Does minimum bid affect positions?

Is my position penalised for a high minimum bids

[Sweezely]

I was wondering, say for the keyword [widgets] I have a minimum bid of £5. A mate of mine with his own Adwords account and a different site has a minimum bid on the keyword [widgets] of £0.10. Exactly what effect does this have on position? If I bid £5.00 to get my keyword to show, will I only be in the same position as my mate who's only bidding £0.10? If he bids £5.00 as well, would we be in similar positions or would he be much, much higher?

[trannack]

There is far, far more to this than you obviously think. Your position depends on a whole host of things - and if you read up on QS (Quality Score) you will realise that it is not plain and simply if you bid more you will achieve a better position. Position can be based on quality of landing page, relevancy of advert re landing page, how long you have been biddin gon that keyword, etc etc etc. As Google are not willing to let us in on the exact way QS is calculated, you are in the same boat as the rest of us - Good Luck!

[resham5]

Yes, it all depends on the 'Quality Score' so to say but your bid in my opinion greatly affects your avg. position. More often than not, the higher you bid, the higher you appear.
There are other things like improving relevancy, improving your landing page and all that but I think it's the bid which plays a big role.