[tbp]

I think there are likely to be bid management tools, but i`m sure they probably break the adwords t's and c's.

Adverts will always move round, especially if competitors are on the ball. You put your price up to move above someone else, they see and raise their bid and your back to where you were. At the end of the day, a lot of times your can can move up with a lower CPC because other people's budgets have run out.

One of the best ways to stay in your position is to set accelerated ad showing to on. If you do this, it will display your ad as many times as possible until your budget it used (but you can up it if you see this happening). If you leave it on the normal setting, it will spread you ad out over 24 hours, in accordance with your budget. If you get say 50 clicks in the first hour, and don't have a massive budget, then you ad may only get shown a couple of times for the next hour, to make your budget last over the course of the day. Obviously these figures are made up, just to illustrate my point, it all depends on your CPC and budget.

Setting accelerated showing to on just keeps showing your ad as many times as it can, so you can stay around the same position, and show up almost constantly.

Also try turning off the content network unless its generating good sales. I find that you your ad gets shown a huge amount, but you don't get that many clicks, so google decides your ad isn't great. Your CPC goes up, and your position goes down. I haven't found one site of mine yet that the content network has worked for, in my own experience it just makes your ad's cost more!