i would never do this !

[findtim]

i've done so many googllllllllllllles adwords campaigns and for little return ( not adsense, adwords )

IP address changes, and dare i say mc donalds FREE access etc leave adsense clicking open to bad people using your money, googlllllllleeeeee benefits so why should they care.

thoughts?

tim

 

[johno69]

Does that come in English?

 

[findtim]

hmmmm, good reply, i just didn't explain it properly, sorry, lets just dump the thread now, sorry

tim

 

[goldnugget]

I think I know what you are asking Tim. Return on investment for adwords campaigns and if they are worthwhile?

Up until the recent weather events up here and the cleanup that went/going along along with it I starting doing research into it for one of my sites. While I havent started any campaigns yet I'm hoping to start in the next month or so after I make some mods to the site and get it more 'shopfront'.

Whilst I'm still unsure of the ins and outs of campaigns (addressing this via the University of YTube at the moment), I think you need to have a site where clicks within your site bring in a decent return to begin with. Either directly selling product to customers where you have a decent markup (or high volume) or if an affiliate site that any sales give you a decent return.

The site that I'm looking at this for is an adult products affiliate site (not porn) that returns me 25% of sales. Now when you do the math on that with an average online local sale of around $100 and targeting specific local keywords relating to the sale of these sorts of goods combined with word of mouth from customers, the return would (I hope) pay off.

With that sort of site, if classified as 'adult' or 'non family friendly' by Adwords it means that ads will come up only on direct search results pages and wont be in the general adsense rotation pool. For me I think this is a good thing because well worded keyword ads should match the users search term and hopefully provide better conversion results rather than just an ad doing the rounds on blogs and wherever as an afterthought.

Dont know if this helps or not, but personal view would be if your site is only returning you a couple of dollars for a 'successful' directed traffic hit, I'd probably give it a good hard look.

Jay

 

[Chris.C]

I hear what you are saying Tim...

Click fraud is an issue, but it's a bit like anything, it's just one of those problems a business has got to solve.

Just the other day I had to block certain keywords from our campaigns that I suspected were bot searches rather than real people and were pushing our CTRs down.

And in the last 7 days we have had 8 people click our ads and visit our landing pages at 3 least times - which does concern me a little and I normally what to see if those IPs continue to click on our ads.

Yet in spite of all of this our adwords campaign is still profitable - and if it's profitable you keep doing it.

And whilst Google doesn't have a HUGE incentive to stop it, they will draw the line at a certain point, because if advertisers don't make money with Adwords then they will leave, so they need to be sure its still worthwhile for advertisers.

 

[snoopy]

Adwords is a pay per impression service. Whoever is willing to pay the most dollars in total will get the higher spots, CTR is irrelevant to what you will actually pay.

The higher CTR is (ie via invalid clicks), the lower CPC will go. For advertising on Google itself click fraud is a non issue in my view. All the data on CPC etc is there to make it look like a pay for performance service because people do not like being told it is based on impressions. Once upon a time it was probably based on clicks, but that would have been a very long time ago. For the content network I tend to think the loser is other people who are not clicking on their own ads rather than it costing advertisers. Advertisers bid lower because the traffic is lower quality (invalid clicks) and the good guys cop the lower payouts as well.

It is a bit like sites which charge for shipping versus those offering free shipping, people would prefer to $50 + free shipping versus $30 + $20 shipping. The guy paying $50 + free shipping would like to believe he is not paying for shipping. The reality is he is paying for shipping. It is all about "impressions". It has been packaged to make it more palatable for most people.

Regarding making money from adwords if it works you have a good site & campaign. If it does work then either

1. Your site blows, or
2. You ad writing skills blow, or
3. Both of the above.