I started a small campaign on AdWords, £10 down, 8 clicks so really small numbers I had a look at them and found:<p>-2 were from sites that were really spammy and had no actual adverts so I don't know how they referred to my site
-2 were from sites that had zero relevance to my keywords
-4 were from sites that didn't exist<p>Is this what other people see? I know the numbers are low but why pay for crap? Or am I missing something??
Heavy headline. There is reason companies spend ~$70 billion on Adwords annually. So yes you are missing something.<p>Sounds like you may have been doing display not search. I'd avoid this until you learn more about campaign setup. Search side is easier/safer. Display can have better returns but is harder to achieve.<p>If you really want to advertise I say get a few thousand $$ together and get someone who knows what they are doing to have a crack.
As other posters have said, you really have to know how to set up a campaign, what keywords to use, how to target, the difference between search and display, etcetera.<p>There are all kinds of people delivering services if you want to run a real campaign.<p>I ran a 100 dollar campaign for a university project, it was an interesting learning experience, but it also taught me that for any real campaigns I'd be better off hiring an expert - and they come at all sizes and prices, from independant contractors up to the biggest marketing companies in the world.<p>In my own sample campaign we did get a lot of noise, and a very low click-through rate. We calculated a cost per customer of U$ 8.
It sounds like you've barely scratched the surface. I'm no expert, but there's a lot to know in order to get good value from adwords. For starters google "google keyword research". Any keyword which is too popular with advertisers should have too high a price per click, so it can never be profitable. So the art is too build around undervalued keywords. I have no firsthand experience with that.<p>10L/8 clicks = 1.20L/click. If we assume 1% net conversion rate (strawman number), your customer acquisition cost is about 120L. Is the customer ltv high enough to justify this?
I don't use partner sites just google.com to start with. Also, get rid of tablet and mobile traffic at first. If I can get that working I go from there. Also, it's pretty expensive traffic.
AdWords isn't useless, but it's pretty overpriced. Which can often mean it's useless.<p>The big players run AdWords campaigns like... you know, ads. They cost money. Then you sell those new customers more shit down the road. Requires complicated analytics and customer tracking. A lot of people are just in it for the big data.<p>It's not supposed to be a slot machine. But Google isn't arguing with you if you want to treat it like a slot machine.