My own PPC costs have skyrocketed ... my Adsense earnings have gone down?

[SEOcidal.net]

I buy PPC ads on Google for the "real" business sites I run. Costs have gone up more than 30%. Some are now prohibitive. I'm paying £1.06 a click in some cases where I'm the only advertiser! If I try to lower my bid, it says "your ad will not show due to quality issues" ... my ad seems to only be of good quality when I'm paying over a £1 a click ...

BUT - my main gripe is that most people I know have seen their PPC costs rise in recent months. Yet my average earning per click on my Adsense sites has gone down. I know Google finally announced the percentage that Adsense publishers get ... do you think they've dropped that percentage now that we all think they're being fair?

(They've got a $500million lawsuit at the moment, don't they? Legal fees will probably come to about that too considering they're fighting mostly the government.)

[axeman]

Its a good racket isnt it.................you pay over 1 pound a click yet recieve 0.001 pence a click!

[katherine]

The best way to earn with adsense is to have Google stock it seems.

[Gerry]

i am not sure that saying google cost have skyrocketed because you are paying more per ad...are you not bidding against other merchants who are also bidding?

Simply blaming google is not the way to approach this. IF you are getting outbid, then the rationale would point to good keyword cost competition.

How do you know you are the only advertiser?

---------- Post added at 11:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:00 AM ----------

Its a good racket isnt it.................you pay over 1 pound a click yet recieve 0.001 pence a click!

I have a site pulling in over a dollar a click consistently and has jumped up to nearly 12% CTR.

[SEOcidal.net]

i am not sure that saying google cost have skyrocketed because you are paying more per ad...are you not bidding against other merchants who are also bidding?

Simply blaming google is not the way to approach this. IF you are getting outbid, then the rationale would point to good keyword cost competition.

How do you know you are the only advertiser?

---------- Post added at 11:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:00 AM ----------

I have a site pulling in over a dollar a click consistently and has jumped up to nearly 12% CTR.

I think the $0.0001 was a deliberate exaggeration.

I know I'm the only bidder because my settings are for UK searches only for a set group of specific terms. When I search, any time of day, I'm the only ad. If I reduce my bid, my ad disappears and no-one is advertising for those terms.

The only reason costs could shoot up like this after so many years of slow rising is if hundreds of new bidders came on the scene or all my competitors suddenly got massive amounts of spare cash that they thought would be best served on PPC. This is across dozens of industries and tens of thousands of keywords.

One group with a £200 a day budget which used to never get emptied, is now being emptied within hours ... no extra sales. Just higher average costs per click even though NO new bidders are out there and the order of advertisers which has been stable for months has not changed.

[Gerry]

I think the $0.0001 was a deliberate exaggeration.

I know I'm the only bidder because my settings are for UK searches only for a set group of specific terms. When I search, any time of day, I'm the only ad. If I reduce my bid, my ad disappears and no-one is advertising for those terms.

The only reason costs could shoot up like this after so many years of slow rising is if hundreds of new bidders came on the scene or all my competitors suddenly got massive amounts of spare cash that they thought would be best served on PPC. This is across dozens of industries and tens of thousands of keywords.

One group with a £200 a day budget which used to never get emptied, is now being emptied within hours ... no extra sales. Just higher average costs per click even though NO new bidders are out there and the order of advertisers which has been stable for months has not changed.

When you buy ad space (even if it is geo targeted), what about the search results from google.com? Does not your site (and thousands of others) appear in the google search results? That's why I think that you are technically bidding against other ad buyers, even if you are geo targeted.

Going another route, has google now set price minimums for certain ad or business sectors? I am not sure if (or if not) that is the case.

I do know google recently made changes (again) to their algorithm. Oddly enough, I have not seem people mentioning the issues you point out. Most are complaining that they have been totally bounced out of google's search results.

[biggedon]

may be better to buy targeted-traffic domain names than to pay for adwords with that money

especially if you aren't getting many click-thru's

[Gerry]

may be better to buy targeted-traffic domain names than to pay for adwords with that money

Great suggestion!

[ngochoa]

I buy PPC ads on Google for the "real" business sites I run. Costs have gone up more than 30%. Some are now prohibitive. I'm paying £1.06 a click in some cases where I'm the only advertiser! If I try to lower my bid, it says "your ad will not show due to quality issues" ... my ad seems to only be of good quality when I'm paying over a £1 a click ...

BUT - my main gripe is that most people I know have seen their PPC costs rise in recent months. Yet my average earning per click on my Adsense sites has gone down. I know Google finally announced the percentage that Adsense publishers get ... do you think they've dropped that percentage now that we all think they're being fair?

(They've got a $500million lawsuit at the moment, don't they? Legal fees will probably come to about that too considering they're fighting mostly the government.)

As my experience of using adword, as long as you agree to pay for the keyword, you are going to have a change to impress and click.
Never let google bid for you, set it your self, cause sometime they are determine themselves for the cost of the keyword relating to others.