1. Cost per click. How much are you bidding to display that ad? We recommend setting your initial bid at $0.05 -- the minimum. If your ads don't then display on the first page or two, consider raising your bid to an amount that will cause them to display on the first page or two of results.
2. Clickthrough Rate. Remember, Google doesn't get paid for displaying an AdWords box. They only get paid when someone actually clicks on an ad, so they care about the relevance of the ad to the keyword. That's the main reason ads get disapproved--the keyword doesn't relate to the website or the ad box. And they care about your click-through rate. For that keyword, Google will select and display those ads which are getting clicked the most, regardless of the amount of the cost per click (your bid amount). You could be offering to pay twenty bucks per clickthrough but if no one clicks on your ad Google makes nothing. An ad that is paying only twenty cents per clickthrough, but is a dynamite ad that people really respond to (by clicking on it!) may be given higher placement at Google for that keyword.
3. Your daily budget. How much have you told Google you are willing to spend on a daily basis? All other things being equal, if you have said that you are willing to spend $1000 a day, while others have limited their budgets to to $3 per day, your ad may display above theirs. Make your daily budget an outrageously high one. You are basically bluffing about this--you can't be charged for more than the ad is actually clicked on, no matter how high you set your daily budget. If you're worried about that, set the daily budget as high as you can stand if it were all used (it won't be), and monitor it every day (every hour if need be) until you are sure it isn't actually costing you a fortune just because you set a high budget. It won't, unless a zillion people click through on it. The worst thing that could happen is you might actually spend it all one day getting traffic to your site.
Now Do the Math! Can you afford to spend a nickel each--that's $1.00 for every 20 visitors to your site--and do that over and over, every day? If not, then something is wrong with your website's business model and you shouldn't be advertising here on Google AdWords at all, even with a small budget! If you're losing money on each clickthrough, you're never going to make it up in volume!
2. Clickthrough Rate. Remember, Google doesn't get paid for displaying an AdWords box. They only get paid when someone actually clicks on an ad, so they care about the relevance of the ad to the keyword. That's the main reason ads get disapproved--the keyword doesn't relate to the website or the ad box. And they care about your click-through rate. For that keyword, Google will select and display those ads which are getting clicked the most, regardless of the amount of the cost per click (your bid amount). You could be offering to pay twenty bucks per clickthrough but if no one clicks on your ad Google makes nothing. An ad that is paying only twenty cents per clickthrough, but is a dynamite ad that people really respond to (by clicking on it!) may be given higher placement at Google for that keyword.
3. Your daily budget. How much have you told Google you are willing to spend on a daily basis? All other things being equal, if you have said that you are willing to spend $1000 a day, while others have limited their budgets to to $3 per day, your ad may display above theirs. Make your daily budget an outrageously high one. You are basically bluffing about this--you can't be charged for more than the ad is actually clicked on, no matter how high you set your daily budget. If you're worried about that, set the daily budget as high as you can stand if it were all used (it won't be), and monitor it every day (every hour if need be) until you are sure it isn't actually costing you a fortune just because you set a high budget. It won't, unless a zillion people click through on it. The worst thing that could happen is you might actually spend it all one day getting traffic to your site.
Now Do the Math! Can you afford to spend a nickel each--that's $1.00 for every 20 visitors to your site--and do that over and over, every day? If not, then something is wrong with your website's business model and you shouldn't be advertising here on Google AdWords at all, even with a small budget! If you're losing money on each clickthrough, you're never going to make it up in volume!