I am currently trying to get my ads closer to the top position. Is there any benefit to raising the bids in small amounts every day vs. raising it all at once? Or is there another approach? Thanks!
starting out high works better than starting out low and increasing slowly over time. This is considered best practice in this industry, as we have seen google discounting much faster by showing them you are a player in the niche and not just trying to skim things.
google employs what is popularly known as 'stupid tax' in the industry. That is, if they feel that you are just skimming through and 'trying' out the system, they charge you dearly for it. As they want only big/serious players in the game who know what they are doing. This makes it VERY difficult for any newbie to jump onto the bandwagon of Google PPC 2 ways to prevent this : 1. Like robert said, its considered best practice to start with a high CPC (as that'll increase your CTR and thus your quality score) and then decrease it with time (since you'll have a good quality score due to high CTR, google system will automatically reduce your max CPC) 2.This is a lil controversial (and without any proofs/facts) - Make sure you never run out on your daily budget, as google can penalize you for that with higher CPC rates. (Again, this hasn't been tested by me : so apply caution with this one).
Thanks! this is an established account and it is not doing bad at all showing in the 3rd spot and below, but we want to see how it does being up at the top.
What pisses me off is when you start out high, and get a ton of impressions/clicks, so you therefore you lower your bid rate. After lowering, you still get good momentum and the clicks/impressions keeps coming. But then the next day when the stats are all reset, your impressions turn into shit because the bid rate you lowered it to isn't good enough to even get the same amount of impressions that you had at the end of the last day. Is there any way around this? It seems that the more I play with the bids, the better results I get but I don't have time to play with my bids on a daily basis all the time.
What is said applies mostly to Search network IMO. However, I haven't cracked the content network yet although I've made over $75,000 in the last 4 months using content network alone.
your lowering too dramatically. When you lower your bids, do it in small increments, not large. Example, If todays keyword avg CPC is .75, lower to .70
My advice would be to buy an adwords voucher, then bid big. When you think about how much you're saving from using a voucher, it'll allow you to increase your min bid by a lot, and soon Google will start charging you less.
These people should evaluate if Google Adwords is right for them... Probably not Adwords is not for the faint of heart...
lol typical answer from you. So people that can't afford to pay .70 per click on day 1, then .65 day 2, averaging 100 clicks (minimum needed to test out an offer these days) works out to be $70, $65, ..... shouldn't be using Adwords? Sorry but I like to test out my offers at least one or two days, and am definitely not into spending $130 for something that will not work. You multiply that by 20 offers a day and you might as well plan on moving your shit to a trailer park if you can even afford that after that sort of adspend.
The best bet is if your budget is low, bid on keywords with not much competition. As your profits increase, move onto more competitive keywords and take it from there. I don't agree that people with a small budget shouldn't be using Adwords. If they go about it in the correct way, they can get a bit of business from it - as you earn more you can then start spending more and then the snowball effect takes place. I generally take it a campaign at a time. Once I've sorted one, I add another. It mean's I'm spending more, but as I'm nailing each campaign, the conversions increase. I'm in the UK so I guess 0.70 in the US would be knocking on around 0.35 here (I don't know the current conversion rate). 0.35 isn't a huge bid, but it's not tiny either. As Google does position normalisation, I find that dropping my bids a little bit, can lower my position but it keeps my Quality Score. As I've found that being in lower positions can increase my ROI, even though it's a lower CTR, I don't mind not being top.
Unfortunately it is the truth... I do not say it to be mean or negative but $130 testing a market is hardly enough to evaluate potential, and you shouldn't be testing 20 offers a day to see if its profitable. Do market research and evaluate supply and demand. This will let you know if there is money to be made without spending a dime, unless its for a consumer report, research or datasheet... I think your response goes to prove that lack of experience leads to failure and that the faint of heart should not attempt adwords. Adwords should never leave you in a trailer park, and if marketing with adwords is a financial burden, then once again, you should not be using adwords... If you do not have the money to learn with then use someone elses money... I see tons of openings with companies looking for entry level internet marketers to learn their system and help them with daily tasks. This is more valuable than wasting lots of time and money reinventing the wheel.
Look bud, I think spending $130 on one campaign to see whether something works or not is well over alot of people's budget, I did not say that this is the max you should spend on a campaign that works. When starting out, how many of your campaigns failed and how many were successful? Give a percentage. So are you saying that each of your failed campaigns you spent hundreds of dollars to test out to see if that worked? Or are you saying that you only select successful campaigns (this is how you make yourself out to be in your previous post), and that you have never failed at internet marketing. If the latter, then I call BS and if you spend hundreds/thousands testing failed campaigns then you truly are a chump. I said 20 offers a day as an example, but I would test 20 offers in a month. Sure I'll probably fail at about 18 of them, but I'm not willing to spend $130 x 18 campaigns in that one month to figure that out. While a few people may appreciate you coming on here and giving your two bits about what you know about adwords, your know it all attitude really does put a damper on some of your quality posts. Next time, let's skip the whole douchebag comment "with your inexperience you shouldn't be using adwords because you're a failure" bullshit and try to be more helpful instead of just trying to show off how knowledgeable you are and putting others down.
