AdWords Income

Friday, July 30, 2004

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Monday, July 26, 2004

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

AdWords Income

AdWords Income

I know most of us have purchased products and read a lot of hype about a lot of ways to make a fortune on the Internet. What I want to do here is to share practical experiences - that's going to include success stories. And, it's going to include flops.

Naturally I'm not going to share my business secrets - or more specifically the keywords I bid on or the programs I promote. But, I am willing to share what's working and what isn't.

A success tip . . .

What I've found to be most successful is bidding on keywords that are very specific. For example . . .

truck > ford > ford f150

You're going to have the most success going for "ford f150". You'll often find less competition for the more specific keywords that include a product name. Yet, that's also the searcher who knows most clearly what they want. That's a searcher who is most likely to buy.

You see, most people are conditioned to think "More traffic is good." To be successful with AdWords you should start with the thinking "Targeted traffic is good." I want to pay for as little traffic as possible that will buy as much product as possible.

When I go with these specific terms - and this can apply to any product - I almost always have a conversion rate of around 5%. That means out of every 100 clicks I pay for, 5 of those people buy. That's pretty darn good.

I have one program I promote that pays a $30 commission which provides me with income from $1100-1500 per month. I bid on the name of the program and the company name (careful, some companies forbade using trademarked names in your campaigns - but most don't).

A flop . . .

You really don't know until you've had about 300 clicks, whether or not something is going to be profitable or not. Last year I decided to expand out of my comfort zone and go after keyword terms related to "dental plans".

After finding that dentalplans.com had an earnings per click of $45.00 (that's actually earnings per 100 clicks), I thought, hey this is a no-brainer. I pay .05 per click, or $5 per 100 clicks and I should make $45 in return.

So, I created an account with "Kanoodle" (a mistake?) and paid for 600 clicks. And I had ZERO sales??

What did I learn?

1. "dental plans" is probably too general of a keyword.
2. DentalPlans.com is not, in my opinion, a site that would convert very well - but they do have an EPC of $45.
3. I left the selling up to DentalPlans.com - you usually will have far better results if you create your own sales site as an intermediary. See The Abundance Course (my site) and Whispered Weight Loss Secrets (not my site) as good examples of affiliate sites that take on doing the selling themselves. By the way, I the got idea for going to this level with affiliate sales from Nitro Marketings Success Secrets of $100,000 per Year Affiliates - highly recommended reading for any affiliate marketer.

So there you have it.

Best wishes, John

AdWords Resources

Just thought of one more thing to share with you!

I just posted a new "resources" page over at AdWordsIncome.com 

At the bottom of the page you will find my outline from a presentation I did recently to a group of local business people.  It went well and I think you'll enjoy the information.

You will also find a Q&A - I answer a variety of questions people have asked about making money with pay per click search engine traffic.  Both downloads are free.

Best wishes, John

Carl Galletti - Ad Secrets

Hey, my friends.

I want to share with you Carl Galletti's blog - Ad Secrets

For those of you who don't already know Carl, he's a master copywriter and host of the Internet Marketing SuperConference. He's also a personal friend who lives here in Sedona as well. We met at Willie Crawford's Internet Marketing How-to Workshop and discovered that in addition to being Internet marketers we also share a favorite restaurant - Casa Rincon. So I have a convenient excuse for getting out of the house on occassion for lunch! "It's work honey. It's a business lunch!" - That's what I tell Tara. She just rolls her eyes and says, "Bring me something."

Anyway . . . I had the opportunity to attend Carl's conference and it was simply outstanding. The conference ran from 8 AM to 10 PM for four days and EVERY speaker was not only dynamic, but the information delivered was worth the price of admission. I'm not talking about all of the speakers combined - I mean each and every speaker offered me information I feel rock-solid-confident would earn me more money in return than what the conference cost (time, time, time - if only I had more time).

I could rave on about it - and I'm sure I will write more in the future. For now, go ahead and take a look at Carl's blog. He offers good, insightful information you can use.

Best wishes, John

PS - My latest project this week is a site called MyWebND, launched with my wife Tara who just happens to be . . . an ND (Naturopathic Physician). We're promoting the site using Google AdWords and so far our ROI is about 500% (of course Tara has her work to do, but we're happy with the early results). It's a creative way of building her practice while enjoying the flexibility an Internet business offers.

Google Cash Review - More

AdWords Income

Last night I spent my evening reading the bonus transcripts included with Google Cash on a teleseminar done with Jonathan Mizel and Perry Marshall.

In my previous post I mentioned that I hadn't reviewed the bonus material yet (it's often junk, isn't it?)

