Anybody willing to share their losers?

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Mike

Mike

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Jun 27, 2006
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Okay, nobody really wants to give out their golden keywords, but what about the ones that sucked? You know, the keywords that you thought were gold, but turned out to be iron pyrite.

Anyhow, here's mine (the first of many, I'm sure):

video game consoles
:repuke:
 Money spent $19.63
Money earned $11.36
Difference ($8.27)

Page impressions: 196
Clicks: 123
CTR: 45%
Per Click Payout: $0.079
Per Click Paid (ave): $0.16

My site had 6 pages, no traffic leaks. A main page with a general article on video game consoles, a "Playstation 3" page, "Xbox 360" page, "Nintendo WII" page, "Video Game Accessories" and "Video Games". Each page had an article targeted to the page's theme.

So, that's my loser for the day.
 


When I was first starting out with arbitrage, one of my first sites was on shoes. Not any specific shoe, just shoes in general ;)

It was an awful attempt, but I learned quickly.
 
DavidR said:
When I was first starting out with arbitrage, one of my first sites was on shoes. Not any specific shoe, just shoes in general ;)

It was an awful attempt, but I learned quickly.
Click to expand...

shoes works for me ;-)...

hmmm... what sucks.... SAT prep
 
Great idea for a thread. I can share several of my mistakes, along with why I think they sucked:

Boilers: No traffic, too few searches.
Wine: Crap CTR. Kept showing untargeted ads for specific locations, and wine tours / wine clubs instead of wine for sale.
Car Loan Florida: No traffic, too few searches.
Inkjet Cartridges: No traffic, too expensive.
VOIP: No traffic, too expensive.
Antivirus Software: Crap CTR. Not sure why.
Cheap Hotels: Crap CTR, untargeted ads for specific locations.
Lower gas and electric bills: Crap CTR, untargeted ads for specific locations. Also low traffic.
Flowers: Lots of expensive traffic, but really terrible CTR in my most successful layout. Kept getting some untargeted location-specific ads.
Treadmills: Contrary to all my keyword research, the payout/click just sucked terribly.

I'm using YPN, so I'm in a little different situation from most. Some of my niches that didn't work because of location/targeting problems might not be too bad with AdSense.
 
I just created one today for the PS3. Spent $3 on 31 clicks, made back $1 on adsense, with 6 clicks.

2 points:

1) I lost heart when I saw my first adsense click reported only brought in 1 cent, and took the campaign offline before I took a bath.
2) If I could improve my clickthrough rate on this page it would be profitable.
 
Oh yeah, some more that I tried and killed:
-Editing
-Toxic Mold
-Translation
-Blogging
-Auctions

Some that are on the line and might get killed soon:

-Medical transcription
-camcorders (too general)

Also, it's been said before, and it's worth saying again - if your per click profit is low, make sure you're not sending traffic to someone elses arbi page. Use your competitive ad filter to get rid of the obviously low-paying ads.
 
pokemon sucked ass - tons and tons of traffic, but was only getting like .01 - .03 cents per click. Had a CTR of over 60% and just was breaking even with it.
 
are you using your suppression list? look at your page, go to the sites that are listed, don't click your ads idiots! see if the sites are affiliate arbi sites or real sites. If it is not a "real" site block it!
 
I've done poorly on payday loans using Adwords or Overture, competing with those who actually offer payday loans is hard when your just getting paid for the lead. They outbid easily.

I never got the ringtone thing going. Stupidly I did a campaign while hammered and ended up bidding $12.50 per click for Chris Brown Run IT. Luckily the top click was only $1.25, but I wasted about $150 before MSN shut me off due to the budget I set.

The PS3 thing didn't work for me either.
 
I don't think I've ever really lost much money on an arbitrage campaign. I broke even or barely lost any money on a campaign I ran for Jordan shoes
 
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