The Adwords Experiment: Week 4

In the fourth week of The Adwords Experiment things really started 'moving'.  But it took that long and a lot of trial and error to really learn the system.  Which is actually much longer than originally thought.  On the outset it seemed like a week to learn and then three weeks to collect data.  But in the end...  Not so much.

Week 4 recap:

Overall project.

So eight clicks over a month.  Not exactly what we were looking for when we started the project.  And from the amount of money needed to spend it is pretty clear that we cannot get 10,000 hits out of $100...  Clicks would have to sell for the one penny starting bid.  But here's what we did get...  10,000+ impressions.  The name of my blog was seen over ten thousand times.  While there is no tangible benefit to that, maybe they will think more favorably of me in the future.  Who knows?

First Hypothesis: Dis proven!
There is no magic number that can bring you enough clicks to pay for your Adwords bid.  You cannot game Google.

Second Hypothesis: Dis proven!
There is no magic number that will bring you a profit on your clicks.  And that makes sense.  If you could they would run out of money and wouldn't be able to do things like buy Motorola.

Conclusion:
That does not mean that using Google Adwords to 'sell your product' is a bad idea.  This conclusion just means that it's not a money machine.  Using Google Adwords to sell your product is a good idea...  As long as you have learned how to do it at the least possible cost.  Being efficient is the way a company makes money with the revenue it generates.

On the plus side the whole experiment cost .33 cents.  That's a great value for the learning experience.  Hopefully from your standpoint, these blogs are worth way more.  The cost to me personally was only $.33, but a company would be facing opportunity cost, plus incurred expenses during such an experiment.  Paying someone to do such an experiment, or learn this 'new technology' would cost a company much more than it does me.  A big thanks to Google for financing this whole experiment!

Now the thing to decide, is do I keep the campaign running and go for more hits?  Or do I save the money in the account until another project needs it?  What do you think?  What I will definitely be doing is writing up a guide based on all the little tricks discovered during this process.  Its going to be short, sweet, and to the point.  The goal of the document will be to save you the learning time I had to spend to get the Adwords Campaign up and running.  This document will cost you...  Nothing.  That's right, I'm going to give it away.  It will be short, more of a checklist and therefore quick to write.  So I won't charge you for it.  More information about that soon.