Posts filed under 'adwords'
A brief follow up as promised on last weeks attempt at a bit of Adsense arbitrage, I did say I would follow up with how it went.
Basically, not very well! In terms of making money anyway, but there were many positives and I did learn a lot about how to do it better.
What I did discover is that even with just an information article as a landing page, you can get click through rates (CTR) of 30 - 50% on the Adsense ads, which is pretty good.
In my chosen area though, which was sinusitis, the payout on the adwords was not high enough (top costs approx $2). This meant that my adword costs were not being covered, so I was actually losing a little money. This is obviously not good.
The good CTR’s and high traffic that I was able to generate was encouraging and did illustrate to me that the principle could be sound. With the right keyword research, to uncover some very high paying ads, ideally at least $5per click, it should be possible to make a profit using this method.
You also need some good Google adword copy and to know what you are doing with adwords. There is one definitive guide to Google adwords which is a must for anyone getting into it by Perry Marshall, and he even does a free email course on google Adwords which covers the basics.
I’m going to try again in a different area, and hopefully can make it pay this time.
John McGuire
www.TheGardenLovers.com
www.ObtainsSolutionsLtd.com
September 14th, 2007
I think arbitrage is fascinating word, it has a kind of esoteric air of intrigue and mystery. Perhaps because it is not a word in common use and I would hazard a guess that if you were to conduct a survey in the street, you would find more people who don’t know what it means than who do. Before I started in internet marketing I had heard the term only vaguely, on some stock market report or other on the news, and I had no idea what it meant.
When it cropped up again in association with the word Adsense i.e. Adsense arbitrage, at an internet marketing seminar recently, I took a good deal more interest in it than I had before, but I had absolutely no idea what either word meant, and had to work quite hard to conceal my ignorance. I left the seminar wanting to know a lot more about a lot of things but “Adsense arbitrage” was certainly pretty close to the top of my list.
Since then I have learned a lot about Adsense. This is where you get the chance for Google to have to pay you money per click, for a change! Although, unless you really know what you’re doing, it never seems to amount to very much ;-) Adsense can be thought of as the opposite of Adwords where you pay Google to advertise your product and you pay them per click.
Arbitrage, on the other hand, I had to look up in a dictionary and here is an example definition.
“Arbitrage: the nearly simultaneous purchase and sale of securities or foreign exchange in different markets in order to profit from price discrepancies”
Having gained a working knowledge of Adsense and at least a broad outline of what arbitrage was. I was very interested to read of an internet marketers results recently in combing a Google adwords campaign with a landing page containing Google Adsense ads, who managed to make $4000 in his first month in an Adsense arbitrage project!
What he did was to identify a topic in a subject area where the keyords are expensive, so Adsense clicks would have a high payout. He then published an article rich in keywords in this area, put adsense ads on the article website and mounted a Google Adwords campaign to drive traffic to the article page.
Theis whole arbitrage concept relies on the cost per click of the adword costing you less than the payment per click for the Adsense. Also you have to bear in mind that the conversion rate will not be 100%. That is to say, that not everyone that clicks your google ad and is taken to the site (for which you pay) will click a Google Adsense ad (for which you get paid). The percentage that do is called the conversion rate and can vary from less than 1% up to greater than 50%. In general 5-10% would be accepted as very good conversion rate. So to make this profitable you have to get low cost adwords and have high payment adsense.
Getting this to work is not easy and Google also have some rules which have to be observed, such as having some quality content relating to the adword on the site, the usual privacy, about, site map etc pages and a legitimite informative exit link on the page being the main ones.
Probably the most important skill to acquire to have any chance of this arbitrage working is to study Google adwords in depth to be able to identify affordable keywords from which you can profit. There are many keyword research tools to help you do this and I’ve tried Keyword Elite, which makes it a lot less laborius and time consuming.
Having seen the results referred to above I was very keen to have a go at this method. Especially as it could be set up quick, with no product to develop, just an article to write. I decided to have a site up within a day and see how it goes. I did this eariler this week and chose a common condition call sinusits and I am monitoring the performance closely and will update with results in about a week or so.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
www.TheGardenLovers.com
September 6th, 2007
I talked earlier about one of my current projects in affiliate marketing the My Affiliate Store service and outlined some of the special features of this method of getting involved in affiliate marketing.
The more I work on this project the more impressed with it I become and there is probably no easier way of getting a good looking website up and populated with a good range of affiliate products. The products here can be almost anything including a impressive range of even physical products, it’s not just all downloadable digital products either, although it does those as well.
The topic I chose to get into was gardening at www.TheGardenLovers.com as I live on a smallholding which has a large garden and I spend a lot of time working on the garden and have got more interested in gardening as a result. This has the benefit when doing research for the site that it’s an area that I know and in doing so continue to learn more about. This makes adding content such as articles much easier and it keeps it more interesting. It also helps in chosing relevant products and in creating logical department and category indexing.
