Make Money with AdWords – How to Get Started

Posted by: Adriana Post date: November 10th, 2009
campaign blasts by Matt Levenhagen

Have you lost money trying to make money with AdWords? I did! And not just a little money, but a lot of money. I’ve probably made every mistake in the book, but I eventually figured it out and recouped what I lost and made a lot more in the process.

As you probably know, there are a number of different pay per click networks out there. But the most well known is Google’s Adwords: simply because the amount of traffic Google gets pretty much guarantees your ability to make money with Adwords.

It’s not quite as easy as just sticking up an ad and watching the money roll in: you have to carefully select what you’ll be promoting. Along with making sure the page your sending traffic too has a decent quality score and you’re not blowing your budget.

What Should You Sell to Make Money With Adwords?

When deciding what to promote many find it easy to just select products with a high payout, thinking that you need less sales to make a good income. But, many times you can get a larger volume of sales for lower priced products, making it possible to be wildly profitable.

So price shouldn’t be your only consideration: you should also take into account what the products sales page looks like, how popular an item is, how many others are promoting it, etc.

Your Landing Page is Important in Making Money with AdWords

The first thing you want to do is decide if the sales page is any good. Does the copy make you want o buy, does it trigger any emotions in you? Is it nicely formatted?

Next you want to check for any leaks which are any links that when clicked you won’t get paid. So things like AdSense, links to other sites, affiliate links for other products, etc.

AdWords Quality Score

Google uses a system called a quality score and if you want to make money with Adwords then you need to pay close attention to this. As a high quality score means a lower cost per click and that your ad will show up in a higher position. Of course if you’re sending traffic directly to the merchant then you have very little control over the quality score. To ensure a high quality score you want to make sure your keywords are as targeted as possible and if the page your sending traffic to isn’t that good then create your own landing page.

Make Money With Adwords Instead of Overspending!

make money with adwords

One of the dangers you’ll face when trying to make money with Google AdWords is overspending. As Google is the biggest search engine and thus gets the most traffic, you can go to bed, wake up the next morning and find thousands of clicks on your ad. Which isn’t a bad thing if your ad is targeted and you’re making sales, but when your campaign is new and you’re still testing it you can easily end up spending a few hundred dollars while only making ten or twenty. So you want to set yourself a budget to avoid this.

Start with whatever you’re comfortable losing, and as you find your profitable keywords, you can increase your budget, while cutting your unprofitable keywords.

Tracking Will Help You Save Money

One of the biggest mistakes people make when starting to use AdWords to make money is just throwing a campaign out there, and hoping to make money. Sometimes, they do make some money, but never know which keyword or key phrase made them that sale. And so, they continue to pay for keywords that are losers, instead of concentrating on the profitable ones.

Conclusion:

There are any number of people who make money with Adwords but there are also many people who lose money with Adwords. If you want to be a member of the first group then you need to carefully select which products you promote. Making sure not just to go for products with high commissions and checking the sales page has no leaks, Along with keeping your quality score as high as possible. Even if that means going to the effort of creating your own landing page. Lastly especially when testing new ads you’ll want to keep an eye on the budget.

campaign blasts by Matt Levenhagen

One of the best guides for making money with AdWords is Campaign Blasts by Matt Levenhagen: it’s the guide that took me from losing money, to doubling my money every day.

Do you have questions about making money with AdWords? I’d love to help, so post your questions below.

  • E. Cremers
    Nice article to get started with Adwords.
    I used the information provided at this blog to start with affiliate marketing: http://bit.ly/chCFgK

    Good luck to you all!
  • I've never thought that you should manage your AdWords this way. It makes total sense when you lay it out, but I was one of those that is just waiting for the clicks. Not many people know that my services as a Virtual CFO are available out there, so I think I really need to spend some time refocusing on my AdWords campaigns and setting up those landing pages! Thanks!!
  • The time you'll spend setting up your landing pages the right way, will pay you back many times with increased conversions, so it's worth doing it right.

    BTW, I'm glad you stopped by.
  • Adriana, This may be on the surface about "make money with adwords" but in reality it is much more. There are offline businesses as well who might benefit as many have no awareness that they can create a landing page and draw people their direction via an adwords campaign as well. Appreciate how you make something which could seem deep and complicated much simpler with an introduction and reference to know more.
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