What I do when I’m sitting at 3/10 QS is split test my3-5 text ads and work on the LP to maximize CTR on it. I spend something like $32 on the campaign for 32 clicks. Not a good deal, but the next day I deactivate poor performing ads and keep the one with the highest CTR and usually at that point, my keywords are sitting at 7/10 QS. At that point I can sometimes lower the bid all the way from $1 to $.10.

QS can REALLY affect your ROI. The lesson here is just to ALWAYS split test text ads and get a high CTR going on, because even if you start out with a high QS, if you don’t split test and get a high CTR your QS will drop. CTR IS the most important factor. I rarely pay attention to anything else. Then you optimize the LP for CTR. (To the offer)

Just a bit of AdWords advice.

PPC: Pay per click.

InfoLinks

You may notice the green highlighted text, this is InfoLinks in action. This is PPC. I have made less than $2 since I started it, from about 40 clicks. Not very good. On top of that, the minimum cash out is $100.

Commission Junction Experience

The majority of my ads are run by Commission Junction, mostly because I was able to get accepted into this program right away. I’ve been with Commission Junction for a year or so and I have made decent money by running Google Adwords campaigns with their offers. I just recently started to use them for site based advertising. They have many banners and links to choose from. Whenever I write a post that relates to a certain product I will post the banner/image. I have already made a small amount from Commission Junction that by far exceeds my total made from PPC.

It seems to me that with my current traffic, CPA is a better advertising method. This means that if a user clicks through my link, and buys something or participates in a trial I get a small commission from it. Nothing extremely large, but one completion can be up to $20 or more. All you need is 1 person to go through with it.

Unfortunately I need $100 to cash out, but I feel I will get to $100 far sooner than my PPC campaign, which is going basically nowhere. If I can’t get to $100 quick enough though just on site advertising I’ll start some adwords campaigns again.

ClickBank

Basically the same thing as Commission Junction, but I did not see any easy to use images and html code like Commission Junction. I have not used them yet. There was no real screening process.

I did notice a lot of  “scammish” products on ClickBank that I would never promote.

ClickBooth

For whatever reason, they have NOT told me why, but I was denied for this program. My best guess is that they do not want anything to do with Entrecard or other traffic generating programs. That or my site is simply not high traffic enough for them. Their denied message is vague at best.

I regret to inform you that we have denied your publisher application to
participate in the ClickBooth Network.
We typically deny applications because we do not feel your site
complements our offers. According to our program Terms & Conditions, we
reserve the right to deny participation for any reason. If you believe you
have been wrongfully denied participation, you are encouraged to write
back with your explanation.

No big deal. I don’t expect to get accepted into the larger CPA programs anyway since I don’t have a 10K unique/day site. I did e-mail them and ask for them to be more specific, I’ll see if they write back.

I’m going to be mixing up my ads, to see if I can indeed make over $10/month, because really I just want to pay for my hosting and maybe get a little side income Making $10 a month is a bit harder than it looks, or maybe it’s my niche not clicking links or buying products.

Updated: I was accepted into clickbooth, and if you want to sign up (and don’t mind referral links ) check them out here.

You want to know the secret? THERE IS NO SECRET. Any site that says there is a “secret” is lying. How you get traffic is very obvious.

• ADVERTISING, ADVERTISNG, AND MORE ADVERTISING
• SEO – SEO is very important for driving targeted traffic to  your website, continuously. This is where quality content comes in. If you have good ranking in search engines, you’re all set. You won’t need to spend a dime. It’s very difficult to get good rankings, however and it’s best to start with ADVERTISING.
  

That’s about it. There’s no real “secret”. If you have a lot of money, it’s quite easy to setup a high traffic site. Right off the bat. Just use something like adwords. However, there are some services out there for those of us that don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on advertising.

• Entrecard – You’ve seen me talk about this before, it works to a certain point. I’ve gained some readers from this service You also get a chance to connect with a lot of different people that blog. You’re not alone. I say entrecard is worth it.
• Adgitize – I haven’t tried this personally, but I know it’s probably worth the $14 a month. I did some poking around in TechByPC’s traffic stats on ProjectWonderful, and I saw it definitely was hauling in some traffic. (TechByPC you can have me remove this if you want)
• ProjectWonderful – Cheap advertising, you just have to know how to work with the system. You can get 100s of clicks very cheaply if you know how to work with it. Finding sites that are within your target niche can be difficult. It’s best  to try and find new sites that were just listed that have high traffic – ads are very cheap at that point.

You see ads on my site. I’m not doing this to annoy you. I’m not doing this to make money. So why are they there? They’re there for my own advertising. I can make a very small amount from having these ads there (except entrecard) and that money goes to advertising for this site.

Conclusion

Getting traffic can actually be quite easy. If you have thousands of dollars laying around you don’t know what to do with. I notice that a lot of blogs exist only because they’re trying to make money. I hope they’re ready for disappointment, because to make money you have to have traffic, and to have traffic you have to spend money.. Yea it doesn’t make much sense. Let me know if I missed anything. I know this isn’t on topic very much, but when you’re trying to promote a site all the time you blog about it as well.

Here’s the banner he made for me.