Newbie needs PPC advice!

PPC is very difficult for newbies. Make sure you educate yourself very thoroughly before you ever put up a single ad. I know a lot of people who lost hundreds or even thousands of dollars learning PPC before they started to make any profit with it.

Any notion you loose your shirt or go broke is crap. Google do not take over control of your bank account or set your bid price and or daily limit.

You do and as such you are in control of your own destiny and as such are responsible for your own outcome.

Yes if you play the i must bid more than the next sheep game or blaze away thinking a click is wow then it will be a disappointment.

put your self on a learners budget, set aside a small amount each day as a test then learn your craft, as you learn a little more increase your budget.

and yes as mentioned never spend more than you can afford to loose and you will never go wrong, but bet the next months rent on a return and being new expect to be evicted out onto the street. you play they click you pay.

Try searching the PPC Section in this forum. Everything to get you started should be there if you use the search function in the upper right hand corner of the page. The advanced search means you can refine and get specific. It's quite an amazing thing that not many people here know how to use. Learn it and you will be one step ahead of the game.

I would prefer someone to outsource PPC. Not worth the gamble

1) Make sure you read over the AdWords editorial guidelines and Terms of Service before you start with PPC. You want to be very careful to follow the guidelines when running a campaign and building out your AdWords landing page. If you don't AdWords is now sending out lifetime bans so be careful and always diversify traffic.
2)Do a ton of research before you start selecting your keywords.Know your market, competitors, and audience. Then look for keywords that are 3+ words to start that accurately reflect your product. I always suggest that people new to ppc stay away from one and two work keywords...they can be profitable but they are harder to manage, generally cost more and there are a lot of other keywords out there that will get you converting at a lesser cost.
3) Put in the time to build a great campaign. This means 1-5 keywords in an adgroup (the less the better as the more tailored an ad can be to a keyword). Then 2-3 ads an adgroup. Keyword goes in Ad once if not twice. Keyword and adcopy goes on landing page.
4) Test test test!!! Pause the ads that convert lower and add a new one, continue to test
5) Like everyone else has mentioned - make sure you do a lot of research before diving in to PPC. But don't be afraid of it, just educate yourself.

Good luck!


Brittany

Hey Parker,

I'll say go ahead but go ahead with extra caution, you probably want to use a prepaid account first when you are dabbling in the waters, if you are thinking of selling other people' products bid ONLY for the name of the product (remember: you can't bid product names for most of the physical product aff programs)

If you are selling physical products, go straight to amazon for your keyword research.

Dos & Don'ts:

• do not be afraid to bid - position 4 to 6 will probably be the best or should I say most balanced position in terms of conversion and traffic
• this is very important - track all results from impressions, to clicks, to conversion, to profit per impression
• do not dive in with 100s of keywords - you don't want to waste your money and useless traffic for now

Things to Expect:

• your first 3 campaign will usually give you a fantastic EDUCATION experience
• you are not going to be earning $2000 per month for the next 2 - 6 months

Once you find a particular keyword that's giving you profits, you go super deep into your research for that keyword (meaning extract each and every keyword phrase or long tail phrase that contains the profitable keyword), and start bidding for it.

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Darren

Instead of Adwords you could try a different network to start. It would be a cheaper way to learn. This would be especially true if you were entering into a competitive niche.
Yahoo, msn, and adbrite would all be cheaper alternatives to use until you've got a solid grasp on things.

I would hone my skills in yahoo and msn. Google will work but you have to be mindful of your quality scores for the specific keywords. Not bring aware of your quality scores can cost you dearly. Also, you must track down to the keyword so you will be able to determine which keywords to keep and which to throw away. There is a lot to know and understand. An adwords course would help but this forum has a lot of info on ppc so use the forum before you spend any money.