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Comment by barmstrong | Hacker News Reader

Great idea - I'm running a decent sized campaign for UniversityTutor.com and have found the Adwords tools a bit lacking in terms of generating targeted keywords for the thousands of pages and keywords I have. I ended up having to write some massive scripts by hand and using the Adwords desktop tool to import all the data (maybe 20,000 pages with several ad variations each, and targeting different keywords). The whole process took days and was complicated to the point where it wasn't easy for me to test variations.

The devil is in the details on a tool like this, but it could certainly be useful (and a quick flip to Google) if executed correctly. Wish you guys the best and would love to be an early beta user.

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Your experience is pretty typical, except you had the hacker skills to hack around AdWords' crappy UI. Most AdWords users do not, hence AdGrok.

The devil is most certainly in the details in a product like this, which is why we welcome any and all feedback from beta users. You've got first dibs on our product pipeline, so any feature you need we can push out very quickly.

Cheers, Antonio.

Hey Antonio, What will the pricing structure be like?

I would hate to sign up for something, get used to it and really like it, and get hit with some absurdly high price.

Perhaps putting the cost upfront might prove to be useful.

Besides, your biggest competitor - clickable.com - buries their price two or three menus deep, which smacks of sleaze.

Please don't follow their lead. Looks like there is a lot of promise here.

I'm following the call for a clear pricing structure - I manage a lot of Adword accounts as part of my day job, and I'd be keen to look at anything that makes it simpler and easier. But only if it's also cost-effective...

Totally fair questions.

We're taking a somewhat Radiohead position on it.

What would you be wiling to pay for it?

I'll tell you our thoughts on it so far:

A tiered pricing structure, with a fixed monthly subscription fee. Probably starting somewhere around $20 for the smallest budgets, and going up from there. We'll set the tier price points wherever there seems to be obvious market segmentation.

Really big power users, or agencies who are white-labeling our product, might get a more industry-standard percent-of-spend deal.

Our view is that Mom-and-Pops might be wary of a percent-of-spend pricing model. That said, the small SEM shops of dubious quality, who are our real competition, commonly use a percent-of-spend pricing model. So we might have to go with that just to make it comparable. Even if that were true, we'd charge nowhere near the 15-20% of spend many SEM shops charge.

So, worry not. You're not going to get used to our product, and then get screwed by us on price. We'll leave the first-dose-is-free business model to the enterprising young gentlemen around the 16th Street BART station in the Mission.

Regards, Antonio.

Btw, feel free to hit me directly with any customer/pricing ideas at antonio@adgrok.com.

Great - signed up for the beta. Let me know when you're ready to test it out. Btw, I'm an employee at another YC company so if you need to get in touch can always do it through my profile here (which links to my blog).

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