Anyone using Google Adwords

<p>I had a question for those using Google Adwords for "Wedding Photographer" advertisment.</p>

<p>Having any luck? Your likes or dislikes?</p>

<p>Whats a good starting point for CPC/Daily budgets</p>

<p>Getting much calls from it? In other words...is it worth it?</p>

<p>What are your most liked forms of advertisment.</p>

<p>Thanks,</p>

<p>I used it. I found that I got a lot of hits, but no calls and no business....almost as if people are just clicking on ads for surfing purposes. I found it to be extremely confusing, but in fairness, this was my first foray into this type of advertising. I quit very quickly. Facebook has a similar program, much easier to understand, but again, i'm finding that I'm getting a lot of hits, but no business.</p>

<p>To too have used to for a while. I prefer NOT to use it. Like Paul said, it has tripled the amount of people going to my site but not a single inquiry from it. Personally I feel that google hires people to click on those ad or otherwise people just click them for no reason. A terrible return on investment. I have had much better luck advertising on popular wedding sites where 1 out of every 5 page visits, people send me a request for more information. My suggestion would be to save the money and apply it elsewhere even though other avenues are more expensive. It takes money to make money.</p>

<p>AdWords seems to work better in the context of online shopping - where the person who clicked the ad is looking to take some immediate action, like adding a product to a shopping card, checking out, and calling it done. Using that mechanism for expensive professional services is a far dicier thing. You're also going to get a ton of your competition or wannabes just clicking your ad to see what you're selling, the better to put together their own campaign. Likewise with third parties who are checking you out as someone to sell <em>to</em>. <br /><br />As Scott says, running ads where the average visitor is much more likely to be actually hunting for what you do (rather than bumping into your AdWords ad under a much wider set of circumstances) will often bring more immediate results.<br /><br />I run sites that use the AdSense program to raise advertising revenue. So, folks like you who buy AdWords ads are paying for clicks when people like me display the ad. Google controls which ads show up where, of course. There are some ads that appear to get very high click-through rates, and some that suffer in near silence. The more specialized the web site that's running the ads, the more effective the ads appear to be. I have many years of watching those patterns prove out.</p>

<p>Thanks. This is what I was looking for. I figured it would be exactly like you described....tons of clicks, no actual calls converting to $$$. I bet you are right, paid employees to inflate clicks.<br>

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I was using the Real Yellow Pages here for a while. Ad in Book and Online and cost me 233/month and never got any calls from it. It was killing me. Then they pulled the BS of, "Well, we are showing that you are getting 10 clicks per day from the link"<br>

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I said, you’re kidding right? I get 30 clicks a day from the local baseball teams website link they gave me for free. And Baseball season is over. And besides, those 10 clicks have generated 1 call. So that ended quickly<br>

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I have been exploring other options to increase calls. I ask brides of mine where they looked first before calling me and most said places like "The Knot" and "Alabama Bridal"<br>

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Maybe I'll try those first. With the gut feeling about adwords and your responses, I think that sealed the deal. My last gut feeling I ignored cost me tons. I cant afford another rendezvous of 233/month and no sales for a year again. I need something that will generate some calls from those $$$ spent. If they call at least, then I can seal the deal. But they gotta call first.</p>

 

<p>Matt I figured that as well. Thanks. Sounds exactly like I figured.</p>

<p>why would Google pay employees to click on adword links when it could very easily write a program to do the same thing automatically, for free? :oP</p>

<p>Sure. Either way, we get the shaft though.</p>

<p>I just did a prepaid $50 hit to see what it generates. If I get a call or two, who knows.</p>

<p>I signed with a couple Bridal sites that had good deals and when you google wedding photogs in my area, their site pops up and if you click it, I'm on the first page. So kinda when around that a little. We'll see what happens.</p>