What can be done with AdWords and a blog?

[emilyjane2203]

I am very, very green

I found this forum today and have been reading a lot (thanks to everyone it's really useful). I feel completely out of my depth! There is a lot of stuff on here about building websites, which seems to be necessary at some point if you really want to succeed. I'm a very long way off building a website, though! I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I have started with adwords campaigns over the past week, researching a lot and experimenting but can't seem to figure out how to get these to make money. I've tried lots of different products (from clickbank and paydotcom). I've got some time off work and study so I've been working 10-13 hours a day on this for the last three days - with a lot of that time spent on research - so my poor results are not due to a lack of trying!

I'm wondering if money can be made out of a blog and adwords and the basic steps involved. I've been reading stuff about finding a niche. Is that where I need to begin and then design a blog around that niche? If so, how do I then get traffic to that blog?

Help!

I'd really like to be able to offer something in return, even if it's just generally contributing to the forum.

Thanks everyone!

Emily

 

[oracleofmist]

Adwords won't really help you generate money unless you are already bringing a good amount of money in, considering you have to spend money everyday to get your ads out there on google, play with keywords and targeting, etc. Also, your adwords placement competes with everyone else trying to do the same thing as you do and I belive google has a little widget that tells you what you are competing with. If you can't outspend your competitors you will not get as many impressions. Of course, spending isn't the only way google ranks your ads, time is another big factor, like how long you have been runniing a campaign, etc.

Everyone plays with Google's search engine SEO (search engine optimization) which doesn't really cost anything aside from hosting costs for your site, etc, and a little more accurate term would be SEM (search engine marketing which takes advantage of SEO to drive traffic). These will probably net you better in the beginning as you are not established in your given market that you decided to venture out into. You'll have better luck starting a blog or two, cross referencing them and just spending time building your size. Social bookmarking and posting up on social sites (twitter, facebook, myspace, mybloglog <----a really good one for aggregating content). Once you start pulling in traffic and a little income, then try your hand at adwords.

I hope this helps

Regards,

Jamey

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Emily,

It sounds to me like you are just experimenting with and throwing money at Adwords. Making money with PPC is part art and luck but mainly science and there are many elements to learn to be able to make a profit.

If you don't have a site then you are direct linking to merchant. That poses a problem on Google as they only allow one ad per domain so if 3 other affiliates are bidding on that keyword for that merchant your ad will likely not even show because they probably had better quality scores.

So yes a blog is a good strategy. The VERY BASIC STEPS WOULD BE:

1) Find a niche - yes it's critical to get the right one or all your efforts could be in vane.

2) Set up a free blog on blogger. Better yet buy a domain ($9 a year), get hosting ($10 or less a month) and set up a Wordpress blog (free)

3) Traffic - you get traffic by writing keyword rich articles for your blog that people in your niche could be searching for. That takes knowing how to do KW research and knowing a little about SEO (Search engine optimization) so you can get your blog articles high enough in the search engines that people will find them. You can also comment on other blogs in your niche, join forums and social networks in your niche and post informative info that makes people want to click the link in your sig to visit your site. (Those are just quick ideas, we have tons of threads about specific ways to generate traffic, once you are at that stage, don't worry about it now)

That's just VERY basic and there are a ton of variables and different options.
Instead of getting overwhelmed with the details I'd just go one step at a time and 1st work on finding a niche.

Read the stickies in the niche forum and write down every idea you think of for a possible niche. Do a personal inventory to try to find things you know about OR are passionate about OR really want to learn more about. Remember a niche is not a broad market. Ideally you want to find a small subset of people who have a strong need for information about a specific topic or are passionate about it or have needs that you can provide a solution for.

After you get a list of possible ideas for niches, then do keyword research following the example in the link below. The goal is to evaluate 1) is there interest? Are people searching for it 2) Weighed against how competitive the market is and therefore how hard it would be to get exposure and traffic.

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/11829-best-5-star-tips-how-posts.html">Step by step Key word research to evaluate niche</a>

After you go through the process above and narrow it down to a niche then ask us more specific Qs if you have them about blogger/vs your own domain, or how to pick a good domain name or whatever and we'll help you with your next steps.

 

[oracleofmist]

if you're looking for cheap hosting with good quality I would start at godaddy as they have good deals on domain/hosting combos and cheap hosting (i currently use their 4.95 plan for personal stuff that isn't affiliate related)

 

[Rob_TID]

If you're experimenting, you're ahead of 90% of the population who wants to do this.

Yes, a blog is a very viable way to put up a site and adwords is a very viable way to drive traffic to that blog.

 

[Rob_TID]

Very Important: If you are using adwords, you NEED to be tracking which keywords lead to a sale.

 

[emilyjane2203]

Hi guys,

thanks so much. Your posts were exactly what I needed to know. I've got one AdWords campaign that I started yesterday and after about 270 clicks has made a sale (woohoo!) so I'll persist with it, refine it and see if I can make it consistently profitable in the long run - if nothing else it's a good learning exercise.

Rob, I have definitely been paying a lot of attention to keywords but I'm not sure how to find the ones that actually lead to a sale as opposed to just generating clicks.

Meanwhile I'll get cracking on my niche...

Thanks again,

Emily

 

[Rob_TID]

Emily,

Firstly, CONGRATULATIONS!!!! It took me a HELL of a lot longer than three days to make my first sale.

But now, this is your situation: You are spending money on 30 keywords (or however many). Only one of them is proven to convert into sales.

But you don't know which one!!

