I've spent a whole tonne of money on Adwords before.

For my first few businesss ventures, I tried a few loony projects involving a combination of premium rate phone lines, singing competitions and selling topical mousemats (of which I still have 750 in the attic) which I promoted heavily using Adwords and lost a packet.

Since then I've tried PPC campaigns for affiliate marketing and usually broke even or made a loss. I've tried direct to merchant (with Amazon) and going through landing pages and not really made much headway.

So I'm pleased to be able to able to report that a recent project has worked quite nicely over the course of the last 4 weeks.

I picked a merchant with large catalogue of items within its sector, and then built a site around a niche area within that sector and extracted the relevant items from their product feed. Without wanting to be too cryptic, the items I'm pushing are actually not the items that the merchant would probably most like to promote as they sell other competing items that are worth more to them. But there's a demand for the items I'm promoting and I'm making it easier for people to find them rather than being pushed towards the competing items that the merchant would probably sooner they buy. In doing so, I think I'm kind of solving a problem, in that I'm making i easier for consumers to find a specific range without being sidetracked.

Anyways, to the numbers: Spent a little under £200 in Adwords and have made about £450 in sales (and there's a lengthy cookie so the ROI could be greater yet). I'll be looking to see if I can gradually decrease the cost of my average click in Adwords too.

New Vaio

I'm moderately excited that this is the first blog post I've written from my shiney new Sony Vaio which I took delivery off about an hour ago. I had a couple of laptops stolen from my car car last year, so it's nice to be able to get back to a bit of portable computing though my plan to get a 3g datacard has taken a knock since i just realised the laptop doesn't have a PCMCIA slot!

Labels: adwords, google, ppc

The affiliate blogosphere is still buzzing with the news that Google is going to open its beta cost-per-action platform to content publishers and Adwords advertisers.

It seems to me that that Adsense has an awfully big reach and there's a lot of small time website owners out there who will be happy to add these CPA ads to their websites and will effectively be entering the affiliate marketing tent - albeit at the blunt end of how we understand affiliate marketing at the moment, and lacking the nuanced, relationship based approach that many are used to.

Publishers will be able to select relevant products and services from a base of Adwords advertisers and put related adverts on their site. We don't know yet which form the adverts will take, but looking at Adsense Referrals, they started with banners and moved onto text ads (albeit still Javascript generated) to meet publisher demands.

Assuming it's a success - and I'll assume for now it will be - and more people will be taking notice of the pay per performance model, what will follow?

Sure, I don't see this in anyway killing off (all of) the current affiliate networks - although maybe it will cause some consolidation. It will lack the human networking factor that allows new partnerships to develop and flourish. It will be lacking, to begin with I'm sure, the more advanced tools like data feeds (unless they go the whole hog and bring out web services and an API). Super affiliates, and those aiming to be so, and technically advanced affiliates will surely demand more than Google is likely to be offering and I imagine that's where the affiliate networks should position themselves.

But if enough publishers and advertisers take up with Google's offering, maybe the centre of gravity in the CPA space will shift in that direction and the alternative networks should be looking at sharpening their technical lead to make sure they have a sufficiently advanced offering to keep the interest of publishers. This might be the kick up the backside they need to offer better tools to publishers and the clever ones may even benefit from gaining new publishers who have had their appetite whetted by what Google has offered, and now want to take it to the next level.

Whatever happens, it's sure to be an interesting. As I alluded to yesterday, my best success online has been with Adsense Referrals and I'll certainly be excited to see the platform expand to include more products and services.

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network, google

Google Adsense Referrals has been a massive hit for me and probably the single most successful piece of online marketing I've done in terms of revenue.

So I'm very excited by this announcement from Google on the Inside Adsense blog that they are now accepting applications for a new referrals beta which will have a much bigger pool of products and services available to refer, drawing on their base of Adwords advertisers.

More from the annoucement:

This is good news for those of you who have wanted to use referrals in the past, but couldn't find a product to match your site's content. With the referrals beta, you can search for products that match up directly with your site's content. And you can customize your referral units to match the look and feel of your site, making it easier than ever to find a referral ad that fits in seamlessly with your site's design and content.

At the moment you can refer Firefox, Google Pack, Picasa, Adwords and Adsense through Google referrals. The chance to open this up to a wider and even more interesting selection is great. The brilliant thing about referrals is you can actively promote and advocate the products to your users and encourage them to click and download, which is obviously well suited to affiliate marketers for whom writing compelling presell and copy which leads visitors in a certain direction has always been part of the job.

I've just applied to join the beta and hope to get in on it, although it's open to a limited few at the moment with everyone being able to join later so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm in the "everyone-later" group.

One observation about the beta sign up - it looks like it was thrown up in a hurry. There's a typo on the page and it's not even integrated into Adsense - you have to manually go and retrieve a publisher ID in order to complete the sign-up.

