The Untethered Lifestyle

Kevin Miller and I recently had an email conversation which we clarified something important for our 212 Connection members to understand regarding his most recent newsletter article concerning the use of Google Adwords.

As we continue to leverage the power of the internet to build our businesses, we don’t want any proverbial babies thrown out with any proverbial bathwater.

There are two programs offered by Google whose titles tend toward confusion as to which is which, Google Adsense and Google Adwords. Kevin’s article actually meant to refer to Adsense though he used the word Adwords.

And in light of that understanding, his admonition should be heeded that we would be wise to consider carefully before mucking-up our web sites with strips of Google Ads only to be compensated with pocket change for comprising our online “first impression.”

But the Google Adwords program is actually very different from Adsense and I highly recommend you consider using it. When we look at the difference between the two, you will see why.

Adwords is actually the advertising program through which people like you or me can buy classified ad space from Google. Those ads can run on Google’s search engine results site (they show up on the right hand side under “sponsored results”) on their partners’ sites like another search engine (AOL, for example) or on webmaster/publisher pages — the content network.

The Adsense program, however, refers to the program that web site publishers sign up for in order to run a set of those Google ads on their site. Yes, those ads are Adwords, but the publisher program is Adsense, so on the host pages they’re called “Adsense” ads.

In other words, Adsense is the contextual ad program running on people’s pages where you are seeing them. Web site owners do NOT pay to have Adsense ads display on their own pages; rather, Google pays money to THEM for each click originating from their pages.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Set it and forget and watch the bucks roll in. But Kevin is right. Very few people make any noteworthy amounts of bucks from Adsense, though their pages may be smattered with it to the point of being almost unreadable. Google is paying them coffee money (7-11 coffee, that is) to wallpaper with ads their otherwise decent site. It’s not a bad idea in every case. Just see it for what it is and consider what your main site is designed to do.

However, let’s revisit Adwords for a moment. This program could be the key to greatly — almost immediately — increase traffic to your site.

Here’s how it works: You essentially create an account, research keyword phrases around your target market that will trigger your ad, insert your advertisement, pick the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click on your ad and then submit your credit card.

Your advertisement will then go live once the credit card is approved. Every time someone clicks on your ad, Google bills your account. Every couple of weeks or when your bill reaches a certain amount, Google will charge your credit card. Adwords is a form of pay-per-click advertising.

Consider the following perks:

• You choose the keyword phrases that have to be entered into the search engines that trigger your ad.
• You can choose hundreds of very specific phrases specialized to your niche at a very affordable (and controllable!) cost.
• You can cap your monthly spending (as little as $50 per month).
• You only pay if someone clicks on your ad.
• You can actually use the program to do market research without spending a dime.

I want to camp briefly on that last one. This month, Google surprised the internet marketing community and made market research a whole lot cheaper and easier. (You should look into the following, even if you dont plan to do an Adwords campaign.)

Google is now releasing actual search volume numbers with each key word phrase.

This is important because search volume data is extremely valuable information when determining what your particular market is looking for. Knowing how many people are searching for various keyword phrases relating to our products and services helps us determine the potential effectiveness of those phrases and whether or not to use those keyword phrases in our Google Adwords campaign.

Before this new upgrade to the Adwords program, Google only showed you a colored bar to simply give a general idea of how often any given search phrase was being used. In order to get actual volume numbers, advertisers like you and I had to go to other providers such as Nichebot or Wordtracker and plunk down some money to get the data — and even then, the accuracy of the numbers from those providers has always been in question.

But now, with the world’s largest search engine showing us their own numbers, we can go directly to Google and do all our market research, discovering actual numbers of searches done on any particular word or phrase.

And the research is free. That, quite frankly, rocks.

Adsense? Don’t bother. Adwords? Get educated on it, leverage it to drive traffic to your main site and make some money — through your products and services.