Welcome to the world of Google Adwords, where men are men and boys get eaten by the sharks. If you think I am kidding, many a marketer has lost his shirt to this beast. On the surface, it seems so easy, but once you start to dig into this little terror and all the nuances that come with it, you soon realize that Google Adwords is not for those who don't have a strong stomach and a sense of indestructibility.
For those of you who don't know what Google Adwords is, it's an advertising system and in theory a very good one. The ironic part of why Adwords has gotten so hard to control over the last year or so is that the cause of the problem is the people who use the system. Many have tried to circumvent the Adwords system, and as a result, Google had to put restrictions in place to make it so that the end user, the person looking for solutions to their problems, would have a good user experience; something that they weren't having when things just got completely out of control with garbage landing pages and everything else that advertisers were throwing into the mix.
Still, the basic concept is very simple. You open an account, enter in your 3 line ad to go along with the keywords you're targeting and let your ad run. If people see it and think your ad will solve their problem, they'll click on it. For every click, you get charged. Hopefully, your income will be greater than your charges. There was a time that this wasn't even much of an issue, but not anymore.
Sounds pretty simple doesn't it. It's funny how sometimes the simplest sounding things can be the most horrible experiences. Google Adwords is no exception.
Okay, so just how do we start this venture into the ugly world of Adwords advertising? Well, the first thing you have to do is open a Google account. Therein lies the first problem. Nobody tells you this, but when you first open your Google account, they expect you to have your first group of keywords and ads all ready to go. I learned this the hard way when I first opened my account. They asked me all these questions about keywords, countries, CPC and ads that I was in no way prepared for. So, before we actually walk you through the steps of opening your Google Adwords account, we're going to prepare the information that you will need in order to get your account opened and ready to go.
Before we move on to the next article in this series, I want to take a moment to clarify something. I know I've made it sound like Google Adwords is the biggest nightmare this side of Elm Street, and it can be. However, if you take the time to set Adwords up correctly and do the research needed to make it work right, it can be one of the most effective advertising systems in your arsenal, because you're not going to find more targeted traffic anywhere. These are people who are looking for just what you're selling. You can't get any better than that.