Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Search / PPC (Adwords, Bing, etc.)

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Facebook doesn't give a SH!T about Google....but YOU should. (27)

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I have been in affiliate marketing for a long time (2008) and by no means, do I know everything. But, like Farmers Insurance commercials, "I know a thing or two, because I've seen a thing or two."

In 2002 Google launched Adwords and gave marketers and affiliates the opportunity to use their search and display platform to generate serious $$$. They went through a series of crackdowns, changes and restrictions that very much resembles what we have seen on the Facebook platform over the last 3-5 years. Google has already gone through the many phases of the life cycle of an 800 pound gorilla in the traffic space. At one time, Google had no viable competitor, experienced exponential growth, was the internet darling and the newest, badass advertising platform that wanted nothing more than to get rid of affiliates using them as a traffic source for offers. Fast-forward to today. Facebook is now the newest, fastest growing traffic monster and Google is the steady boat in the ocean.

I have been a Facebook refugee for almost a year and won't go back to their platform, unless I am running a VERY white hat offer. Google, on the other hand, is a great place to run affiliate offers - especially medium to high risk campaigns (nutra, trials, casino, etc). I have been successfully running on Google for the last 2 years and it is MUCH easier than running on FB. Consistent, manageable and very profitable with significant volume and scale.

If you are tired of Facebook shutting down your accounts and putting more time/effort into gaming the FB system and not making the same kind of $$$ you did before, you need to move over to the big G - I can tell you the grass is Google greener and there are far fewer headaches. If I can be of help or you if have questions, feel free to reach out to me on PM or post here and I will do my best to answer within this thread.

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I guess I fall exactly in this category. Running FB forever and a day but it's getting harder and harder with increasing CPMs and account bans.
Accounts aren't cheap to come by anymore as well so it's an increasing headache.
How is it on big G? Do you have to constantly buy accounts as well?
Not asking you to write a -how to get started with G- but some guidelines would be great about payment methods, account supplies, cloacking ..
Thanks for the help!

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A quick reminder as I suspect this discussion might stray into account-buying territory: we don't allow discussion of Adwords account buying on STM. See https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Allowed-On-STM .

Aside from that - I've had a feeling for a while that Adwords and Google's other traffic (let's not forget YouTube) were the sleeping giants of the 2017 affiliate scene. I've heard more and more affs quietly mention that they're running significant volume on Adwords or related products.

@tbranley - if you fancy writing a "getting started on Adwords" post I think a lot of STM would find that very interesting.

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Can you give us some more specifics from your experience with Adwords. Like,

do you have a serious cloaking solution for grey2BH offers or setting up basic tracker filtering rules is enough?
do you get accounts banned and if so after what spend?
kw research tools? free and/or paid?

I just do Facebook and do not find it nearly as hard as you describe but yet again I do not run nutra or casino on FB

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The biggest issue we are seeing on Adwords is ad approvals. Very hard for us to get any aggressive- direct response - ads approved. Nutra, Casino, Finance all seemed locked down for us.

Almost always the issue is denied for Misrepresentation. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

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in for comments

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Are people direct linking on Adwords or do you always need your own website?

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I can tell you it is a LOT easier than FB. I have a lot of experience on the account side of both G and FB and I can tell you it is not even close how much easier it is on Goog. As far as guidelines, it really depends on where you are located, where the accounts are located, type of payment methods used, etc. Just like FB, there are multiple factors and many different ways to do it. PM me if you have specific questions or issues with your setup.

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I want to make sure I am 100% clear on this - I do not sell accounts. That is not my biz model and never has been.

As far as Google being the sleeping giant, I was hearing affs say the same thing back in 2015-2016, which is why I decided to put my toe back in the Google waters after continually beating my head against the wall with FB.

Let me give it some thought and I will see if I can come up with something that doesn't sound like a blow-hard guru write-up. Lol

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There are a lot of good cloakers out there that will do the trick. My favorite are NOIP and Blackjacks Just cloak it. Have used Fraudbuster in the past, with varying success.
Everyone gets accounts banned and I am no different. However, I do typically get $20-30k avg spend on accounts after warm up - not every account makes it through warm up, but typically I see 70%+ get past warm up and have had accounts spend as much as $250k.

