My first Adwords adventure

I "discovered" adwords a few years ago now, but didn't really have any appreciation of the numbers until I had an idea in 1995 for what I thought would be some upcoming "in demand" keywords. I had the idea to use PPC ads to promote the forthcoming children in need day and children in need auctions that were scheduled to take place in aid of the "children in need" charity on ebay. I'm a big fan of Terry Wogan and always liked what he did for children in need and I also am a big fan of ebay. So the chance to use my new found knowledge of adwords in a little project to bring into play my ebay affiliate account seemed an ideal project, particularly as I had never yet managed to make money from any of them. (I've never approached Terry Wogan to be fair - I'm sure he's very generous though....)

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I researched the upcoming words that were going to be associated with the event and created a small adwords ad.

Here are some of them along with my initial bids

"the great big bid" Bid £0.06 Clicks 62 Impressions 1,121 Cost £3.28 Av Pos 1.1
pudsey Bid £0.10 Clicks 195 Impressions 14,759 Cost £13.78 Av Pos 1.4
"BBC children in need" Bid £0.10 Clicks 174 Impressions 9,970 Cost £10.56Av Pos 1.2
"pudsey bear" Bid £0.11 Clicks 124 Impressions 17,336 Cost £10.98 Av Pos 3.1

"children in need" Bid £0.11 Clicks 853 Impressions 76,560 Cost £73.80 Av Pos
2.9

Content network total Clicks 1,429 Impressions 121,675 Cost £113.82 Av Pos 2.6

Unfortunately I had failed to pick up on the fact that the content network was not where I needed my ads to be appearing and my affiliate conversions fell short of my adwords expenditure - a familiar story to many I am sure. However, what the experience did convince me of was the massive pulling power of google adwords ads and I was convinced from this campaign onwards that PPC and google were the way forward with any promotion. The "TRICK" would be to find cheap words that generated more in conversions than they cost. It's still the trick, but actually, it's a science that continues to elude me. PPC on Google has helped me sell real products through my own business and through my affiliate account on Amazon, but not yet at the rate that will make me want to give up my day job. I remain a huge fan of Google adwords and PPC, but still a student rather than a past master in the art!

http://www.holbeinltd.com/mfc885cw.htm