Screw other AdSense publishers for traffic

As I mentioned recently, one way to get traffic is to pay for it through advertising. This is in fact what you do for AdSense arbitrage. But that arbitrage depends on search engine (in this case, Google) traffic and potentially putting some serious money on the line in order to attract qualified clicks. It's not for the faint of heart and something that requires continual monitoring and adjusting, at least in the early period. And especially if you're in a competitive field.

The other approach you can take is to abandon Google search results entirely and lowball your ads strictly on the Google content network, i.e. your fellow AdSense publishers. It's very easy to do. When you create an AdWords campaign, make sure that the Google content network is selected in the campaign settings (it is by default). You can even enable separate bidding for the content network, which is what I usually do.

Now build a large list of keywords related to your topic area. Make it as comprehensive as possible. Set the maximum bid price so low that all the keywords are marked “inactive for search”. This means that they will rarely be shown in Google's search results, though it may still happen — so make sure the bid price isn't too high for you to handle if those ads get clicked. If you've enabled separate bidding for the content network, set a really low bid price per click, say $0.01 or $0.02. Then activate the campaign.

If your topic is competitive, your ad will get a lot of impressions, even at such a low price. Take the “digital cameras” topic, for example. I've got a campaign running right now with a $0.02 bid price and over 1000 keywords related to digital cameras. So far today my ads have been shown over 63,000 times. The conversion ratio is tiny — only 24 clicks, or 0.03%. But those 24 clicks only cost me $0.48. Even a 10% clickthrough ratio on any AdSense ads on my site makes me money in this scenario. And if I can get someone to visit the Amazon Camera & Photo shop (with a $10-$30 commission on a camera sale) or click on a Chitika eMiniMalls ad then my payoff can be even better. I'll even get the occasional click from the search network, despite all their terms being marked inactive for search.

Ironically enough, you're making money off the backs of other AdSense publishers. After all, it's the 1- and 2-cent ads that are being shown on their sites that are making you money. So really, no one else will be thanking you for doing this, not with the piddly payout they get when someone clicks one of your ads. So you really are screwing other AdSense publishers for cheap traffic. (You might want to look into using your competitive ad filter to improve the payouts you're getting, of course…)

And no, you don't have to build MFA (made-for-AdSense) sites to take advantage of this approach. Legitimate sites can benefit from it, too. And it won't work for all topics. Look for highly-searched-for topics with lots of AdSense publishers vying for the ads. Something with a large enough advertising pool to make it worthwhile. Lots of advertisers bid separately for the search vs. content networks, sometimes avoiding the latter entirely — this is what makes the lowball approach possible, but you still need some advertisers on the content network to make it worthwhile.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.

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