Adwords for Artists - my journey. Part 3

Note: If you haven't read part 1 and part 2 of my series on Google's Adwords program then you should read those before continuing.

So many options - techno-fear!

My ad finally went live on Tuesday night (that's my ad on the right) and not only did I not have to take out a second mortgage (I don't even have a first mortgage... actually) but all my keyword choices were either lousy or pointless, or so I thought.

I'm going to admit I was completely overwhelmed by the Adwords Campaign Management pages. It all literally made my head spin (and I'm used to all this technical stuff). It didn't help that I was trying to make sense of it all at the end of the day either. In the end I decided to just leave everything as it was for a day.

If you decide to use Adwords I'd recommend you leave everything too for 24 hours after your first campaign goes live. The reason being, when I came back today my ad had been clicked seven times. Not earth shattering but better than Dan's (from Empty Easel) two clicks in two weeks. Apparently my keywords weren't all pointless after all.

The lesson here is to give your ad some time after it goes live because all that information you're confronted with is confusing and you may be tempted to fix things that aren't actually broken.

I won't go into detail about my keywords because these will be different for everyone. However closer inspection revealed that all seven clicks came from the same keyword phrase (or set), 'pictures of cats'. To get those seven clicks my ad was served more than 1100 times. Obviously a common search phrase as evidenced by the fact that, unless I significantly increase my five cent bid, my ad will no longer be served in search results (but it will still appear in the *content network, i.e. on web sites with related content).

In fact, by day two, all eighteen of my keyword phrases are inactive for search unless I raise my bid on each one to varying amounts. As well, eleven of my keyword phrases aren't even triggering my ad to be displayed. Could be because there are no sites with similar words, or my bid really is too low, or that no one is searching on these terms. It's hard to tell with everything inactive for search.

From here on I'll have to spend some time trialling different keywords, evaluating whether raising my bid is really cost effective and even trying differently worded ads (which doesn't cost any extra - so worth trying).

I'm not going to bore you with all the details of me trying to fine tune my ads. If you want an explanation of the Adwords interface then read Dan's series on Adwords. For now this is my final article about my initial experience.

Hopefully you've seen that, whilst there is a lot to learn, budget wise it is very manageable. You can learn the system for just AU$20.00 then once you feel a little more confident you can start fine tuning your ads (for which Google provides several optimization tools to help you).

Perhaps, some time in the future, maybe about a month from now, I'll write an update to let you know how things are going and whether Adwords has been a benefit to this site.

* Note that a day later, despite my ad not being active for search it had been displayed another 1000 or so times on the content network and netted another click.

Comments

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

The Dukes of Hazard Movie - My Thoughts

The Dukes of Hazard is a movie that I wanted to see when it was released in 2005 but didn't because, well, I just didn't get around to it. Not only that but when I heard Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson were in it my expectations were immediately lowered to "it's probably not going to be what I hoped it could be." Which is why I've never been pro-active about hiring the movie on DVD. Last night I saw it was being shown on free to air TV. I happened to have the time to watch, so I did. To sum up my experience... I didn't get fired up by the movie until I watched the 'bloopers' in the end credits. The Dukes of Hazard signature is the car. The General Lee flying through the air in some flat out impossible jumps. We know they're impossible jumps but they're just so cool you kind of want to believe the General Lee can do them. The point is, in the TV series, you never (or rarely) saw the General Lee not land safely and undamaged. Thus, seei...

Embarrassing Yourself with Doof Doof Music

Ever since Spinal Tap popularized the notion of turning an amp up to eleven audio systems have been rising to the challenge of louder, more awesome sound. In particular, car audio systems have embraced the notion of the bigger the noise the better the sound must surely be. What I'd like to know is, if these sound systems are so good, why do they make all music sound the same... Doof, Doof, Doof? You've all heard them. Pimped up cars, with audio systems seemingly worth more than gold, volume blasting way past eleven. Sound waves booming long before you make a positive visual on the car... Doof, Doof, Doof. It has to be the audio system right? Surely all these people can't be playing the same tune? Doof, Doof, Doof. Could it be that the more money spent on a car sound system the less musical range it will actually play? Maybe these people can't afford to buy music after purchasing the audio system so they all play the same demo track? Doof, doof, doof. In my own car I hav...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Making the Ukulele Cool Again By Inventing One That Transforms Into a Guitar Mid-Performance

Mattias playing the Ukulele that turns into a guitar in ukulele mode. Y ouTuber, Mattias Krantz , set out to solve one of the biggest problems with ukuleles, and that is, they are ukuleles. As he points out in his video they're one of the only instruments that people respect you less for the better you get at playing them. As someone who bought a ukulele because I wanted to learn an instrument, and I couldn't really afford a guitar (plus I found a ukulele that I think is pretty cool, but only in comparison to other ukuleles) you can imagine my interest would be really piqued by a ukulele that transforms into a guitar. Anyway, there is not much that needs to be said other than, a ukulele that transforms into a guitar isn't a thing you can just buy off the shelf, which is why Mattias set out to invent one. Nothing I say will be more interesting than just sitting back and watching his video below. It's a fascinating journey that I wanted to share and, maybe one day, eith...

Movie Review: Tomb Raider (2018) Spoiler Free

B ack in the 1990s I was a big fan of the Tomb Raider computer games. Aside from the obvious drawcard of the games female lead, Lara Croft, it was the only game back in the day that was a true 3D, third person shooter/adventure game. I wasn't a fan of first person shooters (though I played Dark Forces a lot at the time), I've always preferred computer games where you control a character on screen. Sadly I haven't kept up with the rebooted Tomb Raider games with more realistic graphics and game engine. While I did like Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider movies, she did make the character lean a little too much like a female James Bond, with her own tech guru who gave her wonderful toys. Recently I renewed my HBOMax subscription, and saw that the 2018 Tomb Raider movie, with Alicia Vikander in the title role, was soon to be leaving the platform, so I decided to watch it before it did. Obviously intended to reboot the franchise, in this film Lara goes on her first quest to dete...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog