Google tells you, that it only takes minutes to set up an Adwords campaign. It is just as easy to waste yout adwords money on irrelevant meaningless clicks. Lets go through 5 basic rules, that make your campaign succeed:

Target your keywords!

Using the right keywords will get you relevant visitors, and increase your conversion ratio (that is, how many visitors turn into customers). Take time to figure out, which keywords are used by the people who search for your products. Include misspellings, a massive number of people searches for "acomodation", when they are looking for "accommodation" really. You don't want just anyone to click through your keywords, so focus. You decide who clicks through. If you are promoting "mobile phones", you don't want your ads to be clicked on by people searching for "mobile homes", just because you have added the plain word "mobile" into your campaign.

Create sensible ad text

Don't put any bogus info to get more hits. You pay for them. So don't propose something you don't really offer. You waste your visitor's time, disappoint him and waste money for useless clicks. The ad statement must be crystal clear, so that visitors really get what the ad tells them. The better ad, the higher conversion ratio. You want to attract customers, not just all visitors by all means.

Take time to create a different ad text for every keyword. If a visitor sees an ad, that his exactly his search keywords in the title, then he simply must click it!

Define your audience

You will not sell any winter coats in Brazil. Norwegians are unlikely to buy bikinis in large amounts. So select your target market well during sign-up.

Saving money on bids may not be worth it

It may seem, that three third place ads will bring you the same amount of relevant visitors as one top position ad, but with a lower PPC cost and a lower CTR (click through rate - ratio between the number of people who see your ad and those who click on it). May be true, but you still might not get the amount of visitors you want. Plus, for example Google may penalize you, if your CTR is too low. (You take up an ad spot, but have no clicks, so you don't make them money). Top positions work.

People who want to buy search for products

Therefore, it is sensible to disable displaying ads on partner sites and have them shown in the search results only.

Martin Korvas is an webdesigner and internet marketing specialist for http://www.niterane.com