Confessions of an Adwords Secret Agent

[Annette Thomas]

I discovered Google Adwords. Not a bad thing in itself, but I believed
the hype. I thought I'd be paying 2 or 3 cents a click, easily getting
all the traffic I wanted.
It started out okay. I kept my bids low and my budget low, like all
the books say you should. I got a few clicks on my ads. No sales, but
I was hopeful...and if you've used Adwords, you'll know what happened
next:
It got real expensive, real quick. My ad prices went up. WAY up...
Keywords I was getting for 25c per click suddenly needed me to bid
$2.50 just to activate them. I'm no math genius but paying $2.50 per
click is going to make it pretty tough to break even, let alone make a
profit. But I kept at it. I don't like to quit...and guess what?
I was basically banging my head against a wall. Going nowhere, getting
more frustrated and desparate by the day.
Less than a month after I started I was in the hole to Google for $2k.
I was basically like a gambling addict, just throwing money into
Adwords in a desperate attempt to somehow hit it big and get back
everything I've lost...
So then I did quit. I swallowed the hit and paid Google their fees. It
was time to forget about Adwords, so I concentrated on finding other
traffic methods...

http://adwdsmanifesto.learn.to/