Market Your Products On EBay: Making Money In Tough Times As times get tough more and more businesses are turning to ebay.Whether you’re trying to sell your own inventory, or trying to make big money selling products or services from other manufacturers, ebay is thriving in these uncertain times.
There are a variety of marketing programs to help you succeed on ebay.Here are the most popular:
1) SaleHoo Wholesale/eBay Directory. Stop spinning your wheels and join one of the largest, safest wholesale communities on the internet. Over 50,000 other online sellers, retailers and bargain hunters have discovered the best place to find legitimate, pre-screened wholesalers, drop shippers, liquidators and manufacturers for every type of product imaginable.
2) Build A Niche Store. Succeed as an eBayaffiliate. Build A Niche Store (BANS) is a store / website development platform which enables you to create content based sites that generate income through the eBayaffiliate programs. Over the past year and a half our “Niche Store” concept has really evolved and BANS has grown into a “proven” product with lots of positive feedback and success stories scattered across the web.
3) Auction Acrobat – eBay Delivery Automation Software. The most viable solution to eBay’s digital product ban. Auction Acrobat is not just a software but an automated sales machine that delivers CD/DVD’s, build a buyer list, and much much more… Now you can make long term residual income on eBay without selling!
4) Make Money On eBay And Your Own Website. Access 500 true drop shippers! This free turnkey ecommerce website is stocked with 200,000 drop ship products, allowing you to sell online without purchasing any inventory of your own. Free hosting and free domain names are available.
5) Content Website Builder. Create a website in 2 easy steps for eBay. Content Website Builder is an easy to use website creation software. You can make websites with hundreds of self-updating dynamic pages with keyword rich text, images, and videos. Integrated eBay, Adsense, Amazon, Yahoo!Answers and YouTube.
6) Auction Classified Cash. This product shows you how to create the perfect eBay classified ads that put more cash into your pocket and more subscribers on your lists. This program is most effective for those new to eBay or looking to improve the profitability of their sales.
7) The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On EBay. This top selling products is approaching 100,000 copies sold. Called one of the “most creative eBay ebooks ever written” by leading affiliate magazines, The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On Ebay is your key to eBay success. The product includes free upgrades (version 6 Releasing Soon).
Money Animal. Don’t let the name fool you. This product just launched and includes an exceptional member network and affiliate support. Learn to work from home by following step-by-step instruction for traffic using Adwords and EBay for online income. Full support is provided. See there sales page!
9) Auction Inspector. Niche software for eBay. If you are struggling to find profitable products to sell on eBay, then the Auction Inspector is for you. They guarantee to find you products that will make you money and that you can actually sell on eBay.
10) Become An eBay PowerSeller In 90 Days. This program has helped 1000s of people gain eBay PowerSeller status and achieve their online goals. Work from the comfort of your own home and earn the income you deserve.
Selling on ebay is a great marketing solution in today’s tough economic times. Learn to sell on eBay and your business will thrive even though the market continues to tumble. Marketing on ebay is easy to do and requires little or no startup costs.
If you haven’t tried advertising in Facebook yet, it might be worth a shot. Facebook is the social network site that brings friends together according to interests, existing connections, networks and groups.
You can place ads and display them to anyone on Facebook based on demographics, interests, hobbies and so forth. It’s a good way to reach very targeted audiences. User information is current, updated often, and accurate.. unlike a lot of direct mail lists, which can be outdated, inaccurate and expensive.
Since Facebook doesn’t tie results to exact searches, your ads are not as granularly exact as something like Google AdWords. However, you can reach really targeted audiences for very little money. If you’re selling archery gear on eBay, for example, you can run ads that only display to people who list archery in their profiles.
I’d like to thank everyone for their feedback on posts related to Search Engine Marketing. I hear from so many people who are spending money on Google Adwords and not seeing results that I’ve made today’s post about how you can make the most of your search engine marketing.
When I started out in search marketing, I was experiencing the same thing. It seems that I could never get ahead. I might spend more but the revenue I generated for products and services simply covered my costs. Feeling a bit defeated, I called Google and eventually met with a representative to help me better understand how I might improve my results.
Believe it or not, the answer was quite simple. New ad copy, new ad groups, and keywords. You may be saying to yourself, isn’t that just more the of the same? Well, yes and no. There certainly are lessons to be learned about writing your ads, analyzing your ads, and choosing the right keywords, and it can make all the difference.
Here are the most valuable lessons I learned when seeking to improve your benefit to cost ratio for Google Adwords:
1. Use initial caps when writing your ads. This ads credibility and helps your click through rate.
2. Put the starting price in your ads. Since price is usually the one factor that may influence purchase, putting price in your ad ensures that price is not an issue and buyers are qualified.
3. Break your ads up into multiple ad groups. Doing so allows for better tracking and experimentation. Over time, deactivate ads that do not produce the conversion rates you’re looking for (Track EVERY ad with Google Conversion Tracking).
4. Create a long list of keywords and analyze which perform the best. Make sure your list is exhaustive and eliminate those that don’t perform.
5. Add negative keywords. A great one is “free”. Often times, individuals looking for free stuff aren’t willing to pay for products or services. Learn more about negative keywords and this should eliminate much of the cost associated with unproductive clicks.
These are just a few of the strategies I’ve used for myself and for client to ensure that clicks generate profitable revenue. You should always be working on both sides of the equation. That is to say focus on reducing clicks that don’t convert and improve conversion rates with better, more targeted ads.
