I tend to start my bidding on the high side and work my way down. I've seen recommendations that say start low and work up. The problem I see with that idea is that the low bid will show in a lower position and get lower CTR and will have lower quality in Google's eyes. Any thoughts that you can back up with data? Thanks.
I never collected the data....experience has shown me that it's better to start with Max Daily Budget & Max CPC and then after running a day or two (if you can afford it) pulling back. Reason is Google is going to score immediately so when you go to the max you get a higher quality score to your entire campaign As such when you back off you will not loose the nice rankings you had initially and you'll save cash per click over your competitors Past experience also has shown, starting low and working my way up, has cost more in CPC and it's harder to get the good quality score, and move people out of position... Also when you start low and work your way up you give the competitors a chance to see you and take actions to your moves jumping in at the top slaps them hard though, so watch for fraud, or them trying to eat up your ad budget by cheating some other way, or a bid war.
I try to shoot for positions 3-7 and stay on the first page. I never max out for position #1. Usually I have to decrease my bid slightly (after about 1 week) before arriving at my desired position of #4. In the mean time, I'll tweak my ad copy and landing page to improve those variables in the quality score.
I asked another pay per click resource and their recommendation was start high and dial your bids back. This is how I'm going to do it as well.
High then Low, usually end up in near top positions for highly relevant keywords anyway with very low CPC, I've found that it's harder to lower bids on keywords that aren't as relevant in Googles eyes.
For the campaigns I have running, it's too expensive to run in positions 1-3. Sometimes conversions can be lower since you get all the click happy price shopping visitors and not real buyers at that point. If you have exactly what the visitor is looking for, and it's pretty unique, position #1 might be best. For example, if you're selling genuine rolexes when everyone else is selling fakes. Probably a high profit item that you can afford a couple of clicks from the same visitor, because they are looking for genuine rolexes and they saw you first. Everywhere else they only found fakes, so they come back. You just have to test what works for your campaign.
Rob6188 - you do give useful advices here! I know "work at home" is competitive. To know how much to bid is difficult. Atleast can someone give some guideline or your experience here. What would be your minimum bid and maximum bid? sandy
Yeah as everyone said , you must have good funds at the beginning and after one week you can go low !
Whichever position I am aiming for, I always start off with a larger bid than is necessary. I then tweak my campaign, start lowering my bid and bring my ad down to whichever position I originally intended it to be in (usually position 3, but it depends on the market and many other factors). It is always easier and cheaper to lower your ad into position instead of raising it - at least in my experience.
Rob6188 gives some good advise- Thanks Rob. Created this thread http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=259972 back in March. You might want to check out as there are some detailed responses & great advise.