Why Won’t AdWords & YSM Send Me Traffic?

August 9, 2009 Posted by Tyler Cruz

I’ve now been running my campaign on Yahoo Search Marketing for 2 weeks. I haven’t tweaked or optimized anything yet though since I am not getting many clicks and need a lot more data before I can start fidgeting around.

After I got my first campaign up and running on YSM, I proceeded to work on the site for my second campaign. I finished it on August 5th and set up a new campaign for it on YSM. I kept checking to see if it had been approved and was getting traffic, but it seemed to be taking a while.

I kept checking, about once an hour or so, and after 5-6 hours it still hadn’t been approved. It has now been 4 days and it’s still sitting there, unapproved.

Slapped on YSM?

So what’s going on here? I know that YSM takes a while to approve new campaigns, but 4 days seems like a long time.

Is this what people are referring to when they say they’ve been slapped? The thing is, all my ads are still showing as pending under editorial status, and it does not say disapproved anywhere in my campaign.

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Slapped on AdWords?

After waiting for several days, I finally got tired and decided to port my campaigns over to AdWords. I transferred both my campaigns by hand, and it only took about 15-minutes for my first campaign to start receiving traffic!

But the second campaign, the same one that isn’t running on YSM, is still yet to be approved, just like on YSM. It has been about 30 hours since I added it, so I’m curious what’s going on.

And, just like on YSM, there is no indication of disapproval. It simply states that the status is under review:

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I have not received a single impression on the campaign yet.

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I am seeing a 5/10 Quality Score, and the interface confirms that it’s now showing ads, but I’m not sure why it would take so long for this campaign to be approved. I added it right after I added the first campaign to AdWords, maybe 15-20 minutes afterwards.

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Now, before you guys comment, this is NOT A REBILL. I purposely avoided rebills for this very reason. And my landing site is not a flog or anything shady like that. It’s a legitimate 7-9 page site complete with a privacy policy and all that good stuff. And the offer is nothing questionable either.

The only thing I can see them having an issue with is if they are somehow being hypersensitive about the offer and are actually reviewing it, but seriously, the offers I’m running are probably among the most safest and legitimate offers available on a CPA network. They’re cost-per-sale offers too.

Ideas, Anyone?

Does anyone have any idea what is (or could be) going on here? I’m really frustrated right now as I hate waiting and have no idea why it’s taking so long to green-light my second campaign.

I’d really appreciate hearing your comments.

Meanwhile, I think I’m going to look for 2 new offers and start working on building sites for them. Hopefully at least one of them will be accepted as a new campaign. It sucks though, as I spent a lot of time working on the site for my second campaign, and since it was custom-built towards the particular offer, I can’t use any of it for another site.

My Results So Far

I’ve been running YSM traffic to my first campaign for 2 weeks now, and my Google campaign just starting running yesterday. Here are the results so far:

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As you can see, it started out pretty slow but picked up during the past 4 days where I profited each day. And yesterday I had a great day, netting nearly $75.

Now, the bad news is that this is most likely just a by-product of variance since I have made no changes to my campaign other than a couple of quick Ad Group pricing modifications.

Therefore, there’s no reason why my campaign should be faring better now when it was really no different from August 1st-4th. However, it is possible that my QS has improved over time thus dropping my CPC costs and perhaps improving my ad position, but I really think this is just variance.

Once I get more data I will start to tweak the campaign more.

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Posted: August 9th, 2009 under Affiliate Marketing  

32 Responses to “Why Won’t AdWords & YSM Send Me Traffic?”

  1. My guess is you bought a domain that’s been previously blacklisted with the search engines.

    Although that’s just a guess since that would probably put your QS down to 1, not 5.

    Other possibility could be low quality score on your Google account in general? Perhaps some old campaigns you ran that were not very Google friendly.

    These are just guesses.

    -Paul

  2. Greg Ellison says:

    Is there a number that you call to see why they are not approving your campaigns? Greg Ellison

  3. Killian says:

    I don’t have advice on the pending ads, but -5% ROI sounds pretty good without any optimization. I’m looking forward to seeing how it improves as the campaigns mature.

  4. jason says:

    from what i can see in one of your screen shots your under review. it will take a couple days for them to either approve your ads or either decline them.

    btw if your running anything weightloss, grants, dating, etc etc those shady offers your probably banned. check your email that you signed up with adwords with. even if you pushed those products in the past you will be banned. even if it was just for 1 day. it happened to me and it happened to hundreds of other affiliates.

  5. paul says:

    I wonder why it was taking so long. Do they put a hold on new domain names or anything?

  6. EarningStep says:

    it look like you don’t make anything finally . i wonder what happened with them , but i hope they can give more better service to the customers

  7. That is weird. I have only set up a few campaigns on adwords before, but never had a problem with anything.

  8. Luke says:

    Not sure why you’re having issues, but I’ve never been able to run a successful campaign on AdWords so I can’t really contribute too much :p

  9. Interesting, looking forward to the follow up post

  10. Paul B says:

    Are you running on the content network? That can sometimes cause major delays in getting things approved.

  11. Jason is right. If you are running any kind of rebill, you might as well forget it.

  12. phil.im says:

    Whats happened to your twitter account Tyler? your twitter pages says its been suspended and has been like that for a few days now?

  13. Not quite sure why you are having trouble getting approved, but you might try contacting customer support via emai or by phone.

  14. Kimberly says:

    will be looking forward for the follow up post.

    Thanks

  15. Thats wierd. I am getting ready to run yahoo ppc, and I always like to start my campaigns with yahoo because of the low overhead. If you have a grand to start a new yahoo account with you can get one of the account reps to do all your keyword research for you and then once they do that you can grab all those keywords and bring them on over to Googles Adwords ppc program.

  16. Joe says:

    Tyler, Hello! I love your blog, but it’s worth to start a new banner campaign if you have a product! And all of your readers can start it too. Why?! You spend more than hundred dollars for a few days at your campaigns… And at this link you can buy a paradise place for your banner for $100 per YEAR! Yes, not week, or month, per Yeah! Hurry up!

  17. Luke says:

    will be looking forward for the follow up post.

  18. well, just be patient. someday it’ll work.

  19. torgoen says:

    me too never had problems with adwords have been using from some time

  20. I don’t thin Adwords should give you such problems. But not sure about YSM as I didn’t looked at it till now ever.

  21. Tunes says:

    I think this is quite normal, is always necessary to wait for a few days ..

  22. Google hates affiliates, and has been heavily reviewing/banning people promoting rebill products. IF you’re promoting a rebill product that could explain why.

  23. Anand says:

    Was it some holiday in US..Maye the guys did not review it for that reason!

  24. Bidet says:

    Hopefully it will start picking up.

  25. I wonder why it was taking so long.i think its necessary to wait for a few days .looking forward to the follow up post

    Network Marketing

  26. I have only set up a few campaigns on adwords before

  27. oyun says:

    If you have a grand to start a new yahoo account with you can get one of the account reps to do all your keyword research for you and then once they do that you can grab all those keywords and bring them on over to Googles Ad.words p.program….

  28. Hello.This post was really motivating, especially because I was investigating for thoughts on this matter last Saturday.

  29. Do you mind if I quote a few of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your blog? My website is in the exact same area of interest as yours and my users would really benefit from a lot of the information you present here. Please let me know if this okay with you. Appreciate it!

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