Although we didn’t discuss it here, you should also be focused on improving conversion rates through landing page tests. Change-up your landing pages and see if you can enhance conversion rates once someone has clicked through. This can result in a significant improvement in overall conversions and revenue.
If you’ve ever tested Google AdWords campaigns to any extent, you’ve probably noticed some interesting things. One of them is that ad titles that include the keywords that were searched for typically outperform all other ads when it comes to CTR (click-through rates).WARNING: Remember, CTR is not your goal – conversion is. However, increasing CTR is one way to boost conversions… if the complete AdWords strategy and content approach is correct.
Ok – so let’s say you’d like to increase CTR. There’s a way to automatically insert the keywords searched for into your AdWords ad title. It’s generally referred to as Dynamic Keyword Insertion. The recipe follows.
First you need to group your AdWordskeywords into appropriate ad groups. If you sell music CDs, for example, you might group by classical, pop, country, mod, punk and so forth. Once those groups are set up, you’re ready to design your Dynamic headline.
Use the right and left squiggly brackets on your keyboard {} to do this. It’s shift-bracket on most keyboards. The headline you type in for classical CDs should look like so:
In this case, “Classical CDs” is considered alternate text. If one of your AdWordskeywords is “Beethoven CDs”, the searcher will see the title “Beethoven CDs” come up as the title of your ad. Classical CDs is alternate text, because if the person searches for a classical CD phrase that’s longer than 25 characters (the Google limit), then they get the generic alternate text. For everything that’s under 25, however, they get titles that mimic exactly what they searched for.
WARNING #2: Don’t make your keywords that are inserted highly popular or “hot topics.” You can rack up a huge AdWords bill this way.
For some types of selling, this strategy isn’t necessarily a good thing. If you have a long sales cycle that depends on some information exchange or a phone consultation, for example, your approach would be different. But for many B2C and B2B goods that are sold on eBay, it’s a great idea, because you don’t have to make unique titles and ads for every possible combination of keyword you’re bidding on.
Search Marketing Soars: Focus on Landing Pages Now that you’ve focused on finding the right keywords, setting up your Adwords campaigns, and choosing your bids, it’s time to divert your attention toward landing pages. Internet marketers have proven that a change in landing pages, to accommodate your specific keyword groupings, can have a positive impact on results.
We all know landing pages are important and A/B testing is a common phrase among search marketers, but are we as an industry taking landing pages to the next level? Search engine marketing traffic is highly engaged and quite honestly, different from other online media. So, why do we direct this traffic to the same generic landing pages?
There is a new movement that centers Web design around search intent. Strong keyword groupings that in the past didn’t have a good “home” will now get a custom built landing page with tailored content. For instance, for a travel client, we created new landing pages with content specific to the psychographic intent of the search phrase or phrases.
Landing pages like this take time and effort to brainstorm and build, but the rewards are worth it if thought out. These custom landing pages are also lead generation forms. They created a great experience with tailored content for the consumer and also increased conversions by 25% when compared to the previous destination pages.
In another instance, we built out landing pages for certain geographic based terms that were important to our client, as it was a service offering that had not been hitting our online metrics. When a new landing page was created around the context of the keyword groupings, the cost per lead dropped significantly (think hundreds of percentage points).
The moral of the story is that search marketers should think more strategically in their landing page decisions. It is more than A/B testing these days. Work with your client and creative teams to enhance the full search experience from start to finish.
The Millennial Generation was born between 1977 and 1998 and is just beginning to enter the workforce.Members of this 75 million person group are being raised at the most child-centric time in our history and the impact to marketers is undeniable.
In general, it is said that this group displays a great deal of confidence.This could be the result of focus they receive from parents and high expectations placed upon them – not to mention their new found independence with the advent of cell phones, the internet, and other electronic forms of communication. This is truly the first generation to grow up completely online and as a result, the marketing mix used to target them needs to evolve.As you might expect, this group is technically literate like none other.
Socially, Millennials are different as well.They are typically team-oriented, banding together to date and socialize rather than pairing off. They work well in groups, preferring this to individual endeavors. They are also good at multi-tasking and were the ones studying while listening to the radio or watching television – all the more reason to ensure that you utilize cross-media marketing and ensure consistency among your communications.
From an academic perspective, they are the group that was able to play a sport, attend school, and engage in social endeavors.Millennials believe in going green and supporting endeavors that are good for the environment.
When it comes to work, Millennials seem to expect structure. They acknowledge and respect positions and titles, and want a relationship with their boss. Millennials are in need of mentoring and they’ll respond well to the personal attention. When considering the management of Millenials, be mindful that they appreciate structure and stability.Mentoring Millennials should be more formal, with set meetings and a more authoritative attitude on the mentor’s part.
How to Market
Now that you understand a little more about the target you are seeking to attract, consider the places they go for information and the way they behave.Millennials are logging into their MySpace and Facebook accounts 3 – 4 times each day, sending instant messages to friends, and uploading their videos to YouTube.Are you there?
Listen to the conversation. Where many businesses are failing today is that they are not listening to the conversations that the Millennials are having about their products or their company.Sign up for Google Alerts, visit Technorati and see what individuals are blogging about.
