I started a direct link campaign the other day on the Google Content Network. The product is a higher priced Clickbank product, and is not internet marketing related.

I bid .01 for search since I didn’t feel like setting up the ad groups to be tight with relevant landing pages, etc. etc.

I bid about $0.22 for the content network and kept my daily campaign limit to $25.

I checked my CB account today and saw a nice ~$100 commission from 1 click from the content network.

I was pleasantly surprised. This just shows you that not all content traffic is bad. Advanced PPC marketers know this. You can get incredible traffic (in quality and amount) from content networks. If you try it, just make sure to keep your bids low at first and set a low daily budget and TRACK. See what sites convert for you and what sites don’t.

More on this later…

Vinnie

PS - I use Keyword Radar for all of my tracking.

A few weeks ago I came across an awesome tool by Derek Beau. It does a lot of the same things as Speed PPC, but it is absolutely free. If you’re heavily into PPC marketing, you know that you need to automate as much as possible. This tool helps you create huge campaigns without spending a lot of time or money.

Definitely check it out … PPC Campaign Builder (link removed).

UPDATE:  Derek has removed the tool from his website.  There were some issues concerning copyrights and such.  So Derek’s PPC Campaign Builder is no longer available.

However, SpeedPPC is not only an excellent tool, it offers a interactive forum, video training, and access to the developer as well.  I use the Speed PPC campaign builder fairly regularly and if you want to create huge, targeted campaigns in Google, MSN, or Yahoo, you should definitely check it out.  It is well worth the investment if you use ppc to drive traffic to your site.

Have you ever been punkd by Google Adwords?

I have.

A few weeks ago, I started promoting Keyword Elite on Adwords. It started to go very well as I was getting pretty good conversions and getting a ROI of about 100%.

It’s a great feeling when you can wake up, go to your Clickbank account, and see on a regular basis that you made XXX amount of dollars yesterday and only spent xx.

One day last week, I logged into my Adwords account and see the dreaded “Alert” message. I had several of them.

I noticed I had alerts for several of my KE ads, but not all of them. I made some edits on some of the language I used (took out words like “killer” and “kicks butt”) because I thought they didn’t like the way that I was writing my ads. My ads came back online for a short time, but were disapproved again.

Eventually, my keywords for this ad group are disapproved (in red letters - scary!). However, I still have several other ad groups that are still running. For some reason, Google disapproved the following keywords

keyword elite
“keyword elite”
[keyword elite]

but they did not touch the ones like

keyword elite review (all match types)
keyword elite discount (all match types
etc.

I decided to contact them to see what was up.

Within 1 day, I got a reply.

Thank you for your email. I understand your concerns and frustrations
regarding the recent changes to our content policy. Only after careful
consideration did we decide to implement our Template Sites For Ad
Networks policy. This change was based on several factors, including user
and customer experience. We regularly review Google AdWords content
policies and make changes to keep them current and effective. Our goal is
to have policies that are fair, consistent, and adaptable.

In order to maintain this fairness for our advertisers and consistency for
our users, all Google AdWords ads must follow the Editorial Guidelines and
content policy.

Please note, we do allow advertising for sites and programs that offer
general AdSense optimization tips and advice, as well as sites that
promote web marketing strategy. AdWords/AdSense Search Engine Marketing
(SEM) service providers are acceptable.

Thank you for informing us of your concern, and we appreciate your
understanding.

I had violated their “new” Template Sites for Ad Networks Content policy. That’s a mouthful.
Basically, they don’t want anyone promoting any type of software that can be used to make spammy sites that are made solely for the purpose of making money from ads.

Isn’t that what 99% of websites are for - to make money from ads? I understand what they mean, but I don’t agree with the implementation of the rule.

The real problem is that Keyword Elite is an excellent keyword research tool. It has several powerful “projects” that can be used to help generate huge lists of keywords.

There is 1 option within KE that would allow a user to build a Template Site for Ad Networks type page, but that is not the focus of KE.

Since my keywords were effectively “banned,” I wanted to see if anyone else had experienced this.

I found that I was not alone.

On John Jonas’ blog, he explains how one of the folks he’s working with experienced a similar problem, except the result was much worse - he was BANNED from Google Adwords. A little harsh for a simple keyword “violation,” no?

It’s not like the guy was promoting something sordid or illegal.

At least I wasn’t banned. The only reason I wasn’t is most likely that I spend a decent amount per month. There must be a threshold but I’m not sure what it is. Probably like $500 or $1000. If you meet that minimum per month, maybe Google is less harsh in its Judge, Jury, and Executioner style.

What pisses me off even more is that if you go to Google and type in “keyword elite,” guess what you’ll see. Tons of ads! What the hell? I thought it was funny how in Google’s email reply to me they said how they want to be fair and consistent, blah blah blah… but if you look at their actions, they are neither fair nor consistent. Some people are banned while some have keywords disapproved while some are still allowed to run the EXACT SAME ADS!

Thanks Google - there goes an extra $500 - $1000 per month out the window.

btw, if you want to know how to get KE for $83.50, check this out…

http://keywordelite.goodtimesathome.com

Have you ever been punkd by Google Adwords in a similar way? Let me know here…

if you use Google Adwords, then you should be tracking. some people think that clicks from the Content network don’t convert. It’s just not true. Of course, there will be instances in which it is true, but if you have tight ad groups with related keywords, then the Content network could pay off for you.

More advanced PPC marketers will know about this, but this is for you newbies out there. There is a way to track whether a click came from the Search network or from the Content network.

In your destination URL, you can use the following code:

http://mydomain.com/?trackingid={keyword}{ifsearch:search}{ifcontent:content}

if a click comes from the search network, your id will show the keyword and “search” and if it comes from the content network, then it will show “content”.

this way you can tell where you’re getting your conversions from.

I believe this is called “ValueTrack” and the parameter is called a “macro.”

Hope this helps,

Vinnie

Look for my next post on getting even cheaper clicks on the content network with a KICK BUTT tool.