Information about Google AdWords

Originally submitted by: J. Christina Huh

Question #1: "What are Adwords?"

Google Adwords is a pay-for service that Google offers to advertise your website.

There are two different types of advertisements offered by Adwords.

1. Pay-Per-Click Advertisements. A great way to understand what these are is to perform a search in Google. Open up Google in a new window and search for "handmade crafts." At the top, and to the right of the page you should see faint colored pink boxes that say "Sponsored Links." All of the links in those boxes are brought to you by Adwords.

Advertisers tell Google to display their adds when certain keywords are searched for in Google. The advertiser only pays if a user clicks on the advertisement. When you purchase this type of advertisement you place a bid on the keyword. This bid determines how often your add will appear for that keyword. Google allows you to set daily limits on how much you spend, and once you reach your limit Google will stop displaying your advertisement.

2. Placement Targeted Advertisements (aka Site-Targeted Advertisements): These are ads that Google places on other peoples websites. Advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences, and Google places the ads on what they see as relevant sites within their content network.

If you are new to Etsy, I wouldn't recommend paying for either of these services. I would suggest using other free forms of advertisement before you start spending money on this service. If you are interested in enrolling you can go here: adwords.google.com/

There is also something called Google AdSense. I actually have Google AdSense on this blog. If you look to the right and down you should see an advertissment. This is a way to make a little extra money off of your blog. It displays ads related to your website and you get paid for every time someone clicks on one of them. If you would like to sign up for this you can do so here: https://www.google.com/adsense. It is against the rules to report how much money you make per click, so it is a bit difficult to predict how much money you could make from this. Very popular websites can earn upwards of $8,000 a month using this program. A downside is that your viewers may be annoyed by the additional ad space on your website.


Don't understand something I wrote about? Have a related question? Post a comment and I will be sure to answer it. Have an unrelated question? E-mail me, and I will feature it on my blog!

xoxo
susan.