How to Advertise Your eBay Business with Google AdWords

By Marsha Collier from eBay Business All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

To have a successful eBay store, you need to bring in online customers. By using Google’s cost-per-click (CPC) offering, AdWords, you can run ads for your eBay store all over the Internet while still controlling your advertising budget.

People use Google more than 300 million times a day. Google AdWords allow you to create profitable little ads, which appear on the right side of your Google searches under a headline called Sponsored Links. You choose keywords to let Google know where to place your ads.

Google results for a search for Marsha Collier.

The coolest part of the deal is that you pay for the ad only when someone clicks it. Want to know more? Go to the Google AdWords site. Once you’re there, you can go over the details and set up your own campaign.

Keep the following in mind:

Keywords and keyword phrases: Come up with a list of keywords that would best describe your merchandise. Google allows you to estimate, based on current search data, how often your selected keyword will come up every day. Google will also estimate your daily cost based on the current amount of clicks on that word. That can be a shocking number, but don’t worry — not everyone who sees your ad will click it!
CPC (cost-per-click): You determine how much you’ll pay for each click on your keywords. You can pay as little as $.05 or as much as $50.00 a click. The dollar amount you place on your clicks makes the basis for how often your ad appears.
CTR (click-through rate): This statistic reflects how many people click your ad when they see it. If your CTR falls below 0.5% after 1,000 impressions, AdWords may slow or even discontinue your ad views. When one of your keywords isn’t passing muster, it will be indicated on your reports.

AdWords keyword statistics.

Without showing the keywords, the above figure shows you a month’s worth of keyword analysis for an account. You can see clearly that some keywords are doing their jobs and others aren’t. To keep the account current, you should evaluate your CTR every month and delete the laggers.
Daily budget: You can set the cap in dollars on how much you’ll spend a day. Otherwise, if you had some really hot keywords, you could spend thousands on clicks!

Once you access the AdWords site, this is the general process:

Decide whether you want to target your ads geographically.

You can pinpoint your market if you’d like, or you can blast the entire world. Choose from a list of 14 languages, 250 countries, or as far down as 200 United States regions.
Create your ad.

You can create only three lines of ad text with a total of 95 characters. Be as concise as possibleFigure out the perfect 95 characters that will sell your site to the world. You must also supply the URL for your Web site or eBay Store.
Select your keywords.

Type your keywords and key phrases in the box provided. You can use Google’s Keyword Suggestion tool to help you out.
Choose you maximum CPC (cost per click) and then click Calculate Estimates.

Here’s where the sticker shock gets you. The displayed data lets you know which keywords you can afford to keep and which ones must be discarded. If you want to change your CPC amount, do so and click Recalculate Estimates. The Traffic Estimator calculates how much, on average, you’ll end up spending in a day.
Specify your daily budget.

There will be a prefilled amount that would ensure that your ad stays on top and gets full exposure every day. Set a cap on your budget and Google will never exceed it. You may make it as low as you want; there’s no minimum spending amount.
Enter your e-mail address and agree to the terms.
Enter your billing information.

You’re minutes away from your ads going live on the Google index.