It’s been awhile since I’ve touched on anything, and my stats are definitely showing it. It’s getting to the point where I’ve tried a good amount of things so my post count per week is slowly going to get lower and lower as I run out of money making tricks. With this topic, there are only so many things that you can do. I’ve done just about all of them. From Keyword research, to search engine optimization, to ad types, to social media marketing, there isn’t much left.
So I think my last topic before I write my final few posts is going to be to touch on Google Adwords. We’ve all seen the ads. Free 75 dollars in advertising for trying out Google Adwords. It’s a great way to get you try it out. It’s also a great way to bleed your wallet dry if you aren’t paying attention to it.
I decided to give the free advertising a run so I signed up with Adwords at the beginning of the month and let it run for about fifteen days. In those fifteen days, and using over one hundred keywords, I racked up close to 25,000 impressions, and a whole 66 clicks. $44.00 dollars worth of advertising later, I’ve suspended my campaign and saving the rest of my free money for later.
First thing first. I like the setup. They make it really easy to set-up your campaign. In fact, you can even call customer service toll free, and for no charge, to get your first campaign setup. You have the options of a text ad, or a visual ad. You can determine how much per day you are willing to spend for advertising, and you can even set a bid price to compete for ad space. Of course the higher your bid amount, the better chances of exposure you have.
What I don’t like is the fact that regardless of whether you’re getting hits or not. Google Adwords will charge you $50.00 every thirty days regardless of if you’ve racked up that much in clicks or not.
Here’s the way it works.
Your ad has a chance of getting shown when people search your keywords, or someone is using Google Adsense and your ad matches that genre. Every time someone clicks on your ad, Google charges you a certain amount based on your bid pricing and your max amount per day. Once you’ve racked up $50.00 dollars in clicks from your ad, Google will charge your credit or debit card. If you don’t hit $50.00 in clicks within thirty days, they will still charge you $50.00.
Writer’s Note: I was totally wrong on that 50 or 30 days. Adwords will only charge you 50.00 or whatever you spend within that 30 days. So if you only spend 3 dollars, you only pay 3 dollars.
I’m still within my first thirty days as well I still have some money in my beginning credit saved up. At this point I’ve suspended my campaign before it hit $50.00 to see if they still charge me. They shouldn’t since I don’t have a running campaign and I also still have credit available, but we’ll see. I’ve been hit with enough charges on shit I didn’t use before, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google was just one more person doing the same thing.
Unfortunately for me, my blog is still new. It probably doesn’t quite have the appeal that people want, or the information that people are looking for. My bounce rate during this time from the search engines was close to 80%. While I had some people sticking around, a big chunk of those 66 people didn’t stick around long, but with 25,000 impressions, you’d have expected many more people clicking.
The real down fall to this, is that Google Adwords isn’t that great for a beginning site unless you’re actually selling something. If you’re relying completely on ad revenue (such as on a blog) you better be somewhat established, otherwise it’s all money out, and not much money in. I can see it really easy to rack up two hundred or three hundred dollars in a month on advertising, so be prepared to spend the money if you want to drive that traffic to your site.
If all you’re looking for is pure advertising, then Google Adwords works well. If you have a monthly budget, I’d say use it. If you’re just looking for traffic to come your way, it seems to work, but I’d also imagine that depends on your niche. There are tools within Adwords that can give you ideas, but you have to take the time to learn them to make use of them.
All in All, it can’t hurt to try it for free, just make sure you keep an eye on it in the first couple of days to adjust your spending and make sure you don’t burn up the entire 75 in the first day.