The built in SEO in the product is pretty good at getting your pages indexed and as content and product numbers increase over time they should climb in the rankings organically. I am seeing this work already and have only had the site up for about a month although traffic does take time to increase. Obviously in addition to leaving it to their system you can employ any of the other traffic generation methods you want, such as pay per click adwords campaigns, article writing, blog posting and trying to get incoming links.
The sites themselves do come from templates but these are very customisable and a number of other members are a bit ahead of me and have improved the visual appearance by steps such as customised banner heading and added more functionality like customer voting surveys and video articles.
Two particularly good examples of what can be done with the websites at My Affiliate Store are www.stylishcoffee.com on a subject which is very close to my heart, as you may know from my earlier posts and www.dreamweddingsource.com which I think is another very attractive site.
So I am planning to emulate some of the features from examples such as these sites by getting a professional banner done first off, which is very important, as the banner is really the first impression someone gets of your website. I also plan to add an “ask us a question” type feature which improves the browsing experience making it feel a lot more interactive.
As well as improving the look and functionality of the site, it continues to just need a steady progressive approach in adding product content and is an ideal type of project to keep just ticking over and growing, in the hope that it will start to pay dividends some way down the line. It and can therefore easily be combined with “juggling” some other more demanding projects.
John
www.TheGardenLovers.com
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
September 1st, 2007
In the early stages of a business startup it is sometimes worth reminding yourself of the attractions of the field you have chosen and the reasons that led to the decision.
In online marketing luckily this is relatively easy to do. If you compare it with a physical “bricks and mortar” based business it seems there is almost just one big list of advantages.
For starters no spending physical premises is required, anywhere you can use a pc you can conduct this business. Therefore no rates, no long term binding lease to sign and no maintenance cost. Set up costs are also relatively low so risk is minimised from the outset.
Many of the products are non-physical and downloadable so no headaches with storage and stock control. This also means no carrier costs and the market is very large, often global!
Business is conducted mostly via a website and therefore is open 24/7 and is not dependent on your own personal input. Marketing can also be much easier, for example with Google adwords you can write an ad, publish it and start to see an effect within 10 minutes! All of the other traditional options can be used as well e.g. press advertising and direct mail if needed.
Secure online payments also avoid the need for expensive fixed and mobile swipe devices and the whole payment process including follow up and continuing communications to maintain a customer relationship can be automated. This is to name just a few of the benefits the list could go on and on….. No business is without downsides, of course, and online marketing is no different. The main ones seem to me to be:
· It is a very competitive market with a lot of people selling similar products
· A fair amount of technical and IT ability can be required
· It is highly reliant on technology and therefore prone to failure
· As it is a global market there could potentially be some tax related difficulties on profits
All of these can be overcome and, in my view, the benefits far outweigh the downsides, especially when compared with most other forms of business.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
www.TheGardenLovers.com
August 30th, 2007
Juggling a number of projects is hard to avoid. We all know that completing one project before starting another is the best option.
But the temptation is usually overpowering to “just do a little bit” on another one, to get it ready for when you are, or tweak another a little bit here or there. Before you know it you have at least 5 projects on the go, like I have right now.
I mean, when is a project complete anyway? In online marketing you could say it is at product launch, but it’s not really done and dusted there. You can’t then just “leave it on the shelf” to sell itself. In some ways that’s more like the start rather than the end of the project, and for certain other products it almost literally is the start like a membership website.
I try to console myself that this is the nature of the business and think the best way to deal with it is to accept it and learn to enjoy multitasking.
My feeling is that for practical purposes an important staging post to get to as a minimum with each project is to get a website live. I’m not saying, put up a substandard site but if your website is your shop don’t leave the door shut!
The juggling also has to include time to read, listen to, or participate in e.g. webinars etc. all of the learning materials that you pick up along the way.
I’ve got some high priority webinars to listen to at the moment, for example and the most pressing of which is the last 2 in a series of Google adwords classes by Greg Cesar. I mentioned these in an earlier post and promised to update my thoughts on these after being very impressed with the first. They do last 2 hours and I for one reason or another have been unable to participate live in any of the classes. I’ve been listening and watching them via a Camtasia recording later which actually suits me better. I will be giving my impression here when I’ve got through these last 2.
For me though the need to get on and use some adwords in a campaign before I could learn everything there is to know about them! Has overtaken the time to do so, as it seems to have done in web design and almost every other area of internet marketing that I’ve been involved in so far.
Sometimes you just need to get going with something and pick it up along the way. This is not a bad thing as when it comes to getting back to the theory and teaching I find a bit of experience places it in context and makes things easier to understand.
Although so far in the case of Google ads so far I’ve lost money.
So I’m off to do my homework and to try to continue to keep all the balls in the air 
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 27th, 2007
A 2 hour flight delay! This is not how a budding newbie internet marketers’ supposed to spend his time.
