I've been reading the posts yet I never heard anyone actually praising adwords for improving their sales. I'm considering using a CPC program but the posts I read about adwords are making me very leary of this type of advertising. It is truely sad to see that honesty, which used to be what business was built upon, has taken a back seat in many etailers business plans.

If Google acknowlegdes that competitors DO click adwords multiple times, yet does nothing about, they should be prepared for a lot of webmasters to migrate to other CPC programs or drastically reduce what they spend on adwords - especially if few customers are being created. However, with their share of the internet market, Google probably could care less. I'm not going to hold my breath hoping Google starts acting on behalf of their advertisers.

Here's a though: It's true that many large online businesses pay for employees to do nothing all day but call other sites to set up link exchanges. It's part of their linking strategy. Conceivably the same online company could pay someone to click on your Google adwords ad all day too.

I don't have a lot of loot to throw at Google and my biggest competitors know this. It wouldn't take long to exhaust any marketing funds that I set aside for adwords if my competitors have a 16 year old kid clicking away at my adwords ad for $5.25 an hour.

If anyone is doing well with adwords, please share your experiences so I can make a objective decision about adwords. For right now I'm just see the negative side of it.

Thanks for your input,
Bro. Ivey

Perhaps you should read what Google say:
https://adwords.google.com/select/faq/clickquality.html

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Robert Skelton

SearchEngineZ
http://searchenginez.com
-----------------------------

I promote affiliate programs and Adwords has been working well for me. If you want to learn how to do Adwords right, you should read Perry Marshall's Definitive Guide to Google Adwords. I have read it and I think it's the best guide on Adwords out there.

-Hock

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I personally have had no luck with ad words.. I think it depends alot on your business and target works.. in my business it's really quite pointless to use adwords because most of the clicks I receive are from the competition, alot of good that does me at adwords click costs :)

I gave up on it.

dale

Hello All,

I been using ad words with great success.
No doubt it is expensive but it does provide
extremely targeted traffic.

As for the details, I hope to post my data
regularly here so that you all
can know what exactly I am talking of.

As for yesterday, I got $190 in sales and
just $ 6.5 in ad words!...one of the better days.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns using ad words...It DOES WORK GREAT!

To your success,
Ad Alligator

I've had good success with adwords. I t kind of depends on what you are looking to do and what you sell. If you are just looking for traffic don't do it.

If you have a product that people are searching for and will be ready to buy when they go to your site it is great.

If you are looking to get signups for an email list it can be OK just make sure you have a good offer that makes them want to give up their email address.

Good Luck.

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Good Results with ad words. I spend "A LOT"...close to $100/day, but it is well worth it. Most days advertising runs 10% of sales...a good figure for business' like mine. Sure, it cuts my profit, but I look at my logs and a good 30%+ of my traffic comes from adwords. I've tried it without it, but the volume of sales is way down. Targeted traffic pays.

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kjohnson
www.discount-leather.net
Pat yourself on the back before they kick you in the a__

I have never experianced a better way to market an eCommerce site. It can be very expensive, but it literally pays for itself with all the sales. Its hard to go wrong with google.

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Has anyone successfully used Adwords to sell small ticket items? I figure that the average cost for me to a customer is about $5.00. That is usually about half my profit margin if they buy one item. I tried to use the adwords, but it doesn't seem to work for me...

-Scott

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Has anyone successfully used Adwords to sell small ticket items? I figure that the average cost for me to a customer is about $5.00. That is usually about half my profit margin if they buy one item. I tried to use the adwords, but it doesn't seem to work for me...

-Scott

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So far I have had 0 success with adwords.

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I'd be interested in hearing about a few of you who have had successes with adwords. I tend to always come out on the shorter end of the stick. I dont have a real strategy in regards to adwords. I use a lot of "example" instead of broad search terms. what would be an example of a negative keyword for my main search term "inflatable furniture" [/url]

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Matthew A. Stonewall
CEO, Stoney Enterprises, Inc.
Inflatable Furniture
Inflatable Beds
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I would guess a good negative keyword would be inflatable dolls lol

Really I don't know, I'd be interested also

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kjohnson
www.discount-leather.net
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We do reasonably well with adwords, but did have to put in a lot of negative words to get rid of traffic which was not profitable. About once a month I look at click percentage and rewrite the ads which have a poor percentage.

Stephen

This thread has been of real interest to me as I've just signed up for my adwords account. I haven't yet activated my campaigns.
One thing that has confused me (think I might be having a 'blonde' day), what is negative keywords and how can they help with targeted marketing?
I already have a fair bit of success with google's searches, so I'm hoping that the adwords will drive more targeted visitors towards particular products.
I'm still wading through all the pages on google's site to read up on it before I activate, as my budjet for advertising is limited and this could well eat into the lions share of it, so I do want to get it right.

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Traditional & Celtic Musical Instruments

Baldur,

Negative keywords are words you Don't want to show up for.

