Make Money With Adwords Cheap Content Network Ads

Adwords is constantly changing, and anyone who wants to make money with Adwords needs to keep on top of the new strategies that are always appearing.

In 2007, with the publication of Day Job Killer, Adwords became a game of ‘kill the competition’. Almost immediately, software systems and membership sites sprang up to help the advertiser track and conquer his competitors’ ads. Unfortunately a lot of these memberships were very expensive.

In the wake of that, people who could not afford such memberships or did not want to spend their whole lives tracking, tweaking and testing Adwords ads began to look around for new ideas. So in early 2008, internet marketers rediscovered something that was long considered dead – the content network.

If you are new to Adwords, you may not realize that the content and search networks were once one and the same. Google divided them so that advertisers could have more control in the days when click fraud was prevalent, and most advertisers immediately turned off the content network for their ads.

However, times have changed and click fraud is no longer a serious problem. Google now shuts down any Adsense account suspected of ‘invalid clicks’. This is bad news for the Adsense site owners who can now be put out of business by any bored visitor who repeatedly clicks on their ads. But for Adwords advertisers, it means that the content network is up for grabs again.

The content network has several advantages over the search network. First, the cost per click is generally lower. Second, you do not have to fight off the competition in the same way. Third, you have a lot more control – you can specify the exact sites where you want your ad to show.

The last point here is vital and it is strongly recommended that you specify target sites for all of your ads when you are using the content network – and not just the sites, but the precise pages of that site.

Just like with the search network, you need to avoid having people click when they are not really interested, and you do that by picking out pages that are very closely related to your product. For example if you are promoting a dog training ebook, you will want your ad on a site about dogs but only on the dog training pages.

It is also better to pick out sites that have their Adsense ads ‘above the fold’ so that people see them as soon as the page is opened, without having to scroll down. Ads in the ‘hot’ area toward the top left of the screen will usually do best.