Making money from AdSense with AdWords traffic

[newsguy]

I've read on WebmasterWorld of a few people who have managed to actually turn a good profit using AdWords to send traffic to AdSense pages.

Has anyone here been able to accomplish that? My own small trials have not worked, even when using high paying AdSense ads.

[hassleback]

Nah, just go ahead and click on the ads on your sites. And ask your friends and family to do the same. It's only fair, after you've spent so much time and effort. Just don't overdo it, and nobody will mind.

[keywordseo]

no clicking on your own ads, will get you ban, thousands of users have been banned before.

People are making money, some are making 1-2k a month.
It takes time, as with you I'm still learning lots

[AussieWebmaster]

Nah, just go ahead and click on the ads on your sites. And ask your friends and family to do the same. It's only fair, after you've spent so much time and effort. Just don't overdo it, and nobody will mind.
I take it that was a joke...

[Jenstar]

People are successfully buying Adwords and directing them (within the terms) to AdSense. It tends to take a lot of babysitting (especially during weekends and holidays), since your AdSense EPC will fluctuate depending on what the advertisers are paying at the time. And you have to be able to buy the traffic as low as possible - if you get more advertisers bidding on your same keywords, you can lose the profitability and traffic to your AdSense.

[Dave Hawley]

I've read on WebmasterWorld of a few people who have managed to actually turn a good profit using AdWords to send traffic to AdSense pages I am pretty sure this is against the Term & Conditions you must agree to when using AdSense. IMO, it's very poor advice and I'm suprised a forum (of any repute) would allow any such suggestion.

[Jenstar]

I know the AdSense terms and policies inside and out (and I am sure others here can attest to my knowledge of them as well), and there is nothing in them that prevents a publisher from buying Adwords and sending the Adwords traffic to pages with AdSense on them - you aren't encouraging those visitors to click on the AdSense, but you are hoping they do. There are plenty of things you can do that are well within the terms/policies increase your CTR, and make it more likely for one of those visitors to click an AdSense ad.

The only way it would be against the terms is if you were encouraging or inciting clicks on those pages with AdSense, such as labelling the ads with "Click here" or "Please support the site and visit our advertisers".

I have seen many sites doing the "in with Adwords, out with AdSense" thing, and they are well within the AdSense terms and policies.

[Dave Hawley]

They are loosely worded and very much open ended, as most T&C are. I will contct Google via my AdSense account and ask them the question directly. I will post the reply as soon as I get it.

[AussieWebmaster]

Why would they care... if the content on the page supports the AdWords. The hardest part is finding alternative words that you are not getting the ads served from in your adsense program.

You get a percentage of the income.... so if you pay 50 cents but the click is only worth 25 cents to you in AdSense it would be a losing proposition and also require a 100% conversion rate.

True you could take the low traffic from AdWords at say 10 cents a click but that still requires a high conversion rate.

You are far better served buying traffic from the lesser engines where you can get a click for a penny and have a lot more room to make profits.

You also need to get agressive with optimization to grab the free traffic.

But if you start aggregating results and not measuring each source for its true ROI then you may be losing money by doing the AdWords spend without realizing it.

[Jenstar]

The hardest part is finding alternative words that you are not getting the ads served from in your adsense program.

Mis-spellings and multiple keyword phrases are key in the "in with Adwords, out with AdSense" strategy. You aren't going to be making any money by bidding on the big money keywords, and very rarely by bidding on anything much higher than minimum bids.. unless you are getting them to exit with big money AdSense ads.

[AussieWebmaster]

Mis-spellings and multiple keyword phrases are key in the "in with Adwords, out with AdSense" strategy. You aren't going to be making any money by bidding on the big money keywords, and very rarely by bidding on anything much higher than minimum bids.. unless you are getting them to exit with big money AdSense ads.
But what is stopping Google from having those mutliple keyword phrases as part of what is sent to the page also? Then you would have to hope for enough of the high end keywords converting.

[Jenstar]

But what is stopping Google from having those mutliple keyword phrases as part of what is sent to the page also? Then you would have to hope for enough of the high end keywords converting.

That is why this method needs careful optimization for AdSense as well as constant babysitting. Most don't want to babysit this kind of thing, so there are not too many out there using this method. Which also means if someone has the time and is willing to put the in the effort, there still has got to me some nice niches out there for using this method on.

