I have a keyword phrase that Google says indicates minimum bid of $0.20, if I go 0.01 below that the phrase is listed inactive. I seperated it out as an ad group by itself, and optimized the ad with the phrase in the title and the body of the ad. Minimum bid is still 0.20. There are only 2 ads listed for this keyword phrase. How do I get my bid amount lower? It's where most of my click throughs are coming, but I can't afford to pay this much.
I have the same problem. I think Google learns which keywords are working for you and then jack up the price. I had a keyword that got jumped up to $5... so I closed that ad group and started another and guess what? No more $5 minimum bid. If they do it again on that ad group then I will just close it and start a new one again, but so far I've gone over a month with the new one and it's still running at less than a dollar.