how often do you check overture?

how many times a day do you go back to overture to check your bids?

[werty]

so i am wondering how many times a day are you guys/gals checking overture/hitting refresh in the bidding window and updating your bids?

i check it first thing in the morning. get my bid where i want them then try and check at least every hour. then once before i go to bed.

i wish they had up to the minute tracking on their page

i am totally hooked. it is like last minute bidding on ebay, but i am spending other peoples money (c:

[seth_wilde]

I have software do it for me 24 times a day..

[werty]

what software do you use for that?

[Rossie]

There's a very useful piece of software called Go Toast which does this.

[vibgyor79]

How often do you check overture?

Zero times :)

I just set all my bids to the minimum (5 cents) and let them collects clicks. If I'm not getting enough traffic for my site, I just find and use other keywords related to my sites.

Why lose sleep over competition and their bids?

[seth_wilde]

I've heard good things about Go Toast, but they're a service (charging monthly fees) rather than software (one time fee)..

werty-

To try to keep this thread free of urls. I'll drop you a sticky with a few desktop options. You can check them out for youself and see what fits you best (I've only tried one so I can't say who's better)...

[pageoneresults]

werty, I too use a third party software product to do this, probably the same one seth is using. What's really nice about the software is that you can set the timeframes when you want to automatically update your bids. Overture allows up to 24 automatic bid changes in a 24 hour period.

If you do purchase bid management software, I have a little advice. Take a very close look at your stats and see when your prime time hours are. Then, adjust your bid checks based on that. Since most of my clients are US based selling to a US based audience, we concentrate on PST and EST time zones. Most bids start automatically checking at about 0400 in the morning PST and then are set to check every 30 minutes until the 24 automatic checks have finished which usually puts us at the end of prime time for most visitors.

There is a learning curve in setting up the software and the bids, but after you've done it a few times, you just set it, and leave it.

P.S. Don't forget, don't turn off your PC when you leave the office. Your bid management software is running in the background checking bids. There is definitely an art and science to using bid management tools.

[werty]

thank you all for the help...

seth, thank you for the sticky

i am interested in the software, but i have to see if i can get a budget passed. i may as well test the software using their trials and see if i can get a valid argument for why i need my company to purchase it.

thanks again and have a swell weekend

-george

[hannamyluv]

You know, sometimes I get the feeling that my keywords must have slow people for competition.

Because, I check my bids closely once a week. I have just found that I don't need to check any more than that because in about 90% of the cases, my competitors just don't respond that fast. The other 10% just isn't worth the time and money to go through hundreds of ads because in most of those cases it is only one competitor responding and I only go down one slot, which hardly affects the click thru.