Still, thanks to the gadgetry that is my pda and the mp3 file format I have just spent an enthralling 2 hours listening to a tutorial from the google awords guru Greg Cesar. What an eye opener, the things that he can do with keyword and adwords is truly awesome.
The holy grail of internet marketers is to use ads to get a high click rate (click through rate) by using adwords that don’t cost a bomb. That is what he does and perhaps why he is known as the adwords dominator. He can take a niche market in any area and take on the big boys, getting to top spot in google ads for less than a tenth of their costs and he drives traffic to his sites through the roof.
Of course, I want to do the same. Still it’s gonna take more than one tutorial to get me to that level. So here’s looking to the next 5 tutorials (webinars) in the set and I’ll keep you posted as to how they go and possibly even share some of his secrets with you.
Anyway, now I’m on the flight to London and again thanks to my beloved pda, writing this blog. I’m off to a 2 day master class by internet entrepreneur Nick James to try to get my business kick started. I’ve been working my ass off for about 6 weeks with a hundred and one ideas for web businesses and not yet got a live site. I’m not saying I’ve been messing around, quite the reverse. It’s just that there is a helluva lot of stuff to get in place before launching the web sites that hopefully are going to bring in all of the dough!
4 1/2 hours after leaving home I’m sat being bumped the hell out of on an airport bus to my hotel. Memo to self: At all costs avoid physically travelling when possible and stay by the pc cozy and comfy at home.
Finally arrived at my hotel and within seconds had added 30 quid per night to my bill being unable to resist the executive upgrade. This involved a better room, wi-fi access and, of course, the compulsory late night movie
The Friday night was a membership evening for Nick’s website. This was ok and it was nice to meet fellow members of the forum but it was a little light on content. Still off to the bar afterwards to network, had a few too many beers, a late night and was dog rough for the meeting on Saturday morning.
I was delighted to discover that that this hotel provided proper coffee from the Nespresso range of convenient “pod” ground coffee and it was freshly prepared double espressos all the way, which played a large part in reviving my spirits.
The meeting then kicked of with what is most fundamental in internet niche marketing, which is research your niche and ensure that there is a suitable market. There were two host presenters, firstly Nick James himself who has presence, calm and charisma.
He was a fount of knowledge and experience and presented things in a very clear way. The second presenter was a much less well known entity to many of us, and his presentational style was a bit in your face and OTT for much of the audience’s tastes. He was very well meaning and socially very pleasant though, it has to be said.
The research material included how to come up with potential product areas, such as from personal interests hobbies, magazines and then assessing market size using keyword search tools, google ads and hot web topics etc. Then it covered some further market research survey tools such as askdatabase.com and how to offset costs partially by affiliate marketing.
Lunch was provided as a perfectly palatable buffet, the coffee continued to flow and people gradually overcame their inhibitions and networked more as the weekend wore on.
The content continued with product creation and covered how to produce text based material, audio and video and what the correct tools to use are in each of these areas. Important marketing strategies were also covered including the price funnel of increasingly expensive products.
A key area for success in most of these areas is knowing when and what to outsource to preserve one’s own time for where it’s needed most which is business development.
Next up was membership sites and marketing product licenses. Then there was a fantastic session on writing effective sales copy by a chap called Raja Hireker and it was emphasized that this is a critical area to get right to maximise sales revenue.
Then marketing your site and traffic generation and unusually for a web marketing seminar a fair bit of time was spent on offline methods. These included newspaper and magazine ads and direct mailing through rental of mailing lists from hot buyers in related product areas.
There was only a brief time spent on google adwords and this was presented by a relatively successful forum member.
The meeting was wrapped up by a brief summary of material covered and some generous freebies with a usb stick full of material and utilities and a tape set of a previous seminar.
As ever I after such a seminar I am reeling with information overload yet buzzing with enthusiasm and impatience to get a site up and selling.
Still first things first. That is get back to my wife and kids, chill (but not for too long) and have an even nicer double espresso at home.
Now two days after returning from the masterclass I have worked my ass off trying to get the building blocks in place to run my own internet business.
Now it’s supposed to be inexpensive to set up an online business, and it is compared with a traditional bricks and mortar business. Still almost 5 grand into this arena for me in a 6 week period it certainly doesn’t feel like it.
Expenses include relevant seminars, registering domain names, web hosting, web design software, various software utilities, market research tools, outsourcing some product production design and copywriting, auto responders, shopping carts, some new hardware, setting up a limited company etc. The list goes on and on.
Then there is getting to know all the new software tools and reading various forums which a major time commitment. Not that I am saying it’s not fun but both the time and the money soon mount up. This engenders a deep seated desire to get some money flowing back ASAP.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems (or as you are told) and what I am finding is that the devil, as ever, is in the detail I.e. The nitty gritty little details at every level. Such as what, if any, additional options to choose with a domain name, how to set up a clink bank affiliate and how to interpret all of your google ads research.
John
www.ObtainSolutionsLtd.com
August 21st, 2007