In my early years of internet marketing I spent lots of money. Thousands of my hard earned dollars... It was not till I got a mentor to show me all the inside tricks of the trade did I start being successful at it. Eventually I became better at campaign management and market evaluation than he was. I did all the same things you guys do, which is why I help others out now. I was in the same shoes, testing dozens of offers per month, spending $100, if that as a trial on each offer, and dumping lots of cash into emarketing books and other methods. Overall I failed a lot using these methods, this is why I am blunt about my answers and I don't try to tippy toe around everyones feelings to make their efforts feel good. I give real facts and proven methods. I am here to give advice, help others and make money in the process of doing it. If you choose to listen, thats up to you, but I don't have time to make you feel good about micro testing affiliate offers and pat you on the back, nor do I want anyone who chooses to read and take my advice to think your method is a good approach(At least in my opinion) and nor do I want to mislead anyone into thinking that investing into adwords is the simplest thing to do. You have to be willing to take a loss, and believe it or not, many people are afraid to lose money. To some people losing $1k is as scary as jumping out of an airplane. I do not want to comfort those people, I do not want to egg them on, because in the end, its those people that complain and come back crying that adwords sucks and a scam. They didn't evaluate risk, and their minimal loss of $100 - $1k is the end of the world to them All in all... I will give you an honest and truthful answer, and call out all the BS methods and advice so that others can see BS where others can't spot it. Sorry if this approach is too intense for you, but internet marketing is cut throat and good, real, advice is extremely hard to come by. Many "gurus" will hype stuff off, only tell sell you their new proven marketing methods for only $99.99, or make other outlandish claims. Well, a newbie can't see the BS behind it, but I can. I know if the method works, and if it doesn't and if I was nice about, more people would be more willing to take the advice. I do not claim to be the best, I know many marketers from whom I learn from all the time. New stuff I never even thought of, and conceptual ideas still needing to be tested and tried. Unfortunately I do not meet many of them on this forum, and those who understand, I make friends with and share knowledge and even partnerships. lastly it comes down to 3 kinds of people on this forum 1. People with money and not afraid to lose it. These are the people who make money in the long run because they can handle risk and accept its reward or loss. These are the people I enjoy teaching 2. Business people who want to spend money and spend it wisely. These are people with money who don't want to spend their time learning what I already know. So they employ my services. They are happy to have profitable campaigns, put money in their pocket and I am happy to profit with them, not from them 3. Those who dream of being one of the two above and unfortunately many people cant handle either one So in closing and to answer your Q's... 100% failed till I found a mentor Yes, I usually spend in the thousands to test an offer, but I never test an offer till I have done some extensive research, which limits the amount of failures I have now. Even before I begin any campaign, I create a marketing strategy and consult with my trusted partners to see if any other insight can be given. I never test and offer knowing it will fail and I always allot a certain amount of risk. I have am now very good at evaluating market potential. I can usually asses with great degree the success/failure potential of a campaign, offer, product or service. I am wrong some of the time, leading to some losses here and there, but I now succeed more than I fail. It would be complete BS if I had a 100% success rate, its more like 75%. I have never spent 100k testing 1 single campaign, that would be dumb on my part, but over my years of experience I have certainly spent well over 100k in failures combine with my own money, clients and others. But I have handled lots of clients accounts and offers in my time doing internet marketing. My greatest campaign loss was 35k, with $2k generated in revenue, however this was not a judgment call on my part, I was only requested to manage the campaign. Prior to launch, I highly advised against the launch due to the high amount of risk and failure factor, but was asked to proceed anyway. This is what I would call calibration. Your level of calibration of very low. Over time it will get better, but as a starting point I highly recommend you do more research and put together better plans and strategies. My guess, is that of the 18 failure, about 5 - 10 of them could have been profitable if a proper strategy was in place, but I also guess you are just attempting direct linking campaign and just hoping an offer will convert naturally. This is also known as brand leeching, as the only reason the campaign is successful is because the converting click was prior educated and ready to buy, you just happened to be bidding on the right keyword at the right time. Rather than a real strategy of capturing and converting both ready to buy and research visitors. I am sorry you feel that way, but its my way of weeding out the nonsense. If you could see my inbox, I get dozens of requests from people to review their accounts daily. 80% of these accounts are not worth a glance, and others just need direction and a little help. I guess I should ask these "few" people to stop bothering me right? You took a strong stance against my opinion, I simply rebutted with a stronger one... I would still assume you are inexperienced, but I don't assume you can't learn and eventually learn to evaluate, strategize and make a profit. Honestly if I can do, so can anyone else, they just need truth and less fluff from "gurus" To all those who follow my posts and seek my advice, please understand why I take a strong stance against BS, fluff and bad advise and why I either make a mockery of it or completely trash the opinion. If I simply gave every statement a slap on the wrist, then many people would still be following bad advice. Lastly, if you want to get into internet marketing and don't have the money, use someone else's. Pick up the newspaper or search craigslist. I see dozens of businesses looking to hire entry level adwords managers every day. Most of the work is simple tasks, but you can learn a lot by doing "grunt work", plus you get a mentor and you get to see a campaign thats actually turning a profit. Eventually you can apply that knowledge to yourself, or take up an internet marketing directors position, which pays handsomely. Wow this was long...
