Someone in a forum asked me the other day for some quick tips on Google Adwords. I have been quite successful with Adwords, and so my post got longer and longer as I thought of things, and each one seemed more important than the last-It occurred to at that point that this would make a pretty useful article, as it"s something lots of people participate in, and I don"t feel that many people get as much out of it as they should do! I think it"s a pity because in the work at home and home business arenas, some decent Adwords skills can make a huge amount of difference to your online money making! With that in mind, here are my 10 Adwords Tips You Were Never Told!
10- Trust your own conversion rates-Nobody else"s. This relates particularly well to those of you that are affiliate marketers. When you are considering what items to promote, only use other people"s conversion figures if they can physically prove them to you. I once agreed to sign on as an affiliate for a contact I had made through eBay-He seemed very professional, I liked his site and his product, and he assured me that the site converted around 5% of visitors into sales. I liked the sound of that, as I already had a few low priced keywords in mind that would bring in some good traffic. So I signed up. One month later, I had directed over a thousand clicks to his site, and there had not been a single sale. I got it verified by Clickbank too, so I know it was pretty accurate. Needless to say, our partnership ground to a halt.
9-Keep an eye on the budget-especially until the campaign takes off and becomes profitable. This seems really obvious, but those clicks really do add up fast. It"s really easy to let them get out of hand as we find ourselves pushing it up that extra couple of bucks here and there in the hope of picking up stray clicks at the end of the day. Before we know it, our 4 or 5 dollars a day is 12 or 13, and by the end of the month we owe Google a grand. That"s great if you are making good money from all those clicks, but from reading the forums I gather that this mostly happens to people that are just starting out and struggling to get into profit.
8-Don"t listen to Google. Let them show you how to use the site and get your account set up, but for advice on actual campaigns and ads, look elsewhere. The reason? Google are a business. It"s in their interest for you to pay more for your clicks, and to raise your budget accordingly. There are plenty of free resources on the net for Adwords, like this article for example, so search around for things like this and any free ebooks you can find on the subject. If you want advice, get it from people that aren"t going to be profiting directly from your mistakes.
7-Quantity and quality-Spend time researching your keywords. The more time you spend, the less money you spend, and your click through rate will likely be better too. Lots of Adwords campaigns are run by people sitting behind little desks in big offices, beavering away for a tiny salary and a company car. Campaigns are literally a job for these people, and the success or cost of the campaign is of no relevance because it all comes straight from the company funds. People like this are the reason that you can bid $25 on the words "Credit Card" on some PPC schemes and still not get top placing. People like this are also the reason people like you and I can find thousands of cheap, closer matching keywords just by putting the time in. These guys run campaigns just by throwing money at them, and we can easily outperform them just by applying ourselves a little with the keyword research.
6-Match Test-Adwords lets you run multiple ads from the same keyword group simultaneously. This is a great tool if you put it to use properly. How? Simply by making each ad slightly different, and seeing which one pulls more clicks. Once you can see which one is more successful, tinker around with the wording on the less popular ad until it improves performance and pulls more clicks than the one that was initially leading. Do this constantly and before you know it you will have an ad which literally rips clicks off the page!
5-Have patience-When you make changes give them time to manifest themselves in your results. Only when you can see what effect a change has had should you make any more. If you don"t do things gradually like this you can quite easily mess a campaign up in a fashion that will take two or three days to get back on track.
4-Cheat-I don"t know if it"s ethical to say this, but I"m going to do it anyway- When you are starting an Adwords account, go to eBay first and buy some free Adwords credit. You can buy $30 of credit to an Adwords account for pennies from certain eBay sellers. That certainly makes your first few campaigns a little less stressful. Not ethical I know, but I"m sure Google will get plenty of money from you once you get the hang of the system. Here"s hoping they don"t sue me lol.
3-Don"t forget about other PPC schemes- You won"t get the traffic you would from Google, but you will get much cheaper high quality keywords, so it balances out really. I prefer Google myself because your writing skill plays as big a part as your wallet-your ad will appear closer to the top of the screen if it is popular with the customers. That means if your ad is effective and gets more clicks than the other bidders, you will be able to pay less than the other guys that have bid on that word.
2-Make Your Ads Specific- You can weed out a lot of non-qualified browsers by stating important facts in the ad copy- people that would have cost you money from the click and not bought anyway. For example an ad which simply states "House for Sale" would get clicks from all kinds of people looking for houses, but if it were to say "Two Bedroom House for sale" you would be naturally cutting out the customers which were looking for four bedroom houses, apartments etc, as they can see straight away that you do not have what they are seeking. This reduction is good because it would help keep our costs low due to unnecessary clicks.
1- Be Relentless- It"s easy to think you have made it in Adwords, and equally easy to become really disillusioned when you do not see results straight away. Just keep the faith- It"s science, not art, and as such can be learned. Stick with it and you will soon see profit, and once you are in profit it is just a case of maintaining that balance while you raise the budgets and increase your exposures!
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