[AussieWebmaster]

Hey whatever works right... obviously this would be done in conjunction with other marketing efforts... all of which are watched so it's not like you need more sets of eyes.

[Dave Hawley]

Hi Jenstar

You really do know the TC inside-out :) See reply from Google below;Hello Dave,

Thank you for your email.

Please feel free to utilize our AdWords service to help advertise your
site using AdSense. We recommend that you review our Terms and
Conditions(www.google.com/adsense/terms) if you have any additional
questions about our program policies.

I may give this a bash. I guess however, one should only bid the Min, or close to it?

[Jenstar]

>> one should only bid the Min, or close to it?

Yes, at least to start with, and until you get a handle on your CTR and EPC. You can start bidding a bit higher once you know you will be able to cover it with your CTR & EPC.

Do use all of your channels so you can keep better track of what is making you money and what isn't.

[Dave Hawley]

Thanks Jenstar

[inlogicalbearer]

There a lot of peoples using Adwords to drive traffic to their page with no navigation and with Adsense ads for terms who involved lawyers case.

A hint : "Mesothelioma". One of this advertiser is there since a month without been ban for that practice.

[KeywordMonkey]

Using Adwords to gain traffic for pages you have monetized using Adsense is new to many I know, but driving traffic to pages via PPC and having PPC results on it too certainly isn't

There are many sites that use Adwords on medium to low CPC terms to drive traffic to pages with more expensive PPC results from Overture, Espotting-FindWhat etc in the UK and US. So a (made-up) example is "cheap DVD players" on Adwords >>> Overture results for "DVD players" on a page that also has some reviews or similar content etc. (Not to mention the inevitable Amazon/eBay affiliate links).

Several of the meta search engines do this - e.g. Dogpile and Info.com, to raise their traffic, brand awarness and earn revenue.

Of course, the trick as noted above is baby sitting the right keywords and having enough on-page content to get past human editors (if you buy traffic in from Overture etc. too).

[keywordseo]

I'm actually just working on the keyword now, yeah Ive noticed lots of pages that have adsense on their pages using the word Mesothelioma
Though I wonder how many of those companies offer lawyer services for Mesothelioma cases.

There are now close to a hundred ads for this subject, so many that most would probably make a few cents a click on this ad. The few that do have the top 5 Mesothelioma high paying ads would be raking it in, especially if they are in the top 10 of google for a related keyword.

$$$

[Buddha]

I've done this before. It's basically search arbitrage. If you already make decent $, it's prolly not worth your time.

Key Things-
- Look for a niche with relatively few advertisers, large gap between the #1 bid and #20 bid, and broad KW base. #1-3 bids should be over $1.
- Bid the min and track your ROI carefully.
- Caution: I woudn't bid on 3rd tier PPC engines, only G/OV.

If you are really good, u can make a few grand a month.

[cline]

I've done it a couple times. In one case it had positive ROI before management costs -- which easily wiped out the revenue. Of course, if the marginal value of your time is next to nothing, it would be profitable.

In another case I put Adsense on an ecommerce site that was getting requests for items that were not sold on the site (nor which the site owner ever wished to sell). There it was a killer app. It allowed us to monetize traffic we were already paying to get via PPC. This allowed us to increase bids on the PPC traffic and bring even more traffic in. See article about this: Monetizing Non-converting Traffic with Adsense (http://www.highrankings.com/issue097.htm#guest) .

[alxgb]

after reading this thread I decided to give this a shot.

after 4 days I've made a profit of $2.50. That was for 1 campaign with about 6 keywords.

now if I can recreated this on 100 campaigns I'll be happy...

[Jenstar]

You will probably see even more profit in January when bidding gets back to normal. Things are very skewed right now in many markets due to the holidays.

[KellySEM]

If you are going to purchase AdWords results to drive traffic to your AdSense ads, be very careful about how you do so. If you direct users from your AdWords ad to a page with no links other than AdSense ads, Google will remove your AdWords ad -- particularly if another advertiser notices and complains to them about a poor user experience (I've complained about some obviously bad pages that are giving users the ad runaround and they were removed, and an overall policy on determining acceptable vs. not uses of AdWords & AdSense is being debated at Google right now). If the page has many navigation options and AdSense is just one of them, and has relevant, value add content, then you will probably be fine.

