Your source of PPC ad education.

Hi guys, what is your source of PPC advertising education? Where do you learn your ppc skills? ebook? any other source?

 

check the signature.

 

trial and error for me...but that's the way to lose a lot of money

 

1: this forum
2: trial and error
3: some ebooks

 

hands on experience (quite a lot)

 

Nothing really beats experience with perhaps some guidance/info from reviews and other experienced advertisers.

 

Read Perry Marshall's book (which, experience now tells me, is less than brilliant).

Then played around with campaigns and spreadsheets, working out how to set bids in order to maximise profit (i.e. find the sweet spot), and determine which advert is better when testing (waiting for conversion rate results or picking the best purely on clickthrough rate).

Once I'd got the basics, I came on here, and learned some details.

After that, trial and error.

In my experience, there aren't any books or e-books at the moment that come close to telling you what you really need to do in order to optimise a campaign (by which I mean make it as profitable as possible - many don't even mention profit!).

But I've not read them all, so maybe there is a good one out there somewhere (or perhaps I should write one?)

 

- Adwords help centrer to start with
- This forum and a few more
- Blogs (i have a list on my blog)
- Trial and error

PS: the only e-book i found interesting and it covers a lot of info for ppc is the SEO book, I definitely don't trust the make a "million in 5 minutes e-books"!

 

Trial and error + digesting hundreds (thousands?) of paid search forums, blogs and other informative sites.

 

I have to disagree with CustardMite's view. I don't think there's anyone who knows more about AdWords than Perry Marshall. Admittedly, he can confuse you with the wealth of tips and techniques he throws at you, but he's trying to cover all the bases and you need to recognize which of them apply to your particular situation.
Thus, there's some inevitable trial and error. However, he makes no bones about how difficult achieving AdWord success can be, despite what he points out are some quite simple underlying principles.
If nothing else, his free five day trial doesn't cost one red cent and serves as an invaluable starting point. You can get the details per his page at http://www.perrymarshall.com/google/

Duncan

PS. And no, I am NOT an affiliate of his.

 

Sorry, but anyone who can write a "Definitive Guide To Adwords" and forget to mention Quality Score or Conversion Rate...

These are the two most critical aspects of Adwords Marketing, imho. Quality Score determines how much you have to pay per click to appear in a good position in the results, and Conversion Rate determines how much you can afford to pay.

To give virtually no coverage to either topic, other than to say "here's how you can see the column" seems a bit odd to me.

Most of the book is given over to writing adverts, which is very useful and I've learned a lot from it, but there's a lot more to Adwords than that...

And most of the book is focused on maximising the clickthrough rate - rarely mentioning that since you are paying for each visitor, you should target the right kind of traffic, and dissuade the others from clicking on your advert.

It's not a bad book, but there's a lot of things missing...

 

Perry Marshall got me started with Adwords, I then went out and tested like crazy to see how it all works.

I then went on to Perry Marshall's mastermind series which blew me away... I really enjoy it.

Apart from that I get a lot of ideas from these forums, I test A LOT... and I look at what the competition is doing, or try to at least.

 

To each their own, I guess.

But I don't see how you can run a successful Adwords campaign without understanding how Quality Score works.

I'm sure that you do, but I'm also sure that you didn't learn it from Perry's 'definitive' guide...

 

Great points guys..

I've read here a ton, and other articles. I've also met with other small business owners in the real world to discuss strategy over lunches...

 

I read Yanik Silver's ebook in 2004 that gave some pretty good tips. Then I started on Oveture. I read Andrew Goodman's book last year and started on AdWords. I still read his blog (he doesn't give a lot of free advice, but good topic-related thoughts nonetheless). Forums (GaryTheScuba guy on SEOChat is probably a PPC genius if there ever was one), combining knowledge and learning from others IRL.

And yes, I did pick up Marshall's book to see what the hubbub was about. He makes some good points. The takeaway would be never quit a/b split testing and get your prospects on a list someway or somehow through offering a free report/course for an exchange of their name and email.

 

I bought just about every e-book on Adwords and joined just about every affiliate training program. Some were a complete waste of money, while others were gems. I've also learnt a lot from reading through forums (especially the Wealthy Affiliate Forum) and from personal experience. Despite all these sources, I still endured the learning curve and lost a lot of money to begin with. Adwords is mercyless!

 

Read the AdWords blog, forums like this one, and test, track, test, track, test, track. The PPC game is getting more difficult by the day so you have to stay on top of it. BTW, having a large war chest helps too.

 

just do it like nike. I don't like reading

 

Testing is always the best way to figure out these things.. I usually have 2000 keywords and a very low bid amount 10-20 cents .. that usually works for mee

 

Yes, I agree. I manage to save a lot of money after learning the correct techniques in setting adwords campaign.