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Magnum Opus: My Adventures With The Great Google Corporate Ad Team, AdSense, AdWords For Better Or Worse

Read more articles on Internet Marketing and Life and Freelance and The Thoughts Of A Writer In New York City and Blog Tools and General Business.

December 25, 2009

Posted by neillevine

About This Editor: I am a writer. Have been writing for other sites, but expect to do most of my future work HERE! My expertise extends from the esoteric such as burning hydrogen to the unpredictability of the stock market and my writing makes me a jack of all trades and exasperated master of none. I have had some influence over national wildfire and water policy and there are hints of a change in energy policy, BUT as Samuel Goldwyn once said, "A verbal promise is not worth the paper it is written on."

         

Hard to visualize, but I received a letter in the mail a short while ago from no less a mighty company than Google.

Yes, Google, the search giant.

Seems they decided to offer me $100 in free advertising.

Since I am not the owner of this site, nor any other existing web site for that matter, I sought permission from the web master of not only this site, www.arscompendium.com, and the publisher of the other site I write for, www.useless-knowledge.com, and it appears both men were happy to grant me permission.

Given that, I did not have to bother dissuading the good folks at Google from the error of their ways, since it is irrelevant to the task at hand, advertising. It is also true that I have been unable to convince them in the past that I was a mere contributor so I decided to try my luck. My AdSense account could use some action anyway. I therefore, carefully proceeded to read the two sheets of information enclosed, twice to be sure, then tried to get into a discussion on the web site frequented by many of the writers who have posted here on arscompendium to get some ideas or insight.

Lots of luck is a good summary of what transpired.

So armed with my coupon and willing to be as courageous as possible for someone dealing with the all powerful and omnipresent Google corporate machinery, I then followed directions and visited the Google AdWords url listed.

There were some fairly simple screens to fill in.

My campaign, in brief was
Good ideas,
Politics, economics, writing, settled law.
For some reason the key word finance was illegal. Why? I do not know. Not much in that way is explained, although there is a lot of free advice, suggestions and other hints that appear pretty much irrelevant to the task at hand.

I committed the $100, agreed to everything I had to agree to, yessed my computer to death and filled in all the blanks needed and kept clicking until I figured it was all over and the job completed as best I could

I now receive more helpful computer tips from Google than I had previously or that I have any human need for.

I have just checked my AdSense account, my new AdWords account, the www.arscompendium.com site and everything else necessary or available including doing web searches on Google to see if the site, key words or anything else that might be interesting or relevant would pop up.

While I was able to pull up ArsCompendium by typing it in as a search term, nothing else I was looking for popped up and I found out there is a lot of competition for good ideas. Nor does this seem to be hard wired to visits to the site, which seems to be tied to what visitors are searching for in the first place.

The final tally in my AdWords account seems to be 336,000 eyeballs now know ArsCompendium is a web site with quality content and 35 people actually paid a visit, a small and disappointing number if you ask me, since the success of this site would clearly be tied to visitors. Worse, for some reason, while Google promised me $100 in advertising less a $5 deductible for initial setup, all they claim was expended was about $27 for thirty five visits.

There is something disconcerting about this since I thought I had expended the entire $100 at $10 a day for ten days. I could use an explanation. So I deigned to ask the Mighty Google Corporate Help team what if I changed the advertising selections to say 21 days? Would that have helped?

The answer was maybe. Though I still have around $67 left for more advertising. Generous of Google. Still I need to figure out a better approach. Where I get it is anyone’s guess.

The response on the writer’s site to any of this was underwhelming. Seems all anyone was interested in was ready cash. Advertising any personal or other projects did not appeal to the members. This being a crew that puts up new content for web masters. I have just suggested to the crew that perhaps we could put up the content on two sites instead of one to attract traffic for clients. Would this be worthwhile? From the reaction, it would appear that the webmaster here is cogitating on this. No telling where he is going to take it, although he is enjoying the Holidays and has a new baby in his house.

Back to the creative writing pad to reassess this entire concept.

Last 5 Entries by neillevine

• There Is A Yawning Chasm Between Financial Regulation And Patronage And A Risky Crock - December 28th, 2009
• Terrorist Trials, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Osama, Virtual Armies, Robot Armies, Bomb Sniffing Dogs - December 9th, 2009
• Hearts And Minds In Afghanistan. Further Thoughts On Pacification. - November 25th, 2009
• Why Not Ask Bernie Madoff To Testify About The Wall Street Meltdown On Capitol Hill - November 24th, 2009
• Still Looking For Counsel. Still Looking For Paid Work Writing. - November 18th, 2009

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