Create accounts in FaceBook and MySpace and other Social Media.Put you name out there.Make sure that you company has a space among social media outlets.One thing to keep in mind though is to not be overly commercial.Millennials can see right through it.Rather, be genuine and let your prospective market understand what you’re really about and what you stand for.
Communicate on a personal level.Create a two way dialogue with your audience.Give them an opportunity to speak to you.Whether you let them rate your products, share comments, or share their experience with friends, providing a forum to socialize is essential.
Focus on consistent messaging.Regardless of which media type you use (email marketing, direct mail, adwords, etc.), keep your messaging consistent.If you say one think and do another, or change your messaging frequently, you will not be building the trust necessary to ensure lifetime customer value.
Be creative.When your marketing is creative, it can very quickly gain momentum.With the advent of YouTube, Flickr, and Delicious, messages are quickly shared and distributed.Don’t force the issue.Rather, create something meaningful, fun, and worth sharing.Before you know it, the Millennials will be sharing and distributing information about your and your brand.
Improving the effectiveness of your marketing to Millennials is no small undertaking.To be truly successful, you need to understand the social dependence these individuals have when communicating and the value they place on the opinion of others.Although much of Millennial marketing needs to happen online, don’t lose track of some tradition media like direct mail.As much as marketing has changed, traditional media can still be effective – just make sure it has a social component.
Google has several features (free features) that are extremely useful in helping anyone optimize their AdWords campaign. Theses features should not be overlooked by anyone and a lot of times other guides recommend you purchase tools that do the exact same thing as Google’s free features.
Reports
I recommend watching the following video by Google that tells you how to create a report in Google AdWords:
Everyone knows that the more information they know about something, the better. So why wouldn’t anyone want to know as much information about their advertising accounts as possible? This is why you use Google Reports. They will give you all of the information you need to know about your account, and you can even set the report to create itself and email it to you every few days without you having to do anything. Here are a few things you can set your report to do.
Help you find unprofitable keywords in your account
Compare your traffic/sales/cost reports over any time frame in graph form
Tell you how many clicks you received
List the number of sales you received from certain keywords/campaigns/AdGroups
How to Create A Report
Click on the reports tab (Number 10. on the AdWords map on the last few pages of this guide). From there you select “create a report”. You can choose how you want to see the report, which campaigns or add groups you want to view, and then you can view all of the information about the report either in text format, graph format, or both (I would recommend both).
Once you create the report, be prepared to wait a few minutes, the more information your researching the longer it will take to create the report.
There’s no limit of information that a Google report can display. I know this because I actually ran a one year report for all of my Google Accounts, which took about 15-20 minutes to complete, and Google told me my report was over 250 Megabytes in size and it was only available for download.
I recommend watching this video by Google about additional AdWords report features:
Google offers its advertisers a free service which will allow you to actually track the number of sales you receive per keyword for any time period specified. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone, because knowing this information is very valuable. If you know that a certain keyword is generating above average sales, you would want to raise the bid of that keyword so you can receive a higher rank, thus getting more traffic which leads to more sales. I have bids for some keywords where I pay about $0.25 to $0.55 per click. But I don’t lose money on those keywords because they generate above average sales.
Unfortunately, this tool requires two things that keep many people from using it. These two things are that you must own (or have the owners put a Source Code on their webpage for you, many online companies do this) the webpage you want to have conversion tracking on and you must enter the Google Conversion Tracking code into the HTML of your webpage. Some web pages with online affiliates advertise that they have Google Tracking available for all of their affiliates, but I have never tried this so I don’t know how accurate theirs are.
Surprisingly this tool is extremely accurate, especially when compared with other “free” sales tracking tools offered by other search engines. Usually when Google reports a sale, a sale has been made. Again, I would highly recommend this tool for anyone.
For more information about Google’s conversion tracking, I recommend watching the following video from Google.
Tracking Other Search Engine Sales Using Google Tracking
Google also offers the same tracking feature for use on other search engines. This is called Cross-Channel Tracking. Basically when you sign up for this Google will give you a small piece of HTML to put on the sales page (also called a Thank You Page), they will also give you a new URL for each keyword you want to add to Cross-Channel Tracking. Once you have the individual URL(s) for your keywords, you will need to go to the other Search Engine and replace that keywords destination URL with the new URL Google gave you.
This is also a very accurate tool, although it is a bit of a pain to do this for in search engines where you have large keyword lists. I would only recommend adding this feature to keywords that you spend a lot of money on.
For more information about Cross-Channel conversion tracking, I recommend watching the following video from Google:
Like many of the other major pay per click search engines, Google offers its advertisers free tools to use. But unlike other pay per click search engines, these tools are very helpful, accurate, and will help you to make more money online. In fact, I prefer Google’s tools to the tools you pay for.
The second way is to login to your Google Account. Once inside your Google account you can see this keyword tool inside your individual AdGroups. This keyword tool is excellent to use. Its one of the best keyword tools I have seen, and it is free. I would highly recommend this tool for everyone advertising with Google AdWords.
What makes this tool so great? This tool uses Google’s Quality Score and displays your best performing keywords based on their Quality Score. Then if you select a certain keywordGoogle will search for other key phrases that are related to that keyword and then allows you to add them to your campaign. Even if you think there is no possible way that you could be missing a keyword I would still highly recommend that you use this tool. You will be amazed at how many keywords you have overlooked.
This tool also allows you to type in keywords that Google didn’t find on your website. This way you will be able to find thousands of extra relevant keywords that you didn’t even think of.
