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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Jul-12 15:51
Flying Rose ... you might be a good one to answer this question but anyone feel free to jump in.
A few months ago I embarked on my first google adwords campaign. I wasn't having alot of luck getting affordable bit prices. So I got a copy of Perry Marshall's system. It was very helpful ... but still I couldn't get anything affordable.
There are a lot of experts (including the late Corey Rudl and Chris Carpenter) who say you can get clicks for 5 cents.
In other forums I have heard from power users of google adwords that since April, many of their keyword prices have skyrocketed in some cases to $10/click that were previously only pennies.
Any thoughts on this?
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jul-12 18:36
As all areas of the Internet get built out - meaning more competition moves in on niche topics - bid prices will rise.
It's tough, but you need to really dig these days to find the phrases which keep costs low and develop traffic.
It can be done, I think.
You might want to focus on finding those keywords as the main objective - those really odd, niche keywords that other won't think to look for.
You'll also need to make certain your ads are written well and tweaked to perform at peak efficiency. Does changing a word raise or lower the CTR & conversions? Are things individualized in each ad to focus on only one or two phrases? That type of stuff.
It's no longer a given that you can find cheap keywords in all areas online. In some cases, the keywords that perfom are just getting more expensive as companies with "more budgets than brains" drive costs per click higher thinking this will secure them sales quickly and easily. While there is some validity to this thinking, unfortunately, the biggest problem is that Google will NEVER police it as it's revenue for them.
I personally think that the PPC world needs some kind of "group" which would eductae advertisers and potential advertisers on how to manage bids responsibly and keep costs down not just for themselves, but for everyone....but, I digress...
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flyingrose
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Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 08:06
vculp, it really depends on what you're advertising, how much traffic you want, and how creative you are. There are a handful of subjects that finding inexpensive keyword phrases for can be really difficult.
It is possible to find keywords for other subjects using imagination, research, and the available keyword phrase suggestion tools.
I still do have five cent clicks in most of my accounts (and some as low as two cents); however, the AVERAGE cost per click for most advertisers is at least 25-70 cents and some are far higher.
A few years ago I could routinely buy tons of traffic for many advertisers for under ten cents. That is getting very rare at Google or Yahoo, partly because of Google's artificially inflated bid prices on certain keywords.
If you want to buy inexpensive traffic you might give Looksmart a try. I've been getting good results there very inexpensively which is a situation I doubt will last long.
Bids are going to keep going up because for any subject there is only one page of results and more and more advertisers who want to be there.
If you don't want to say publicly you can PM me some sample keywords and I can see what the traffic and prices look like in Ad Words Analyzer and possibly suggest a way for you to come up with less expensive variations.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 09:20
In the past, Google would place keywords "at risk" or "disabled" for lack of searches or more often a low click through rate. Now they raise the minimum bid instead.
I just opened a new account and Google's system set default bids of $0.40 and $0.50 on almost every keyword phrase I used. I just checked and found out those minimums are basically what it takes to hit the first page so perhaps that is what they're up to with that.
Bidding off the first page usually doesn't provide much traffic so I suspect that in this case they're indicating that they have lots of advertisers bidding for those keywords and if you're not willing to bid competitively your ads won't be showing up anyway.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 16:31
What you just described Rose, is why I tend to use Yahoo instead of Adwords. I know it's a mental hurdle, but what a buzz-kill to set up the campaign, figure you'll run a few bucks a month through the system and see, suddenly, it's more like a hundred bucks a month... 
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 19:36
I dedect both a sense of encouragement and one of "lost cause" in your tone. *grin* I'm still deciding which way to go with it. Thank you both for your replies.
Advertising dollars have to produce something, and in efforts not to be stupid, I'm working with small numbers so I don't waste a bunch of money.
However I'm hearing a lot of internet marketers are running into huge problems with their campaigns lately. One guy used to spend $40K / year. I think he said his average $ per click was about 40 or 50 cents. All of a sudden every one of his campaigns shot up overnight, to a minimum bid of $10.
In this same case he gave some pretty specific examples of the "quality" of the landing pages of his and competitor sites that just didn't make sense to me, based on what I learned from Perry Marshall's course.
As I'm typing here I'm reading the two adwords ads on my left: Free Adwords PPC Tricks and Beat the Adwords System. LOL. Am I wrong in thinking that much of the information on the subject is simply stale and out of date?
Gin
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3600
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Posted: 2006-Jul-13 21:06
I suspect you're not wrong in your thinking Gin. 
...and keep in mind - the best source of info is the data you collect yourself. That other gent, as well-intentioned as he may be, is likely not being 100% transparent with you.
Rarely to folks openly share "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" online...
Watch your own stats and make decisons based on sound business principles. You're right in approaching things slowly - no sense throwing around big money for small results - it just never works out well when you do it that way... 
