Avoiding risks withAdWords

What are the risks with AdWords?
I just read that some loose money by not checking their account daily.
Not enough research, just starting because of a voucher, seems another bad experience for some.
What else?

 

Don't advertise scammy stuff - ex: flogs for teeth whitening or acai would be bad....

 

You can lower the risk in adwords by carefully maintain your campaign.

If you don't generate sale in 150 clicks for example, try to find another product. But yes, you must invest your money first before seeing the profit in adwords.

I evaluate my campaign at least once in a week.

 

Yeah, you definetly need to keep extra close attention to the campaign, especially early on as data comes in. Also be careful which keywords you choose to bid on-use the match types liberally, and where appropriate, add negative keywords to weed out an untargeted traffic.

 

The risk is in jumping into something without first knowing what it's all about. The "bad experience" for most appears to be getting free money and not educating themselves as to what PPC advertising is all about. If you want to make the most of a voucher, take your time and learn. You'll maximize it otherwise it will just be a waste, even if it is free money.

 

I have got the feeling that "quick" money makes people blind and then they pay for it! Not good!
Let's learn first instead!

 

It's all about testing and statistics. Start slow, use several different ads, split test and make an excel sheet with your expenses, conversion rate, your gain/loss, average CPC, daily/monthly budget. Basically, the more data you collectabout your campaigns, the easier it will be to monitor what works and what doesn't.

There are so many people telling you "Hey, I made $20k via Adwords" but spent $21K without really noticing...

Forget all guides and guru ebooks. use the official, free Adwords Learning Center for the basics, then slowly start to test yourself. It's all about exprience, something you can't learn from a book. Don't be scared, it's not rocket science.

PS.: Stay away from any offers like the one in your sig if you want to keep your adwords account long term.

 

> Stay away from any offers like the one in your sig if you want to keep your adwords account long term.

Good advice.

> Forget all guides and guru ebooks. use the official, free Adwords Learning Center for the basics

I wouldn't say forget the guides. Adwords learning center covers the basics but doesn't get into the nuts and bolts. I'm all for experience but sometimes you need a helping hand, a bit of a nudge to help you understand better. The key to PPC in my opinion is having relevant keywords and ads that make people click. Few advertisers that I can see do this well.

 

Put a daily limit of like $50 or something just in case.

 

Thanks a lot for your advice, Scripter!

 

i'm also new using adwords, i try the pre-payment system so i was charged in advance, is that good doing this way?

and i need advices from all of u guys, i received an adwords credit of $25 when i purchased a product, but when i redeemed the voucher code i only received $6.81 instead of $25, is that normal?

 

Even if you have a voucher from Google, it's important to understand that you have to spend effort to learn about the Adword system and its possibilitie with Google Adwords learning center. Take the time to learn and know what you're trying to accomplish by setting up a Google account - goals/objectives, ROI, targeted keywords related to your website and how much are you willing to pay on a daily/monthly basis since all costs will be charged on your credit card... Once the basics are setup, then you can test out different possibilities by testing out different ads, landing pages, etc. optimizing you campaign(s) so overtime, your CTR will increase at at lower CPC to reach your "goals/objectives".

 

Very good input!

 

Learning FIRST is the key!
It looks like a lot of newbies follow: Ready,fire, aim!

 

totally true, can't say that my experiences with adwords have been good, I consider it to be scam more than anything where the only party profiting from it is google... but I gotta agree it's great as a testing ground to see what works or not... just my 2 cents

 

Adwords? Scam? Are you sure that you do use the proper words?

 

Thanks for the input

Even if Adwords can be deceptive or difficult to handle it's not a scam

 

I've heard a good way to tell if someone is searching a keyword phrase (hense potential sales on adwords) is to search it yourself in quotes and see how many sponsored links are displaying. But that's not always accurate.

 

Well Adwords is definitely not a scam. It is a tool and like any other tool, you have to know how to use it effectively if you want to get the job done right.

I think if Adwords was a scam, you would have heard about it and it would be shut down long ago. Adwords has been around in its current pay-per-click format since April 2002 and was a CPM format before that. Since many use Adwords, it appears they are happy and it's working for them.