Are there ways other than using google's keyword tool to find out what my adwords competition pays per click for a certain keyword? I would like to find out how low my cpc for a keyword can possibly get, given that I have a super ad CTR and landing page quality score to guestimate whether I'll ever stand a chance to set up a profitable campaign...
You're not going to be able to find out what your competition's CPC is. Yahoo used to have a tool where you could look up the top 3 bids, but it has been retired. You're not going to confidently answer your question without doing a test campaign.
Nope, and it's one of things I have previously suggested that people should not worry about. As Huligan suggested, set up a test campaign to get an idea of what things will cost.
There are a tool that will give you an approximate idea but it will tell you a lot more data ( like number of advertisers etc). However you will have to use a combo of two software. One in monthly fee of 80$ and other cost $500.00 for the year. So expensive to get as well. Keep searching online and you will find them. I cannot tell you what they are as I use them for my own business but I can confirm they do exist but will only give you an approximation of costs. Thanks and hope this tip helps you.
For keywords I'm particularly interested in, I just set up a dummy advert and keep upping the limit until I get to the position I want. Crude but it does work!
I don't quite agree, I do worry! If I can find out that cpc's are too high for my ROI to be positive, I can save myself the hassle of entering a niche/setting up a campaign and spending time/money. In some markets you maybe just don't have high enough affiliate commissions to keep up with the cpc merchants are bidding to advertise for the same products.
But you can bid what you like! The minimum bids are independent of what your competitors are doing. So as long as the value of a click to you is more than the minimum bid, then you can make money. You have to work out the most profitable bid for you by varying it, and looking at the volume of traffic that you get. Multiply the number of clicks by the profit you make from each one for each position, and go for the most profitable one. The objective is not to appear at the top of the search results, it's to make as much money as possible. It's true that if a number of competitors are bidding over the odds for keywords, then it limits the amount of money that you can make from advertising on Adwords, but knowing their bids won't help. Apart from anything else, if you knew their bids, you could calculate their Quality Scores (at least, relative to your own) by finding the bid that put you approximately level with them. If you had an entente cordial with another company, you could use this information to test things to maximise your Ranking Quality Score. IMHO, it'll be a cold day in Googleplex when they give that information out...
If you can find out what the competitor is bidding on, how much they are paying, what keywords they are concentrating on, what is the density of keywords they use and what URL or pages contain them..how much is that info worth to you as an advertiser? Luckily before you throw money testing ads, tools available will let you do this research where you can go with a strong 90% assurance of how you will perform. True results can only come from running the ads. But you will spend less. Again with a little research these tools are available on the market to help save you money.
You're assuming your competitor actually knows what they are doing? Assuming that to be true it's still not worth much at all. It may save some setup time but that's about it. Keyword densities & urls would be pretty much worthless. Sorry, I don't buy it. Unless you're replicating a competitors campaign and landing page down the letter (including using their domain name which is impossible) and every other element of the product/service you're selling is identicle to that of your competition knowing what they are doing, while it might seem "cool", does nothing but poisen/taint your view of that market. That I agree with. The less you spend the less you learn I'd like to see a practical application, with associated benefits, of these "tools". They sound like they were built for the lazy and marketed to those who think their competition is light years ahead of them in terms of effective AdWords marketing. I've seen a bunch of this stuff before and have never been impressed. Secret tools you can mention but not by name? Sounds a bit silly to me.
GuyfromChicago..you are right..I guess such a product only exists in my dreams . I choose to think that it is used by very "smart" marketers who know how to use the product but I can see where you get the idea of a product such as this to be built for "lazy" and marketed to those who think their competition is light years ahead of them in terms of effective AdWords marketing
I don't recall saying that. I said it would have little to no value. Also, I've used a lot fo the tools out there that claim to be able to gather the info you suggest...never found one that even gets close. I always test them on my own stuff where I know bids/keywords/etc. I (and and a few others) have spoken as to why such a tool would have little to no value, but heck, everyone's wrong from time to time. That's why I asked for a practical example of how these tools could benefit someone. And by practical example I meant something with some specific metrics that could be discussed...not an example like "it showed me all my competitors keywords and that saved me money". Does that seem unreasonable?
I think your questions are reasonable. However, I rather not discuss the specific metrics of these programs and my research methods etc. Just wanted to let people know that there are existing programs out there to help advertisers or e-marketers. Now how much of value these software can or cannot provide can only be concluded by the end user using the programs. Thanks
quite apart from all of the above topics you can buy keyword elite and you can try keywordspy.com. keyword spy lets you have a free trial, keyword elite is around $170 or something.
I really didn't like Keyword Elite, kind of wish i didn't buy it now. but oh well another lesson learned. I think Keyword Analyzer is far better but hey. grass is all ways greener and stuff you know.
Point is, if you can't get a campaign to return positive, you start asking yourself questions like 'does the competition have higher commisions?', 'do they have better landing page ctr's?', 'is their ad ctr on adwords better so they have lower click prices?' and so on. Now if you think you've optimized/tweaked the hell out of your own campaign but still get no positive ROI you start to wonder: 'what's the competitions average click price?'. Because in my case the commissions are fixed by the merchant running the affiliate program...