I'll admit it .. I've never managed a Google AdWords campaign before. Sure, I've recommended keywords, discussed marketing goals and keywords with clients, but never actually managed the bidding process.
I started managing my first one on Tuesday. I have entered a very dangerous world.
For control freaks, like myself, it is perfect. I can micromanage my campaign to a level where even I become a little overwhelmed. I can tweak ads, test ads, test words, research words, research competitors ... crazy. And, if you don't know what you're doing, a huge time sink. But fascinating!
It reminds me of a time, oh back in 1996, maybe? I worked for a (now defunct) company called SoftQuad. The web designer, Colin Moock, and I had just launched an email campaign. We wanted to see how the campaign was doing (this was back in the day before there were fancy tools for monitoring open rates), so we cracked a couple of beers and ran tail -f on the logfile and watched as people hit the link we had sent in the URL. Real-time feedback. The 3-hour lag on the Google AdWords reporting isn't as immediate, but then it at least it gives me time to get some other stuff done.