Google Content Network DOMINATION :: CPA Bidding Explained

Introduction:

Did you know that you can have Google Adwords attempt to get your target cost per acquisition for you automatically? You can. A lot of people have shunned Adwords lately because it's not the traffic source du jour, but those people are missing out BIG TIME. You're not going to be one of those people though.

CPA Bidding From The Horses Mouth:

Meaning:

You tell Adwords what you want to PAY for every conversion (or "action") in the "Cost Per Action" part of the phrase. They go and GET IT for you. They optimize your campaign for you. Now, most would say that's insane, NEVER give control like that to them. But I say au contraire! (yeah I'm Canadian so I can speak French too). (Well if you consider Grade 9 French class was my last expsosure to the language of love).

Anyhow, say you're running a completely white hat type campaign on Adwords. You're building a list in the DATING niche. (Great niche to build a list in btw). You have a landing site with no affiliate links, no banners, no anything but good solid information. The site does have one major thing though, your collector form for email addresses. This means that your "Action" is a confirmed double opt in email. You simply place the Adwords conversion pixel on the "thank you" page from the list sign up. (All list services allow you to enter a thank you page of your own on your own server or host).

Now Adwords will happily pump traffic to you daily and try to optimize the "Action" to meet your target "CPA". How frikken cool is that?

Confused? How About A Step By Step Then:

Here you go for all those that love numbered lists of actions:

1. Setup your landing site, get a form on there, (I use aweber). Build a thank you page and enter the url into Aweber. Place Google's Tracking Pixel aka Conversion Code on that thank you page.
2. Setup a Content Network ONLY campaign.
3. Add ONE keyword per adgroup, (yes ONE). Make that keyword a very obvious one about your niche. If it's payday loans, then "payday loans" is your keyword for this adgroup. If we're doing dating, usually we go for a niche within dating, so how about "christian dating". No need to get a ton of keywords in here. Just make sure they're very very relevant to the niche.
4. Now you have to wait until you've got about 20 to 30 conversions. You MIGHT lose money at this point. (Check that, you most likely WILL lose money getting those 30 conversions. The ads are showing up all over the place, so just grin and bear it for now.
5. Once you hit 30 conversions, your account will probably have little notifier saying you're now eligible for the conversion optimizer. So use it. Go under Bidding and Budget -> Bidding and set it to "Focus on Conversions". Set your maximum CPA (1 per click) bidding and the set the amount a sign up to your list is worth to you. (that part isn't very important right now).
6. Now, Google is going to optimize FOR YOU. Think about it, they've got years and terabytes of data that you do not have. They know what works where and are now working for you instead of against you, (nice change isn't it?). We could just leave it here and keep adjusting our CPA downwards, but let's help them optimize too.
7. A week or two into it, simply pause any site that is not getting a good ctr for you. Basically anything under 2.5% should be paused. You don't want to show your ads on that site anymore. What you're doing is setting up your campaign even further for even cheaper clicks. (remember the biggest part of their quality score is CTR).
8. Repeat the above every week.
9. You can also adjust your CPA downwards slightly every week but having a high CTR is important before you do that. Remember they're going to be going for the lowest CPA they can get you anyway.

The end result? Dirt cheap, converting clicks on Google Adwords' Content Network. If you doubt this method. Then don't do it. I'll keep all these clicks to myself.