

(Mis)adventures in trying to promote a book on AdWords - TrevorBurnham
http://trevorburnham.posterous.com/misadventures-in-adwords

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mikhaill
Here are a few tips that I always find useful for any AdWords campaign I
setup.

* Select Google Search only

* Geo-target to US/Canada only (or add more countries if relevant)

* Enter negative keywords for the campaign that we know aren't buyers for the product (free, hack, crack, etc)

* Bid on Exact Terms and Broad Matches separately at different prices

* Track all keywords through analytics to see what the bounce rates and PV/Visit are to see if the traffic is bad or the site is failing to convert the visitors.

Google AdWords still work well for a number of campaigns I'm managing in
different vertical industries. It does take time and effort to set them up
right through, it's not as easy as just throwing in some keywords and waiting
for cash to roll in.

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TrevorBurnham
Thanks, these are good tips. Could you point me to a resource on setting up
Analytics to track individual keywords? Right now all referrals from AdWords
look the same to me ("referring site: googleads.g.doubleclick.net").

~~~
mikhaill
You need to link your Google Analytics account to your Adwords account and all
the information will flow automatically. After doing this, in your GA account
under Traffic Source, the AdWords will populate with all your stats.

[http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55507)

As far breaking down the Partner Sites performance, since that's usually the
first thing I turn off... if I remember correctly GA will bunch all the sites
under (content) word. Perhaps someone else here has a quick answer for you.

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patio11
So, whenever you see "Quality Score", I want you to read BIG Score: Best
Interests of Google. This will remind you that QS has nothing to do with
quality and is designed to maximize revenue for the borg. For example, the
dominant factor of QS is _not_ relevance, but is, in fact, click-through rate.
(Google defines that which results in you paying more money to them as
"relevant.") Next up is account history, for much the same reason that e.g. an
airline will throw you off the plane if Mr. Super-Diamond-Elite really wants
your seat.

Defaults are also set to be notoriously BIG. For example, no responsible
AdWords professional would suggest putting search and content ads in the same
campaign, because the performance of the two is not comparable and this will
result in massive overspending on the Content Network. Guess what the default
behavior is? Yep, both checked. Default ad rotation strategy? BIG (n.b. which
is sometimes in the best interest of the advertiser, too, if they're doing it
wrong). The behavior of various match types? BIG etc, etc

~~~
bane
_no responsible AdWords professional would suggest putting search and content
ads in the same campaign, because the performance of the two is not
comparable_

What is the difference in performance?

We haven't yet started a paid advertising strategy and are thinking of
beginning one in the next few months. Google sent us a gift card to kick start
a small (very small) campaign and we're debating the best way to use it.

~~~
myth_drannon
The price for content is much cheaper , if you going to have the same bid for
both networks you going to spend huge amount of money for nothing.

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powertower
Google's revenues are completely dependent on click-fraud traffic from their
"partner sites" and fraudsters.

Nice of them to have this: <http://www.google.com/domainpark/>

In your post you claimed 75% click fraud (about 3x over legit traffic).

In my own experience it was 30% link-farm traffic about 3 years ago.

And I was being very modest with that figure so not to sound like I was making
this up.

~~~
TrevorBurnham
Whoa, whoa, let's be clear—I wasn't claiming 75% click fraud (though I'm
certain some click fraud is occurring). I was just saying that 75% of my ad
impressions are on Google's partners rather than on Google Search.

~~~
powertower
But you are claiming that those "partner sites" (that you viewed) are
completely shady. Trust me, link farm and auto-generated pages are click fraud
pages. Some directly, some indirectly. The effect is the same.

~~~
JacobAldridge
I think Trevor was claiming _some_ of those partner sites are / may be
completely shady.

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coliveira
Google adsense has stopped being relevant a long time ago... Specially for
technical subjects, since most tech people just blog these ads anyway.

Moreover, to be successful with Google adwords, one needs to have a lot of
money to tweak the campaigns. The system created by Google is so complicated,
that only spammers and big corporations have enough money to win the game.

~~~
skymt
So what ad system _is_ relevant?

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dangrossman
Blast from the past: hand picking websites with the right audience for your
product and advertising there with a creative tailored to the site.

BuySellAds.com helps with finding sites to advertise on directly, but most of
the sites listed there are clustered around a small number of topics.

~~~
petercooper
Or, if the option is there, make a killer product and attach a good affiliate
program to it. I've long been amazed Pragmatic doesn't have one. I have the
perfect audiences for much of their stuff but there's not much motivation to
rave about it and, even when I do, I might as well link to Amazon (meaning
they make less money).

I linked up Trevor's book in JavaScript Weekl recently simply because it was
such a big deal but I couldn't make a bean from it (not always the point, but
if I have two choices..)

~~~
TrevorBurnham
Hey, thanks for that! I'll prod Andy/Dave about why we don't have an affiliate
program.

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pkananen
With these sorts of stories, it makes me wonder if Google's relevance could
drop in the future. Success through the system seems to be gamed.

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rubyrescue
"In my last post, I described my efforts to get my book, CoffeeScript:
Accelerated JavaScript Development, near the top of the Google results for the
search term coffeescript. Since that post went up, it seems to have gone from
#10 to #8, so that's progress. Or it could just be a random fluctuation.
Google has been known to show search results in different order to different
people on different devices at different times, after all."

\- email me (mail's in profile), if you want a free inboxSEO account to track
your rankings for this project... i would have posted this on the blog but
there's no way to comment there...

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ApolloRising
Trevor if you need help, feel free to send me a msg via email. (in my profile)
We can get Google Analytics working properly for you and that will help you
maximize your adwords spending for ROI. If you have direct access to your
sites code (I assume yes from your book) we can set you up in a few minutes
and get you going. (The help offer is gratis not paid consulting)

All you should need is a basic GA setup and a basic adwords account to start
making sales.

