I've also been trying to listen to your tips about search terms, but our search terms are pretty specific. So far Ad Words seems to be working well...very targeted... but I don't want to spend more until I see some solid results.
I've also seen people in the forums talking about terms that don't get searched for. Google charges a fee to remove these terms, or you get penalized? I'm confused. Is it better to remove these terms yourself?
Thanks for the tips and any advice!
Roxanne
It sounds like you have a budget of lets say $300.00/month for example.
If $300.00 is exhausted by the 10th of the month at $5.00/click you get 60 clicks for your budget and then the ads have to come down because the budget is exhausted.
If the max CPC is set to $2.50 and it then takes 30 days to burn through it because the ads are lower, you get 120 clicks per month for the same price.
If the budget is not going to increase, I'd go with lower bids and more clicks.
If there is a certain CPC that proves to be profitable, then presumably there is no need for a budget at all because the expense associated with the AdWords campaign can now be considered an investment that provides a return. The marketing dollars are no longer an expense.
When its possible to spend X amount of money and generate a return of 2X it may make sense to throw the budget out the window and invest all day long if the return is whatever is needed to make money.