Yesterday I started my first campaign in over a month. I have to say I always get a bit scattered in the keyword research part of building a campaing. I almost only use google keyword tool now, except for the occassional thought my brain throws in there. The problem is there are so many combinations of keywords that go to one campaign I forget which I have already gone through and downloaded. Then after wards when I think I FINALLY have it all under control I realize I left out a whole section of combinations. What was I thinking?

As you can guess that is the part that takes me the longest. Keyword research and building my keyword list. The negative keywords weren’t too bad as I remembered to note them from the beginning. With this all in mind here is what I did:

173 keywords (each in their own adgroup)

91 negative keywords (on the campaign level)

I used what I have learned from the 9 original modules on PPC Classroom to build the campaign. He talks in depth about how to use excel and Ive gotten pretty good at pasting back and forth between excel (actually Open Office) and adwords editor.

I also used http://sortmylist.com a lot because, like I said, I get scattered with my keywords. This site takes out all of your duplicates and white space if you have any, things like that.

I also used 2 different ads for each adgroup, but most of the ads were the same. I try to stick with something that has the keyword in the headline (but make it make sense), a benefit in the first line if description and a call to action in the last, without saying CLICK HERE. I hate that adwords doesn’t let you use exclamation points though. I love those things!

I put my daily budget at $20 a day, because I haven’t done much lately and I wanted to move slow. Within a couple of hours I had spent $10 and gotten a sale of $34

By the end of the day I had some data (not too much, but some) and I was still ahead $14. I used a landing page review site where I talked about 3 products and how they were beneficial for people in this niche.

I realized from my data that most of the money went to one keyword that was pretty broad. I paused that for now. The keyword that did convert was actually on the second page, so I bumped it to the first page around position 5.

I will post more when I get more data. Its so nice to be back. Today Im working on month 1 (again) on ppc coach.

There is more news in PPC Coach today. I believe it was today that the new month 5 forum was launched, there are even scripts just for month 5. That means that you will now find 2 months each for the first 5 months you are on the forum.

I have to admit I was away doing holiday stuff for about the last 2 months. Everytime I tried to come back I got sucked away again. Now though I need to get back to making money. That is why I have started playing around on ppc coach again.

Now I want to reiterate I am still a member on both ppc coach and ppc classroom. I love them both. In fact ppc classroom is opening their doors again on the 17th of February. Even now they are starting to do strategies. Our new section (we get one a month) is a strategy straight from Amit.

On top of that they send out motivating reports once a week, and let us know about all sorts of new ppc tools. I do admit sometimes they send a lot of mail, but I realized today I was on 3 of their lists, so I took it down to one.

Im sure they will have a lot of great stuff when they re-open the doors. They certainly did last time. Im still subscribed to a lot of the people who gave away free stuff.

I have to say the forum on ppc classroom is really dead. It bothered me that they never did a main discussion area, each area what a module or something pretty specific. While that helped, you didnt get many answers when you posted and I think it really stunted the growth of the forum. Not only that but there were a lot of people complaining about this that and the other thing and there didnt seem to be any moderation. They even took down avatars and signatures.

So, back to PPC Coach. There is an amazing guy over there that is really helping people out with the old month one method. He has 2 free reports about how to go about the first method and about 3-4 threads in the forum about getting started. This is a great time to join because it is so much easier to get started with this help. I have long said things there are unorganized, so now it is much easier.

Im not going to bother giving you the links to his stuff, because it is only useful if you are a member. He links to his threads from the reports, and if you arent a member you cant access his help. But if you do sign up, let me know and Ill help you out.

Ill post more soon

It has been awhile and I havent updated because I have a super post I am working on, but it is taking more time than I expected. I am currently working on a few projects. I do ghostwriting on the side so I have been doing some of that work as well.

My last post was a bit mean as I attacked people that are not using adwords in a smart way. I guess I just meant to remind you to look at where you are getting clicks, and for what keywords. It is a report you can run that will tell you. I get worried when it comes to these things because I am always unsure whether I want to use phrase or exact match.

I do try to make great negative lists and I spend a lot of time on them, but doesn’t it seem like something always slips through the cracks?

Adwords is definitely tricky to say the least.

I just want to add one more thing, in 2009 I want to do at least 5 campaigns a month. That means 60 campaigns this year. Here’s hoping I can get these done.

The huge post will be out soon, I hope you like it.