I'm using starter edition, and I've told Google to automatically set the price for my clicks. I've set the budget to $30/month, so effectively they have $1 a day to play with, yet I haven't had any clicks in nearly a week. I had clicks before, and I still have money in my account, yet no clicks! Surely my ad wording cant be that bad...
A valid point entirely if the process was controlled by humans, but as the system is controlled by a computer, and $30/month was readily available in the budget drop-down box, surely I should be getting clicks.
There is a list of about 50 keywords, but the two main ones are forum and money. I've set no limit on the bid price, and let Google determine it in order to get the most clicks per day. I was getting clicks before so I can't see why I shouldn't be now.
It seems to be working now, however only for affiliate program clicks. My theory is that with a budget of $30 a month, Google only allows itself to spend $1 a day regardless of whether it spent the previous day's $1 or not. This means that even though I set no maximum bid, it was effectively limited to just $1 per bid, and it's entirely possible this is why I got no clicks.
I think you're right there. Bidding on words like forum and money is insanity, the competition is immense and almost regardless of what you're selling, those words can't be relevant. I'm surprised you'd get any traffic at all on those words at $1. It'd probably get you one click every so often, but with masses of tire-kickers and unless you're giving away money, it'll probably bounce. Tighten your keywords and phrase them up. Do you run a make money forum or something? If you do, try having longtail stuff, like "make money forum" and "forum on making money". You'll still be completing with the idiots bidding on terms like broad and phrase match "make money", but they'll be paying more to compete, as they words will be less relevant.