Google AdWords ended up being a more difficult than it first seemed. I started out bidding on various AdWords at around $1.00 per word. After a day, Google told me the bid went up to $5.00 for certain words. Then after another day, Google told me the bid went up to $10.00. Most of the ad words I was bidding on had few (if any) other bidders so I wasn’t sure what was going on.

I still don’t have a firm grasp on Google’s reasoning behind their pricing. They purposefully don’t tell anybody what the algorithms are so people can’t game the system. But my impression is that they’re getting the exact opposite result. The spammers are the only ones who really understand the system well enough to use it effectively. Ordinary people who just try to run a campaign have huge problems because things seem to happen by magic instead of logic.

I couldn’t find a coherent explanation online of how to make it work right so I tried several different strategies. I broke my keywords out into smaller groups. I added different ad variations. I added text to WealthFly that explained what the blog does. Nothing worked. After a day, in each experiment, Google started to hike the price of my keywords up. I’d like to increase the blog traffic, but I’m not paying $10+ per click.

I hope the sheer ridiculousness of all this doesn’t escape anybody. In trying to get my AdWords campaign set up, I can’t find a decent explanation on either Google’s site or anywhere on the Internet. I’ve been reduced to hacking the AdWords “bidding” system in attempts to avoid paying $10 a click for AdWords where WealthFly is the only site “bidding” on the advertising space.

I finally broke down and bought a book called “Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords“. It explained how the AdWords system works and how to game it.

From Amazon:

Never before in the history of advertising has it been possible to spend five bucks, write a couple of ads and get instant access to more than 100 million people in 10 minutes. But that’s exactly what Google AdWords does. It’s an awesome concept-but you can lose a bundle if you don’t know how it works.

Learn how to:

• Build an AdWords campaign from scratch
• Identify keywords that entice people to click on your ads
• Get the lowest bid prices on your keywords
• Defeat click fraud and other scams
• Use search engine optimization techniques
• Turn clicks into customers

Plus get FREE e-mail updates on Google’s ever-changing system.

The methods in the book worked. I’ve been able to cap every single bid at $5.00 with most being much lower. I still don’t understand why I’m paying top-dollar for empty ad space that I’m supposedly “bidding” on. But I suppose the important thing is that it’s working now.

The book advocates breaking your AdWords out into micro-campaigns, with targeted ads for each campaign. For example, I now have a separate Ad Group just for “financial planning magazine”. And within that group I have specific ads titles like “Financial Planning News” and “Magazine for Planners?”

When you search on “Financial Planning”, most of the ads that show up have “Financial Planning” in their title. It makes the ads hard to read and reduces their effectiveness. I already know they have something to do with financial planning because that’s what I typed in the search box. I’d rather see other information in the ad text. But apparently Google doesn’t agree.

The “Ultimate” method is much more time intensive but it’s working. It will be a few more weeks before I know if the clicks we’re getting are resulting in new readers but for now I think I’m satisfied. If any advisors are trying my previous suggestion, I’d also recommend checking out the Ultimate Guide before you go too far. It worked for me.