What is Value Per Click?

Value Per Click was my aha moment.
Here's the video that explained
Value Per Click to me:



Here's the same video as seen directly
on the Google Adwords Online Classroom
network:

Value Per Click

I love the term Value Per Click!
It says so much. It takes the fear
out of setting Maximum Cost Per
Click. Maximum Cost Per Click
is often called Max CPC.

Nobody wants to spend more money on
advertising than they get back in sales.
Value Per Click tells you in a very direct
way whether or not this is happening.

You don't want to lose money. Understanding
Value Per Click keeps you from losing money.

Ed Abbott

What Is Average Position?

What is average position in
Google Adwards talk? What does
average position mean?

It's another one of those Adwords
terms that means something very
specific. It tells you how far
from the top your ad is being placed.

Here's the Adwords Help article
that defines average position:

Average position (Avg. Pos.)

For me the term inspires as many
questions as it does answers. Do
you bid for a higher position? Otherwise,
how else would Google Adwords determine
your position?

I'll be trying to answer these questions
for myself.

Ed Abbott

Does Adwords ReportResults Right Away?

A question I've had in the back of
my mind is Does Google Adwords
report results right away?. In
my case, this has not been so much
a question as an assumption.

I've been assuming that Adwords reports
results in real time. So many things
these days are reported in real time.
Therefore I assumed the same was true
of Adwords.

It turns out this is not the case. This
Adwords help article explains that this is
just not so:

How do I know
if my ads are
running and performing well?

Another false assumption bites the dust!
Ther above article indicates that it can
take up to 3 hours for your Adwords results
to show up.

In the above article, results are called
account statistics.

So often, you need to know what to call
something before you can find it on the
Internet. What I call results, Adwords
calls account statistics.

Ed Abbott

Click Through Rate

I just learned a new term,
click through rate.
I learned it on this Adwords
help page:

How do I know
if my ads are
running and performing well?

It sounds like click through
rate is a key concept. If I
understand correctly, it is based
on the number of ad impressions.

Here's my understanding. Let's
say you ad had appeared 1,000
times. One thousand is the number
of ad impressions. The appearance
of your ad is an impression.

Let's also say that 10 people click
on your ad. Now you have all the
data you need to figure out your
click through rate. Click through
rate is the number of times users
have clicked on your ad over the
number of times your ad has been
displayed.

Expressed as a fraction, click through
rate looks like this:

clicks / impressions

Click through rate is expressed as a
percentage. Therefore, a click through
rate of one percent on one thousand
impressions is ten clicks.

Here's a simpler way to look at it:

Everytime your ad displays it is an
impression. Just because you made an
impression does not mean you got a click.

If you get 10 clicks for every 1,000
impressions you make, your click through
rate is one percent.

Ed Abbott

Adwords Column Headings

Today I've been trying to figure
out how to get more information
out of Google Adwords. Anytime
I start working on something like
this there is an element of
frustration involved.

For example, I kept clicking on
the column headings in the Google
Adwords interface. Usually when
you click on column headings it
sorts the column for you.

I do this all the time. My email
client works like this. I click
on the column heading and I can
sort my inbox by date or by subject
or by the email address of the person
who sent the email to me.

With my email reader (client) I can
do ascending or descending order on
the time in which the email was received.
I can also sort the email addresses alphabetically.
Or can can sort the subject line alphabetically.

These email column headings can be quite
valuable if I want all the emails from one
person to appear sorted together. This is
one application of column headings.

So it's not as though I've never seen a column
heading that allows you to sort the column
underneath the heading. I've used this feature
many many times through the years.

Yet, when I saw this very same feature under
Google Adwords I failed to recognize it for what
it was.

For some reason, when I clicked on
Google Adwords column headings I was
expecting something different. I was
expecting all kinds of information to
kagically appear.

I probably thought this because nothing
was happening. Nothing was happening
under each column heading because I only
had one row. How to you sort one row?
No matter how you sort it, the row is always
both first and last.

So now I struggle to understand the simplest
little things. There's a lesson in all this.
Slow down and get it right.

I feel as though I have very little time to
spend on this. However, slowing down and
getting it right will make much more effective
use of my time than trying to rush through it.

Ed Abbott

Getting Started With Google Adwords

I've started this blog out of frustration
as much as anything. It is Sunday and
I've been given a free Google Adwords code
by Google and I'm trying to run an ad.

The tool that Google gives you to run ads
appears to be relatively sophisticated.
It allows you to do many things. Of course,
the more sophisticated the tool, the harder
it is to get started.

I may have to wait until tomorrow to get my
Adwords campaign going. Right now, my campaign
has a status of paused and I can't seem
to get it going.

There's a green dot to the left of my campaign
that indicates that my campaign is enabled. Yet,
when I look to the right, I see that the campaign
is paused. I don't understand the difference.

Here's Google's official answer on how to enable
an ad campaign:

How do I
edit, pause, or delete a campaign?

For some reason, I'm not able to get the official
answer to do what I think it is supposed to do.

Update: I finally figured it out. I'm using an
outdated browser. I'm using an old version of
Google Chrome under Linux.

When I switched to Google Chrome under Windows XP,
it works perfectly. I'm now able to enable my ad.

The thing I still need to figure out is whether or
not my ad is actually running.I'm very very clumsy
with this Adwords thing. I'm not good at this at
all.

I think maybe I expect too much from life. Should
I know how navigate software the first time I see
it? Probably not.

I need to be patient as I learn how to work with
the Google Adwords interface.

Ed Abbott