Quite frankly, the bonus material I've gone through so far surpassed the information offered in Google Cash! Perry Marshall is on a completely different level than the rest of us when it comes to using Google AdWords profitably.

My hope was the bonus items would fill in some of the gaps. They do - and they don't - but my personal opinion is the Perry Marshall material is worth at least what the cost of the package.

Out of respect for their material, I cannot go into the details of what I learned. But I will share this . . .

I did learn a dozen little tricks that can boost your click rates significantly - and cut your per click costs.

And, I did learn another little trick that will boost the ranking placement of your ad, without raisiing your bid price or changing anything in your current ad. Very cool and it took me about 10 minutes to make the change.

My somewhat lukewarm endorsement of Google Cash yesterday has just become quite a bit hotter.

Google Cash Review

Although I have a few banners on my web site for Google Cash by Chris Carpenter, I have to confess I hadn't read it.

So last night, surfing my own site - AdWords Income - I decided I'd check this ebook out for myself and hopefully learn a useful tip or two along the way.  I purchased it and I've read the material in a little over 2 hours taking time to visit various links, etc.

Google Cash presents the step-by-step how-to for using Google AdWords to generate income with affiliate programs.  What that means is that you can earn a healthy living by selling other people's products.  And "all" you have to do is write simple little ads that sell the product.  Well, it's not simple, but it sure is doable.

For example, I can purchase advertising through Google AdWords for the keyword "stress management".  In my advertising I promote an "affiliate product" that is a stress management program.  An affiliate product, in case you don't know, is a product someone else produces but whenever someone I refer buys it I get a percentage of the sale price.

So if I tell my friend Sally to buy a pair of Birkenstocks from my other friend Pete, and she does, then I get a percentage of the sale. 

Back to Google Cash . . .

Chris has obviously been successful using Google AdWords as he provides some solid examples of how he's made some excellent profits using the system.  I was surprised by some of the information he shares about the actual campaigns he runs.

I consider myself pretty solid in using Google AdWords to make money, so my crititique of his book is written with that bias.  And, I'm also going to do my best to consider the various skill levels my readers may have.

The bottom line with any Internet marketing product is "Could someone read this, go out and start making money?"

To that question I have a "yes" and a "no" answer.

Yes, if you already have some basic Internet marketing understanding.  I think this book could include more detailed "how to" information.  And I found it left out some key details I consider important.  High points were covered, but I'm not sure a "newbie" would follow.

Which leads me to the "no".  Not that there isn't some very good information to point the "newbie" in the right direction.  It's more that, in my experience, we experienced marketers tend to take some fundamental basics for granted.  And if I were to put this book into the hands of a complete novice, I am not confident the content would be helpful.

Also Google Cash sometimes loses focus.  For example, and this could be an unadvertised benefit viewed in alternate light, Chris goes into discussing how to make money using Ebay and how to use classified ads in newspapers.  These inclusions seemed out of place and like afterthoughts.

Critiques aside, here's the good stuff . . .

I know from personal experience that what Chris is sharing works.  If you fall into the "I'm beyond newbie, but not quite saavy with Google AdWords already" category, this ebook will point you in the right direction to making money.  There is good, solid advice here.

The bonus package appears to be quite good (I haven't reviewed it yet), but it includes information from Perry Marshall, a useful spreadsheet for tracking, links to a lot of bonus tools and more.  And perhaps those bonuses would fill in some of the blanks the ebook doesn't.

And, the final plus of this book is that although there are many people out there doing what Chris is teaching, I'm not aware of another ebook that shares this system or approach to earning income using pay per click.

The long story short, I don't believe this is the definitive book to earning cash with Google AdWords, but I do believe it's the best available.

Is it worth the price of admission?  Yes.  I think it is.  (EDIT:  After reviewing the bonus items, it is definitely worth the price of admission).

Blogging

OK. So I'm just getting the hang of this "blogging thing". And trying to decide officially what I want it to be all about.

So, let's start by just being upfront about it. How did I end up here and what does this have to do with AdWords Income?

Well, AdWords Income will eventually have a sister site called "AdSense Income". And, AdSense Income is based on generating profits from, you guessed it, AdSense ads.

I've played with creating Traffic Equalizer generated sites for about the last 5 months. I've had great success with generating traffic - marginal success with producing income until recently.

I can't spell out the details - the "how to" - but you can take a look at what I've done and learn from what you see.

Here are the latest sites - and you will notice evolutions in each of them.

Sedona! Sedona!

Alternative and Complementary Medicine

Golf Clubs and Vacations

The Dating Website

I'll be writing more about these sites in the future. And sharing more information about AdSense Income too.

To your success, John