Hey guys, I have used AdWords before, a while ago, and got nowhere and spent lots of money. I did lots of keyword research and even paid an "expert" to do some for me to make sure I had the right word. I set up my campaign with a couple hundred dollars and didn't see any sales or jump in visits from it. I feel like I am missing something terribly important, some secret that everyone knows. I hear all this good stuff about how AdWords makes people so much money, but I wasted money on what I thought was a good keyword. Does anybody have any pointers for an AdWords beginner? I have looked for hours on google about this stuff, and most everything I have read is crap and people saying the same stuff over and over again.
Adwords is not a silver bullet, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. One thing you should have seen after spending the money is increase in visits. Basically, you pay directly for visits (clicks).
It totally depends on your niche. Adwords can be a goldmine but if the niche is saturated and the CPC is high it can be unprofitable to do adwords... Just got to calculate for yourself! If you have ecommerce just take the average customer lifetime value and compare it to the cost per acquisition (conversion rate= out of 18 clicks one becomes a new customer = 18 x CPC= Cost per acquisition!)
May be you should learn from the expert, never give up try and try until you find the answer of all your questions about that Adwords.
Perhaps the expert you hired wasn't much of an expert after all. If you didn't see an increase in visits due to your ad campaign how did you lose money? As Amyasella said, how crowded is your niche and what is the Cost Per Click (CPC) for the top few spots? What keyword were you targeting? Perhaps it wasn't a buy keyword. But, if you didn't receive an increase in visits due to your ad campaign you need to bid higher to be ranked higher among other quality score factors. Just a few thoughts.
Thanks everyone for all the great feedback. I will be sure to put it into action next time I start an adwords campaign.