If you sell Widgets, but you do not repair widgets,

you might place a negative keyword in your keyword listings:

widgets
blue widgets
-repair
-repairs

If anyone searches for how to repair widgets, the negative keyword will keep you from showing up on that search.

Stephen

Thanks Stephen, makes sense to me now.
:0)

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Traditional & Celtic Musical Instruments

Always (for me)

-free "whatever you're selling"
-cheap "whatever you're selling"

You'd be surprised at the folks who really think there is such a thing as a free lunch.

oops

-free lunch

:)

I have used AdWords with quite a bit of success. In fact, currently it is the only way I am listed on search engines, my CTR is about 4% and my conversion is about 10%. I don't have a large budget, but I have noticed that you don't have to spend a fortune to make them work. I don't try to get the top AdWord listing, as that can be very costly. I focus more on the wording of my AdWord so that it attracts the right people. So far I am very pleased.

Yes - you can get exceptional results but like anything you do need to work at it.

The most important part starts with the ad itself and Google tend to help out alot here (simply because if your ad works they make money).

After the click though you are on your own - so it comes down to 3 things:

1. you are targeting wrong phrases for your website content, products, or services, or

2. your website isn't developed properly to gain maximum sales potential, or

3. the AdWord landing page is the wrong one.

While there are many exceptions to this - these tend to be the main problem areas.

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AdWords (plus Overture) keeps my retail site on the front page for searches on our products, at least the products where click price hasn't gone insane. Without our PPC advertising, which is mostly from AdWords, we would only get sales from our returing customers (who found us in the first place with PPC). It costs plenty, but the ROI is there, so it is worth it. Overall, I'd have to say it is a success.

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You need to get a lot more specific in the terms and you could do okay... and it is not all your competition unless they are carrying adsense. I have found most of the bad clicks are from the wrong people that have come through adsense... there is a definite need once Google has it established to start a separate auction for for each publication carrying adsense.. it would keep them in line.

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I have a computer repair business. For the last 6 months adwords has been my sole source of advertising. I am able to get most of my keywords for .05 per click. I usually spend about 60.00 - 70.00 per week and get anywhere from 3-5 jobs per week (earning 300.00 - 600.00 per week in sales). For me it has been great. My website is only showing up on the 4th page in the natural listings.


I also have recently began to play around with affiliate marketing. I ran a 30 day test. I spent 150.00 with Adwords and have so far generated 420.00 in sales. Not bad. Now if I can duplicate this with several other products all running at the same time it will be a great stream of income.

It works. Do your homework. Read and learn all that you can. I spent about 100.00 dollars on various ebooks and memberships to put this together. Now if I can just stick with it it will pay off. If you want to know what I consider the best ebook out there email me at bruce@ideaz.biz. I don't want to advertise on this forum.

Bruce

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Bruce McClellan
Faster Digital
www.FasterDigital.com
Bruce@FasterDigital.com

i have also met many people who have had some success with adwords. i think your success depends a lot on how you approach it. there are a lot of really competitive keywords and if you bid for top placement for those, you probably won't be able to get a good roi.

i think the people who have found the most success are those who have targeted niches. like if they're a web host, they wouldn't target "web hosting." they'd go after a more specific keyword like "mysql hosting" which would go for less but would still bring highly targeted traffic.

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I personally think that for anything to work, you need to invest time and strategy. As with many things in life, it takes time and dedication to make anything work.

I've tried adwords for the past 3 months for two of my businesses. I cannot say, it's perfect nor very poor. It does generate traffic. But, what kind of traffic?

So, there needs to be patience to try out a particular strategy and evaluate its performance. I've discovered that a targetted geographical location is really more helpful than just choosing "all countries".

It's no use to throw in the towel just because after trying for a month or so, we do not generate the returns. If results can be so stimulatingly fast, life would not be that "fun". But, at the same time, if certain keywords or bidded rate are not working after a trial period. Then, we must quickly change. That's strategy.

I hope the little experience I have helps :)

Benjamin

I was hesistant too, so I put up my campaigns and my limit of $20/day. That was 3 weeks ago and my sales have improved 200-400 a day which seems about right if you go with the 10% rule. I just increased my limit to $30/day to see what happens. I don't want to grow too fast and my sales are good without any marketing other than the search engines, but they plateaued for a couple of months and so I decided it was time to invest in marketing. My sales have gone up, and for items that weren't selling as well too.

The trick is truly to monitor your keywords religiously. I use digitalpoints keyword tracker and check it daily, then limit your campaigns for the keywords you DON'T show well with. It takes a little bit of work at first. Then, as soon as your position goes up to top 10 or so with the keywords in your campaign, then pull your ad. You don't want to pay for keyword click thrus when you're listed there already for free.

If you have a good product at good prices, they will buy. There was a week lag which I expected, because people shop around first. However, if your products aren't competitive, then it may be a waste of time and money because the majority of people will shop. I invested A LOT of time in searching out good suppliers so I could price lower than anyone else online. That worked for me.