
How to waste money in Google Adwords - hermitcrab
http://successfulsoftware.net/2010/02/10/5-great-ways-to-waste-money-in-google-adwords/
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steveklabnik
I'm not sure why, but the negatives really threw me off. I kept thinking,
"Wait, you _shouldn't_ do that?"

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pbhjpbhj
Should definitely rewrite for clarity it's a mess. For example:

" _My own experiences with Adwords quickly showed me that people will click an
ad, even if it isn’t at all relevant to what they are searching for. For
example people searching for “747 seating plan” will click on an ad with the
title “wedding seating plan”. It is the nature of the web that people are
surfing rather than reading, and clicking on an irrelevant ad doesn’t cost
them anything [...] you can be sure that I have “747″ set up as a negative
keyword._ "

He switches voice within the para and there's not much hint he's doing it.

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hermitcrab
So how should that paragraph have been written?

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pbhjpbhj
He's using the supposedly humorous "say the opposite to what you mean" method
of blogging. He should just have dropped that right off the bat:

My edit: _"My experiences with Adwords shows people don't click an advert
unless it's relevant to their search. For example, people searching for '747
seating plan' don't click ads for 'wedding seating plans'. People are not
surfing the web, rather they are reading. Clicking an irrelevant ad is rare
[...] thus I have '747' set up as a negative keyword."_

Where it says "clicking an irrelevant ad is rare" I'd probably say "following
an irrelevant ad leads to virtually zero conversion rate". But I tried not to
change the meaning with my edit.

FTFY: how did I do?

Edit: re-reading the original I can see now that he may not have been
continuing his negative voice. He may have posted this para in the positive.
It does work either way. So, is he saying people click irrelevant ads, or is
he saying they don't?

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hermitcrab
For example people searching for "747 seating plan" _will_ click on an ad with
the title "wedding seating plan".

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pbhjpbhj
By accident, and then fail to convert.

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tptacek
For what it's worth: this is a micro-ISV guy that patio11 respects
(PerfectTablePlan is the Bingo Card Creator of wedding seating plans). This
post was less sophisticated than some of what Patrick has written, but you can
bet I now have his blog RSS'd.

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patio11
In a very real sense, Bingo Card Creator is the Perfect Table Plan of bingo
cards. I have a notebook from ~3 years ago somewhere listing audacious dreams
for the future. It includes the line "I want to be like Andy Brice when I grow
up." (Incidentally, I still have a year or two to go to catch up to where he
was 3 years ago.)

He's also forgotten more about AdWords than I'll probably ever know. (Note
that if you were to graph my ROI on AdWords it would on a very good day hit
one of the minima on his graph.)

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tbgvi
Some good tips but pretty basic - if you don't know anything about AdWords and
you're running ads then take a look.

On that note, the #1 dumbest thing I've seen wasting money on AdWords is
running an ad for a local business across the whole world. Oops :)

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fnid2
I'll start using Google adwords when they let me pay only for clicks that
result in a conversion. They have the technology, put it to use. I'll come
write it myself and then pay for the adwords, but I won't pay for adwords
until they enable pay for performance for adwords.

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hermitcrab
They do (of sorts), see:

[http://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/07/a-test-of-cost-
per-...](http://successfulsoftware.net/2009/07/07/a-test-of-cost-per-action-
cpa-vs-cost-per-click-cpc-in-google-adwords/)

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jasonlbaptiste
someone needs to build stuff that helps developers make money with their apps.
we all cant be 37 signals or salesforce, nor want to be, but we all certainly
want to sell our software.

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callmeed
Good stuff as I'm actually about to start some new AdWords campaigns.

The 1-day consulting looks interesting too. Anyone use an AdWords consultant
(or offer such a service) with good results?

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aarongough
The company I work for does Adwords setup/optimization. I'm not too involved
with that side of things, but I know that previous clients have experienced as
much as a 250% increase in their business volume after starting adwords
campaigns with us (relative to their pre-online-advertising sales)

If you're interested check out <http://waldendesign.com/>

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mikeyur
6\. Advertise on the content network (unless doing some branding w/ display
ads)

6a. Advertise on content network w/o selecting specific domain names in your
niche

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bemmu
Isn't it worth bidding up to 99,999...% of your profit, if it really already
accounts for all costs?

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URSpider94
No, and here's why.

The goal of selling your software is to make profit, so that's what you
maximize. Let's look at some examples for comparison.

Alice and Bob are both selling software. Their per-copy expenses are $1.

Alice advertises on AdWords for $.10 per click, and has a 10% conversion rate.
So, her cost per sale is $2 ($1 cost + $1 AdWords). She sells each copy for
$3, making $1 profit. She sells 100 copies per month, making $100.

Bob advertises on AdWords for $.199 per click, and has the same 10% conversion
rate. His cost per sale is $2.99 ($1 cost + $1.99 AdWords). He sells his
software for $3 per copy, making $0.01 profit.

Homework questions: how many copies per month does Bob have to sell to make
more profit than Alice? Is it likely that an increase in AdWords bid from $.10
to $.19 will drive that kind of difference in click-throughs?

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joelhaus
The goal is to reach your optimal profit point; where an increase in
expenditures would result in a decrease of overall profits. For adsense, this
requires careful/constant measurement/iteration.

More here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_maximization#Marginal_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_maximization#Marginal_cost-
marginal_revenue_method)

Good article for the adsense illiterate though.

