My first Adwords sale!

thanks to the great people of WebmasterWorld

[pavlovapete]

I am very risk averse and like to act slowly. Really slowly and carefully.

Adwords is a difficult beast to get your head around. I have been lurking at a range of forums (multicolored to monotone) for nearly 3 years trying to understand the Adwords. Some may say I should have jumped in earlier and learned the way the Spartans did. I prefer to test the waters before leaping.

Anyways we fired up our best chance at a winning campaign earlier this week and last night, while I was at home enjoying an ale, a customer came via Adwords and decided to put their money down.

It was a great feeling to discover this morning that a sale had finally been made.

I wish to thank all the good people here, especially in the Adwords forum, who have provided me with food for thought, either directly or indirectly over the years.

Cheers

[jfeeney]

Congrats pete! Can I ask (as someone who is still trying to come to terms with Adwords) how you were able to determine that the client came in via Adwords?

[Chrispcritters]

Did the profit from that sale more then cover the cost of adwords campaign so far?

[netmeg]

Congrats pete! Can I ask (as someone who is still trying to come to terms with Adwords) how you were able to determine that the client came in via Adwords?

If you are using Google Analytics, and it's tied to your AdWords account, you can tell very easily when a sale comes in via AdWords.

And if enable ecommerce tracking, and your cart doesn't send people off to Paypal or some other site for payment, you can even use an Analytics filter to match specific transactions to specific sources and keywords.

[pavlovapete]

Thanks jfeeney, thanks Chrispcritters and thanks netmeg.

how you were able to determine that the client came in via Adwords

Netmeg has provided some methods already. I'm a webserver logfile type-of-person myself.

Did the profit from that sale more then cover the cost of Adwords campaign so far?

No I have turned that campaign off. It was looking good for a while there but after a couple of weeks I became unhappy. We have struck the thorny issue of attribution. We experienced a massive uptick in offline sales for the product advertised, and generally our ecommerce value has doubled for month. So it is anyone's guess what advertising has caused what sale

you can even use an Analytics filter to match specific transactions to specific sources and keywords

I haven't gone that far yet (don't know if I will) I understand it would make life easier (in terms of reporting). At this stage I'm happy enough with log files and basic attribution.

Cheers