Start small, track, track, track - tweak, tweak, tweak, test, test, test - stir, repeat.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-16 07:17
vculp, anything you read can be dated before you finish the first paragraph. PPC engines love to change things constantly.
What you're describing may be largely due to Google's change a couple of months ago that includes "page relevance" in the algorithm. It is suspected that both relevance and pagerank may be factors and these two may be conflicting for many advertisers.
Your most relevant page may well be a new landing page and/or product page and neither of those may have much pagerank if any.
Your best pagerank page will be your home page which will certainly not be the most relevant page for most of your keywords.
You have the right plan: start small, spend conservatively, track results. Then increase spending and expand on what works; decrease, pause, or delete what isn't working.
If they have any traffic for your keywords I would suggest running ads somewhere less expensive than Google or Yahoo. It is always better to tweak and test for less $$$.
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evicart
Joined: Jan 13, 2005
# Posts: 81
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Posted: 2006-Jul-18 14:21
All good stuff in this thread.
I have a situation that sounds very familiar to this discussion. I am working on a site most recently that is not in a very competitive industry. I found a ton of keywords that seem to be suitable for the site in terms of traffic. When I set up the campaign the ad words system would not let me bid on ANY keyword for less than $5.00 at minimum. So I did some research and found that MOST of the keywords were not even being bidded on AT ALL. So how can that be? If there is no competition for the word and no one is bidding on it why would I have to pay a minimum of $5.00 a click why couldn't I bid at only $1.00. It just doesn't make sense.
So I sent an email to my rep at Google and this was the response:
"When minimum bids are assessed on your keywords, it's independent of the number of advertisers who are also trying to show on the keyword.
The minimum bids are a reflection of your keywords' Quality Scores (which would be good if I HAD a score it was a NEW campaign), and those scores are based on a number of factors that include
a) the relevance of the keyword to the ad text - this part makes sense
b) the CTR for the keyword in your account - There was no CTR for that word it was a new campaign.
c) the historical CTR for the keyword in the history of the AdWords program - this seems bogus!
The number of competitors on the keyword isn't factored into the equation."
I just think it completely unfair that I would have to pay a minimun of $5.00 for a keyword that is not even a competitive term. None of it makes sense to me. It seems that they are just pushing out the advertisers who do not have the larger budgets and smaller companies like the small business owners I deal with are the ones who suffer.
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Jul-18 17:14
Can we talk about track ... tweak ... track (since you mentioned it)?
Other than tracking my clicks, I am interesting in tracking conversions. Can you recommend any software that you have used?
(This isn't an open intvitation to sell me your AFF link... please notice I said "used".
I am runnign an e-commerce web site and would like to track through to the conversion as I will be advertising in lots of places. And ideally I would also like to be tracking "what" they purchased.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-18 19:01
evicart - High minimum bids may mean the keyword is too general and other advertiser's ads had poor CTRs OR it may mean they don't believe there will be any searches on it.
vculp - Any affiliate links that get posted are deleted so not much likelihood of that happening here. You can use the free conversion tracking provided by Google and Yahoo or a Web Analytics program.
You can request a free Google Analytics account from within any Google Adwords account but there may still be an extended waiting list.
There are many third party analytics programs. The one I am most familiar with and simplest to get started with is IndexTools. ClickTracks is another you may wish to consider.
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vculp
Joined: Mar 30, 2006
# Posts: 89
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Posted: 2006-Jul-23 14:19
Do you think google analytics can track properly all campaigns from all sources? There's a lot of third party apps, some are a one time license and others are a monthly fee.
Perry Marshall highly recommended doing this. And I agree. When someone purchases something I want to know what ad it came from so I can get rid of the losers and keep the winners.
Hey if one ad pulls very well, it's worth spending money on right? But when you don't know, it's a shot in the dark.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2006-Jul-23 22:25
Theoretically Google Analytics will track all other sources of traffic provided you use their specific tracking codes on that incoming traffic.
For non-Fortune 500 companies the three analytics solutions I recommend reviewing are IndexTools, ClickTracks, and Google Analytics (G.A.).
I am most familiar with IndexTools. The advantages of it over G.A. are real time statistics and the ability to track incoming sources without having to get the G.A. specific tracking codes on it.
There may be other pros and cons and I will be sharing them here as I become more aware of them.
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imram033
Joined: Jul 23, 2006
# Posts: 1
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Posted: 2006-Jul-24 01:39
wel i am not sure about $10/per click but i had experience of $5/per cllick, which is quite huge achievement but for htat u need to be more smart and active around the key word.
google pay for click ofcousre but those click directly depend upon on the keyword ur using in ur website and contenet of ur website....
tahir
[ Message was edited by: bhartzer 07/24/2006 11:10 am ]
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