It sounds absolutely ridiculous but after registering for Adwords a couple of days ago I am really nervous about starting a campaign.
Was anybody else concerned when they first started out or am I just being an idiot?
Just get on with it - the biggest risk in life is doing nothing!
I can feel it.
Here is what i want you to do for starting up
1) Dont bid more then 10cents on any keyword if Google says to bid more ignore it
2) Choose few keywords only which are very very relevant to your bussiness
3) Set you initial budget to very low
4) Dont target whole lot of people in first go , test with few regions or countries
5) If you are doing bussiness locally within few miles of you area , try to use Click to call ads they would convert bit better
Let the campaign run for one day and see the results
Good luck with your Adwords campaign
Benevolent, thanks for the great tips which alleviated some of the fears I had (visions of my credit card account being emptied in seconds with nothing to show for it at the end...eeek!).
I will definitely do as you suggested.
I am less scared and more excited now :o)
Thanks again to both of you for giving me the much-needed push.
I am such a wuss! LOL
You will have some data to work with then, and dont forget to track your traffic somehow, if something doesnt convert dont just delete it, add it as a negative keyword.
if something doesnt convert dont just delete it, add it as a negative keyword.
Any specific reason for this , is it so as it will give us better stats?
Are deleted keywords removed from overall stats
Why you said this
...visions of my credit card account being emptied in seconds with nothing to show for it at the end...eeek!
This won't happen if you keep a tight rein on your daily budget. You could set it very low for the first few days and see whether your ads are getting enough clicks to reach it. Then, when you're happy, raise your daily limit a bit higher. Continue this until you've reached the spending limit you're comfortable with.
Just remember that you have complete control over your budgets.
Good luck!
Syzygy
Oh, just to add to the "terrified" bit... I have to say that it took me a good three months before I had any real clue as to what I was doing with adwords!
[edited by: Syzygy at 11:36 am (utc) on April 5, 2007]
The first mistake I made - one you should pay heed - was corrected by a very informative response from the AdWords team. New advertisers are under the impression that more words=more traffic and more earnings. Often this misses the mark, resulting in "junk" traffic: "ahh that's not what I was looking for . . . "
The idea is to give the user EXACTLY what they are looking for. What you want is lots of ads with fewer keywords per ad. Don't try to capture red widgets, green widgets, and blue widgets all in one ad - make three ads. Use a maximum of 5 keyword phrases for each ad, use the keywords in the ad text and heading, and if your site is set up right, in the URL as well. Target, target, target, and when you're done ask yourself, does it target the user's search?
Experiment with ad variations too. For each of the three ads above, try at least two variations of ads with the same keywords.
Then you will drive yourself crazy spending hours at the adWords dashboard. LET IT SIT. Give your ads a week to gather stats, then look at the stats for the entire week. ALSO turn your attention to your website stats - you will start to see changes in the keywords results sections. Look at them see what's working, bring those words into your campaign. I have one advertiser that has a significant amount of traffic . . . . ON A TYPO!
It's an addictive and fun task, like anything else that involves spending money. :-) Not as rewarding as the first time you rip a chute cord, but still rewarding to see it all work. :-)
