1c Clicks from Google Adwords for Arbitrage

As always, great post, keep up the good work

Wow, that’s great, should help alot.
Thanks.

I really had never thought of that way before, thats interesting and I will have to give it a try. Thanks for the great info!

Do you actually have to have your own banner even though you just do arbitrage? Or can you just set the ads to ‘image only’?

Any particular reason for choosing those 2 sizes?

Amazing tip, as usual. If I had to read just one blog, it might be yours.

It might take Google a few days to approve of your images according to the original WF thread:
How I get penny clicks on Google

Uploaded three image ads, can’t wait to see what will happen

Have anyone actually received any impression on their 1c image ads?

It almost sounds to good to be true…

It does sound too good to be true, but I”m going to try it nonetheless. So I waste an hour or two - I probably would’ve done that anyway, right?

I created my ads about 15 hours ago and still waiting for something to happen. Maybe they are still in Google approval.

Still no impressions for my three image ads

… and now it’s more than 24 hours since I created them.

10, but very generic ones like for example “horse”.

But you are right, maybe that’s the problem. I’ll try to add some more keywords and report back in a day or two.

Still no luck

No impressions - and I have created 3 campaigns with more than a 1000 keywords each…

Does everybody else get impressions?

So does this method actually work?

I want to try this but everyone here has replied that it is not working…

it’s difficult to get impressions this way, and you can still have a text ad, anyway.

i’ve followed this thread and started a new campaign a few days ago without the text ad, but not a single impression yet.

best i’ve ever done is $0.02 with straight text ads on a campaign with only two keywords. i’m not sure how you guys are managing your territories, but territories make a difference.

if you focus on just the States, then chances are you’re going to pay more than the $0.02 even.

adwords is never as simple as people would have you believe. states has higher bids, because many people set their campaigns to the states, which drives up the competition level. while, if you focus your campaign on Iraq…

i’m attempting to reach the $0.01 clicks, but no luck.

Why do you seem to think a banner ad would work better than a text ad for content. Banner=better visual appeal, text=more impressions?
tia
jon

Very nice technique you shared!

Another blog to add to my ‘must visit’ list!

Dylan

I just tried this technique with 600 keywords for my banner ad. I have NOT even received one single impression!

Is there a threshold of keywords we must add before we can attain impressions on the ad? What is happening? I am not sure how you can get 500 clicks/day using this… Please help, thanks.

It took some time (5-7 days), but now I get impressions for my ads

Funny, Stuart said he is using 10,000 keywods and other people say it isn’t working wiht the 10 or 100 they are using….Hmmm…Makes ya wonder.

I guess you have to have the content network turned on, right?

DOH! There goes the neighborhood!

i fired this up with 700 keywords and 1 cent but got no impressions so i raised cpc to 10 cents and still get no impressions. i’m only targeting the states so maybe that has something to do with it but it looks like you’ve gotta have the right niche for this to work.

Well, I did the two banners last night and set it up with 2000 Top keywords and phrases, Today I’ve gotton 127 impressions. I have my settings set for global. Still no clicks though, I’ll just leave that one alone and create another one and see if I can get something more than impressions.

Well today resulted in about 1500 impressions and one click. So needless to say the theory might work, but after doing allot of research on the background of this, it looks like the average person placing google banners on their site(s) are slim pickings. So as a test, I’ve built another eight camps, and have around 50,000 top keywords / phrases and some other stuff in there for testing. Well see what happens over the weekend. I’d cross my fingers, but I wore them to knubs typing..

A couple of things;

1) it will take up to a week to get your banner ads approved.

2) banner ads have stricter editorial guidelines than text ads. All sites and ads must be ‘family safe’

3) if you are planning on make at $100+ sale off a one cent click, you’re dreaming. The content network might drive traffic, but those viewers aren’t targetted costumers. If you are interested in sales to targetted costumers, you’ll need to use the search network.

I tried this. Put the price to $0.02. I’ve received some 70.000 impressions and 403 clicks. I’ve had some 70 free signups to my program. Problem was that most of the signups were from India. They won’t convert at all for me. So I’ve just limited the territories. Wonder how many clicks I will get now.

I think it would be better to focus on some sort of free service rather then a paid one.

However, this does work! I’ll try cheaper affiliate programs and see what happens.