Have you ever wondered how many advertisers were advertising for a certain key phrase or how many people were searching for a keyword? We all have, but now thanks to Google’s new Keyword Tool we can finally find this valuable information.
Google will display two different types of keyword lists.
More Specific Keywords: This list is the list where you will find the largest amount of keywords that are most related to your campaign. You will probably select most if not all of these keywords to add to your AdGroup.
Additional Keywords to Consider: This is the list that will contain more broad keywords. I would recommend reading over this keyword list, but you will probably not select as many keywords as you did in the More Specific Keywords list.
Currently Google offers five different selection options for the keyword tool. These options are all very important to take advantage of because they will give you valuable information which can help you to generate more profit.
You can access the keyword selection options by clicking on the keyword tool button, entering a keyword or phrase (in the examples below I used the keyword “laptop”), and then click on the “Get More Keywords” button.
Notifies you if you already have the keyword in the same AdGroup or Campaign.
I would only recommend using the “Keyword Only” selection if you are an absolute beginner and are feeling overwhelmed with the keyword selection process.
This is an extremely helpful keyword selection type. It allows you to see both the Search Popularity and the Advertiser competition of a keyword. This is a great way to see if a keyword will give you large traffic amounts and a good ranking. It’s obvious that the best keywords are high in search volume and low in advertiser competition. I have found several keyword niches with this tool.
I would recommend using this option every time you wish to add keywords. It is perfect for beginning and advanced advertisers. Don’t completely disregard a keyword because it has low search volume. Add every keyword you see that is related to the product you are advertising.
Cost and Ad Position Estimates Selection
The Cost and Ad Position Estimates selection gives you a rough estimate of your Average CPC and your Ad Position. Notice I said a rough estimate. Google’s ad cost and position estimates are usually very far from accurate. Look at the above screen shot for an example of what I mean. It would be very difficult to receive a first page ad position for the keyword laptop and notebook, while only paying $0.05 per click.
I would only recommend using this tool to find which keyword will be inactive for search before you add them to your list.
Global Search Volume Trends Selection
The “Global Search Volume Trends” selection is an extremely helpful selection. This tool allows you to view the popularity of a keyword and it shows you when that keyword is searched the most.
Why is this tool so great?
This keyword option allows you to know exactly when a product will sell the best. Look at the screenshot above. According to this data, people are more interested in purchasing laptops online from December to March. This means that I should focus on advertising for laptops more during those months. By giving you this information you can take full advantage of sales trends, by letting you know when and how long to advertise a product at its full potential.
I definitely recommend using this option, especially if you are advertising for seasonal products (sports, clothing, etc.).
The “Possible Negative Keywords” selection gives you the option to make the keywords listed a negative keyword match (-keyword). If you don’t know or remember what a negative keyword is, look in the “Keyword Matching Options” section of this guide. I wouldn’t recommend using this tool unless you find a large amount of keywords in the Keyword Tool which are irrelevant to your product. An example of an irrelevant keyword for your product would be if you were advertising for Pepsi Cola and one of your keywords was “cola”. If this was the case then you would not expect many sales from people who searched for Coca-Cola, so to keep your advertisement from being viewed by anyone who was searching for Coca-Cola products, you would add the negative keyword –coca to their keyword list. When you do this your advertisement will show anytime someone searched for Pepsi or Cola, but it will not show if anyone typed the word “cola” into their search phrase.
For more information about Google’s Keyword Tool, I recommend that you watch the following video from Google.
This is a great tool to use if you want to increase your bids for a large amount of keywords. It is very useful if you want to activate a large amount of inactive keywords by increasing their bid amounts.
How to Activate A Large Amount of Inactive Keywords
Although this feature is no longer available, I have talked with Google and they said they may be adding it again, so I will keep this information below until the next update incase they do add it again.
Click on the “Tools” link (Number 13 on the AdWords map page on the last few pages of this guide) and then click on the link “Advanced Search and Editing”. You will then be taken to a page asking you which tool you want to use. Click on the “Find and Edit Max CPCs” link.
Once you’re on that page, set your settings to the picture below to activate all of your inactive keywords. The only option(s) you should change are the max bid for each inactive keywords and which Campaign/AdGroup you want to change the Max CPC in. In this image I am changing the Max CPC to $0.10 for all of my campaigns and AdGroups to every keyword that is inactive for search. If there is a keyword which needs a Max CPC of $0.15 to become activated, it will remain inactive until you change the bid to $0.15. Don’t forget to click on the blue link next to number 3 (in the picture below) to specify how you want to change your keywords.
If you want to watch a video of how to activate thousands of inactive keywords, then I recommend watching the following video:
Another great feature this tool has is that it can filter out and return only the keywords you want to see or edit. For example if you want to increase the bids of all your keywords that have an average position of 10.0 or higher then you just set Google’s Find & Edit Max CPC Tool to the following picture. Don’t forget to click on the blue link next to number 3 to specify how you want to change your keywords.
Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool will tell you which of your Text Ads are showing for a particular search, without you having to type that keyword into Google to see if your advertisement is appearing yourself. It will also tell you why your ads are not running or why they are not on the first page of the search results. I would recommend using this tool until you get your text ads running profitably.
Google also displays this tool next to each keyword in your keyword list. If you look next to your keywords you should see a button that looks like a magnifying glass. If you put your curser over this (you don’t have to click on it). When the curser appears it will tell you how your text advertisements are performing for that keyword. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is 100% accurate.
