Stupid Google Adword Tricks

February 2004 was my first full month of seriously using Google Adwords to make money and I made just under $500.00 promoting my own and affiliate products. I'll reveal some specific techniques I use in the next post but right now, I want to tell you about my very first experience with Google Adwords and the mistakes I made.

If you are not familiar with Google Adwords you can find out more by visiting https://adwords.google.com/ Or, for a detailed video that shows you how to sign up for a Google Adword account and steps you through the process of setting up a Campaign see www.emergencycashgenerators.com

My first Adwords experience was last October. It was on the Saturday of the Lunar Eclipse. I was on the internet looking for web cams that were scheduled to show the eclipse because it was overcast in my area and I really wanted to see it (I am an Astronomy nerd)

Anyway, after a couple of hours searching I found 10 or 12 web cams that were scheduled to show the eclipse. That is when I got the "bright" idea (honest -- it really sounded like pure genius at the time) that I could throw up a website and use ClickBank to sell access to the links that lead to the web cams. I figured there were other people that would also not be able to see the eclipse because of bad weather. Plus, I had been itching to test out Google Adwords and this seemed like a good opportunity.

So off I go, putting up a sales page to try to promote this stupid thing along with the welcome page to deliver the product. The whole thing took me about an hour to throw together. I charged $5.00 for access to the web cam links.

Next I stumbled around in Google Adwords until I figured out how to create the campaign and select keywords. When I did I was disappointed to see that Adwords estimated <1 for every keyword even though I had little competition. I had several hundred keywords and I think in total it estimated that I would get 4 clicks a day. I almost dropped the project then but I went ahead and finished it and set my daily budget. I didn't really notice what I had set the daily budget to -- what difference did it make with only 4 clicks a day, right?

There was about an hour before the eclipse would start so I went out jogging and came back to find that...

My Entire Daily Budget of $50.00 had Been Gobbled Up!

I have no idea why I set the daily budget so high. I guess I figured I could watch it and reduce it if I needed to -- hell, I am a product development genius not a freaking accountant!

I achieved a 9% click through rate with that campaign. 0 sales. $50.00 thrown down a big rat hole.

What went wrong? Obviously Goggle's click estimates did not take into account that many more people would be searching for 'Lunar Eclipse' on the actual day of the Lunar Eclipse then any other time. Genius Product Developer missed that little minor detail too. :)

I didn't touch Google Adwords again until mid January. And now I take Goggle's Estimates with a grain of salt.

Next time I'll reveal some of my profitable Google Adword techniques.