Google Adwords Is It Worth It?

[Onix]

I occasionally get $100 coupons to try out Google Adwords most of the time I have to open a new account to use it but they don't seem to have a problem with me doing so. I don't hide that I'm the same person in the same place using different emails. Only once did I get a coupon that could be used on an existing account but that's beside the point. That's just to explain what I'm doing.

I'm not going to be paying for Adwords any time soon. The clicks I get are very low quality, most just hit the site and leave. Mostly because google keeps advertising on flash game sites and most people are just looking for more online games. That might not be a bad thing though, there could be a new role player born of it. I get about 50 downloads per $100s.

However a lot of those are aborted, why? People are thinking they're downloading a video game and then see that the download is a PDF (at least that's my theory). In the end my reporting software isn't good enough to tell me how many download all the way.

Would I pay for that? There's no way I could but would it make economic sense? With the free coupons yes it does, even if most of it is wasted (it's free). I couldn't imagine spending money on it though. Still if it were my money I'd probably be a lot more careful about my search terms and fine tune things better but I don't think I could fine tune it enough to make it worth my money.

Any other monkeys play with Adwords?

[maledictus]

I recently got a coupon and starting to play around with adWords. So far it hasn't been very efective. The visits I got last for a few seconds. And for what I've heard from others, their web traffic didn't improve much with AdWords.

I'm going to see how things work in the next days, but is unlikely that I'll continue my campaign after I spend my coupon.

[BubbaBrown]

Tried Google Adwords for a self-published short story. Their keyword rating algorithm is garbage. Seriously, I picked terms that accurately described my work. Since the algorithm only does surface scanning of site material, I could never get decent scores on any of the the terms. The only hits I ever got were from bots that hammer adwords bait sites to drain ad revenue. Even when I started to filter them out, I still never got decent results.

Adwords is only decent if you are hosting the ads, it's a ripoff the other way around. Stay away from them if you are actually trying to advertise.

In fact, in a discussion with LateNite over on RPG.NET, he found that he actually LOST money by advertising. It seemed better to do PR in forums and just spread it word of mouth rather than go through web ad systems.

[cjoki]

Sorry, been in the web business for a while and I can only say...you are better off putting that money in a hole ...err sending it to me.


Seriously, SEO is a racket in my book. If you want to improve your web presence look for ways to get others to link to your site. Write a lot of articles, reviews, or GASP forum post "with a subtle link to your own site" for other more popular site with a common interest to your site. Establish yourself as a person well versed on the topic and gain a little following.

[kylesgames]

Everything I've ever read about getting traffic to your site says that you should get links out, not buy ads.

Speaking of which, anyone wanna start a link exchange?

[bigpappyj]

Yeah, AdWords is good for wide net but results may vary. For such a small niche it's hard to get any bang for your buck, especially when you consider time spent. If you're willing to spend money on advertising you're probably better off approaching sites that talk about games and asking about ad rates there. You're getting a better platform in front of your audience and any money you spend will go straight to folks who also care about the medium.