Adwords Should I?

Is it really worth the cost

[paul]

Hi all.
Still unsure as to use adwords or not due to reading lots of posts about the high cost of being on page one?
The question i wish to get an answer for is
How much can i realisticly expect to spend per week £££ on a top of page campaign?

Thanks

Paul

[sean]

Every situation is different and there is only one way to find out.

If you are worried about spending too much, set a daily £ maximum.

But your main concern will be figuring your earnings per visitors vs. cost per visitor. If it is profitable, volume is not a problem, but rather an opportunity.

[paul]

Ok, but what daily limit would put me 1 2 or 3 on sponsered links?

[TheGuyAboveYou]

Depends on the word. In order to determine how much you should pay you need to known your conversion rate obviously. If your CPC is 1.00 and you make 10 dollars a sale and your conversion rate is 10% you break even right? The formula is simple to break even your conversion rates needs to be CPC/Commission.

[skibum]

Best bet may to forget about the top-3 spots when easing into AdWords. In most keyword areas there are plenty of searchers that go to page 2 or 3 on the search results. A visitor is a visitor whether they click through the top listing or a link on third page. It generally costs much less to get them on the second or third page or even from a lower spot on the first page.

[Gmorgan]

If you are very concerned about budget then forget about coming first place.

I had a campaign a few months ago where all my ads were on the first page for my industry. I recently scrapped that and started a new camapign where instead of £3+ CPC I'm now paying only 5 pence. Most of my ads now fall on pages 2-4.

Amazingly, with a few more keywords and a bit of fine tuning I'm now getting the same conversion rates I used to but with an my overall spend reduced by 98%!

[sean]

Re-reading your first post there might be some confusion here. The per-click bid determines your position at any given moment, the per-day budget determines how long you get to stay in that position (i.e. how early in the day your ad is pulled offline, if necessary).

You can actually get a recommended budget for a campaign within AdWords.

All the estimates and advice go by the wayside as a campaign takes on a life of its own. You may end up tweaking a dollars-per-day campaign to elegant perfection, or you may end up spending thousands per day via brute force. Like most things in life, it is what you make it.

quick start:
Step 1: determine your overall revenue per visitor, if available.
Step 2: enter conservative bid per click and budget per campaign.
Step 3: create a variety of advertisements and keyword phrases.
Step 4: compare adwords performance and site conversion stats.
Step 5: if favorable, up the ante. more words, higher bids.
Step 6: test, analyze, react, repeat

[PCInk]

First page expensive? I have first page adverts that cost me 5 cents.

If you want to compete against 'web design' or 'free email', then you are going to have to pay a lot of money. Just find the rarer terms that people search for and advertise on them.

Alternatively, and I find myself doing this sometimes: people search and by the time they get to page three and nothing is relevant, they start to wonder if the paid adverts are any better. I know I do, but I start to look at the adverts on the right-hand side, but I do not go back to page one. I just start looking when I think the free results are not giving me good enough results. So being low on AdWords does not matter as much as people think, as long as you keep your CTR up and the adverts active.

[paul]

Ok thanks for all the advice. I have started a campaign at a daily budget of £7 (about 0.10cpc) and quite high so will try that for a month.

Question, what stops a competitor clicking on your add say 70 times (your daily rate)?

Can Google police this problem?

Thanks

Paul

[paul]

Also, are the sponsered links at the top, middle of the page, not to the right also adword links?

Thanks

Paul

[skibum]

Nothing stops a competitor from repeatedly clicking on your ad but Google is generally good about filtering out that kind of activity and yes, all sponsored links on the page including the ones at the top are AdWords.