Learn me how to do it.

This week I have realized how helpful it is to have a course or a mentor to guide a person through setting up an online business. There are so many areas to spend time and energy and not all of them are important for every business. Through this course I have learned the steps to set up the business. From domain purchasing and payment processing to optimization and backlinking. The sites I built before I always played with them until they looked good and then tried to drive traffic to them with ads. I did not know that by optimizing my site I could get cheaper ads and that those visitors were more likely to stay. I didn't know that keywords in Google ads even mattered. I'm realizing more and more that the best tactic is to seek advice from those in your same business type, set a schedule that ensures you work on all the parts of your business and that you do not get stuck in some rabbit hole forever. Several times I made changes to my site that actually hurt my performance. O...

I feel like things are looking up this week. Could just be that I haven't looked at my conversion rate in a couple of days. I didn't realize that there were so many things that I could do to improve my site. I also learned that I need to be intentional about changes that I make. Around the end of last week I made altered my landing page to rank higher for a keyword that I wasn't doing well on. It seemed like it would match my target customer base. I really tanked my click through rate. Around the same time changed the presentation of my affiliate links to increase my speed. Both of these changes really hurt my performance. I feel like this week I learned that I need to do things carefully and only make little changes one at a time so I can see the overall effect. If I get too caught up on something like page speed I can jeopardize progress in other areas.

I really did feel like I was treading water this week. My understanding of the subjects from this week are only surface deep. I did learn how to add negative keywords and I think that will be really helpful. I feel like all of this stuff is getting more and more complicated every year. Or maybe keywords and ads have always been this complicated and I just didn't understand enough to know how complicated it was. There is more information about all of these subjects than any one person could digest over a lifetime so I guess the best idea would be to study several aspects and get good at a few things. It was interesting to watch how the different keywords performed on my campaigns. Some of the ones I thought would do really well are duds for my ads. It takes a bit of intuition and creativity to find keyword ideas and then it takes numbers and analysis to improve or eliminate them. Its kind of an odd mix of skills.

I feel like Google Ads is a great way for someone who doesn't know what they are doing to lose a ton of money. There are a ton of little details and decisions that you have to make before you can even run an ad and some of them are hard to find again once you leave that page. All in all I am glad to be learning these skills and in my case better late than never. I spent quite a bit on Google Ads for a previous company and it really didn't go anywhere. In my defense it was an odd product without much demand. I found ways to sell a of product elsewhere but it had a high return rate because the product itself did not meet consumer expectations. I feel like this process of learning Google Ads is part technical and the other part learning to find out what people really want. Then to put products and services where they are looking for them. If you really know your customer you know what they need and how to get it to them. I thought it was funny that this class was a marketing cl...

Learning about ads and ad groups was very enlightening this week. I ran ads for the last company I worked for but I didn't understand how keywords and ads really worked. I didn't know that ad groups run one at a time and work like an automatic AB test. Google then runs the ad that is performing the best or that has the highest quality score.  Based on what I read, it seems like it would be best to find keywords first, then find a product to match, then write an article or landing page to promote it.  I also didn't know that it is best practice to create a single ad or ad group for each product to efficiently target customers that are ready to buy that product or service.  There was a story or post this week of someone that was helping to promote a product and found a broader keyword that had more traffic and it boosted the sales.

Google Ads is easy, keywords don't matter, and if you make a mistake Google won't charge you for clicks that didn't work. Right? Totally wrong. I ran a couple of campaigns for a small company that I worked for and I had no idea what I was doing. Here are a few tips of things not to do. First, don't use generic ads. People don't search generic search terms when they are looking to buy something. Your generic ads will only waste time and money.  Second, do keyword research. If you think you know what people search for you are wrong. If you know what you would search to find something, you are probably still wrong. Look for specific keywords that relate only to your product or service. You don't want to waste money on people that are looking for something that is not quite what you sell. Third, if you sell multiple items or services make an ad for each one. Use specific keywords and text directed at that customer.  Forth, don't run more than one ad at ...