It’s been a month since I last posted about my test, and wow, yes the theroy works! We’ve gotten thousands of clicks and and conversions. The big trick to this isn’t just putting up any slap together banner and any old keywords / phrases! You need to have a really good keyword list. I wrote a program to do just that. I just finished a new keyword list of over 50,000 of the highest paying keyword / phrases list of misspelled words! My previous test worked pretty darn good of an old batch that I had used. If anyone is interested in them please let me know, my email address: scubadu@gmail.com I’m selling them for 4.95 and only selling them to three people. Also if your interested I can create any catagory you would like of keywords / phrases along with top rated banners.

Well this did work before but Google Adwords is up to something. I was getting clicks as low as 0.01 but all of my stuff is not showing anymore period. No clicks and no impressions in the last week.

Adwords says all is fine, increase my bids. Said too many inactive keywords. Adwords is cracking down on this stuff. I guess they hate people getting clicks cheap. Still my ads not running and I did changes and made all keywords active.

People have been having same issues but no one really knows what the heck is going on. Anyone know please feel free to share.

digg from my friend’s old bookmark. i think i’ll use this pretty trick to promote my newest site…

I tried this and it didnt work. I think Jamie Boyle is right and google put an end to this trick. I had no clicks or impressions and tried with 2000 keywords/phrases.

Hey Stuart thanks for the info - I’m giving it a try. Just finished setting up my image adds on Google - I come up with the idea that I can still use my affiliate banners by cut and pasting the last part of the script they (merchants) give me into the browser - turns it into a jpeg - I go to file & ’save page as’ etc. then upload it onto Google - they look great and still flashing - Now the waiting game - I know geo-targeting plays a big part in all this - Will keep running some text adds while I’m waiting for Google - Will let you know in a week if I’ve had any luck.

Cheers - Pjay

Okay - a BIG thanks from me Stuart !!

It hasn’t even been 48 Hours. Yesterday I deleted all my text adds and replaced them with as many affiliate banners possible (19) for that particular product. As I explained above how to turn your affiliate banners into image jpgs for Adwords - works !

Click through almost doubled - CPC halved - Av Position has gone from 5 to 1.6 - However I’m sure this can not be replicated by everyone - I’ve been doing split testing with other aspects of Adwords for some time now - i.e I’ve learned which countries I get the best results with (geotargeting) - I don’t target the USA - only Asia, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey etc. I’m not promoting a niche product - Forex, Stocks - a lot of competition. I have the maximum 2000 keywords that Google allow ( took 2 months to research ) The av. Position will have something to do with the fact that I’m using size 728 Banners and sky scraper Banners - anyways - enough said - thanks for the info it’s saving me heaps.

Cheers,

Paul

Just a quiki to let you know all my clicks are 3 cents now. Thanks Stuart !

now 2 cents

Well, its been almost 2 weeks now and I’m paying 1 cent for at least 50% of my clicks - the other 50% around average of 5 cents advertising another program I normally pay 20 cents per click for ( these are some of the most competitive programs )- so as you can imagine I’m pretty glad I did some research and found this blog,

Thanks Stuart

Cheers,

Pjay

hey Pjay or Stuart if you guys are reading.. how do you group your keywords? do you group them tightly or just fit in as many keywords as you can in an adgroup?

Hi Ash, the cheap 1 & 5 cent clicks keep coming - now just got to find a better product to monetize my landing page with.

Re. advice on other advice on Adwords - I’m always studying and testing ideas I learn from others - and researching the best tools and mentors (free) - and have myself a great list of tools I couldn’t live with out. Here are a few :

http://www.keywordcountry.com
http://www.adsensefinder.com
http://www.hexatrack.com
http://www.tools.seo.com

There are a few more, but the best thing you could do is subscribe to Frank Kern’s http://www.masscontrol.com - Frank puts out great free videos - visit: http://www.masscontrolsite.com/blog/ and you’ll see what I mean.

I also have some keyword tools you can’t get for free if you need a free list of keywords let me know.

Re. First question - Frank will answer that in one of his videos - but I do both depending on whether I’m using banner ads, or text ads - and also depending on my main goal i.e Instant monetization, list building, arbitrage, site promotion etc

cheers,

Hey Ash, I made a mistake - DON’T go to http://www.adsensefinder.com - totally different site which has nothing to do with adsense finder the tool - if you go to Frank’s blog I think you will find a link to it there - can’t remember how I got to find the tool - but basically it’s a tool for finding sites that have adsense on them so that you can use Googles ‘placement option’ to decide which site/s you want your ads to appear on.

