How to Start A Google AdWords Account

If you're new to this and want to watch a video showing you how to sign up, then I recommend watching this following video:
How To Start A Google Adwords Account

Here's how to sign up:

Go to www.google.com and look towards the bottom of the page. You will see a link which says, "Advertising Programs". Once you click on that link, you will be taken to the following page:

http://www.google.com/ads/

Once there you should click on the link which says "Google AdWords".

You will then be taken to a page which looks like the following picture. I would recommend book marking this page or add it to your favorites because you will visit it often. Click on the button titled "Sign up now" to sign up for your AdWords account.

Here's a $50 AdWords credit for your Google Account. If you use this, you will receive $50 in free advertising. I've personally never used this because if you repeatedly use free AdWords credits you can get banned from Google. This also may not work for accounts in smaller countries.

Click Here for the Credit

After clicking "Sign up now", you will be taken to a couple of pages which will ask you how you want to set up your advertising group(s) with Google. As for now, we will just set up a dummy campaign, meaning that you are not going to advertise anything in this campaign. Why are you creating a dummy campaign? I am going to go over in extreme detail how to set up a perfect campaign later in this guide, but for now, I don't want you to worry about advertising, I just want you to have a Google Account.

After you hit the "Sign up now" button, you will be taken to a page where it asks you what type of AdWords account you want to create. Select the "Standard Edition" and click on the "Continue" button.

I recommend watching this Google video which gives you information about starting a Standard Edition account with Google AdWords:
Google Video - Starting A Standard Edition Account

After you hit the “Continue” button you will see a selection where it asks you to Target Customers By Language, choose which language you wish to advertise in (this should be the language the webpage is in that you're thinking about advertising).

In the Target Customers By Location selection you will select where you want to advertise. There are three sections; I would recommend the Countries and Territories selection for now.

Countries & Territories – This is where you will advertise in certain countries or territories. For example if I wanted to advertise in North America only, I would choose the Countries and Territories option and I would select the countries Canada, Mexico, and United States.

Regions & Cities – This is where you will advertise in specific cities and regions. This works best if you're advertising for a local flower shop or a furniture store located in one or many cities. If this was the case you could specify Regions & Cities and if you lived in the USA you could advertise in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia if the business was located in the North East.

Customized – This is where you customize where you want your ads to be displayed. You can choose very specific places to advertise…like certain cities, regions, etc.

Next you will be prompted to choose more specific areas to advertise, such as individual countries, regions, or cities. You will only need to choose one city, country, or region for the dummy campaign. Since I live in the United States, I chose “United States”.

When you hit the “Continue” button you will be asked to make the advertisement for the website you are promoting. Again, you can edit this later so just make a quick advertisement. If you don't know what to do, simply do the following:

Headline: "Search Engine Advertising"
Description line 1: "Learn How to Make Money Online"
Description line 2: "by Advertising on Search Engines"
Display URL: www.stevenholdaway.com
Destination URL: www.stevenholdaway.com

Don't worry, you're not even going to use this advertisement. Google just wants you to have something entered here before you can continue.

After you click on the “Continue” button you will be prompted to enter keywords, this can be edited later so just enter one keyword which is related to your website and hit continue. If you used the previous advertisement, just enter “steven holdaway” as your only keyword.

On the next page you will be asked to choose which currency you want Google to use to bill you. Select the appropriate currency, because you cannot edit this later. Then you will see a section where it asks you What is the most you would like to spend, on average, per day? This is your Max Daily Budget, set this anywhere from $8.00 - $10.00 and go to the next section (don't worry, you're not going to get billed this amount). The next section is What is the maximum you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad? This is your Maximum Cost Per Click. Enter $0.05 here and click on the “Continue” button on the bottom of the page.

Now hit the continue button and you will see a page which shows you all of the current settings to your Advertisement Group. Read through them and click on the “Continue to Sign Up” button at the bottom of the page.

The next page will ask you if you already have a Google Account. If you do, simply enter your email address and password and click on the button titled “Create AdWords Account”. If you don't have a Google Account look for a link on the page which says “Create a new Google Account to be your login to AdWords”. This will create a new Google Account for you.

If you don't already have a Google account it will ask you to enter your email address and a password, make sure this information is correct because Google will send you an email right after you create your account. After you enter this information, click on the “Create AdWords Account” button.

Google will now send you an email to the email address you specified which will contain a link that you will need to click on in order to activate your account. Simply click on the URL in your email from Google.

After you go to that URL you can log into Google AdWords using your email address as your User Name and the password you created earlier. Once you are in your account, you will need to specify a credit card for Google to use in order to bill you. Here's how to do this.

1. Click on the "My Account" tab located near the top of the Google Account webpage.
2. Once you are there, you will notice the following near the top of the page in your Google Account.

Click on the “Billing Preferences” link near the top of the page. This will take you to the appropriate location where you need to enter your credit card information.

You will be charged a $5.00 activation fee, but don't worry this is not a lot at all, most other search engines charge you much more than this. After you enter your credit card and personal information your account will be activated.
Beginners Introduction To Your New Account

If you're new to Google AdWords, the following information is an introduction for you to your new account. It will start off by giving you basic information and features of your AdWords account, but first I will show you how to pause the “dummy” Campaign you currently have active.
Pausing Your Dummy Campaign

Now it is time to pause the dummy campaign so you will not receive any traffic to it. To do this click on the “Campaign Management” tab. You will see something that looks a bit like this:


Notice that in the "Current Status" column in the picture above, it says "Paused". Unless you've already paused your campaign, the Current Status for your campaign will say "Active".

Remember earlier when I said to just choose one country, one keyword, and a basic advertisement and not to worry about it being perfect because I would get into that later in more detail? Well, now is the time to learn more information about those things. In the meantime, you will want to make sure you don't receive any activity in your account until you know how to properly manage it so 'pause' your campaign until you are ready.

It is fairly easy to pause your campaign. In the picture above, I put a red "X" and a red rectangle to help you know what to do. Just check the box next to your only campaign and hit the "Pause" button. This will pause your campaign.

Now that you have an account set up, you are ready to learn how to create a perfect Campaign so you can begin making money online.
Background Information with Your Account

It's about time that you need to know basic AdWords Account information such as definitions and meanings of keywords, campaigns, and AdGroups.

Keywords – Keywords are what people search for in Google. Whatever someone types into Google's search box is a keyword. If someone searched for “Google Money Pro” on Google, the keyword is “Google Money Pro”. If someone searched for “red hat with eBay logo” their keyword is “red hat with eBay logo”.

So basically a search query is a keyword. Whenever you have a keyword that matches someone's search query, you're advertisement will be displayed. So the more keywords you have, the better the chances are that someone's going to see your advertisement. This is why it's important to have keyword lists, which is basically a list of many keywords.

Text Advertisement – Text advertisements are pretty self explanatory. They are the advertisements you use on Pay Per Click search engines. Of course, text advertisements are only text, which means you can only use text (if you want your ad to be viewable to everyone, Google allows image ads but they won't be displayed to everyone).

AdGroup – An AdGroup is where you store your keyword lists and text advertisements in your Google account. Your keyword lists can contain a maximum of 2,000 keywords and you should have at least two to four different text advertisements in each AdGroup.

Campaign – A campaign is where you store your AdGroups. If you're selling computers, I would name my campaign “Computers” and I would name my AdGroups within that campaign names like “Dell”, “Apple”, “Gateway”, “HP”, etc. You also control your daily budget as well as what countries you advertise in from your Campaign settings.