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by ScottWhigham 4594 days ago
Although it would be awesome, I doubt you will find anything like that. After all, the second someone published their "actual production adwords campaign" info, their competitors would know exactly what keywords to bid on and by how much. I know a lot of the younger HNers are all about "transparency" but that's bordering on the absurd.

"But, Scott - surely they can blur out the text so we can't see it?" Sure, but then if they're doing that, how could you trust it? Example - author says "All I did was increment by $0.10 and our CTR jumped 100%!" But what if he really pushed it up by $10 just so he could quickly have an example screenshot to show?
1 comments
akshat 4594 days ago
That is a valid point. However, there are many campaigns that are no longer active or have relevance. The learnings from that can be made public.

Alternatively if someone has the expertise in this field can start a new campaign and show how a campaign should be built for a new product. I am sure there will be a wide audience which will be willing to pay significant amount of money to learn from this.

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ScottWhigham 4594 days ago
...there are many campaigns that are no longer active or have relevance. The learnings from that can be made public.

Sure, that could have value. It would require a long term pre-publication plan that says, "At some point, I'm going to trash this successful campaign so that I can write a book." I don't know that you do that though, do you? If you're making $10,000/yr with AdWords, would you really trash that so you could make $10,000/yr with a book that's going to be "stale" within a year or two?

FWIW Perry Marshall's basic guide to AdWords is a good start for most people.

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rfergie 4594 days ago
With the recent switch over to enhanced campaigns this year I'm not even sure looking at a successful past campaign would be that great.
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