You need to know that keyword 1 was the sale maker - this is hugely important information or you will keep wasting money on keywords 2-30 and that may bring your entire campaign into the red (though you need to gather enough data to make it statistically relevant)

I think your next task should be learning how to track keywords.

You need to read about tracking campaigns with SubIDs

 

[emilyjane2203]

The story so far...

Thanks for the info on tracking with SubIds, Rob. I've been doing some reading and I can definitely see how they could make or break an AdWords campaign. I still have a bit of researching to do, though, I get lost with some of the jargon.

Linda, I've been through the steps of finding a niche and found my niche! That post was very helpful, really easy to follow and I NEVER would have figure that out on my own.

And I've been making a webiste! I clicked on the link for free websites in Jamey's signature and went and got myself one. To be clear, I decided to look at it out of my own volition (I wasn't prompted or directed there and I'm certainly not an affiliate for the free website site). It was actually really easy to use and made a decent looking website. I know this paragraph may have to be removed, but if it's allowed to stay it could really help some other newbies because it really is free and if I can manage to use it sucessfully anyone can.

So, for any other complete newbies that are following this thread here are my tips:

1. You really can do without the ebooks, I've learnt more on here in two days than I did with three ebooks.

2. Don't do what I did and get all gung ho and try to do everything all at once. It's really tempting to want to get things up and running right away but you will save time in the long haul if you do the preparation. Another reason the ebooks suck, they all make you feel like you can do it right this minute and then when it doesn't work you feel like it must be something wrong with you.

3. If you're computer illiterate like myself and you're writing text for your website do it in word first. I was taking ages researching stuff and the website making thing timed out and I lost about two hours of work. Haha. Even if I don't have much to offer on here knowlegewise I should keep everyone entertained with my rookie's mistakes.

Thanks again Rob, Linda and Jamey for your advice, it really is most appreciated.

I'm going to finish my site tomorrow and hopefully I can post it on the review bit on here soon.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Linda, I've been through the steps of finding a niche and found my niche! That post was very helpful, really easy to follow and I NEVER would have figure that out on my own.

1. You really can do without the ebooks, I've learnt more on here in two days than I did with three ebooks.

Even if I don't have much to offer on here knowlegewise I should keep everyone entertained with my rookie's mistakes.

Congrats on finding your niche and I'm glad our info has been so helpful. Your writing is very entertaining - not because of your mistakes but because you are a good writer. For other newbies though learning through the mistakes you make and are willing to share can be an invaluable lesson. We I look forward to hearing your progress.

 

[Anomaly]

Thanks for your posts ...

It's always great to see new people find their way ... and best of all it opens the eyes of some of us not so new folks as sometimes it's all too easy to forget the basics ...

may the first sale turn into many - we both know it will!!

 

[emilyjane2203]

Thanks, Anomaly.

I've finished the first draft of my website, which I'll put in the reviews section in a moment.

I've actually really enjoyed researching my niche and putting together a site that hopefully provides people some useful information as well as flogging stuff.

So I think my next moves should be:
* Improve the website as much as possible - I think I might need to focus a bit more on the selling of stuff because I got carried away with finding good information and didn't really say that much about the products. Hopefully the reviews will help me figure out what needs improving.

* Get some traffic! This is the bit that is daunting. Lucking I found a niche that is specific enough to not have too much competition, even in the adwords bit so I've made a little adwords campaign for my site as a starting point, and I've already had a click (very exciting). But what next? These are the things I've been reading about but I'm not sure where to start or even how to start:

- SEO - there's so much to consider here. All I know is that at this stage I have a crappy domain name. I've tried to make the content of my site keyword rich and I've submitted keywords and stuff to search engines (that bit came with the free website service) but not sure what to do next, or if my site is doomed due to my poor choice of domain name.

- Articles - writing the articles will be the easy bit. Where are the best places to publish to generate traffic?

 

[Joseph Ratliff]

Emily,

A couple of things about Google Adwords that you might wish to use...

1) Target the merchant's site for keywords. In the Google Adwords keyword tool, there is an option for putting in a website instead of listing words to gain keyword ideas from.

2) Remember this: Keywords --> Ads --> Landing Page (your blog or website).

The relationship between the three is important to Google...so therefore when you're using Google Adwords, it should be important to you too. You benefit from higher Click Through Rate (CTR)...and if your page converts, higher conversions.

One tip I will offer here is to write your ads for less keywords...think about it this way, how could you write such a small ad that is relevant to 50 keywords? There's almost no possible way in such a small space right?

So...

Write your ads for 1 - 3 keywords (and all variations)...where these keywords also are the predominant keywords on your landing page.

An example if you're not familiar with "all the variations"...

My big long keyword phrase
"My big long keyword phrase"
[My big long keyword phrase]

The quotes and brackets tell Google to match the "exact search" and [all the words] in the keyword phrase.

Make sure your keyword shows up in your ad, and on your landing page.

Then, one final tip...

Think "action" keywords. You don't want people who are "thinking about" doing something, you want people who are in the process of doing something right?

Here are some action words to consider...

"How to __________"
"Fix ______________"
"Buy _____________"

There's a TON more, but I will leave it to you to get creative!

Ahhh...one more thing...

Negative keywords.

Yep...there are keywords you should include in your keywords list to eliminate "freebie seekers" (UNLESS your campaign is needing freebie seekers, which is possible).

-get ___________ free
-free _____________
-free _____________ download

Notice the little negative symbol? Put that in front of your "negative" phrases...and Google WON'T show your ads when someone searches for them. It will "qualify out" those that won't be interested in your offer any how.

There you go Emily, hope that helps! Enjoy.