Hi, after some link development i am thinking about promoting my site (a commercial one) on AdWords. Any hints on how to start? I heard it's good to just do some "probes" - like to spend very little on various keywords and see which bring the best results... Thank you for help!
you would have to do some keyword research for the nich you are targetting, otherwise you might as well throw the money away... ive learnt from this...
Take the adwords course from google itself. Good introduction to get you up and running. It is also free! (always good)
The adwords course is good, but I belive the best way to lern is with experience play around with it, see what you can lern.
Hi kozuch, If you're new to AdWords, I'd advise you to START SMALL. Clicks and costs can add up in a hurry, and you can find yourself in trouble before you realize it. Then gradually ramp up your campaigns once you have a feel for PPC advertising. Another suggestion would be to do your learning on "second tier" PPC Search Engines, rather than with AdWords. Allfeeds.com is a good example of one of these SEs - their CPC is typically significantly less than AdWords', so it's a good option for moving through the learning curve. In addition, these SEs typically have more responsive support, as well. HTH, Sam
Web freedom, can you elaborate please, im interested. What kind of budget do you have in mind how much maxbid? etc etc
Hi biziboy, I'd say your starting budget should be whatever you're willing (and can afford) to lose. Typically, $1.00 - $5.00 per day is a good place to start. I also think it's easiest to learn on a single campaign to begin with, as trying to juggle multiple campaigns can be more confusing than helpful at the start. Max bid is really going to depend on your keywords, niche, competition, and obviously budget, so it will be different from case to case. But by starting at this level, with a single campaign, you can begin to analyze results, ask any questions you may have either through AdWords Support or here at DP, adjust your campaign, analyze results, ask questions, etc. As far as ramping the campaign up is concerned, ideally you wouldn't do this until you hit "critical mass" - that is, the revenue that your campaign is producing is equal to or greater than your budget. After that, and once you have a solid understanding of how the system works and a successful plan in place, increasing your ROI is simply a matter of scale. HTH, Sam
Thanks for that post, I was shocked to see you say 1.00 to 5.oo thats part of why i asked the question... When i started adwords, i was under the impression that those amounts would bring results but a few campaigns with no results led me to conclude that advertiser with low budgets wont break the statistical barrier of chaos. So, im assuming that if im starting with $5 a day then my max bid should be low, just to get enuogh visitors...say 70 if i get about 8 visitors for five dollars, ive found that nothing magical happens. so let me rephrase, since the money is all relative, how many visitors should i try to get before results positive?
Hi folks, thanx for valuable advices. I guess I will combine the advices from you WebFreedom and biziboy - you both seem to have experience. What i find interesting is the biziboy's "brutal force" method - get as many visitors as possible with the lowest budget as possible. I think this could work maybe even better than a higher CPC, because you have pretty much no guarantee that more expensive CPCs bring exactly the visitors you need. However, only a mix of various techniques can be successful enough I think - I mean unless you find the right technique for you... Am I right or is there always an AdWords technique (i mean certain AdWords "settings" - keywords, budget, CPC value etc.) that works much better than any others??? Starting with other companies but Google is a golden advice as well i think - you burn much less money like that... Biziboy, your offer on vounchers is very interesting... will talk to you later probably. WebFreedom, wouldnt you have more links like Allfeeds.com to start with please? Edit: I found a pretty good tool at yahoo's - it nicely shows the max bids (=max CPC???) for the currrent advertisers - http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/se...t+guide&mkt=us&lang=en_US&Partner=userbidtool
Biziboy - expecting 70 visitors for $5/day may be a bit optimistic depending on your market/keywords. 70 visitors @ $5/day ~ $0.07 per click Usually the minimum bid on keywords if $0.05 (although there are ones that you can bid $0.01 on). Now lets say you pick a competitive market. Your probably looking at $0.15-$0.25 per click if it's not a super comeptitive field. Your $5/day would pull ~ 20 visitors But if you start with something like financial, legal, or any of the other super competitive fields, your $5/day could easily just end up being a single click! It's really going to come down to what market you are trying to learn ppc with.
I would actually suggest the opposite - avoid second tier PPC programs until you know what you are doing. 2nd tier PPC programs tend to have horrible conversion rates and a higher % of click fraud. I've never used allfeeds but when I see stuff like this on their advertiser page it makes me wonder who's running the show over there... Can we get a few more typos, commas and exclamation points? !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Biziboy, Discreet beat me to the punch (above), but his (or her) input is dead on. There's really no way to bid on highly competitive keywords with a $1.00 - $5.00 budget, so it's a good idea to do some solid keyword research and find some "nuggets" to begin with. This will give you an opportunity to see how the program works, take the initial steps (i.e. set up a campaign, etc.), and hopefully break even or turn a small profit. I wouldn't say that you can learn everything you need to know with a budget this size, but it's a good way to learn the basics before diving in deeper. Sam
Thanks for this info, but I've been misunderstood a bit... My wanted to basically ask if it is possible to profit of adwords on low budgets at all... ebook etc (even though id dont buy ebooks) will claim that you can start off with 5 dollars a day.... from a few trials, i found this to be wrong becase as mentioned, 5 bucks wont get you much traffic... so is it possible to profit on low level or should i bump up my budget?
I think it's possible, but it's not easy - and whatever profit you may make will probably be small. The biggest challenge with a small budget is that there's not much margin for error - since you're restricted to a small number of keywords, each with a relatively low max bid, they have to perform exceedingly well in order to generate a profit. That said, I'd say that your strategy with a small budget should be very similar to keyword research itself - the more time you invest in finding a low-competition, high-traffic niche, the more revenue you stand to generate. Sam
For newbies, is best to start with low cost kewords to drive traffic to your site. Of course, low cost means low profit. But the lessons learnt will be much more valuable before venturing into high paying keywords with higher risks.
Well, finally what happened to me is following: I got lost the $5 on AdWords account opening, I could not figure out the correct AdWords technique for me so I stopped using the account temporarily. God know if I will use it again... The sign-up fee is a huge profit for Google I think...
hi kozuch82 if u want to start adword u have to do a through keyword analysis related to your product or services. those keywords which can really pay u or convert the leads. its pretty easy to sign in to the google adwords account and make your ad live. but before making them live u have to also monitor the bid on those keywords which you have selected and you have to make interesting ads. i hope you must benefit from this any suggestion is welcomed. Regards Jacobs