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The google algorithim that controls this process more than likely changes daily based on what the 'hot' bids are on that day.

You can talk to a person in sales, thats the only way I know of being able to be consistently on top. The salespeople will customize an account for you..of course this is all based upon how much money you can afford to pay. The more money you pay the higher your ranking.

Hi Jim. Remember me, we had a few phone conversations many months ago. Anyway, I hear you, I don't fret day to day or hour by hour. What I DO see is a consistent pattern of an initial spike of positive activity at the very beginning of a new campaign, then it just dies, completely and permanently. I turn it off to 'rest' a few days, reactivate it, and see the same thing again...initial spike, then total death. Almost as if they want to give you some positive reinforcement to dig deeper before reality sets in. Threre HAS to be a better way. Darned if I can figure out what it is.

Question: How DO you figure out how much to bid? What's too high and what's too low? Is it purely guesswork trial and error? Or is there some source where one can get an idea what competitive bids are?

BG

Re: "I set my bid amounts based on what others were bidding". HOW do you find out what others are bidding?

Re: '+Are the people coming through the same people? "+ I have no idea who the clickers are. How does one tell?

I suspect there ar lots of tools out there I am missing out on. The purpose of this inquiry is to find out what the heck they are.

To be honest, I just suspect the initial spike comes from nosy people who just want to click on competitive ads, either for curiosity or maliciousness Google is supposed to have a policy on malicious clickers, but I'm not sure about that, nor do I see any incentive for Google.

BG

First off, you need to figure out how much you can spend.

What is your websites conversion ratio? This is the amount of visitors who buy compared to those that visit. If 100 people visit and 10 buy then your conversion ratio is 1 in 10.

Next you'll need to know your average net dollar amount per sale. In other words, how much per sale you stick in your pocket. Let's say that is $10.

So, if 10 people from google visit your site and you make 1 sale yielding a $10 profit you could afford to pay google $1 per click and break even.

Now, business is not about breaking even so with the above scenario I would start in the 90 cents per click range. You would be paying out $9 for every $10 you make which would cover your cost.

At that point you will need to start tweaking on your google ppc ads for best performance. Google ppc is all about clicks. They would rather run your ad in the #1 spot for 25 cents a click if it is getting 5 clicks (1.25 in profit) versus some guys ad that is paying $1 a click and only getting clicked on once ($1 profit).

The key to google adwords success is ad perfomance. If you have 25 keywords, make 25 ads targeted to every single keyword. Stay on top of your ads at least daily. Eventually you will thin out your keyword list to remove the non performing keyphrases.

On a more advanced level google ppc also has a conversion tracking tool. The tool essentially will report which keyphrases are actually converting into sales and how much money it is costing you to make those sales.

Stick with google adwords, it is a lot to initially digest but in the long haul is the best bang for your advertising dollar.

Not to take anything away from the PPC services, they do provide an instant gratification factor. There has been some fantastic advice offered here also.

But it is my experience that a well thought out and built from the ground up plan to market and optimize your website for the search engines brings a much higher quaility of User. One that is more interested in actually purchasing your products or services.

For my business dollar, it is a much wiser expendture than fishing for the PPC audience of Users.

There seems to be a common belief among many that using PPC with Google will benefit your site in Natural Position ranking. I do not believe this to be the case. Yes, PPC does get you in the Content Network. BUT in order for that in bound link to be seen by GoogleBot it would have to be present when GoogleBot spiders your website. (the content network ads are served dynamically, in other words the ads change everytime a User views the site.) Although this is possible, it is not probable.

Static, text based, keyword relevant, in bound links will always trump any benefit based on in bound links from the Content Network.

Googel also adamantly denies that PPC (with them) has any bearing at all on natural ranking.