Cheers.

Hey Paul,

It’s been almost a month and google still haven’t approve my image ads yet. How long do you usually have to wait for them to approve the ads?

I’m using a special site targeting tool….

Do you have a contact? Can we talk and share ideas? email me at ashfantasy@gmail.com if you want to chat…

Thanks

Yeah sure. I’ll be in touch.

cheers.

Some advice re. using banners - to get the most out of your cheap clicks make sure your banners have at least enough text ad on it to better target the market. i.e don’t just have a pretty face/graphics, an url and bargain price etc.

It’s a good idea to have on the banner e.g size, model, price etc.
This will save you more money and get you better targeted traffic.

cheers,

Hi Guys,
i have put up 2 campaigns in the last few days for image ads only on Content, it then leads me to where i want to place my ads ( e.g which website)..

But on the forums some guys have been talking about keywords etc… how and where do i put my keywords in for content search only…

and how do keywords work with content search, as with content we are not bidding on keywords, we only decide where our ads will be displayed..

also when choosing which publishers you want your ad shown on, is there a facility to choose all the ones that are shown rather than clicking on ‘add’ for all publishers…. is there a ‘ add all ‘ facility..

your help on the above would be most appreciated..

Murad

Hi Murad,

I’m no Adwords guru or anything but from my experience the 2 most common forms of advertising using Adwords is : Search and Content. (keyword-targeted)

When you create a new campaign you will notice the 2 options : ‘keword-targeted’ or ‘placement-targeted’. Your choice.

I’ve never had much luck with placement-targeted campaigns - yet.

Make sure you choose keyword targeted.

If you choose placement targeted then you have no need for keywords.

When I use text ads for search and content my list of keywords is much smaller and much more targeted and the same key words appear in the ad text - especially the title. I have one ad group for banner ads and one for text. Of course with banner ads the default bid for search doesn’t apply so it doesn’t really matter what bid you put in there. With content I put in a much higher bid to start with until I have at least 20 clicks and can look at the stats: IMP/CPC/CTR etc. over a few days I can usually get the bid down to where I want it.

Hope that answer your question.

hi

well guys thanks to you all for introducing this tip and providing feedback about its succes, i have tried 2000 normal keywords with 8 image ads. in 2 weeks i managed 200+ visits for my adsense revenue site http://www.indian-dollars.com , targeted only to india , pakistan ,srilanka,nepal, and turkey right now.so on average i am getting 20%more in adsense in whatever amount invested in adwords. I hope the impressions will increase with little changes.
thanks to u all for sharing info.

Ok guys - well it’s the 3rd month of the 1cent click project and I’ve split tested heaps and learned heaps. I’m now paying nothing for one campaign & 1 to 5 cents for others.

I’ve also come up with a nice plan to get traffic to an Adsense Arbitrage page. Find a term that has little or no competition i.e one not associated with affiliate program or commerce etc. e.g a banner for a non profit organization - get people to a review page for that organization - your own blog etc. Make the banner look proffessional and make sure you have some useful keyword rich info to offer your visitors. Make sure your page is optimized for adsense. Anyways it’s working for me on some other Adsense Arbitrage campaigns.

You might even be able to ask some non profit organizations for professional banners - tell them you’re doing a review site for that topic - just an idea.

Cheers,

Paul

P.s - make sure you have outgoing links to sites/pages with simlar topics - in an inconspicuous font & I’m not talking about black hating techniques really - I’m not.

Wow!!! sounds like a good idea. I’ve spent so much on Adwords but hardly ever make any profit. I’ll give this trick a try as soon as I can but that means I’m going to have to learn to use photoshop. Should be fun…

Just an update - today I started getting cheaper clicks - 63 cents for 211 clicks. However, the others are still averaging 3 cents a click

Re Banners - if you are promoting for affiliate programs and they provide you with banners you just have to save the banner and then upload it when you create your image ad. Some times I have to edit them with phixr.com - the banner size may say it’s 728 x 90 when in fact it is 730 x 90 - Google won’t accept it. I’ve also made a lot of my own banners on free sites like phixr.com.

Anyways,

Cheers - and all the best