Back in Oct. 2007 my job became unstable - as in "be prepared because you may be laid off." So I began attempting to make money online. In Dec. 2008 I came across a training program for the latest "hottest" way to make money online. Long story short, I bought the training and the program required that we do a lot of Google AdWords advertising.

I was phenominally successful... At giving Google my money without making much in return.

Google AdWords is a very good way to get loads and loads of traffic very very fast.  However, there are 2 problems.  First, just because you get lots of traffic doesn't mean that any of that traffic will buy your product.  Second, that traffic you bought can be very expensive.

For the Google AdWords newbie there are several things to become aware of that are really beyond the scope of this hub.  The primary thing to keep in mind is that profitable Google AdWords starts with a lot of thorough keyword research.  Often the longer the keywords are best.  The longer the keyword, the harder they are to find.  There will, most likely, be fewer daily searches on those terms as well.  But, those longer keyword phrases will also tend to be cheaper.  And the people doing searches on those long terms are more likely to be buyers where as the shorter terms get a lot of people doing research.

To recap, the longer keyword phrases are the cheaper they usually are and the more likely they are to be buyers (if it is the right phrase, this isn't true for just any keyword phrase).  This means that you are hunting for a few golden keywords that will have the highest profit margins.  However, many of those terms may not get enough searches every day to make you a living so you may need to dig up dozens of them.

The price you pay per click with Google AdWords is based on several factors - these factors make up your Quality Score (QS).  In the beginning of a campaign for a brand new site the most important factors are:

1. Ad Text Relevance:
   Headline
   Ad Copy
   Display URL
2. Landing Page Relevance

Relevance in Google AdWords is done on a keyword by keyword basis so sending a lot of keywords to the same landing page (where a click on the ad will send searchers) can backfire.  It is certainly the most efficient way for you to get started but it isn't necessarily the best way.  First, the landing page probably won't be that relevant to more than a few of your AdWords keywords so you will pay a lot more for each click on the keywords that Google deems unrelated or less relevant.  Second, the same landing page for all keywords isn't likely to convert prospects to customers as well as a customized page will.

After an ad campaign and site are established within Google AdWords then other important factors become:

1. Click Through Rate:  The percentage (or ratio) of ad impressions to clicks (if 100 searches on a term are performed with your ad showing that will constitute 100 impressions and if 1 user clicks on your ad then you have a 1% CTR).
2. How long does the user who clicks your ad stay on your page?  The longer the better.
3. Campaign History:  Historically, what has your CTR for this campaign and URL been?  How long do users stay on your pages? etc...
4. Domain of the display URL:  If you've run several low CTR or low quality campaigns pointing to the same domain, then Google will lower your Quality Score.

The best way to a high QS and lower cost per click is to customize each ad and landing page to each keyword. Obviously, even you only need 5 minutes to customize your page and ad to your keywords then this customization can be very time consuming. Here are a couple of tools to help:

1. LPGEN (worth every penny)
2. SpeedPPC (many more functions than you are likely to need and overpriced for what it does but I don't know of an alternative - although I've considered building an alternative)

The original question for this hub asked about AdWords as it relates to driving traffic to a hub.

I wouldn't use AdWords to drive traffic to a hub. I've seen a few people use Adwords so to sell affiliate products. It doesn't seeem to work well. HubPages, even reviews, don't seem to make for good sales pages. Also, you can't drive traffic to your hub via AdWords to make money through AdSense. Particularly for HubPages - think about it, the advertiser pays 1 price (that's probably the price you will end up paying for your ad) then Google takes their cut and HubPages takes their cut and you get the remainder.

If you are driving traffic to any website using Google AdWords you need to monitor your AdWords account multiple times a day until you become comfortable with setting daily limits, comfortable with ad performance, and comfortable with your conversion rate. Typically, you need to let an ad campaign run for at least week because of daily search variations - on Mondays a keyword could be hot while there are no searches really on Wednesday.

Watch your campaigns carefully, monitor their performance daily, be patient but not lazy, and do your keyword research.