In purchasing my hosting package from 1&1 I received a $25 voucher for Google AdWords. With the recent release of ClimbPoint 0.7, I figured this was a good opportunity to see what all the fuss was about
After deducting the $5 setup fee for Adwords, I had $20 left in my AdWords account to spend on clicks. I didn’t have a clue how much a click would cost, but I was guessing $20 would buy me a couple hundred clicks.
It seems I underestimated the value of a click, as Google charges anywhere between $1.07 and $2.05 depending on the going rate for an ad click. At first I thought Google was randomly choosing a price, but this page of the FAQ cleared that up for me.
So in the span of about two weeks I bought 21 clicks at a cost of $18.31. After that, I paused my campaign and then set the cost per click that I was willing to pay down to $0.25. We’ll see what difference that makes in the number of views my ad gets.
Many of the clicks that I purchased were one-and-done’ers (they didn’t really check out the site) — so I didn’t notice a dramatic jump in site traffic over at ClimbPoint.com. In contrast, most of the clicks that come from generic Google searches result in at least a few page views.
This was opposite of what I would have expected, but as I think about it I know that most of my AdWords clicks are “impulse” clicks — I’m not explicitly searching for a product or service but notice an AdWord that seems compelling, so I click just to see what it is.
So I think AdWords helped increase my visibility, but I don’t know that I targeted my ads appropriately before starting my campaign.
Anyone have any good tips on getting the most out of AdWords? I did a quick search but was overwhelmed by the number and sleaziness of results 
