I am sure you have heard by now about the recent Toyota recalls.  The first was from a gas pedal issue with many models and the second was just with the Prius model regarding an issue with brakes.  No doubt this has hurt the companies reputation.  Toyota has always been know for it’s quality and safety so this comes as a big shock to consumers.

When I heard the news my investor instincts kicked in and I immediately looked at Toyota’s stock (TM).  I was thinking about how much of an opportunity it is to get in on a discounted price of such a great company.  First let’s take a look at some of the details of the stock.

Toyota is currently trading at around $74.  It is down from it’s recent high of around $90 back at the beginning of 2010.  The last time you were about to buy the stock this low was at the end of 2008 when the stock dropped to about $60.  This was of course due to the peak of the recession.

I expect the stock will go down further in the next few weeks due to the recall situation so now is probably not the best time to buy.

The thing that I like about the stock is that it also pays a dividend.  Currently at 1.90%.  Dividends are always a nice thing in stocks due the compounding effects you can get over time.  If only it was a monthly dividend stock.

To conclude, I wouldn’t run out and buy shares of TM just yet.  It seems there is more to come.  My guess is that Toyota will recover from this mess eventually and they will come back strong.

Disclaimer: The author does not own any shares of Toyota Motor Company.

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Ever wonder what adwords is?  Google Adwords is a pay per click advertising program.  Adwords pay per click is basically the other side of adsense.  Adwords is where you become the advertiser instead of the publisher.  You get to decide how your ad will look and what text will be displayed, etc.

Then you choose the keywords that will trigger your ad to show up.  You pay when someone clicks on the ad.  You are basically buying adsense traffic.  Adwords pay per click can get very expensive if you are not careful.  You first deposit money in your account and then you create a pay per click campaign.

You choose how much you will bid for each click and then adwords automatically purchases the clicks based on what your pricing is set to.  You need to be very careful in choosing your keywords and need to make sure that the traffic you get converts well or you will lose money.  Since adwords automatically bids on the clicks you receive it can drain your money rather quickly.

Quick Walk Through of an adwords scenario

So let’s say you have a nice little product you would like to sell from your website.  You most likely would want to start getting traffic fairly quick.  So you open an adwords pay per click account.  You then go and create an ad unit to go with your product or service.  Then you create a pay per click campaign and choose how much you are willing to pay for each click that comes your way.

The campaign goes in motion and you start to see traffic and clicks.  Your account automatically pays for the clicks so your money gets depleted rather quickly.  You could bring traffic very quickly this way but can lose a ton of money if you are not careful.  Basically it comes down to how compelling your ad is and how well it converts.  Of course we can go into much more detail about adwords but this is just a quick over view of a typical scenario.

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