Money Pit

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I onced talked to someone who said that they were making big bank with adwords. I asked them how and they told me the same thing that I have read everywhere else. Do keyword research and test campaigns.

Testing is where the problem comes in. There is an old saying "It takes money to make money". I can't speak for anyone else, but I have lost lots of money by testing campaigns and don't have anymore to give to adwords.

I even read where one may have to invest $1000 in testing ads on adwords before finding a winning combination. Since losing money and reading this information, I decided that I don't have $1000 to test adwords ads campaigns. I nodded my head and walked away from adwords.

[morestar]

Google is big and so is their ad service - big because of the sheer volume of users using it every single day, hundreds of times a day. So it's hard and especially in some markets, to break through, come out on tope or make a decent profit. A lot of the time, the results might be the luck of the draw.

I'm an 'SEO' but haven't ever truly succeeded anywhere special when it came to Adwords. I managed an already established and successfully performing campaign a few years ago - day in and day out - going into the account and tweaking it. I even sat back as an outside Adwords management company took over the campaign and took it to a whole new lever. from 500 keywords or keyword phrases to over 5000. My boss, did have the money to invest and he did and it still works for him to this day. If you search for almost any terms related to assisted clothing or senior apparel there they will be, either at the top of the search results or within any of the ad blocks. Big money...(silverts clothing)...

So I would say you're right. If I were to compete with my previous employer, I would get rocked. It would take quite a bit for me to steer some of this market share in my direction, SEO wise and with a Google Adwords campaign.

The point I'll make is, sure, you can go to another ad network but the question you'd have to ask yourself is do you believe you'll have a chance to get the same traffic to your website as you would with Google Adwords? I think not but I could be wrong.

You might have done well taking that few thousand dollars you invested and used it to hire an SEO.

Good post!

[Web Res]

Perhaps the key to success with Adwords is to have very targeted goals that operate on a small scale? If you are looking at 10 to 20 keyword combinations that are satisfied by a handful of landing pages that match the keyword expectations both for Google and give the end-user a valid call to action - then it shouldn't be too hard to set up and monitor.

It only makes sense that 500+ keyword combinations are going to open the floodgate to a huge daily click budget that will cost a lot of manpower and tools/techniques to manage. Clicks will quickly ring up huge costs before you have time to refine results. A small campaign can have a budgeted daily spend that will limit risk and provide enough knowledge to tweak keywords and increase the spend when you're happy with conversions.

I remember a friend telling me years ago that he made 200% on every dollar spent with Google and his biggest concern was getting more and more clicks, but those days are over IMHO.

[mawells]

We run into prospective clients all the time who say what you're saying. Either they didn't get enough site visitors or the cost was way too high. The key to a successful and cost-effective campaign lies in the Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) and the profit of the product or service you're offering. We've proven it to these clients over and over again and they are amazed how well the program actually works.

If you're only making pennies on the dollar for a particular product and paying Google $3/visit - it's easy to see that you're going into a hole. Find keywords that have a high CTR but lower volume. The idea is to get quality - not quantity. That may mean getting very specific phrases and buying them as an exact or phrase match. If you're not sure how to go about doing the appropriate research or setting the match type - I suggest you work with a professional.

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Mawells, thanks for your response, but frankly I am no longer interested in trying to run anymore campaigns with Adwords. For me $1000 is to much money to waste on testing to see what works.

For others, just thank of all the money being lost on adwords by beginners and other people who have just not found the right key to making any kind of profit with adwords (maybe millions $$$ have been lost). I would advise them to do the same as I and walk away from it instead of continuing to lose money at it.

There are far, far too many other ways to make money on the internet without having to gamble money away on adwords.