We are mostly running GDN, not search, so I cant really comment on kw tools. There are a lot of good spy tools out there, but I would suggest that is part of the problem, not the solution ; )

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This has been a big issue lately, from what I have seen and heard. We try to stay under the radar, in a lot of different ways and even we get caught up in the misrepresentation sometimes. Over the last month, it seems to me like it might just be end of year to clear room for direct, top tier advertisers. If you have done FB before, you know exactly what I mean. So don't get too worried about the misrepresentation on ads, unless you still find it happening in January. Also, I would suggest you make sure that your ad image, copy and landing page are congruent. As I type this right now, I am on the phone (actually, on hold) going back and forth with Google to discuss this very issue - btw, don't be afraid to call them and get more information or clarification. If you are using Shark Tank, Joanna Gaines or any other celeb images or outrageous/vague ad copy, your chances of getting an ad approved are very low. Be creative and find a way to attract your target demo with an ad that matches your safe lander and still gets decent CTR.

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You love strip clubs, Lambo's, horses (the more the better), crypto and Roseanne. Oh wait, not the comments you wanted? Lol.

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If you are talking about direct linking to aff offers, that will get you instant banned. Put a pre-sale lander in between. Always.

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We are always facing the payment problem...
Create account, warm it up, create wh campaigns, spend some money, after creating the bh campaign we start with higher budgets and the account gets into payment review. After it its closed, used payoneer this time for it, while warm up it was fine but generelly we need way more payment methods and ways to fix this problem.
Looking forward to have 50k spending / month but are stucked right now.

Added you on skype

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This is accurate .... I however still love FB and have not done google.

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In my experience, when you raise budgets too fast or too much, you are going to get reviewed. I assume you are international and payment methods are not as readily available as they are here in the US.

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We will change that.

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What about too much ads. I add a lot of campaigns with 50-70 ads in less than 5 hours. It is also signal for check, or you haven’t experience with that.

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1) Ads have fingerprints, both in ad copy and images (sizes, file names)
2) Loading that many ads is absolutely a red flag. Try 2-3 new ads and make sure they aren't the same as ones from a banned account.

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Challenges, challenges, challenges..... don't run away from them man! Try harder, be patient and re-cap every step you take and what steps must be improved to run a solid business. Not only FB but all platforms. If you run grey/blackhat no platform will give you an easy time I can tell!

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Agree 100%. IMO, the difference between those who are successful and those who fail to achieve in AM is the amount of effort put into testing, testing, testing. If something doesn't work, you are one step closer to the solution.

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I can tell you that the safepage quality requirements on Google are much more stringent compared to FB. This is because Google actually owns the data on the entire web and already has the ability to analyze and evaluate a website's quality (courtesy of their search business). So they have the most sophisticated tools to weed out low quality/scammy safepages.

Their algo for detecting suspicious billing + cloaking + low quality ads is extremely aggressive, always improving/learning and often errs on the side of caution which is bad news for you. If an image ad in a new account got denied due to misrepresentation, there's a good chance that it was denied by Algo. Appealing gets you a manual review and usually an approval, or instructions on what to fix, in order to get an approval.

This is a number's game - plain and simple. If you make 10 accounts and take the pain to create solid quality safepages, there's a good chance that 2-3 will spend 5 figures.

Good about Adwords (vs FB):
-Cost of creating an account is low.
-Can get up and running quicker. Less "farming" or "human activity" required prior to launching ads.
-Account can fly under the radar for a long time as long as you pass the first $5k spend.
-Campaign (on GDN esp) can run on autopilot for a long time on same ROI without the need to babysit.

Bad about Adwords (vs FB):
-Need a REALLY good quality safepage which takes time and experience to figure out.
-Algo is tough.
-ROI is usually lower. Search is brutally competitive.

There is no guaranteed easy money on Adwords, but if you eat, breathe & sleep it, then you can make it.

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If you can write up something about GDN then it will be really helpful. I am currently working on search traffic and hearing the whistles that some big names are going to stop accepting search traffic on nutra

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A LOT of accurate information here ^
I have differing opinions on a few bullet points, but the quality of this post is worth reading 2 or 10x.
It is absolutely a numbers game and if you commit to the process, you will succeed with Google. It is bar none, the best long term play available to AMs today.

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Frankly, 99% of our campaigns have been GDN, so I can't really comment on search - aside from saying that search is Google's bread and butter, cash cow and it is no surprise that they would protect that hard and fast. I will try to put something together after a few weeks of watching this thread so I can cover the FAQs in a write-up.

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Very Interesting and helpful post buddy

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Really looking forward to the write-up!

And with all the algo changes and account bans on FB in recent months, I know more than a few people that are exploring / expanding into google search. Thanks for the expert advice you've already provided in this thread so far! Very much looking forward to more!



Amy

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