
Higher bids allow your ad to show higher up in the queue, thus generating clicks.

I used the ad I posted above, with a huge keyword list and bids at 23 cents. Because everyone clicked on the ad (since it calls out CLICKME) I got a great CTR. Combined with the relevancy of my landing pages, my QS allowed me to bid 10 cents, then 5 cents, and I managed to get it to 1 cent. 5 euro, 500 visitors exactly PER DAY.

The problem was to monetize the traffic, since 8 year olds dont buy from amazon But I found a way.

You need to do some more studying before you throw in 600$ per day on an experiment. Get a 5$ budget, turn it into a 7$ income. Learn the tricks, and then go for 30$ to 60$, and 100$ to 200$.

EDIT* for all the previous posters. The guy's problem is that he gets no clicks on his adwords ads, not on his adsense blocks. Hey aveligand, you do have blocks, not banners, right?

 

[vizilla]

I'd personally avoid AdWords -> AdSense arbitrage. A ton of people have been banned for it. AdWords-> YPN does work.

 

[Aveligand]

Hey glowleaf, so let me get this straight. You do Adcenter -> YPN?

My actual landing page CTR is alright. I'm averaging around 40% with 2 ad blocks (one blended with the text on top left of page. One at long rectangle at bottom right below a flashy picture, but separated to comply with Google's guidelines). Payout's not so great, though. Averaging about $0.60 per click, though as of day 3 I'm doing a net profit of about $1 per day. Guess its time to find another niche.

Vizilla, there's a lot of conflicting views on Adwords -> Adsense Arbi, at least in terms of whether or not Google will ban you for it. Shoemoney doesn't think so, and neither do a lot of people on WF. For my site I have genuinely useful info, along with Privacy, Contact, Sitemap, authority links, multiple pages (albeit well hidden one) and all that jazz to keep the big G happy so hopefully they won't layeth the smackdown.

 

[Aveligand]

I've lowered my daily Adwords limit to $50 as recommended and upped my bids to $0.30. Lets see where that takes me.

I'm not too worried about losing money, at least at this point. This is more of the experimental stage for me and at the end of the month I hope to summarize and share my no0b arbi experiences with WF.


Okay, for keywords list say my arbi site revolves around "blue widgets", and Keyword Country generates a list of 1000 keywords - what're some guidelines that I should be following to choose them? Obviously, we would be going for the long tail words, but should I be choosing them on the basis average CPC? Number of clicks? Lowest # of Competitors? Or just dump them all in and see what works?

 

[glowleaf]

CTR of 40% is a biiig factor that can get you banned. Anyway, the best way to check keywords is to test them. Also, adwords has a nice traffic tool. Its only a graph, not actual numbers, so the informational value is open to discussion...

But, it is google's data, so its more relevant than any other tool

Also, make a list of your strong 30 keywords, and see the bid prices google recommends to be on the 1-3 place. That gives you an image of what the competition is bidding. E.g, if they bid 40 cents, something like 30 cents is good for placement.

For arbitrage you need low competition on keywords so you can bid low. Go for anything with medium competition and as large traffic as possible.
Long tail can only be generated by brainstorming, because the variations are infinite. Also, most advertisers bid on "credit" (cost 4$) instead of "credit companies for teenagers" (cost 13 cents) or "where can i get a frikkin credit card as a teenager" (cost 5 cents). You get the point.

Then, maybe your niche doesnt pay well. You said 60 cents per click, and that is a rather nice number to work with...Right now, you are losing money with 0,30 bids. But if you manage to drop the bid to 0,15 cents, with CTR 40% its becoming a nice arbitrage.

I tried 45 different campaigns until I got one that worked.

You can also put other mfa sites on your banlist, so you get the juicy clicks. Right click the ads and copy the url, dont click on them. I suppose this is the case for your low payouts.

There are no real guidelines, you just have to try it. Btw, I got banned for adwords->adsense. No I dont do adcenter-> ypn, I do adcenter->affiliate

 

[Aveligand]

CTR of 40% is a biiig factor that can get you banned.

Btw, I got banned for adwords->adsense. No I dont do adcenter-> ypn, I do adcenter->affiliate

Shit, dude. That kindda freaks me out. Where your sites very blatantly MFA or more subtle?

Guess I'll be switching traffic source over to Yahoo, Adcenter and 7Search.

 

[glowleaf]

As I said, they varied. Some where squeeze pages with affiliate code, other minisites with adsense, and some were real sites with 70-100 articles.

From my experience, the best way is to mix affiliate code with adsense.
Let's say your target keyword is webhosting, you build your keyword list as always, bid high and then lower the bid etc... But, on the landing page, you put some hosting ads, along with adsense. Text ads work fine in this method as well. That way, you have the following chart:

Income minus expenses = cashflow
critical is the sale through affiliate code

PPC covers and/or exceeds your expenses, and you have the occasional sell via an affiliate code.
As soon as you manage to turn an arbitrage campaign to this image, steadily over time, you can replicate it and have income on autopilot.