Run A Profitable Google Adwords Pay Per Click Campaign
By Michael Lawrence, Sat Dec 10th

Google has leveraged their market share as the internet's topsearch engine to deliver their version of the pay per clickadvertising model dubbed Google Adwords.

Google and Yahoo-Overture control over 90% of the PPC market andas such you should seriously consider using them if you want themaximum possible exposure to targeted web traffic through PPCadvertising.

Sign up for the program is free but they require a $5USD deposit before they will start to display your ad copy.Google provides an excellent interface to work with. A pleasantmodular design groups all of your work into nice "containers"for you to work with.

The system reporting is by no means real time but the delay ontheir results display is palatable when comparing them to theother large PPC provider, Yahoo-Overture.

A nice feature that sets apart from other PPC providersis that your ads display almost instantly after you place themin their system. They have built a lot of their editorialguidelines into the ad entry system.

Their system will flag your ad before you can enter it if itdoesn't meet their terms of service. That is a lot better thanwaiting 2-5 business days to find out if your ad had a problemor not. Time is money.

Also provided with your account are a number of freetools to help you with your campaign management.

While several of these tools are great starting points I havefound the need to augment what Google provides through my ownonline research, tools and software as well as e-book purchases.

The lesson learned, everybody that uses Google hasaccess to the same tools that you do, including yourcompetitors. It goes without saying that if you want to get anadvantage here you will need other resources to supplement yourknowledge other than what Google provides.

Typical Costs associated with Running an Campaign

There's two ways to approach this:

Are you going to manage your own campaigns?

or

Do you want to leverage someone elses's experience and investmoney in a company that can manage your campaigns?

Let me suggest that you manage your own accounts at least in thebeginning. Start small and start collecting reference materialswhile you learn how the system works.

Search for other products and resources that can help you butkeep in mind some of them won't work out. Don't let that stopyour research, there is material out there that can truly helpyou and save you a lot of money.

Investing in a $40 ebook is a lot cheaper than blowing $500 ormore with Google while you are learning the ropes.

Having said that if you want to get a successful campaignstarted now you can enlist an SEO company to manage your Adwordscampaigns.

The question is: How will you know who to trust?

You can burn several thousand dollars for overpriced, untargetedtraffic if you let the wrong companies manage your campaigns.How can anyone honestly know what to look for in an AdwordsManagement company if you haven't even tried the system out foryourself? Food for thought. If you manage your own campaigns atfirst you will get a feel for the system.

Campaign Costs

Ok, let's talk about the typical costs you can expect running aGoogle campaign for yourself. The good news is GoogleAdwords gives you the potential to reach millions of surfers ina matter of minutes for pretty much as little money as you wantto spend.

The bad news is after the novelty of having an accountand setting up your first few campaigns wears off it can beginto feel like a job. There are a lot of monotonous tasks thathave to be managed and it can be a tough thing mentally to do ifyou are left cope with Google's tools alone.

Before you spend money on campaigns and resources acquire mentaldiscipline. Realize before you



begin that it isn't going to befun after a while. Google is a business tool,one ofmany, and as such it has it's advantages and flaws.

Ok, your minimum initial deposit is $5 to get started as welearned above. Start here, and I suggest resisting the urge toJUMP in and start spending like crazy...stay at or near this $5level of investment for a while.

You're not going to see any returns on this investmentfinancially but you will gain valuable knowledge of how best touse the Google System to generate income withoutlearning the hard way.

You have a lot of learning to do before you want to startpouring money into your account. Google is in the business ofmaking money and their system makes it "REALLY" easy to spend asmuch as you want.

Minimum bids start at a reasonable $0.05 USD. After developingyour keyword list and dumping it into Google's system you haveto start making financial decisions.

If you take Google's suggested bid prices for your keyword listyou can pay a lot of money for your web traffic depending on howlarge your keyword list is and how much traffic these keywordsgenerate.

Rest assured Google's system will provide you a lot of trafficquickly if you want to pay for it. It's not uncommon forGoogle's big management system to suggest max bids in the $20 -$30 range.