[Edit]

I think in this post I think I probably thought too much about this as simply an extension of Adsense Referrals and not enough about how Google's move into further into the CPA space might have a wider effect on affiliate marketing. Check out these posts from other blogs for more useful perpectives on this:

http://www.here.org.uk/2007/03/google-launch-pay-per-action-today.html
http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/google-affiliate-program-20/
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/2007/03/20/google-cpa-launches/

Labels: adsense, google, referrals

I am now very fond of the Adsense Notifer add on for Firefox, which was recommended to my by Keith Bond.

The latest Adsense earnings figure sits in the bottom right hand corner of my Firefox window, almost directly above my system clock.

I was treated to a rare sighting of what I call the Adsense Eclipse today when chronology and monetisation formed a perfect union, with the system time and Adsense earnings falling directly into line with each other.

I've had this a couple of times now, but usually it's near misses. My optimal viewing time for the Adsense Eclipse is between 11:00 and 12:00. Any later than that and I don't want to see it occur at all.

Labels: adsense, google

I stopped using Adwords quite a while ago, but recently have been starting to dabble again, partly to make some money and partly because it is actually quite fun.

I picked a merchant where linking direct to the site was allowed and setup some campaigns. I created a tracking URL of my own to receive the click, insert the details into a database and mail me them to me too, before directing the user to intended destination. I like to have stats in real time as far as possible so this seems a nice way to do it, and also it exposes me to the full referral url data which is great for learning about search terms.

One of the thing that's most annoying is of course repeat clickers. I guess the odd repeat click has to be accepted as part of the user behaviour for some indecisive users, but anything over 4 clicks and I get very suspicious.

So what do you when you're getting repeat clicked?

First thing I do is make sure a warning is displayed. This probably doesn't sit will with Google but it's my money going down the drain, so my tracking link counts the clicks from a single IP source in a time span and will display an warning message alerting them to the fact that the repeat clicks have been detected.

Next thing I do is go into Sherlock Holmes mode, and crack open a command box and enter tracert [IP Address]. At the least this will tell you their ISP, but it can also possibly tell you a lot more sometimes revealing the organisation they're from, if they're on a company network.

When enough details have been logged, I pass them onto Adwords Support for them to investigate.

There are some caveats with these methods: Some ISPs, such as AOL, use proxy servers which means that some or all their users may appear to be from the same few IP addresses, so this is a less than perfect method. But when it's your money, doing nothing doesn't seem like an option. So what do you do to deal with competitor click fraud?

Labels: adwords, click fraud, google

I blogged a few months ago about a website I had called Problem Exchange that was built with worthy intentions and was doing kind of okay traffic wise, but just seemed impossible to monetise. I tried AdSense, Amazon links and affiliate network links but nothing was working.

The site had been using a three column design, with most of my advertising attempts placed in a 120 pixel width column on the right-hand side.

I recently changed the layout to a two column design with a large right-hand column. I've brought the AdSense unit into the main content area and placed it alongside an entry form. Rather than the 120x600 unit I was using, I've go a 300x250 banner. Since making that change, the website has provided a regular stream of AdSense clicks and has become one of my most reliable and consistent earners.

You can see from the picture below where I've placed the AdSense unit. Please excuse the Valentine's Day decorations-my users a demanding bunch and always liked their seasonal decorations on the site.



One of the exciting things about this kind of affiliate marketing in general is in seeing how minor tweaks to the layout and presentation of information can have a direct effect on human behaviour.

Labels: adsense, google

I'll just concentrate on Adsense for this earnings update, as that remains my biggest earner by quite some way.

In this type of update post, I debate with myself whether to just state the actual numbers but I think you reach a certain point when you're doing kind of well when it seems a bit inappropriate to say how much exactly you've made. Although there's another stage where your earnings are so phenomenal you just have to tell the world - but I'm not quite there yet!

Anyways, so here's a percentage break down of how I did in January compared to the previous month, and the same month a year ago.

	Compared to Last Month	Compared to 12 Months Ago
Adsense for Content	+47.87%	-10.98%
Adsense for Search	+98.12%	+268.50%
Adsense for Referrals	+1.37%	+89.66%
Totals	+20.38%	+21.72%

I find doing this update really useful because it reminds me that actually I was doing better with Adsense for Content a year ago, but because Referral units took up the slack and pushed my earnings forward, I lost sight of other sites which have had an earnings decrease.

When you make quite a few sites, its easy to lose interest in older sites which once earned OK money. So my task for February is to spend sometime everyday revisiting some of the sites that are earning less than they were to see if they can be dusted down and made useful again.

Labels: adsense, earnings, google

Wow, what was happening yesterday? Traffic to nearly all my sites down, click rates were down and the clicks that did come in made only a bit more than diddly squat. It was actually the worst day on Adsense I can ever remember.

