No one starts off by paying $.05 click

I have a client who makes and sells crab traps. Believe me there is not a lot of competition in this niche for PPC
Many of the keywords / phrases we had - we were the only ones advertising so you would think you should be able to get the lowest bid rate - nope. It doesn't work like that

Google has a quality scoring system for your landing page. If your page is not relevant to the content in your ad - you will score low and then Google charges you more $$ for your clicks. There are several factors that make up the scoring system - you can read inside your Google account

I tweaked the pages and got a fairly low PPC which worked for us.

If you have an ad running with plenty of competition you need to earn your way into the low cost category. This involves spending some money so you are in a good position for clicks. The more people click the ad the more popular your ad appears and Google adjusts the rate and your position.
Watch your account closely and you can start lowering your max bid per click - just make sure you continue to get those clicks.
Personally for most of the niches I deal with, I prefer postition 3-6 (3 is ideal in my opinion)

On the flip side of the coin if your quality score is poor it won't matter how much you are willing to pay per click, you won't get top spot.

Also if your ad is new you might enjoy top spot for a while but if people don't click your ad, Google will keep moving it down the page and replace it with ads that get clicks.

Using PPC is an art - think of it like a game but you better be prepared to spend some money to get into the game.

If the products you are promoting are marginal converters then Google adwords might not be the game to use.
You can usually get the other networks for less $$ per click or try alternative forms of advertising.

Hope this helps

Everything I've found only gives you a range of rates - most of which are far higher than what I've ever had to pay.

If there are several pages of advertisers then there is a good chance you will have to pay top dollar - at least for a while.
That wonderful quality score system is what will determine your cost.

The best way to test (for price and quality) is to create the ad using the actual url of the sales page of the product you are trying to promote (if you are using keywords that match the sales page) and then see what your quality score is.
If it looks like you can get it for a reasonable rate then write your own landing page to match your keyword groupings.
Just remember there are a ton of other things that go into that quality score.
Like number of pages, links, actual content, optin form, use of video, meta tags, site map, etc


There is no real short cut that I have found to give you solid answers for an ad campaign. Its a test then tweak situation.

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