[Jenstar]

Yes, I am definitely referring to running AdSense on pages within the AdSense terms. This "in with Adwords, out with AdSense" can be used successfully, even when there are other external non-paid links as well as true quality content on the page.

[mindstream]

I made around 5 dollars a day with 10 dollar to spend so 5 dollar a profit a day. After 2 weeks or something like the adsense just went down to 2 dollar or something and the adword was still on 10 dollar a day. I did not change anything and i have the same amount of clicks i do not know what happend? anyone?

:confused:

[Patrick Berry]

the new adwords minimum bids may place a very server squeeze on this arbitrage.

we will have to wait and see.

[AussieWebmaster]

the new adwords minimum bids may place a very server squeeze on this arbitrage.

we will have to wait and see.
The minimum bids are not what you think. Basically everything will remain the same as this is geared more towards the disabling process that tends to happen for large impressioned words (100s of thousands of impressions for search each month).... there are way too many different phrases used and the searcher jumps past the PPC to the organic which in this case falls closer to relevant results.

[Whitecell]

Choice of keywords is very important if you are doing something like this. I tried this way back when i just stepped into IM world.

I made a a good page on Dating and websites specializing in it (Hey! Dont laugh) :D and promoted it via Adwords, brought 5 cent traffic. Added some Adsense Rectangle blocks and signed up as affiliate to all the websites.

Google has a vast content network now and it can get your ads exhausted within seconds. So, put a "Maximum budget" on every Ad you place on Adwords.

Such a stupid keyword like Dating brought loads of traffic. I wasnet profited by it much tho...but I was not in the loss either.
TIP : you can also use other Advertisement networks to bring paid traffic to your Adsense targettin pages. Why spend 5 cents on Adwords wen you can bring same amount of traffic in 1 cent?

Lastely, Expeiment with your Adsense block layouts to ain maximum CTR. If you are getting 2% CTR, and a new setting boosts it to 10%, That equals boost of 500% in traffic.

Best of luck in your mission to rob google. :D

[AussieWebmaster]

Best of luck in your mission to rob google. :D

I would not call it robbing... more arbitraging price differentials... also Google makes out on the deal... it is the advertisers that pay...

[Whitecell]

AussieWebmaster, robbing thing was a joke only. :D

You said it, Google must secretly smiling at thing methodology people have opted. This is what you can call "recycling the traffic"

[IncrediBILL]

Buying AdWords to earn with AdSense only makes sense if you're getting either really high paying or a high CTR, and preferrably both.

At the minimum bid of $0.05 it will cost you $50 to get 1,000 visitors.

If you only have a 10% CTR thats only 100 people clicking.

On my site with an average of $0.20 CPC it would make $20 by spending $50.

A $30 loss, not smart math, maybe on something that pays better :)

[AussieWebmaster]

Buying AdWords to earn with AdSense only makes sense if you're getting either really high paying or a high CTR, and preferrably both.

At the minimum bid of $0.05 it will cost you $50 to get 1,000 visitors.

If you only have a 10% CTR thats only 100 people clicking.

On my site with an average of $0.20 CPC it would make $20 by spending $50.

A $30 loss, not smart math, maybe on something that pays better :)

In your case you want to find .01 traffic maybe from the smaller engines. Or get better words on ther page and have a .60 CPC payout.

[IncrediBILL]

In your case you want to find .01 traffic maybe from the smaller engines. Or get better words on ther page and have a .60 CPC payout.

I've seen various ads on my site pay anywhere from $0.03 , $0.80 and even $4.50 CPC but it's a wide variety as my site blankets a niche market and everything averages out to about $0.20 at the end of the day.

I get the highs and the lows but with about 2 million pages views a month and over a thousand click thrus a day I haven't felt the need to buy traffic just yet.

[AussieWebmaster]

I've seen various ads on my site pay anywhere from $0.03 , $0.80 and even $4.50 CPC but it's a wide variety as my site blankets a niche market and everything averages out to about $0.20 at the end of the day.

I get the highs and the lows but with about 2 million pages views a month and over a thousand click thrus a day I haven't felt the need to buy traffic just yet.

Nice traffic must be an impressively sized site with numerous niched pages and great SERPs

[IncrediBILL]

Nice traffic must be an impressively sized site with numerous niched pages and great SERPs

Only a modest 400K visitors a month with around 40K pages according to Yahoo as Google seems to undercount.