January still on course to be a very good month despite that blip, but what a seriously depressing day yesterday was for Adsense.

Labels: adsense, google

It's been well commented upon in the blogosphere that Google has revised its Adsense program policies.

I was just reading through them and one thing jumped off at the page on me.

Publishers participating in the AdSense program:

• May not direct user attention to the ads via arrows or other graphical gimmicks

I think it would be fair to say that my recent experiment including a "post it note" style image as a background could be construed as a graphical gimmick to attract user attention.... so not only did the post it ads not manage to muster any improvements, they may well earn a ban from Adsense. Conclusion: don't do it.

Labels: adsense, google

I blogged last week about how I was trying out a new tactic: putting Adsense ads on a post it note style background. I was running the ads across a couple of sites, and after being live for very close to a week, I thought I'd review how they performed.

The results are, unfortunately, disappointing dull. The ads didn't deliver any particularly noteworthy percentage increase at all. Looking at the specific channel data and comparing days from last week with the same days during the week before, some days CTRs were up slightly, some days down slightly, some days about the same. Certainly there was no consistent and clear increase.

I'll keep running them for a bit because I think they happen to look nice on the page, but they didn't deliver the kind of results I had hoped for.

Labels: adsense, experiment, google

I saw a post the other day (sorry, can't remember where) asking how often people checked their Adsense stats, and it's a question I've seen before on various forums.

I'm unashamed to say, I check them continuously. It's probably the first thing I do when get to the PC in the morning, and the last thing I do when I quit for the day. And in between those two points, I check them often. Like more than several times an hour.

Sometimes I'll be on the Adsense stats page and I'll instinctively click it again in my bookmarks, despite the fact I'm already looking at it.

Sometimes if I suspect the stats are lagging even a bit, I'll sign in from a different browser. Or sign in from a different PC. Or I'll do a custom report and switch from Today to This Month or vica versa in the belief that it's holding back on me and not showing me everything it knows (it works, too!).

I suppose this Adsense addiction could be construed as a waste of time and I could be creating content. But seeing the money coming in is the spur I need to go make some more content.

Also I have various benchmarks that I look for throughout the day. I know what I expect to have earnt through Adsense at pretty much every hour of the working day, so I like to check up and make sure I'm on target and where I expect to be for that time of day. If things are going well by noon, I might have a particularly extravagant sandwich when I get lunch.

And whilst I do use various traffic instruments, like AWstats, Google Analytics or even just plain IIS log reading, Adsense still serves as a pretty useful ad hoc page impression counter so it gives me a nice general overview of how my sites are performing traffic wise which is useful to keep an eye on.

All that talking about checking my Adsense stats has made me want to, well, check my Adsense stats!

Labels: adsense, google

Google is always saying to play with the position and colours of your adverts to see if you can improve click through rates. I've seen a couple of sites which have used background images to create effects around Adsense images to really draw the readers attention to them.

I thought I would give it a go and a created an image looking vaguely like a post it note. I've made that the background image for a DIV and put the Adsense code on to create a rather nice looking effect. See from the picture on the right how it looks different from a plain Adsense unit I used previously. I double checked Google's recently policiy clarification about Adsense and images and think this is all quite safe. I'll report back on if it proves successful.

Labels: adsense, experiment, google

MSN's search engine has always been a friend of mine. Whilst Google was a tough nut to crack, MSN was easier to optimise for I found. The traffic was lower than an equivalent position in Google, but it was enough to make it a worthwhile strategy.

So I loved MSN and accepted that Google wasn't being kind to me. But so far in 2007, things have changed around in dramatic fashion.

I noticed a few months ago that I had lost some good positions on MSN for sites I had about bikes and toys, which was particularly disappointing with Xmas approaching. I've looked into a bit further and found that at least 3 of my sites have now vanished from the MSN index altogether. I'll follow their advice for getting sites reincluded, but it seems my luck with MSN came to an abrupt halt.

But as one door closes, another one opens. I noticed the other day that one of my sites was now #1 for a generic technology search term I had been chasing for quite a while. I just noticed today that another site of mine has managed exactly the same thing and is now also enjoying top status in the UK results for an excellent search term. It actually feels great to have seen these sites gradually move up the rankings to where they are rather than have some overnight success which might have felt more precarious.

I always knew me and Google were destined for a beautiful friendship - it just took the big G a bit longer to realise than I had hoped!

I actually have a theory that once you get to the top spot, it's easier to stay there too, for this reason: Have you ever had to quickly compile a list of links related to a subject? It might be a subject you don't know much about so you may not have any knowledge of specific sites to recommend. And being in a hurry and maybe a tad lazy, you just search for that subject and figure that the top sites must be there for a reason and just use them for your links. So I'm thinking that you can expect new incoming links just by virtue of already being #1, and those new incoming links could help cement your position there.

