November 10th, 2009 by Joe Majewski
I didn’t expect to post another AdWords article until my current campaign had finished, but I am so extremely satisfied with my first day’s results that I couldn’t resist.
After running my advertisement campaign for just a single day, my AdWords account brought over 60 unique visitors to my website for the price of just one dollar, which is much more than I had been expecting. This service is absolutely amazing, and it’s definitely something I intend on using in the long term.
But alas, it is far too early to make such a bold claim at this time. Perhaps I just had a bit of beginner’s luck with the service. I don’t want to give myself a negative name by judging a book by it’s cover, so for the time being you should take this article with a large grain of salt. Since I’m unsure of whether or not I’m allowed to post screen shots of my data, I will play it safe and keep that information to myself. However, if you take a look at the traffic stats (linked at the top of the site) for Monday, November 19, you will see that it was the best performing day so far in terms of unique visitors. Pow!
November 9th, 2009 by Joe Majewski
I received $50 worth of free Google AdWords credit upon signing up for my newest web hosting plan; all I had to pay was a small, five dollar, one-time activation fee. Now that I’ve gotten a decent amount of content, I figured that this was the right time to get started.
Signing up was fast and easy. As long as you have an account with at least one other Google service, it’s about as easy as the click of a button. This applies to all Google applications, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Upon logging in, it became immediately apparent that Google caters more to their advertisers than they do their publishers, which makes a lot of sense. Within just a few minutes I was able to begin creating my own personal advertisement.
The sheer number of options that are made available can be rather overwhelming at first, but it just goes to show how serious Google is in creating an advertising environment that is flexible enough for targeting any demographic imaginable. Some of these options include choosing (1) a location for your ad to be displayed (by country, state, city, etc), (2) an age group, (3) the time of day to display your ad (for each day of the week), (4) a daily budget with no minimum requirement, (5) a time frame, and more. They also ask for you to enter the maximum amount of money that you are willing to pay for each click, which you can set to any value you like. Obviously, the more you are willing to pay, the more likely it is that your advertisement will win the `auction`.
After creating your ad, you must compile a list of keywords and phrases that you want your advertisement to compete for. You can update your keyword list at any time, and they even offer you an estimated cost per click that is associated with each term. You are free to customize your bid on each of your selected keywords.
Going at a rate of one dollar per day, I should be able to advertise for almost two months, which isn’t bad at all. I’m still learning how to use many of the features that Google AdWords has to offer, but I promise to deliver some quality information once my advertisements begin to go live.