I've been using the Google Keyword Tool for years and I could never figure out why some of my websites that were ranking in the top 10 for keywords that 'supposedly' got thousands of searches weren't delivering squat. As it turns out I never changed the default setting which shows you the 'broad' searches for a particular keyword. When I changed that to 'exact' searches many of the keywords that got 3,000 or more searches went down to less than 10 searches. Some didn't show any results! I wasted years of valuable time because of this simple mistake!
Sorry to hear that. Additionally, you may still be doing another crucial mistake. It's country targeting. Always look for local search volume NOT global. In time you may (and probably will) rank for global keywords but it's very hard at the beginning. For example: If you want your site to rank in Google.com -> choose United States Google.co.uk -> United Kingdom Google.ph -> Philippiness etc. Hope this helps, Tibor
Ouch. I've made mistakes too that put me behind in the game. When I first started in adwords, I didn't fully understand the importance of negative keywords and that I can turn them on at two different levels. I ended up turning some on on the campaign level which prevented some of my ads from even running. lol. Also made the mistake of giving a client an estimated traffic report based off the broad match. That was money lost.
I see people doing this mistake over and over again. Some are even trying to sell their websites/domains for thousands of dollars just because they think global searches in AdWords is what you should use
Sometimes we learn the hard way. It is difficult to know everything, most of us learn by trial and error in this business. It is good to know what you need to do in the future to avoid the same mistakes already made in the past. All the best.