For more information about Google’s Ad Diagnostics tool, I recommend watching the following video from Google.
First off, to find the traffic estimator tool click on the Tools link and then click on the link titled “Traffic Estimator”.
The traffic estimator tool does what it says. That is, it tells you how many clicks and impressions you should expect to receive as well as your ad’s position and estimated cost per day.
Although this is a pretty handy tool, I don’t recommend using it a lot. This is mainly because Google’s traffic estimates are far from accurate.
For more information about Google’s Traffic Estimator Tool, I recommend watching the following video from Google.
Earlier in this guide I mentioned the importance of grouping your keyword together by theme to help improve the CTR of your Text Ads. Unfortunately, this can be difficult to do especially if your campaigns have thousands of keywords.
Luckily, Google has made it very easy to do with their Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text Tool. With this tool you can search all of your keywords for a specific theme, and then you can move them to a new AdGroup within seconds. Here’s an example: Let’s say you have 10,000 keywords for laptops, but you want to create a new AdGroup specifically for HP laptops so you can include “HP” in your text advertisement to increase your CTR. Well all you have to do is: go to the Move Keywords tool, indicate that you want to move keywords, and then set your settings to this:
Notice that I have told Google to look through every single keyword in my Account and if Google finds a keyword which contains “hp” or “Hewlett Packard”, then move that keyword to the new AdGroup I specify later.
This tool is extremely useful and can literally save hours of work. I would recommend this tool for everyone to use.
Google offers its advertisers free use of a tool which allows you to download your AdWords account to your computer and manage it without being logged in to Google AdWords.
I recommend watching this introduction video by Google about the AdWords Editor Tool:
This tool was designed to help AdWords account holders manage their Google accounts and campaigns. Google recommends that this tool will be a good aid for advertisers with large accounts. This tool will allow you to manage your entire account offline, but you must download your account first. Its best features include sorting through keywords, text ads, and accounts with ease, but if you have a large account, be prepared to wait because it can take a while to load.
Should you use this tool?
I used to not recommend using this tool, but Google has changed some account features that make it almost necessary to download and use this tool. The feature that Google removed from managing your account online is the ability to find and edit all of your inactive keywords at once. Luckily AdWords Editor has this feature that allows you to edit your inactive keywords (so you don’t have to go and manually edit each keyword bid one at a time for your inactive keywords).
Here are some problems I found with this tool:
It’s recommended for large accounts, yet the larger your account the longer it takes to load.
You can use it offline, but you must be online to download your account and online to upload your account’s changes.
Its user interface is different from your AdWords account user interface, meaning you will have to take time to learn how to use this tool before it will benefit you.
It doesn’t do a good job of telling you when your keywords may be inactive for search. In order to get an accurate idea of your inactive or active keywords you either have to login to your AdWords account online, or you have to remove your AdWords account from AdWords Editor and then re-add it again to AdWords Editor.
This tool wasn’t all bad though, here are the good things:
Can filter through your results to find poor performing keywords, change them, and then upload them to your account.
You can save your account onto a file on your computer for back-up purposes or you can send it to someone for help or review.
How to Use AdWords Editor
Like I said above, AdWords Editor is now the only way you can edit all of your inactive keywords at once. Trust me, there’s nothing more annoying than having to go change the bid for thousands of keywords one at a time. Here’s what you need to do to get AdWords Editor.
Downloading AdWords Editor
Downloading AdWords Editor is very easy to do, and yes they do have AdWords Editor for both Windows and Mac computers.
To download AdWords Editor click on the link below which will take you to the download page:
Setting up Google’s AdWords editor tool is fairly easy to do. Basically it will prompt you for two things.
The email address you use to login to your AdWords account.
The password you use for your AdWords account.
After you enter this information AdWords Editor will download your account to your computer (be sure you’re on the internet when you do this). Make sure you are not logged into your AdWords account when you are using AdWords Editor (downloading or uploading information), because in my experience this has caused AdWords Editor to do partial downloads and uploads.
Basic Information about AdWords Editor
AdWords Editor will not change any information in your account (AdWords account) unless you click on the “Post Changes” button.
You can manage multiple accounts using AdWords editor.
AdWords Editor uses colors to symbolize AdWords rules. If there’s a red symbol next to the AdGroup, Keyword, Campaign, or Text Ad it means there’s an error with that particular AdGroup, Keyword, Campaign, or Text Ad and it will not upload.
Adjusting the Bids for all the Inactive Keywords in your Account
This is by far the best way to change/edit the status or bid for all of the inactive keywords in your AdGroup, Campaign, or entire account.
Why would you want to do this? Well, chances are that you will see keywords in the inactive for search state and in order to fix this you will need to increase bids, delete them, or re-group them.
For this example I will show you how to edit all the inactive keywords within your entire account. If you want to edit the inactive keywords within a specific AdGroup or campaign simply click on that campaign or AdGroup when choosing what you want to edit.
First off you will need to tell AdWords Editor that you’re going to edit your entire account. To do this login to AdWords Editor and on the left side of AdWords Editor click on the name of your account. This will select your entire account including all keywords, text ads, AdGroups, and campaigns.
Now you will want to tell it that you’re going to edit only the keywords. To do this simply click on the “Keywords” tab in AdWords Editor. Your screen will change and it will display all the keywords within your account.
