-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
Is this what other people see? I know the numbers are low but why pay for crap? Or am I missing something??
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.
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.
Spammy. Very much. Even more so if you advertise in mobile apps.
There are all kinds of people delivering services if you want to run a real campaign.
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.
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.
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'm just trying to see what I am missing??
Mobile traffic is generally garbage, too.
AdWords is a monster to wrangle.
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.
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.
I make a great living off Adwords. God bless it.