Had any massive failure with Adwords?

[NicoleDean]

Just make sure you're testing every single step along the process, so you can tweak any of the weak links.

Headlines, ads, landing pages, results, etc.

:) Nicole

[WAHumor]

I tell everybody I meet who's starting out in Google Adwords to immediately get Perry Marshall's ebook, The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords, go to their Adwords account, open it as soon as you're in and then do everything that book says.

Saved me loads of heartache as well as an excessively empty wallet. Were I to try my hand at Adwords again (possibly in the near future), you can bet I'll use that book again.

No aff link, just get it!!

Better $50 gone once than $500 gone overnight. And that DOES happen!


Dan

[lindastacy]

It wasn't adwords, but another PPC company that gave a free $50 trial and their staff even set up the keywords for me (I wrote the ads). The did a great job... so great that my $50 was used up with a couple hours. LOL!

Lesson learned... even if the "expert" is setting it up for you, make sure a spending limit is in place!

[nichescape]

My suggestion is don't make any changes to campaigns (or start new ones) at the end of the day, before a weekend or any other time you might be away for the computer for a while. Do it when you can monitor it for a bit once it's live to be sure you haven't made any costly mistakes.

I set up a new campaign at the end of the day once and made the mistake of putting a keyword phrase in as broad match rather than exact match. The exact match phrase was a buying keyword but there were a LOT of searches for other things with that phrase in them that were not.

By the time I looked in on it the following morning, it had cost me several hundred dollars in clicks for stuff that would almost never convert.

John

[Getagrip]

Be very careful - you can lose money very easily. I would suggest only bidding 1/100th of what your commission is going to be and keep a very close eye on your campaign. If you haven't gotten 1 sale in 100 clicks, I would suggest pausing your campaign and re-evaluating things.

[Bonnie]

I second Dan's recommendation about Perry's Adwords Guide, Ethan... Perry has been the "king of Adwords" (just my opinion) for many years, and he's a great teacher. Glad to see his book is "Updated for 2010" -- PPC has changed a lot since I first read Perry's tips!

[deniseoberry]

Gosh -- don't even ask about the day a few years ago when I nearly gagged at several (and I mean several!) $5 clicks to a campaign I was running. That was a loser. Test and track as others have said. You'll be better off in the long run.