Chapter 2. Creating Your First Google Ads

In This Chapter

  • Comparing pay-for-placement to pay-per-click

  • Signing up for an AdWords account

  • Viewing your campaign

Creating your first Google ads is a lot of fun — but potentially hazardous to your wallet.

Google ads represent a wonderful opportunity to build your business. Like eBay before them, Google ads are building up an entire new business environment, with millions of people making relatively small amounts of money — and a few people making millions of dollars.

A Google ad charges you a small fee — usually just a few cents — for each potential customer it brings to your Web site. As these fees add up, you need to be making enough profit from these potential customers to pay the fees, with some left over to give you a reason to spend time on Google ads instead of on other ways of building your business.

It's all too easy to "fire and forget" — to launch a couple of ads, with a seemingly small daily budget, then lose a surprising amount of money as the money goes out each day without bringing in much business.

That's why it is so valuable to read a book like this one — and to think and plan about what you're doing. You discover how to shorten the time it takes to make Google Ads profitable and lessen the amount of money you spend while you're figuring out what you're doing.

To get started, you need to experiment and learn from your mistakes — but you need to experiment inexpensively and learn fast.

Understanding the Data-Driven Business Model ...

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