Scared of making new Adwords ads... (14)
I am terrified of adding new ads to my Google Adwords campaigns, even though there is a lot of opportunities I have not taken advantage of in there. My ROI for some campaigns are about 150% and they are making me up to $50k a month. I could easily make $100k a month if I added some more banner sizes, keywords etc...but I am too afraid of doing anything.
Two times in the past when I added new banners Google shut down my sites and told me to make changes according to their policies. Twice. So first time they butchered my sales page, then it ran for a few months, then another policy-rep wanted to butcher it even more. What happens if they look at my site again, will they butcher it a third time?
ROI has gone down from 700% in the beginning to 150% now. I'm afraid that if I create new ads to split test, Google will decide to butcher my page again. I have campaigns with ads with terrible CTR that has long run its course, but I am too scared of creating new ads.
Anyone else have the same fears? It's ridiculous I think. I think if they have approved you once, then you should stay approved. What to do about it?
Nothing you can do, their traffic source, their rule.
I wouldn't cry about getting 150% ROI though.
I'd get another Adwords account and run from that if I were you, when things are working, don't touch them.
Originally Posted by thuglife
What Thuglife said.. While 150% ROI is not as high as the original 700%.. It's still bloody good!
Had a similar thing with Adwords in the past, each time you create a new ad you get scrutinized again and can lose your account very easily. If I were you, look at another way to get a new account and test on that one.
yes get another account or just run the campaign until it does not make any more money and then add the new two ads
Originally Posted by lord charles
Oh yeah, don't even think about using the same domains, hosting, landers and stuff. You are going to have to change it all up. It's not easy. You are going to have to go through the frustrating processes of trial and error until you figure out how to get Adwords to trust your new accounts.
It might sound naive, but I had a positive experience with Google not long ago. Had a similar situation. I've been spending on Adwords for many years, and although new ads never triggered anything, a redesign to our site did. They outlined the various issues they had with our site, and I had to rewrite a lot of content. It was a pain at the time, but haven't had any issues since, and I had one representative who followed up on the process the entire time and made sure that once the changes were made, everything was reactivated.
If you're spending tons of money with them, it wouldn't be in their best interest to shut you down. However, they are always making changes to better the user experience, so its not a bad idea to keep up with them, while of course maintaining to the best of your ability what you are trying to do as well.
At the same time, I totally understand and would share your sentiments. It often feels like walking on egg shells, and if you make one slight movement, the whole campaign can crash.
If you are running legitimate campaigns, the most ideal scenario would be to get in their good graces on your primary account, so as to not take chances in getting a new, or both accounts banned if you create a new one and make one small mistake. It's more difficult to go around something instead of straight through 
.
Good luck!
If your happy where you are, keep it. If you dont mind possibly losing that source of income in exchange for a much larger business, go fer it
Unfortunately, the policy decisions at Google are arbitrary. I have had multiple campaigns setup for clients with direct input from the policy team guiding my setup and a few months later someone else on the team flagged the campaigns and banned them. Even with a dedicated team at Google, I couldn't overrule the policy team.
It sounds like you are running display with Google. My recommendation would be to programmatically try to buy Google inventory using a third party platform. While building out campaigns in the Adwords platform goes through a manual review, programmatically buying inventory is checked by policy algorithms and only spot checked manually. It sounds like your content passes the automated policy crawls, so you should have little problem testing new creative buying the same inventory via the ad exchanges.
My personal recommendation would be to setup a Choozle.com account, a new domain name with a clone of the site and see how that works out for you.
P.S. would love to know what niche banks $50k+ a month via adwords if you are open to sharing.
Lord Charles,
You shouldn't be afraid, you should be horrified to make new ads to +50K/m campaigns on gagwords.
Especially if that's your only/main income source.
Alternative for Shakedown's route (which I greatly admire, just too complicated for me), you could learn some other traffic source(s) and start launching campaigns there, while you are
covered with that 50K/month income.
Niche can be different.
Diversify, if you haven't already. You can't never be even 90% sure that you're doing EVERYTHING like
you should, regarding to the present policy-rep's state of mind.
Yup, I was about to suggest the same thing as Red_Serpent.
Learn a new traffic source, develop your SEO, build a(nother) product. There are lots of other ways to diversify your income stream.
From what you say, you're not struggling with an irrational fear - you've very rationally identified a real business risk. Diversification is a good way to mitigate it.
Can you run any of your original un-butchered landers on another source that allows more aggressive tactics? Native would spring to mind.
Why not create a new version of your site (not a clone but a variation of it) and outsource the new campaign/ads to an Adwords agency? Your margin seems to allow for it.
i see everyone working with Google has the same fear....
for 1.5 years, i didn't change anything on my campaigns, because i was in the same situation as you are, was fearing to loose it all...
and after counting and counting again, i finally found out that those campaigns was almost not profitable anymore, but i was keeping running them for some reason, i was thinking, if i turn it off suddnely, they ll check out and will block me for whatever reason...
and suddnely, while i didn't change anything, they contacted me and flagged many very very old campaigns, which were directly linking to sites i don't own (at that time, you were allowed to promote sites as an affiliate on adwords)
So i told them : "I can't do anything about those links, that's why i stopped those campaigns and even deleted them... i don't own those sites, so i can't change the content of those links !!"
answer :
"Then your account will get banned"
i thought WHAT THE FUCK, and ask them what was the solution...
and they told me "close your account and open a new one"
i thought it was totaly bullshit, but i did it as i knew i would be fucked up anyway, so i preferred to show them i was doing what they asked...
While waiting for my new account to be reviewed etc etc i deceided that it was enough with Google and tried some other sources, and finally after loosing a lot of money in the first week, I finally could generate profit every day.
And now my adwords account is all setup, i have two dedicated guys (one technical and one administrative) at Google that help me improve my campaigns that i was fearing to change in the past.
And they are doing pretty good, everything they show me, tell me about, help me decrease my cpc
To give some numbers, i had an average cpc of 1.3-1.4 on my old account
Now for almost the same traffic, my cpc is between 0.95 and 1
So finally some stuff that look bad might turn good.
My conclusion and my advise on this (even if my adwords budget is more around 20 to 30k/month and not as high as yours) would be :
- Check again if you are as much profitable as you think
- Try to find out the trend to get the approx time of when you won't be profitabble anymore (if you were at 700% and now at 150%, it might be a matter of weeks before you start loosing money...)
- Create a new campaign with your new creative (not in the same campaign, i learnt that from Google guys, always build up a new campaigns when you are not totally sure you are ok with the TOS)
- If things turn bad, close your account by yourself and open a new one.
- When opening a new account, you ll have representatives contacting you, so work with them, they will tell you what is possible or not, listen to them, and you ll get back on making money again with adwords, for sure. If you don't make money, you stop campaigns, and they loose you, so they better have you to making money, don't forget that !
hope i was not too long and that you get my point !
have a great day, and no worries 
Google loves money to !
Do you guys know any google third-party inventories for search campaigns in Adwords?
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