Google Adwords

[a1sapat]

What do people think?

I've just set up my account but I'm not getting much more than impressions. (Could be because I have such a small budget...) Has anyone had a lot of success with it?

What about Overture?
Any other good programs out there?

[avatari]

could be any number of things:

if your click-through-rate is low, then your ads aren't interesting or eyecatching enough.
if your impressions are low, then your budget/max cost-per-click isn't high enough

but don't get too disheartened, most people are lucky if they earn enough to cover hosting costs. plenty of people will tell you they earn loads but this is normally rubbish. only a lucky few earn a lot off it. the biggest winner is...you guessed it...google.

[OtbHunter]

Yep, that is pretty much true of all the Advertising programs offered... the big winner is usually the person selling the ads
Have been in business for 20 years... the Newspaper and Yellow page ads used to always make money for the advertiser up until about 10 years ago... then, if you were lucky, you made enough to pay for the ad and over the past couple years, every ad I ran in the newspapers lost me money!
Why.... I have no idea.... Found this very same problem on the internet. I am more than willing to listen to an idea about how to reverse this????
Banner ads are even worse than Google...be very careful if you try that approach!

[stuey]

I'm sorry guys but I'd have to disagree. I find that when executed correctly, adwords is a fantastic advertising opportunity.

I will give you some of my tips, which helped me immensly.

1. Make sure that you do campaigns on a keyphrase basis. e.g. if you sell green, blue and red widgets DO NOT put this as your advert.

Title: Widgets to buy
Line 1:We offer many widgets
Line 2 - Visible URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com
Line 3 - Actual URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com

instead run 3 adverts

Title: Green Widgets to buy
Line 1:We fantastic green widgets at trade prices
Line 2 - Visible URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com/
Line 3 - Actual URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com/green-widgets.htm

Title: Red Widgets to buy
Line 1:We fantastic red widgets at trade prices
Line 2 - Visible URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com/
Line 3 - Actual URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com/red-widgets.htm

Title: Blue Widgets to buy
Line 1:We fantastic blue widgets at trade prices
Line 2 - Visible URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com/
Line 3 - Actual URL:hxxp://vvv.widgets.com/blue-widgets.htm

When an identical "search phrase" is matched by the google advert the actual matched text e.g. green widgets is made into a bold font. This immediately catches the eye and makes your advert more clickable IMHO.

You also get a better CTR (click through rate) for each of the colours as the "most relevant" advert is showing. Therefore if someone was to type in "green widgets" or "blue widgets" the adverts look better suited to their search.

End of my little lesson but I hope that I've explained a little about how you should run a gadwords campaign a little better. If anyone has something further to suggest I'm all ears as I'm learning too

Stuey

[dtmtsp]

I also recommend running ad variations. This way you can make some slight changes and really optimize your ad. The best performing ad will be served first. It takes some work, but once you get used to it, your results will improve.