Get Google Ads Free?
The advertising copy said "Get Google Ads Free!"
That sounded good to me. Who wouldn't want free traffic to their
websites from Google Adwords? I believe I paid $67 for the book
(there are a couple that promise the same thing - probably similar
in what they suggest), and I remember asking for and getting
a refund the next day.
I requested for the refund even though I liked the ideas in
the book. Why? It was a bit too expensive for the information,
but the more important point was that the sales copy was very
misleading. Of course there is no way to get Google ads free.
I didn't really expect that.
But perhaps there were promotions that offered free trials.
I had done that with other pay-per-click search engines and received
$50 in free clicks. Maybe there was a way to set up ads so that
people read them and typed in the address of your site rather
than clicking the ad, so there was no charge for that traffic.
The claim was that you didn't have to pay for your Adwords clicks,
but beyond that the method was not revealed.
The Truth
I only had to read the book for about six minutes to get to
the truth of the matter. The system the author was recommending
was actually quite ingenious. I won't get into too much detail
here, but the basic idea was to sell ad space on a page that
you sent traffic to using Adwords.
Of course you first have to pay for your Adwords clicks. So
much for free Google Ads. The author claimed you could easily
sell the ads on the page before the first bill came due for you
Adwords account, which is possible (but not likely on your first
try). But in any case to say that the ads are free because you
raise the money to pay for them is silly.
Look, I could sell articles online for $15 each and then spend
the money on Google ads and say that they were free as a result.
I could call it the a secret system, perhaps claiming "Write
a few simple paragraphs and get free pay-per-click advertising
for life!" But that's just dishonest.
In any case, here's the basic idea so you don't have to buy
the book. Suppose you create a page about backpacking. You make
a list of keywords, including all of the "long tail"
keywords that you can find. These are the ones that are less
commonly targeted and therefore cost less per click. They might
include phrases like "backpacking with children," and
"lightweight backpacking equipment."
If you can keep your cost down to about 14 cents per click,
you can get 2,000 people to visit the page for about $280 per
month. Now, with that very targeted traffic you can sell spots
on the page to those who don;t want to set up their own Adwords
account. If you sell ten spots at $50 per month each, you take
in $500 monthly, for a profit of a couple hundred dollars. Then,
of course, you set up another few dozen page like this until
it all ads up to some real money.
The author of the book does tell you where to go to sell the
ads (there are places online that will help you with this), and
has other useful information. The system is based on a basic
idea that has been used for many decades in print magazines.
You pay $1,000 for a page and then sell 20 spots for $100 each.
Done right, I imagine that this is a great way to make money.
But you pay for that advertising whether you make money or not.
There is no way to get Google ads free.
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