Next you will need to tell AdWords Editor that you only want to edit the Inactive Keywords within your account. To do this click on the dropdown box titled “View” near the top of AdWords Editor. In this drop down box you will need to select “Create or Set Custom View…”.
This will open a new window and on this window you should ignore everything except for the check boxes near the bottom. In these check boxes uncheck everything except for “Broad”, “Phrase”, “Exact”, and “Inactive”. Then click on the “Search” button at the bottom of this window.
This will now display all of the inactive keywords within your AdWords account. Usually to make it easier and faster for me I click on the “Min. CPC…” column button (it may not look like a button, but if you click on the text “Min. CPC…” you will see that it is a button) which sorts the keywords by your minimum required cost per click (A.K.A. your Quality Score).
Now to select the keywords you want to edit, click on the first keyword you want to edit and hold the “Shift” key on your keyboard. While you’re still holding the “Shift” key, click on the last keyword you want to edit. This should select all the keywords in between the first and last keyword you selected. To select specific keywords, do the same thing but instead of holding the Shift key hold the “Ctrl” (control) key.
To increase bids for the keywords look towards the bottom of AdWords editor and enter the new bid in the box titled “Maximum CPC Bid” (this may say “” or “”).
To move the keywords to another AdGroup or Campaign click on the “Edit” menu at the very top of AdWords Editor and select “Cut”. The open the AdGroup/Campaign you want to put the keywords, click on the “Keywords” tab, and then go to the “Edit” menu and select “Paste”.
When you’re done and want to post these changes to your AdWords account, click on the “Post Changes” button.
Another unique and useful feature that AdWords editor has is that it will sort and group keywords from an AdGroup, Campaign, or your entire account and it will create and insert these keywords into new AdGroups.
Unfortunately, I don’t recommend using this tool 100% of the time because it will simply create massive numbers of AdGroups (it’s not uncommon for it to create an AdGroup for just one keyword). The best time(s) to use this tool is when Google has made some of your keywords inactive for search and you need to regroup them to try to improve your Quality Score.
To use this tool simply select the AdGroup or Campaign you want to regroup the keywords in. Then click on the “Tools” menu and select “Keyword Grouper”. Then click on the “Generate Common Terms” button. Wait for a list of common terms to appear and then click on the “Next” button.
AdWords Editor will now display the new AdGroups in Bold and the keywords within those AdGroups. If you want to copy text advertisements over to the new AdGroups (I recommend doing this), select the AdGroup that contains the Text Ads you want to use and click on the finish button.
Now AdWords Editor will have sorted and grouped all the keywords. Before you can post the changes to your AdWords account you will need to specify a minimum bid for the new AdGroups that were created. To do this click on the “AdGroups” tab and select all of the new AdGroups that were created. Then at the bottom of AdWords Editor enter a new max bid in the text area titled “Maximum CPC Bid”.
When you’re finished click on the “Post Changes” button.
Google Analytics is a free service that Google offers that allows website owners to track very detailed visitor information about their website. You can view the Google Analytics section by clicking on the “Analytics” tab near the top of your Google Account.
In order to use Google Analytics, you are required to place a small code on each webpage you wish to be tracked.
This is a great tool to use for optimizing your website. Unfortunately, this tool is only available for website owners.
Analytics has so many features that it’s hard to mention them all. Here are some of the best features (in my opinion):
Tells the location of your visitors
What screen resolution, browser, color, and processors your visitors are using
Unfortunately, this tool has not been extremely useful in targeting my accounts. It has only been handy one or two times for optimizing your website. If your website offers products where it would be nice to know locations and other visitor information, then I recommend this tool. I also recommend this tool to the website owners who don’t have tracking information from their web hosts. Otherwise I recommend staying with Google’s current Conversion Tracker tool.
Now that you know the basic layout of your Google AdWords account, it’s time that you create a keyword targeted campaign which means a campaign that you use keywords to advertise. Before you start a campaign, please read over the following things which are very important for you to know.
General Info
Keyword targeted advertising is the most common type of advertising with Google AdWords. This is the type of advertising you see most often on Google, it is what most people think of when they hear about AdWords. When you are searching Google, the AdWords advertisements are displayed on the top and/or right of each Google search page. You can see an example of what they look like to the right of this paragraph.
Things to Remember
Please remember these two things before you start your account. Although there are things that are more important these things can severely hurt beginner advertisers.
Google’s advertising policies are very strict. They will notify you via email and/or by a message in your account whenever there is something wrong with your account or your advertisements. If you do not fix what they notify you about, then you may become banned by Google. Don’t expect this to be a temporary ban, either. If Google decides to ban your account, they will not accept any of your payments from any credit card you enter. Each time you use a different credit card in a banned account, that credit card will also be declined by Google AdWords. If you ever use that credit card to pay for another AdWords bill, even if it is in an active account, that AdWords account will also become banned. If you ever do become banned, you will not be able to receive traffic to your advertisements and you will need to call Google to get it fixed. Read more
As some of you are aware, Google changed their advertising algorithm in July – August 2006. This change affected many advertisers and has caused several advertisers to drastically increase their bids or leave GoogleAdWords.
If you are a current Google Advertiser and want to know what you need to do in order to beat Google’s new advertising policy, please read the full report of Google’s Advertising Policy
If you are a beginner to Google, then simply continue with this guide. I have included in the text the information you need in order to avoid getting hurt by the policy change.
