Affiliate Marketing – Google Adwords Quality Score SLAM

Its been about 2 years now since I began working with google adwords and pay per click.

I will not make this complex, I will just say it like i have experienced it.  There have been many new campaigns that I have started and make HORRIBLE returns on right away.  Usually it is because the CPC is too high at the beginning, but once you let the ad run for a few days, google will not think you are trying to make a quick buck and they will loosen up on slamming your site with a “we want more $$ so we are saying your quality score sucks because we think your trying to outwit us incident”.

Here is what used to happen to me.  I would start new campaigns by first creating a pretty decent landing page.  They have to be good if you want google to not boot you after a few hours of running your ads. (unless you are smart and know some great cloaking method to make google see something that is not really there).

I would start the new campaign with a daily budget of about $100 USD.   I always start each campaign at $1 CPC.  When i began with adwords, I would freak out because I would not make a good ROI with a CPC of $1 and my budget being $100 daily.  Every beginner does this.  You try to lower your CPC to something like .50 cents and then almost instantly, your keywords go from being rated either GREAT or GOOD by google to the POOR and low quality score.

Every affiliate marketer dreads this.  What I have done to make sure this does not happen to me is:

1: Make sure the DOMAIN and URL matches the AD text in some form.

2: Have a DECENT landing page. Not 1 page with no outgoing links or text, it has to look like a real site.

3: If you do not make a good ROI (return on investment) your first day or 2, do not lower your CPC (cost per click) until you have let the ad run a bit. You need to lose $ to make money most of the time with adwords.

4: Once you are feeling good enough to start lowering your bids, lower them in small increments… DO not go from $1 to .50 at once.  I say MILK it, a little at a time.

These few things have helped me. I hope they help you!