Under my hosting account, I can sign up and get $50 free in a G or Y! ppc campaign. But I've never used these before and I've heard some horror stories if you don't set it up right..... a wrong setting or two could end up costing you thousands.

I'd like to fire up one of these services to catch some potential sales I'm missing. Anyone here have some tips, screen shots for settings, advice??

Well Stitch it's like gambling in the sense that you can only loose what you put down on the table (in theory )

When setting up your PPC campaign it will ask you to enter several figures including the max bid per click (ie. how much you want to spend for every click through to your site- depending on your competition you may need to bid high for your ads to appear), but it will also ask how much you want to spend per day. So if you say the most you want to spend per day is $7/day (for example), you'll get a week's worth of testing (if you spend all 7 bucks each day). When you hit your preset $7 limit, G will pull off your ad so you don't get charged more.

As far as tips, just remember that the SE's like relevance. So make sure you are only bidding on terms relevant to your site, that your title/description is relevant to your keywords/theme and that your landing page is relevant to the keywords your bidding on. Try specific and long tailed keywords to start or you may loose your shirt (well that free $50) bidding on broad, highly competitive terms

Thanks Nic. I was considering bidding on longer tail terms that my sites are currently NOT ranking for. Just looking at one, I see that there is little to no competition (it just looks like the primary 'core' term is being bid on at the moment). Does this bidding-for-placement fluctuate during the day?

I'd rather not have to constantly babysit the serps just to find out where my ads are located by the hour.

Quite often you asked for credit card to verify your details
be careful how you set up the account so that further payments are not taken. For this reason , perhaps wrongly, i have shied away from these free vouchers

Thats one of stories I've heard also. People that claimed they clearly set their limits, but the ppc service just kept on billing. I'd lose my job if all of a sudden I put $7,000 on the credit card.

it's up to you to "cancel" your services after the $50 or they could keep charging your card

if you cancel the services- Google will stop- they are not a 2-bit operation that you have to worry about them ripping you off

it doesn't mean you have to be glued to your account screen either- if you set a max of $7/day then you know it will take at least 1 week to reach there and you can check your balance then

Good to know that G has their stuff together. The story I was referring to, was someone that had used Yahoo's ppc program.

Will test the waters with G, first.

Oh yeah... question on relevancy - If I set a campaign for search term 'Blue Widgets', will it automatically pop up for terms like 'Buy Blue Widgets'? If so, does this setting have a threshold to tighten it up?

No reply? Bummer....

Anyways, I literally just set up my adwords account, and chose the handy-dandy 'starter edition'. Got an ad, don't see it in the serps yet, so I'll wait a day or so.

When I was reading some info, it looks like you can increase some settings like CPI, monthly budget, etc. All I remember seeing was a monthly budget.

Does the Standard Edition give you more controls for how much you want to spend, number of impressions, etc.?

Hey Stitch,

it's been a while since i used Adwords and can't rememebr exactly- was hoping someone else would pitch in

however i do recal 1 important point and that you should turn off the "publisher network" setting sot that your ads only show in the serps (you'll get a better bang for your buck that way)

Also if your products are not available everywhere you may also want to do some geo-targeting

I thought the Geo targeting was for getting traffic from local areas. The site in question sells nation wide and canada.

However, they would be more popular in some areas than others.

Again it's been a while but if i remember correctly you can target countries within adsense

so if your target market is USA + Canada there's not much sense in me in Costa for example seeing and then clicking on your ad

Ahh... I see. I was thinking more on a 'state' level than country. Already set to U.S.

Another question - I know the ad has to be somewhat relevant to the site, or you pay a premium fee (so I'm told), but how sensitive is it?

Example - My ad is 'Extreme Blue Widgets', but I don't have the word 'extreme' anywhere on the landing page. The site in question is clearly all about blue widgets (and google already understands this just fine). Would my CPC go down if I add the word 'extreme' somewhere in the body text?

