Hi ducatibatty,

It's your Quality Score that causes you to pay such a high price.

Undoubtedly you have earned a poor Quality Score and this is AdWords way of discouraging you from continuing until you improve your account structure, bidding strategy, ad text and landing page. All of those can impact your QS.

You can check your quality score

Login into adwords

Click on your Campaign Name
Click on your Ad Group Name

Once on the Ad Group page, look at the four sub tabs right above the content block

If keywords is not currently selected, click on it

Next to each keyword you will see a magnifing glass icon. Hover your mouse over the icon.

This will show you your quality score for the keyword in relation to your add. It will also show you the minimum bid.

Ex: Quality score: Great
Minimum Bid : $0.04

If your quality score is poor, then here are some things you can do to improve it.

1) use only one keyword phrase per Ad Group.
2) use the keyword phrase in the title or body of the ad
Each time the keyword matches the search term, it will be highlighted and improve click throughs.

3) Create a targeted landing page for the ad that is optimized for the keyword phrase.
4) Enclude other links on your landing page such as about us, contact use or links to other pages. This will improve the quality of the landing page and give the vistor options if they are not interested in your landing page.

5) if your landing page forces optin, add an option for getting some information without opting in.

If you want me to take a look at the ad and landing pages your can PM them to me.