Labels: affiliate marketing, google, msn, search engines, seo, serps

I mentioned the other day that Google had released details of its search data from the last years to show what the most popular search terms.

I have Adsense for Search on a couple of sites and thought I would just take a quick look at the most popular searches across my sites since Jan 1st 2006:

• mcfly
• alg.exe
• svchost.exe
• mdm.exe
• frank lampard

And here's a quick snapshop of the last week - you might notice it's now more biased towards my problem exchange site.

• trowbridge hotspots
• stgsent
• erection problems
• free sexless marriage
• big boob,s agency

Labels: adsense, google, search

Google has released the 10 most searched for terms in 2006 and the list makes interesting reading. I have to admit I have never actually heard of 4 of those terms, which I guess means I'm worryingly out of sync with the current zeitgeists.

1. Bebo
2. MySpace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

Labels: google

I just switched to the new Beta of Blogger from Google and it's looking pretty cool so far!

The major ommission from Blogger was catagories, but they've eventually caught up and now you can label every post. Yay.

Labels: about this site, blogger, google

Let me preface this post by saying I think Google Adsense is an excellent service. It was my first foray into making money online and it's been a great, reliable income stream ever since. I recommend it as a tool to anyone thinking of monetising web content.

I was thinking the other day about how I could promote the new Google Pack which I mentioned in a previous post and had an idea for a domain name, and a sub domain name which together would make a very SEO friendly website name.

I was pretty sure that having a Google trademark in a domain name would be a serious no-no, but wasn't sure about the possibility of using it in a sub domain name or sub folder name so contacted Adsense support for guidance. I've heard stories about accounts being closed so like to get guidance from them if I'm at all unsure about anything.

I was a little shocked to get a reply saying that actually using any Google Trademark in any part of the URL was against the rules for publishers. This is actually a massive limitation on what publishers can do, and it only takes a few seconds of searching to find plenty of sites, often well known ones, which are in breach of this.

Say you wanted to review Google Picasa on your website. It's a great product and you might end your review with an Adsense referral unit for Picasa or an advert unit. So far so good. And you might want to call your new page, "review-of-google-picasa.htm". Wrong! Because any part of the URL that features Google branding is against the rules for publishers.

What about if you were writing a blog and had Adsense on your page. If you mention any Google product in your blog post title, the blog software will mostly likely use the post title to generate a search engine friendly URL. Google's own blog software, Blogger.com, does exactly this. So if you mention a Google trademark in the title of a post, Google's own system design will be putting you in breach of their Adsense rules.

This seems like a very restrictive clause in their programme policies, and to be honest I can't see how they could enforce it without losing swathes of publishers, but I thought I would try to bring this to the attention of anyone wanting to ensure they stay on the right side of Google's rules.

The real solution though is for Google to think again about this policy which doesn't seem fair on publishers and content creators

Labels: adsense, google

Google has added the Google Pack to its Adsense Referral Units for publishers worldwide. It's been a part of Adsense for a while, but wasn't available in the UK until recently.

What's in the pack?

• Google Earth
• Google Desktop
• Google Toolbar
• Mozilla Firefox
• Picasa
• Norton Anti Virus Special Edition
• Ad-Aware
• Adobe Reader 7

The payout for a successful referral is up to $2.00

With the Firefox referrals, the referral only counts if it is a new install. I'm not sure if the Google pack includes a similar caveat though I think that would perhaps be a little unfair as there's a reasonable chance a user might already have one or more of these utilities. Seems a decent set of tools to get going on a new PC though.

Labels: adsense, google

Google has announced the roll out of Adsense Referral Text Links to all the other langauges it supports - it had only been available in US English up to this point.

Adsense Referrals are now my favourite part of Adsense, and I hope they are going to further develop it and find other partner products to include. And having the text links available is excellent news because you can easily include them in a hyperlink embedded in a sentence.

The image links were OK but for me there was always a question mark as to whether you could say to a user "click on the picture to download" because Adsense terms had always made clear you weren't able to incite a user to click on Adsense - mainly because each click was a revenue generator. You don't need to worry about that with a text link because you just embed it in a sentence like: Start your free download of google referral link.

Labels: adsense, google

I haven't really talked much on this blog yet about Adsense from Google, but this really is an essential tool for a webmaster, and one which has been very successul for me over the past 18months.

For anyone that doesn't know, you sign up, and then can generate a piece of Javascript code that you plonk into your HTML. When the page is loaded, Google Mediabots will crawl your website to work out what adverts to serve up for you.

The things you need to think about when placing Google Adsense are the colour, size and position. But rather than go into that, I would point you toward the Google Adsense Webinar which has some really great info on how to maximise your earnings from Adsense.

Labels: adsense, google