Hello, Newbie here!

[RnD]

Hello, I'm relatively new to marketing and know next to nothing about search engine placement, etc. I use PPC right now, which has worked the best!
I heard about Adword. I heard it could cost you an arm and a leg, maybe even two.... I heard they make you place an acct. max lets say ex: $400 depending on the market, etc.

Q: Do you only run it, when you are around to monitor your acct.?
It sounds like a program that's not for beginners!
Any suggestions???
RnD

[Advisor]

The great thing about Google Adwords is that there's no max. or minimum. Just 5 bucks to set up an account and then you can spend as much or as little as you want. No monthly minimum like Overture.

I've personally got only 5c bids set up and pay a measely $10 or so a month. But many spend a whole lot more!

Jill

[scottiecl]

There is a very good series of articles on Search Engine Blog ( http://www.searchengineblog.com) about getting the most from your PPC campaign.

[haystack]

I use PPC right now, which has worked the best! I heard about Adword. I heard it could cost you an arm and a leg, maybe even two.... Hi RnD, Adwords offers greater complexity and control than most other PPC programs, so it's worth taking some time to learn how they price ads, where they'll appear, and on what terms. Since Google lets you set a daily or monthly governor on your accuont, it's usually worth setting a limit until you're confident that you're getting a positive return on your ad spend.

If you simply dump your terms from a different PPC program such as OVER into an Adwords campaign your results will likely be less than stellar. Be sure to check out this thread (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8552&perpage=10&pagenumber=1) on wildcarding your ads.

[qwerty]

In my brief experience with both Overture and AdWords, I found that it was Overture that tended to cost me numerous arms and legs.

There were 2 major factors that seemed to make the difference in cost:
1. The positioning of your ad in Google's program is based only in part on your bid. Its clickthrough rate also enters into it. Therefore, you don't have to have the number one bid for your ad to show up in the SERPs.

2. Overture shows you your competitors bids (and shows yours to them). Therefore, even if you've got automatic bidding, you have to constantly monitor your position and update your bids to either stay in the top 3, or drop out during periods when you don't expect potential customers to be searching and don't want wasted clicks coming through.

[DoubleV]

1. The positioning of your ad in Google's program is based only in part on your bid. Its clickthrough rate also enters into it. Therefore, you don't have to have the number one bid for your ad to show up in the SERPs.
what if you've just started with the program or just created a new ad? its click through rate would be 0, so how would it affect your ad's placement?

[qwerty]

Originally posted by DoubleV
what if you've just started with the program or just created a new ad? its click through rate would be 0, so how would it affect your ad's placement?

That's another nice thing about AdWords. Google gives new ads the benefit of the doubt and throws them into the mix to see how they perform.

On top of that, if an ad is disabled because of a low CTR, you're given the opportunity to reword it in order to see if you can make it perform better.

[haystack]

what if you've just started with the program or just created a new ad? Good question. Someone please correct me if this is out of date. If I remember correctly, Google used a .5% as your baseline until you've received 1000 impressions on the search phrase you're bidding on. In cases where you're receiving a high CTR, this could be a drag until you're over the hump, but once you are, your price per click should drop and/or your ad's ranking will improve.