chewy - 3:18 pm on Apr 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

Sure it is hard - but well worth figuring it out - and I do not recommend doing-it-yourself through trial-and error learning as it HAS gotten too complicated, bids can be very high (and deceptive) and the system has lots of extremely useful complexity that in the hands of someone who doesn't know what the are doing can be quite overwhelming.

After ~10 years of using AdWords - starting with Overture before it was Overture I think I know a bit about PPC advertising.

I'm a bit biased - as a professional - most people starting PPC need a professional to help get them started. Sometimes it is the starters that bid things up inappropriately and cause bids to rise inappropriately.

Of course, some might say that is good for Google - others say this is good for the professional as there is reason for them to get help when they discover how many mistakes they can make and how wasteful, expensive and slow learning by doing can be.

There are tons of books - tons of "get rich quick" style authors, almost a whole genera of Adwords newsletters, blogs, sites, books, software, value added services, etc; some of it is not to be trusted, and most needs to be read with a giant grain of salt.

The best advice - find someone who has run small AdWords campaigns for a few years to help you set up your account and help you determine if you need a real professional.

Some folks want someone in their office to do this with them - others can do it online with comfort - I personally prefer and recommend the face to face relationship - but hey - I've learned so much here from Netmeg, eWhisper and others here whom I have never met - so there are tons of ways to get going.

Another great resource are books (albeit a bit dated but pretty good for beginners) by Andrew Goodman (if I can drop the name...)

Like anything today, you might have to try a few books, a few experiments, talk to a few experts, go to a few seminars, download a few tools etc before you can really get your head around this.

And in closing, keep in mind that they're going to keep moving the cheese around so don't be upset if things don't quite seem right.

Good luck!