AdWords training resources

[SSFCU]

I was afraid of that.  I am definitely a writer and not a numbers person. Luckily I've been collaborating with an analyst, but I need to know this stuff on my own.

[SSFCU]

Are Brad's materials something a non-numbers person can pick up? Or is it going to be totally over their head? I'm willing to learn.

[SSFCU]

This looks more advanced that I need at this point, but I need to bookmark this for later. Can you recommend any entry-level training?

[SSFCU]

For example, if I purchased the latest "For Dummies" book, would it even be timely enough? I'm looking for something at that level to get started.

[KevinBudzynski]

Try viewing the Lynda tutorial on it (the site has great tutorials--but I have never viewed this one). Also, Perry Marshall has a great book on adwords. Adwords get's extremely complicated and expect to many mistakes. Do your best at minimize them as much as possible and watch the numbers DAILY! Good luck!

[EGOL]

His typical Adwords seminar is two days.  The first morning is about keywords and ads.  Everybody is watchin', sippin' coffee and smilin'.

Then the math starts after lunch.  I sit in the front and turn around..... quite a few of the people behind me are using their phones or are watching the screen with a "10,000 mile stare".

The second day... quite a few people are not there.... by the afternoon the math nerds are the only people left along with a few people with the 10,000 mile stare.

Now, I am not saying that he is a bad teacher.  He is fantastic. Fantastic.  He says there during every break, during lunch, back early after lunch, stays late to answer EVERY question.  The problem is everybody thinks that makin' money from Adwords is easy, you just write an ad and pay 5 cents a click.  Then they realize that they are up against genius people who have rock bottom costs who are really hungry.

[EGOL]

Buy the easy books and tinker around.   Be ready to lose money.  But if you keep at it and keep doing your  math and eventually you will get better.

But, bottom line... Can you compete with the big boys on costs and expenses?  You can be a small biz genius but if you don't have the numbers you are not going to make money.

100% honesty here.  I love math. I know my numbers.  I have done LOTS of adwords training and even more self study.   I get killed at Adwords for most products.  Why?  I am up against people who have a 20% merchandise cost advantage and a 15% shipping cost advantage.

I could have Mahalanobis doing my math and would still get killed.  Because my competitors have a huge advantage on costs and expenses.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

EGOL, What about PLA?  What about Remarketing/Retargeting?  Are you able to make money on either of those?

[EGOL]

One thing that come with the PLA ads, in my opinion, is an even high level of price competition.  So the same forces that make it difficult to succeed with Adwords are still in play.

I have not tried remarketing/retargeting.

My approach at present it to compete in the organic SERPs as an MSRP seller.  I have great organic visibility (especially long tail), a lot of traffic and sell a few items that my competitors ignore.  My site also gives great service to the visitor through content and video - no competitor is even close to matching.   So, we are still making lots of sales at MSRP.  This yields good profits on every sale.

I am also running Adsense across the site.  I don't think that it damages sales very much and it produces income with zero work.  So, I am happy not to be doing PPC and actually glad that my competitors are staying busy making lots of sales at very low profit margins.

[SSFCU]

Thank you Kevin. I'll definitely check those out!

[SSFCU]

Thank you EGOL. That's a common theme I hear - start small, trial and error. As for costs and expenses .... it remains to be seen. I'm on the ground level in terms of both the new products and digital advertising in general. Right now I'm doing preliminary research for the benefit of our budget next year, which is how I ended up tinkering around in there and realizing I'm going to need some deeper-level training.