GoogleAdWords is a pay-per-click program that allows you to advertise on Google’s search engine as well as their partner sites and millions of other smaller websites. In GoogleAdWords, you will create appealing text advertisements to convince people to visit your website and you will also generate keyword lists which tell Google when to display your text advertisement. These are the two things that determine how much money you will make online.
Sounds easy, right? Two things stand between you and online success. Unfortunately, not many people can master these two things because it is harder than it seems. Lucky for you, you’re going to have a Certified GoogleAdvertising Professional guide you through everything to make sure you succeed online.
Whenever you search for something on Google you will see the following:
Notice, I have highlighted results in two different colors, red and green.
The green-highlighted web pages are the search results pages. These are the pages which are displayed for free and are the web pages that most people click on when searching for something.
The red-highlighted web pages are the GoogleAdWords paid advertisements. These advertisements are always shown to the right of the search results and are sometimes shown above the search results. The AdWordsadvertisements are Pay-Per-Click (PPC), which means that the owner of that advertisement pays Google a few cents every time someone clicks on their advertisement. The red sections are where your advertisement will appear when you sign up for GoogleAdWords.
I recommend watching this video by Google to get more information about where your advertisements are displayed:
Why would I want to Pay-Per-Click, when I can get free traffic on Google?
The main reason for wanting to pay for traffic is because it is very very difficult to receive free traffic on Google.
When you sign up for GoogleAdWords Pay-Per-Click advertising your advertisement will be displayed almost immediately in Google’s search results (usually within 5 minutes). You can also decide which search results page you want your advertisements to appear on (the first page always receives more visitors than the other pages).
If you want to receive free advertising, you would have to own the website you were promoting. It would be really difficult to do otherwise. Then, you would have to optimize your website for Google and then submit it to Google to be displayed in their search. This may sound good but it can take up to 6 months and that will not even guarantee you a 1st page position.
Contrary to what most people say about affiliateadvertising on GoogleAdWords, it is not required that you have your own landing page or web page in order to advertise for another website on AdWords. Most people think they need to have their own landing page because Google doesn’t allow two or more advertisements for the same web page to appear for the same search. This is not true. In fact, videos included in this guide prove this isn’t true.
Here is how this rule works: when you create an advertisement for Google you are asked to enter two different types of URLs (web addresses). One is the Display URL which is the URL that the web surfer sees on your text advertisement and the other is the Destination URL which is the actual URL that the web surfer goes to when they click on your advertisement.
Google, then, looks at these URLs and compares them with your competitors URLs for each keyword in your keyword list. If there is another advertisement that uses the same display URL, Google will not display your advertisement because there is already another advertiser advertising the same website as you for that keyword. Google will only display your advertisement in place of the competitor’s ad only if your text ad is better than theirs. Google uses an algorithm called the Quality Score (we talk about this later) to determine this. So if your quality score is better than the other advertisers, then your advertisement will always be shown.
There are two ways to always have your advertisement shown:
Create your own landing page. If you do this your text ad’s display URL will be unique, so your advertisement will be shown. Unfortunately, using this technique requires that you know how to make a web page.
Optimize your advertisement so its quality score will be higher than your competitors. This is the best approach in my opinion.
Go to www.google.com and look towards the bottom of the page. You will see a link which says, “Advertising Programs”. Once you click on that link, you will be taken to the following page:
Once there you should click on the link which says “GoogleAdWords”.
You will then be taken to a page which looks like the following picture. I would recommend book marking this page or add it to your favorites because you will visit it often. Click on the button titled “Sign up now” to sign up for your AdWords account.
Here’s a $50 AdWords credit for your Google Account. If you use this, you will receive $50 in free advertising. I’ve personally never used this because if you repeatedly use free AdWords credits you can get banned from Google. This also may not work for accounts in smaller countries.
After clicking “Sign up now”, you will be taken to a couple of pages which will ask you how you want to set up your advertising group(s) with Google. As for now, we will just set up a dummy campaign, meaning that you are not going to advertise anything in this campaign. Why are you creating a dummy campaign? I am going to go over in extreme detail how to set up a perfect campaign later in this guide, but for now, I don’t want you to worry about advertising, I just want you to have a Google Account.
After you hit the “Sign up now” button, you will be taken to a page where it asks you what type of AdWords account you want to create. Select the “Standard Edition” and click on the “Continue” button.
I recommend watching this Googlevideo which gives you information about starting a Standard Edition account with GoogleAdWords:
After you hit the “Continue” button, you will see a selection where it asks you to “Target Customers By Language”, choose which language you wish to advertise in (this should be the language the webpage is in that you’re thinking about advertising).
In the Target Customers By Location selection, you will select where you want to advertise. There are three sections; I would recommend the Countries and Territories selection for now.
Countries & Territories – This is where you will advertise in certain countries or territories. For example: if I wanted to advertise in North America only, I would choose the Countries and Territories option and I would select the countries Canada, Mexico, and United States.
Regions & Cities – This is where you will advertise in specific cities and regions. This works best if you’re advertising for a local flower shop or a furniture store located in one or many cities. If this was the case, you could specify Regions & Cities and if you lived in the USA you could advertise in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia if the business was located in the North East.
Customized – This is where you customize where you want your ads to be displayed. You can choose very specific places to advertise like certain cities, regions, etc.
