Making Money with AdWords and AdSense

By Mandrake Moore

It is possible to make money with AdWords and Adsense. Lots of people do. But how? You could buy one or more of the guides to making money with AdWords and AdSense on eBay or from various flashy looking websites. Most of them are 
overpriced nonsense.

Some of them offer incorrect information, some of them are flatly immoral in the techniques they suggest, while a few offer one or two useful tips - which are usually available on the net for free if you know where to look.

Here a few tips on getting the best ad spots.

How to pay less for the traffic you need, which means more money in your pocket.

Success with AdWords

Getting the Best Ad Spots 1

The 'hot spot' for high click-through rates (and this is what you want - people coming to your site) is the top three positions - either in the organic results or the sponsored results.

In the sponsored results it doesn't seem to make any difference whether you are number one, two or three. So for high click-through rates, you need to get into the top three. To make money you need to do this as cheaply as you can.

The first way to do this is to bid on key words relevant to your business, but for which there is not much competition. So for a store selling horse feed in Jacksonville, Ohio, you might have to pay 97c to get a top three spot for the phrase 'horse feed'. That would soon add up, and many of the people who clicked on that general phrase would not buy from your local business. Most of your customers are going to come from Jacksonville, or at least Ohio.

A top three spot for a general match to 'horse feed Ohio' might only cost you 19c. A top three spot for a general match to 'horse feed Jacksonville Ohio' might only cost 7c, and your conversion rate (the percentage of people who click on your ad and then buy from you) will be higher.

These longer, very specific keyword phrases are sometimes called 'longtail' keywords, and they can be very profitable. In particular niches (a phrase for a very narrow or specific market) there is often little competition for keywords, and people who enter these phrases are telling you very clearly exactly what they want. If you can meet their needs, your chances of getting a sale from people entering your longtail keywords as search terms is high.

Success with AdWords

Getting the Best Ad Spots 2

Pay the least you can to get into the top three. Obvious, really. But how?

Unfortunately Google doesn't tell you how much your competitors are paying for their clicks. There are various 'bid management' systems which will charge from $25 a month to track your keywords. Don't bother, unless you are a large company with a massive budget and you just can't keep track of your ad campaigns.

There are also programs which claim to provide detailed information about keyword popularity, competitor bid levels, etc. Probably the best known of these is Key Word Elite. I would love to have advertised that product on my site. It pays affiliates $93 per sale! Then I tried it. I found it clunky and confusing, and its results were only intermittently more useful than Google and Overture's free tools.

Even though Google doesn't tell you what competitors are paying, it does tell you when your bid is enough to get into the top three. When you set up your AdWords campaign, the keywords traffic estimates page will tell you (roughly) where your ad will be positioned - eg 1-3, 4-6, etc. For example, a bid of just 20c will get you a 4-6 position for the phrase 'computer parts'.

But you want to get into the top three. Try increasing your bid to 85c (just a guess at this stage). Yes! This will get you a top three result. Google also tells you your actual cost will be between 52c and 78c.

Now go back and enter a bid of 53c. Click 'Re-estimate traffic.' Still yes! This bid will get you a position between 1 and 3, and at a cost of between 32c and 53c.

This means you are in the top three at perhaps half the price you might otherwise have paid. This process takes a little time, but truly, if you want to be a success, you have to be prepared to put both time and thought into your business.

Remember you don't always pay your maximum bid - only what you need to beat the person next in line (like Ebay). If you put some thought into it, you may be able to come up with other ways to use this fact to your advantage!

Because effective advertising is essential to the success of your business, you should check your advertising campaign at least daily. Your competitors will be doing this (or you should assume they will be!) and bids can change frequently.

You also need to check which keywords and ads are working for you. Keep the ones that are, make small changes, one thing at a time, to the ones that aren't. Check whether those changes have made a difference. Test everything! What brings more clicks? What brings more sales? It will take a little time, but you will gradually build up an arsenal of highly effective and efficient (ie money-making) ads and keywords.


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