Re: Google Adwords Application for Review (WAS Re: Google Adsense versus Adwords)

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

Just an FYI, I just talked to a small nonprofit that started getting 10,000 hits a week after they started using Google ads through an Adwords grant. They receive a lot of donations from those hits (they didn't share how many.)

It also made it easy for them to qualify for a Google Checkout account that doesn't take any fees for processing their credit card donations.

Stormy

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Claus Schwarm <clschwarm googlemail com> wrote:

Stormy, thanks for your understanding. After some sleep and my second
cup of coffee, I'm slowly going back to normal. :-)

I'm also more the "Let's get this started" typ, except when applying for
free stuff or submitting tax forms. For some reasons, the guys on the
other side of the process often take submissions literally -- at least,
in my experience. They almost never appreciate what was meant.

And it's usually more work to explain afterwards, that one didn't mean
what one wrote.


So, I had a look at the grants guideline here:

http://www.google.com/grants/details.html#eligibility

I may have misunderstood parts of it, due to the language barrier. I
apologize in advance if that happened. But it seems to me, we should not
take this lightly.

It says, among other things:

       "Your ads must link only to the URL included in your application, as
this is the URL approved for your Google Grant."

I see a small problem here, especially in the "only". The GIMP and
GNUCash addresses are clearly different to ours and to each other.

       "You must submit any significant changes of content on this URL for our
review before the updated site is promoted via your AdWords account."

We have no control on the GIMP and GNUCash sites. An innocent change by
them that we overlook and not report might cause problems.

       "Other websites belonging to your organization require our review and
approval before they can be promoted through your AdWords account."

So, we might add other urls later, IIUC. I'm also worried about the part
"belonging to your organization": Surely, GNUCash and GIMP are closely
associated but do they belong to GNOME?

If not, they can apply for a grant, too, I guess.

       "Your ads must reflect the mission of your organization, and your
keywords must be relevant to your programs and services."

Here's another problem. The GIMP has no 'mission' as far as I can see
and neither has GNUCash. If they have, it's not obvious on their
homepages. And it certainly doesn't reflect our mission.

       "If you are removed from the Google Grants program, your organization
will be ineligible and should not apply again."

We should really try to prevent that.

I also studied your initial email, and unless there's something missing,
what's our answer to the question about "Organization Mission
Statement / Primary Objective"?

Instead of making it complicated, couldn't we just use the
Friends-of-GNOME page as an example?

This would also circumvent any later problems when using competitor
brands as keywords. Dunno what the US law says about that.

Keywords might be

 "GNOME, Nautilus, gedit, etc." AND "Support OR Help OR Problem"

In other words: Whenever somebody is looking for help or support for one
of our components, we advertise they could also help us. We can repeat
the keywords in the headline, which is common practice. Google makes
them bold automatically. An example for the application:

12345678901234567890123456789012345
Why Not Help GNOME, too?
Join your Fellows in Supporting a
Desktop Everyone Can Use Today.
http://www.gnome.org/friends/

This might not be the best text, but we can refine that by testing other
formulations when the account is open.

Here's also a really important opportunity: We can make split test with
Google Adwords! This means, we can make a nearly identical friends page
and Google automatically directs to just one of them.

Split tests are far more effective that questionnaires. It can improve
conversions rates by 100 percent or more, sometimes. IIRC, the
conversion rate of the current friend page is not that high. So there's
lots of room for improvement!

Sorry when I sound too worried. But 10,000 dollars a month on
advertising is quite a lot of money. If we optimize the click stream for
the friends of GNOME program, this may mean the same amount of
additional cash for the foundation.

What are other people opinions? Has anyone else read the application
guidelines?


Best regards,
Claus

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 16:54 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:
> I'm happy to hold off if someone will have time to work on this later.
> But if not, I'll just wordsmith and cut it down and submit it. I have
> to admit I fall much closer to the "just get it done" side of the
> spectrum than the "perfect" side of the spectrum. Which is why I
> always appreciate feedback and contributions.
>
> I hope you get some rest and sleep. Have a good evening!
>
> Thanks for your feedback.
>
> Stormy