Next, you will be prompted to choose more specific areas to advertise, such as individual countries, regions, or cities. You will only need to choose one city, country, or region for the dummy campaign. Since I live in the United States, I chose “United States”.
When you hit the “Continue” button, you will be asked to make the advertisement for the website you are promoting. Again, you can edit this later so just make a quick advertisement. If you don’t know what to do, simply do the following:
Headline: “Search Engine Advertising”
Description line 1: “Learn How to Make Money Online”
Description line 2: “by Advertising on Search Engines”
Display URL: www.gmoneypro.com
Destination URL: www.gmoneypro.com
Don’t worry, you’re not even going to use this advertisement. Google just wants you to have something entered here before you can continue.
After you click on the “Continue” button, you will be prompted to enter keywords, this can be edited later so just enter one keyword which is related to your website and hit continue. If you used the previous advertisement, just enter “googlemoneypro” as your only keyword.
On the next page, you will be asked to choose which currency you want Google to use to bill you. Select the appropriate currency because you cannot edit this later. Then, you will see a section where it asks you What is the most you would like to spend, on average, per day? This is your Max Daily Budget, set this anywhere from $8.00 – $10.00 and go to the next section (don’t worry, you’re not going to get billed this amount). The next section is What is the maximum you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad? This is your Maximum Cost Per Click. Enter $0.05 here and click on the “Continue” button on the bottom of the page.
Now, hit the continue button and you will see a page which shows you all of the current settings to your Advertisement Group. Read through them and click on the “Continue to Sign Up” button at the bottom of the page.
The next page will ask you if you already have a Google Account. If you do, simply enter your email address and password and click on the button titled “Create AdWords Account”. If you don’t have a Google Account, look for a link on the page which says, “Create a new Google Account to be your login to AdWords”. This will create a new Google Account for you.
If you don’t already have a Google account, it will ask you to enter your email address and a password. Make sure this information is correct because Google will send you an email right after you create your account. After you enter this information, click on the “Create AdWords Account” button.
Google will now send you an email to the email address you specified which will contain a link that you will need to click on in order to activate your account. Simply click on the URL in your email from Google.
After you go to that URL, you can log into GoogleAdWords using your email address as your User Name and the password you created earlier. Once you are in your account, you will need to specify a credit card for Google to use in order to bill you. Here’s how to do this:
Click on the “My Account” tab located near the top of the Google Account webpage.
Once you are there, you will notice the following near the top of the page in your Google Account.
Click on the “Billing Preferences” link near the top of the page. This will take you to the appropriate location where you need to enter your credit card information.
You will be charged a $5.00 activation fee but don’t worry, this is not a lot at all. Most other search engines charge you much more than this. After you enter your credit card and personal information, your account will be activated.
Now, it is time to pause the dummy campaign so you will not receive any traffic to it. To do this, click on the “Campaign Management” tab. You will see something that looks a bit like this:
Notice that in the “Current Status” column in the picture above, it says “Paused”. Unless you’ve already paused your campaign, the Current Status for your campaign will say “Active”.
Remember earlier when I said to just choose one country, one keyword, and a basic advertisement and not to worry about it being perfect because I would get into that later in more detail? Well, now is the time to learn more information about those things. In the meantime, you will want to make sure you don’t receive any activity in your account until you know how to properly manage it so ‘pause’ your campaign until you are ready.
It is fairly easy to pause your campaign. In the picture above, I put a red “X” and a red rectangle to help you know what to do. Just check the box next to your only campaign and hit the “Pause” button. This will pause your campaign.
Now that you have an account set up, you are ready to learn how to create a perfect Campaign so you can begin making money online.
Now you are ready to learn basic AdWords Account information such as keywords, campaigns, and AdGroups.
Keywords –Keywords are ‘words’ or ‘word phrases’ people use to initiate a search in Google. Whatever someone types into the Google search box is considered a keyword. If, for instance, someone types “GoogleMoney Profit” in the search box, the keyword becomes “GoogleMoney Profit”. The same applies for any ‘word’ or ‘word phrase’ entered in the search box.
Basically a search query is a keyword. Whenever you have a keyword that matches someone’s search query, you’re advertisement will be displayed. So the more keywords you have, the better the chances are that someone’s going to see your advertisement. This is why it’s important to have keyword lists, which are basically lists of many keywords.
Text Advertisement –Text advertisements are pretty self explanatory. They are the advertisements you use on Pay-Per-Click search engines. Text advertisements are text only and no images are displayed but text advertisements can be seen by everyone. Google does allow ads with images, but they won’t be displayed to everyone.
AdGroup – An AdGroup is where you store your keyword lists and text advertisements in your Google account. Your keyword lists can contain a maximum of 2,000 keywords and you should have at least two to three different text advertisements in each AdGroup.
Campaign – A campaign is where you store your AdGroups. If you’re selling computers, I would name my campaign “Computers” and I would name my AdGroups within that campaign names like “Dell”, “Apple”, “Gateway”, “HP”, etc. You also control your daily budget as well as what countries you advertise in from your Campaign settings.
Now that you know some basic information about your Google account, it’s time to create a “real” Campaign, AdGroup, Text Ad, and Keyword List.
We all know landing pages are important and A/B testing is a common phrase among search marketers, but are we as an industry taking landing pages to the next level? Search engine marketing traffic is highly engaged and quite honestly, different from other online media. So, why do we direct this traffic to the same generic landing pages?