I started out 'carefully' with a budget of around £30 a Month for my niche in the accommodation sector. I read as much as I could before embarking on a campaign researching the posts in this forum extensively in the process. To start I was getting a ROI of around 5 to 1 on ad spend so was able to figure out I was at least doing something right. More importantly it gave me confidence that I could increase my spend which in turn improves ROI. I regularly spend over £200 a Month now with my ROI as good as 30 to 1 but never falling below 5 or 6 to 1. The poster above is clearly a pro in this game and has in the past answered in detail queries I have had. I have learnt from those experiences and thank him for his input. At the end of the day this is a learning curve. You need to put the time in to understand it once you have that and the key to how testing works then you will make money from it. As in everything internet marketing there is no such thing as a quick buck to be made you need to understand your product and how best to present it within PPC. Anyone prepared to sit down and devote time to learning the systems will have the best chance of making a success from it. Only losers blame others when they cannot get it right..
Hmm you guys seem to know your stuff, I have a question if I may... I have a long-ish tail keyword that has a GREAT quality score, YET, a shorter version of that key word in the same campaign has a POOR score. Eg. Brand New Dog Leash would give me a high score, but Dog Leash gives me a poor score. On my website, I am optimized for the long tail key word, and THUS, I should be optimized for the short key word. Why the diff in quality score?
in reality, dog leash and brand new dog leash mean 2 different things dog leash... Well, what about it? how to make one? how to sell one? new one? used one? green one? blue one? There are too many possibilities and since your landing page is "highly optimized" for brand new dog leash, you don't cover enough ground for the general version of the word, therefore you are no longer relevant to the broad meaning of dog leash and only highly relevant to someone looking for a brand new dog leash. Hope this helps...
Not all of us have had the privilege of obtaining a mentor, actually probably about 99.9% of us internet marketers don't have and will never have one. Unfortunately for the other 99.9% of us suckers, we have to test and learn everything from scratch. Did I ever ask you to blow smoke up my ass and give me a pat on the back? I have no problems with people poking holes at my methods and giving it a good kick in the ass, but at least throw some advice along with it instead of just saying that if you're not willing to drop thousands on testing something then you should quit adwords. Some of us are really serious about this, and are willing to lose money doing so. So far I have dropped over 5K into my adwords account since signing up as a noob 4 months ago. Yes you guessed it, I'm a noob but I am making a profit with doing this stuff (not much of one but enough to keep me motivated). Also note that I have a full time job (doing something totally unrelated) and also have a young family (2 kids). So sorry I can't spend 12 hour days to perform the type of research you do when testing offers. Poke holes at my strategies, tell me what I can improve on, but when you start name dropping "me and my partners" and talking about tens of thousands that you advised your clients BS turns into a who gives a fuck post. Lose the arrogance. My point is, not everyone has the same successful strategy that you do. Not everyone was privileged enough to get a mentor to show them the inside ropes. Not everyone can spend 100% of their day doing this. So when someone comes in and wants to learn about something new, don't just tell them that you can tell by their response that they're a noob and they should be spending thousands of dollars testing something because everyone's strategy is different. Thanks for the tough love post Why don't you enlighten us with this post instead of just telling us that I do a ton of research and drop big bagfuls of money? Again, enlightening us with what you do on the above would be helpful. This paragraph interests me, what do you assess? Nice to see that you have business partners and you do this as a full time job, but as I mentioned above (and also goes for many others), we don't have access to these types of resources. This is a good post. BTW though I do build all my own landing pages (even though you assumed I was just some noob who direct links everything). But if I throw something up, setup adcopy, spend $30 (or 1/100 of my conversion amount), tweak, spend another 1/100, tweak, spend again. If by the 3rd time I can't make things happen, I drop the campaign. SURE if I had someone experienced like yourself look at these dropped campaigns, you could probably turn it around but I have no idea where TF to look to get these going. Again, I don't have a mentor so I have to keep testing things the hard way. I won't even bother responding to this. This maybe something to consider if I wanted a $35K job, but I would rather learn the hard way and try and make some extra bucks on top of what I'm making now (which is more than enough but I want to be able to work for myself and not work for someone else).