[dotBen]

Please forgive me if this is taking things OT, but if you want to go down the "do it yourself" route but are new to this area, what would be an efficient way to quickly grok the space?

I'm aware there is a plethora of PPC communities and blog posts, but if you are a smart geek who just wants to ramp up efficiently is there a book/ebook/concise set of posts that you(/others) would recommend that covers the basics and moves through to the tips, tricks, optimizations, etc stage?

Thanks

[mceachen]

OMG, are you throwing me a softball here, what with the "grok" reference?

I just posted a longish reply to the root post with some general guidance, but I also just wrote http://adgrok.com/getting-started last week to help total newbies get going.

What we're hoping to build with AdGrok (and admittedly, we're not completely there yet) is a tool that lets you act like an "AdWords Certified Professional" without all the pain and suffering of studying for those tests.

[dotBen]

Never heard of adgrok ;) so no softballs there.

I had a look at the Adgrok.com site - it's sadly not what I'm looking for as I don't think it fits with the situation I'm trying to fill.

My younger brother is a new recruit in the PPC team of a leading retailer - as he is learning on the job from his colleagues I'm trying to find ways he can learn all the basics and quickly move onto advanced ideas they may or may not be using. Sadly AdGrok presumably won't work as he is just an employee who doesn't have any say or ability to utilize adgrok's statistics collecting into his workflow as he doesn't have any admin capability within the company.

I was therefore looking for other resources - if you have ideas or suggestions I'd be grateful! Thanks.

[mceachen]

Yeah, if your brother doesn't have the authority to link a google adwords account, he won't be able to use AdGrok. Know that we can link to MCCs and that any given account can have 2 links, though. People who already use an agency also use AdGrok just so they can keep tabs on what's going on easily.

I posted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854584 to the original Ask HN post -- he should read through those bullet points after he reads the first couple sections of that getting-started link I sent. PPC is all about targeting customer eyeballs, NOT targeting the "bouncers" or "trolls" that you won't ever be able to convert into a customer, and giving a message that is specific enough to someone's needs that it speaks to them.

Google has a certification process that has a horribly dry but thorough -- he should slog through that and get certified (it'd be good for his CV if he wants to do PPC at other companies, because many require it):

http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwords/professionals/individu...

Here's their "learning center":

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&...

He should also try "AdWords for Dummies" (really!) and/or Brad Geddes' book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470500239

Good luck to your brother!