The reason I asked was, it looks like my search term has little to know competition.... mostly because there is nothing showing right above the serps, and on the right hand side theres things like Shopzilla, and other odd sites. Yet, last night I did get a few clicks, and the cost was around 50 cents a whack. Seems awfully high for a term that nobody is bidding on....

maybe i should stop answering these as things have probably changed since i was last in there but anyways

again the goal is to be relevant and not misleading...

so for example if you use the title "Free Blue Widgets" and you link it to a landing page that only sells blue widgets for big $ then you are misrepresenting yourself

Also you cannot make claims that you can't prove- for example you can't use a decription like "My Blue Widgets will make you 1 trillion dollars while you're on the can this morning" if you can't prove that

Your example of "extreme" is a tough one- the good thing about adsense is you can quickly tell what's working or not (and what they will allow you to do and not) so testing is always worth it

Sorry, my example wasn't very good.

What I was referring to was 'CPC'   vs.  'On Page Relevance'.

From what I understand, if you try to place an ad for Free Hair Care Products, for a landing page that has Used Cars, then the CPC is suppose to be through the roof... IF you can get it passed at all.

In this case, the site is based on Hair Care Products, and the ad reads Blonde Hair Care Products. The word 'blonde' isn't anywhere on the landing page (cause it's obviously assumed). I was wondering if the missing text on my landing page would drive up the CPC.

Are you selling "Blond Hair Care Products"?

if people have added the keyword "Blond" to their search for "Hair Care Prooducts", that to me means they are looking for "Blond Hair Care Products" - so your landing page should cater to that search

if people are running that search, see your add , and click through to your site expecting to see "Blond Hair Care Products" and you're not selling them...chances are they are going to leave- so you just wasted that click (or maybe they'll see something else they like and stay)- to me though, the closer your products/services can match your keywords the better- just my $0.02

No no no no... not what I mean.

I'll have to catch up on this later... they're kicking me out.

Well Mr. Stitch.....How have things been going?  Is AdSense working for you?  Where you able to cap the amount Google charged etc????  I'm anxious to know your results - as my host provides similar credits - just been too chicken to try them out for the same reasons you listed.

Can't wait for the details!
Basket Lady

Well, so far it looks as tho I've gotten 10 clicks. But god only knows if I actually had any sales...... A customer calls me today asking if his order went through. I looked him up, but didn't have any information on him.

He said "Thought so". Then he explained that we was having problems with the shopping cart, after he had entered in all his payment information.

So far, I've received 10 clicks. WOO HOO. hahahahah Yeah... big deal, right?

The thing about advertising is, you have to expect some of that to go to 'marketing' in general. Some of these click-people very well could come back in the future.

Other than that.... it's far too early to tell.

My experience with google ad words. (ha if you want to call it that, try nightmare better word)
Had a voucher for $200 ok joined that program.  They have a section where you can check what sites your ad is appearing on. Ok checked some out.  Now why would my ad be appearing on very clear adult sites when it was stated no adult sites.  Called customer service, answer because my "bids" are on the lower end they will place my ads where they see fit.  On my site it also states that I will not host, design for etc. any such web sites.  So why would my ad appear there?
Site number 2 they would not do the ad reason, "Site is underconstant change"  Well duh it is a place for people to put there ads on for free.  Tried to fight that one.  Pulled everything off of adwords told by girl at customer service that my business will suffer because of this and that there really were no other choices.  (hey girl there are always choices) I choose to get rid of everything google.  No urchins anymore, nothing to do with google.  (if you look at the logo of another big time place you will see that the colors in their logo's are about the same and people at ebay are just as arrogant.)   Still have about $100.  in credit but will never go back to them and I do cringe when I go to a web site and it is covered in google ads.  Seems that some sites that is their main content.

Good info - thanks guys.  Mr. Stitch - if you have different results - please let us know  :-D
Basket Lady