Around a week ago I read somewhere (can’t remember where) that you can get really cheap traffic by using image ads in Google AdWords. It said that you have to target at least 1000 keywords, lots of countries and create at least 8 ads.
I decided to try the idea with my squeeze page so I opened a AdWords account and filled it with $55. I then opened up photoshop and made some nice ads like this one:
I added 1500 internet marketing related keywords using Google’s keyword tools and targeted all the countries. I knew that usually you should only target a small amount of specific countries but I decided to anyway go with what I read. I set the maximum bid per click to $0.05 and waited to see what happened. After a few hours I checked my account and saw that no ads were being displayed so I changed the max bid per click to $0.10. I left my computer for a few hours and when I came back…
My inbox had 20 new subscriber notifications from Aweber. I was really excited (I thought I hit the jackpot!) and waited to see some money coming in from the upsell. But I never got an email from paypal, just another 25 emails from Aweber. The $50 I deposited in AdWords finished, I had 45 subscribers and 0 sales.
I started to go over the stats to see what happened. I got a few hundred visitors and had an opt-in conversation rate of around 5%. The reason that I had a sale conversation rate of 0% was the location: 90% of the traffic was from Philippines and other nearby countries. I have nothing against those countries but they’re not known for internet surfers that have their credit cards out and ready to buy.
After that first failure I decided to give it another try before I give up (I must have been high or something 
). I added another $30 to my account and changed the target countries to USA, Cananda, England and Australia. Now the ads weren’t showing up again and I had to put the max bid per click all the way up to $0.75 for them to show. I got another 45 visitors, 1 opt-in and no sales.
At the end of the day I ended up with a hole in my pocket and 45 low quality emails on my list.
Conclusions:
1. Untargeted traffic isn’t worth a lot
2. There’s no magic way to get good traffic cheaply and easily (prove me wrong!)
may all your traffic be good,
Nadav
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Nadav,
It's great that you are sharing your experiences of Adwords and giving us such detail as to what happened. Pity you're down by $85, but this should help others to avoid the same pitfall.
By the way, I've been meaning to come over to your site to say a big thank you because it was your video instructions that got me started with my Wordpress blog. You are a top guy, and I wish you every success.
I'm on my turbo hopping mission to get round as many of the F500 that I can and I don't want you to think I'm being rude bringing a standard message, and leaving it here. It’s taking me for ever to get round everyone just to say hi, so I need to adopt this kind of approach and I hope I do not offend you as communication and generosity are what is driving this. If I wait for you to come to me, it might never happen. Thanks to all who have already visited Planet Valz.
Firstly, my wishes to you for a Happy, Healthy and very Prosperous Year 2009.
Secondly, I want to give you a New Year present, but you need to go to http://daybydaymarketing.com/2008/12/choose-your-...
Valerie
http://daybydaymarketing.com
Hi Navad:
Let me tell you one thing, that I am sure you may have heard many times already… you are very smart for a 16 year old. I am very impressed with your knowledge and your attitude. I just watched your January 1st post of what you did in 2008 and you are also a very lucky young man! You have done more than I have and I am old enough to be your mother!!! LOL
I think the content you add to your blog is very valuable and with high integrity. By the way, I tried to add a comment to your Jan 1st post but it said "Commenting disabled
Further commenting on this blog post has been disabled by the blog admin"; was not sure if you were aware of that…
Keep up the great work… we will get to the top if we all stick together!!!
Robin
Happy New Year!!!
Hi Valerie,
I'm glad you like my post, I wrote it so other people can learn from my mistakes and avoid them. It's great people are actually using my instructions, thank you for your kind words!
Your blog is really nice, I'm looking forward to following your success…
Hi Robin,
Thanks so much for your amazing compliments, they gave me a good motivation boost.
It's great you like my content, you got some awesome content on your blog. Thanks for telling me about the disabled comments, I've been having a problem with that lately and need to figure it out.
I definitely agree that sticking together will really help us.