$500 to invest in online marketing - Is Adwords a good idea?

20 Sep 06 2:52 am

Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like that...My total daily budget is set at $5 right now, so I'm not going too fast. I just want to hear some success stories from people that have done well only implementing Adwords. Thanks for your advice, Adrian. Those were wise words, and I appreciate them...

21 Sep 06 7:23 am

If all you have is $500, then adwords is probably going to be too much of a gamble for you, as it is easy to burn a bit of money at the start while you are figuring out which keywords are profitable and which are not.

Also, it is easy to burn too much money on adwords early on when you are not good at making optimal landing pages that convert well.

I suggest following the 90 day plan. You can use that $500 in order to get some stuff done for you, such as article creation.

regards,
Mark

21 Sep 06 7:23 pm

You did not get shot down. You were given advice on how to best use your money at this given point in time.

All the best,

21 Sep 06 11:46 pm

Sorry I might have misread what you said. I was thinking adsense, not adwords.

Adwords are great, if you have the money to allow for it.

Right now you don't, so you need to create money out of nothing, whereby you need to do it by creating a free content website and doing it that way. What sites do you have right now? You said you are already making money from adsense, perhaps they can be monetised better with affiliate programs?

You can try adwords, but I'm worried that with only a $500 budget, you may invest in the wrong keywords etc and end up losing out. You can easily burn a bit of cash while discovering profitable keywords with adwords, that's all.

regards,
Mark

p.s. I'm also adding new seo videos in the coming month from my interview with charles heflin from seo2020 (plus a document that goes with it). That will help you even more with things.

22 Sep 06 9:21 am

Engineering student, part time job, I know exactly how you feel :)

What sort of eng are you studying?

Forum posting and articles is a good way to start promoting your sites. Just get stuck in!

Adwords is great, but there are plenty of other ways to generate traffic, which can be even better if youre starting from scratch. Hopefully Mark can give you a better idea of how much you should be spending on Adwords.

Cheers.

30 Sep 06 6:25 am

If I had $500 today and nothing else this is what I would do.

Do some keyword research first using free tools on the net (a little searching in google will give you a good base) but if you really want to make the most out of it.

Sign up at themezoom.com for 1 week (costs $35) and get every possible keyword for your chosen niche.

This can also be used for finding a viable niche for you to go into. Obviously you will need to judge your niche for profitibility, products you can promote how hard is it etc etc.

Get some hosting with your favorite host and purchase a domain name.

You can get a basic shared account with hostgator for $6.95 per month.

Go over the video's in your affilorama membership if you havent allready, and take note of the SEO video's you will need them later.

Also download Brad Callens free guide on SEO at http://www.searchengineoptimizationmadeeasy.com

If you want to (and I highly reccomend it) go over to http://www.seo2020.com and purchase "The Master Plan" I have just been reading it and have gained some excellent tips from that one. Was very pleasantly suprised.

Splork from this forum and also ours has done an excellent write up on it, check it out at his site.

(broken link removed)

Go into rentacoder and find a quality writer who will write articles for you for $4 per article. You can find them just be very specific about what you request for.

Okay so lets add up the costs here.

ThemeZoom.com $35
Domain and Hosting $85
The Master Plan $97
Content $254 (equates to 63 articles)
LinkMarket Year Membership $29

I presume that you are allready a lifetime member of affilorama for this also.

Also I know you can get good articles written for $3 per article too so depends on the price, but you mainly want to get the best quality you can for that price range.

Now with everything above, Marks advice and this forum.

If you cant get that site making you at least $10 per day in adsense and affiliate commission combined.

Then you are really doing something wrong.

I am not saying that it would happen overnight. I would expect more like at least 3 months to be really cranking, presuming you know what you are doing.

But yeah it would work well. And depending on the niche extremely well.

So I would expect a site like that could do between 300 and 1500 a month, maybe even more but like I said all depends on the niche and how much SEO you do with it and how much traffic you get to the site.

Also how sticky or viral you have it.

But that is what I would do.

Regards
Marc

30 Sep 06 11:54 am

With a budget of $500 its not really viable but you allready know that :)

But yes would 110% concur with you as far as price goes, if you want quality you have to pay for it.

And it is certainly a good idea for when you have your sites setup and earning you some sort of stable income.

Regards
Marc

12 Oct 06 2:25 pm

Is that there really is no way for someone to start with virtually no money even though they have a desire and strong worth ethic.

The numbers that you are quoting to do these things are out of the reach of most of the people that I know and planned on introducing to Affilorama so that they could get a start on the internet.

Am I mistaken in understanding that such large amounts are required or am I somehow comparing kites to kiwis ?

Thank you guys,

Peakperformance Ken

13 Oct 06 10:57 pm

Yep, if you dont have any money, it just means you have to do everything yourself. Its going to take a little while longer to get off the ground, but that shouldnt matter once things get moving.