You don't have to accept these outrageous suggestions of courseso your first big money saver is to lower the max bid tosomething you find acceptable and enter it for all of yourkeywords.

Please note Google's system will not charge you this full amountunless someone else is willing to pay that much for the keyword.Leave this number set higher if you want to produce a lot ofclicks quickly.

Over time you will learn which keywords are making you money andwhich one's are simply too competitive for your budget. Google'scampaign tracking abilities in conjunction with other 3rd partyad tracking software can help you identify these profitablekeywords and track your website visitors.

To make proper decisions you will need to gather as much data asyou can on how the system works. Obviously, you won'thave this data until you run a campaign or two which is why Isuggest running your own Campaigns for a while to getfamiliar with their system.

Study the stats provided by Google which are really quite goodin conjunction with one or more 3rd party stats trackingpackages.

You will start to notice trends in the numbers which will allowyou to make more effective use of your time and money by biddingonly on the keywords that are generating sales.

Analysis may also prompt you to tweak your site content if younotice a niche you want to start competing for (better yet startup another site or tier two web page on your site targeting thatniche and remove these keywords from the original campaignmoving them into a new campaign pointing to your new content).

Google allows you to bid on 3 types of keyword matching optionswhich immediately gives you three times the keywords to bid onwithout any more brainstorming on your part.

Each matching option provides different results and should bemanaged on a keyword by keyword basis.

Google also provides two methods of displaying your ad on theirnetwork: content match listings and search network listings.

Effectively this allows you the potential to be noticed by:

1)anyone searching on Google's portal,

2) anyone searching portal sites that get their search resultsfrom Google,

3) anyone viewing a site displaying Google's ads that hascontent related to the keywords you bid on.

4) anyone reading an email with content related to your keywordat Google's free email service.

That's a lot of options and a lot of potential exposure.Tweakingto find the right combination for your particular situation andspending requirements is something you simply have to do on anongoing basis. I think the benefits are obvious to you by now.

A final word on costs. You may have noticed that I didn't use alot of numbers in my discussion of campaign costs with Google.What I think I have illistrated is a Google campaign truly cancost as little or as much as you want it to.

Advantages of the Google System

- Highly configurable system with an intuitive web-basedinterface.

- Reporting system is near realtime so you can tweak campaignson the fly

- Since their system is web based you can access your account atany time.

- Good list of Free tools and guides (although third party toolsmay still be required)

- Rewards advertisers that pay attention to providing relevantcontent to their search clients not necessarily the highestbidder. Get a better CTR and your ads are cheaper.

- Geo-targeting capabilities. Target by City, Country or displayyour ads Globally.

- Multiple ad delivery systems. Content and Search listings,Partner Network listings, Email.

- Multiple keyword matching options including the ability to'filter' keywords.

- Reasonable minimum startup cost of $5 with no monthly minimumspend requirements

- They have licensed their search results to several other largesearch engines improving your web site's exposure to people thatdon't use Google as their main search portal.

- Free ROI tracking tools.

- Minimum bid is a reasonable $0.05 USD.

Disadvantages of the Google System

- Learning curve can cost you a lot of money.

- Not the most expensive PPC search engine but certainly moreexpensive than all other PPCs except Yahoo-Overture

- Click fraud is an unavoidable risk.

- Content matching system does not always deliver the same ROIas their search listings. If both ad delivery systems are enablefor a particular campaign the content match results can loweryour overall campaign CTR and get keywords disabled.

- Support system is email template driven. It can take you a fewtries to get the information you REALLY need from Google'ssupport.

- Interface does not indicate what your competitors are bidding,only the maximum bid for any particular keyword, making theimplementation of bidding strategies much more difficult.

Google Resources: Google Homepage

About the author:---

Michael Lawrence is a University of Waterloo EngineeringGraduate with 10+ years of IT experience and 2+ years ofinternet marketing experience.

Mike is the site operator of Cobrasurf.com which providesFree Website Traffic and Free Website Promotion.

Please see his Financial Website http://www.credit-cards-online.biz