Google gave us $100 of free advertising!

Google has given us $100 worth of free advertising. What this means is that anytime someone does a search on Google using keywords that relate to our project, a link to our homepage will appear on the side under "Sponsored Links." The only time money is deducted from our $100 account balance is if someone actually clicks on the link.

The first ad I wrote read:
Help African Children
Bring hope to Lesotho children thru
better educational opportunities
evansville.edu/sb155

Now it reads:
Help Lesotho's Children
Donate to improve their education &
open their world with kid's laptops
evansville.edu/sb155

I'm still not happy with the wording. Unfortunately, there's a very tight word limit for each of the four lines, and the URL that is displayed has to be the same as the actual URL, i.e. I couldn't use "Laptops to Lesotho" for the last line.

In the first hour after I posted the first ad, over 4000 people saw it and 20 actually clicked on our homepage link. Once enough people click on the ad to reach our daily budget limit, the ad stops displaying until the next day. I put a limit of $2.00/day on the ad, about 20 clicks, so we don't blow through the $100 before I figure out how to best attract actual donations with the right keywords and ad text.

Go to Google.com and type in "Lesotho charity" or "laptops to lesotho" and you might see our link. (Don't click on it though ... it just takes you to our homepage.)

- Janissa