Hi :)

Has anyone tried Google Adwords for advertising? If so what budget did you set and how was the ROI?

Cheers,
-James

Many of the hosts using Adwords will expect little or no return in the first 12 months, i.e. they spend $100k on advertising and sell $90-$120k of hosting, just renew 70-90% in year 2 and all is well :)

J

Adwords is a great place if your main objective is to dig a hole, light a fire, and pour money into it. :D :erm:

If you have a good plan, do your market research and come up with a quality offering then Adwords can work, but it can take months to get it just right, if you go too big too fast then money/hole/fire will save you time and bother ;)

J

Tried a few times but so far ROI is very poor. I'm quite sure I have not make any money directly off Adwords yet. I usually set the daily budget as $50 but I used a tight range of keywords. These days, I used it to generate leads instead of direct sale.

I have a lot to learn and practice when it comes to PPC advertising.

stephen

Adwords for hosting is a money pit, plain and simple. If you have money to burn, that's a good place for it.

The only way adwords can work for a host is if the host has been setup targetting a specific keywork/niche, and competition is limited for that keywork and in that niche. The thing with free markets, is that if there's a demand in a certian niche, that demand will quickly be filled, as competition increases, so this will quickly push up the cost of those keywords.

Adwords has a very poor ROI for hosting, For us it was like investing for the sake of doing it.
would love to hear experiecne of other ppl here :)

Thanks for the feedback.. Some interesting comments..

I guess adwords just isn't really fit for the majority of companies in the hosting industry..

I tried it for a while, and got a consistent CTR of 0.09% or so with about 83,000 impressions. But for now I've suspended it until at least I get a better design, and perhaps until I get more money for advertising. But even then I'll probably try other alternative methods. I have never gotten good results from adwords, regardless of the market.

But my site's quickly on the rise for its target keywords so I might not even need it. :D

. . . I guess adwords just isn't really fit for the majority of companies in the hosting industry..
The concept is solid, don't get me wrong, but there's just too much keyword competition for anyone to get any kind of a reasonable ROI. For those hosts happy to spend $100+/customer, adwords would be great.

Adwords is a great place if your main objective is to dig a hole, light a fire, and pour money into it. :D :erm:

Msn Adcenter is also good to look on, They are also rocking with the results. I am a SEO and i currently use Msn Adcenter for my clients and the results seems to really good.

I am not saying Adwords is bad. They both are good.

For hosting it hardly works or else you have a big marketing budget. Last sunday I took off all my marketing campaigns from google related to hosting after spending 1000s of dollars on it. My suggestion spend on Yahoo or MSN where you have less compitition relative to Google.

Yes it works if you know what you are doing and you have a solid plan based on experience and knowledge. The problem is that most small hosts expect to spend a little and make a lot, and don't intend to put much effort into it.

If it didn't work then why do you think the same hosting companies have been at the top of the list of years? It is obviously working for them as they would not burn cash like that for years on end.

If it didn't work then why do you think the same hosting companies have been at the top of the list of years? It is obviously working for them as they would not burn cash like that for years on end.

Microsoft sells Xboxes at a loss. Sony sells Xboxes at a loss.
Hostgator pays more per affiliate than they generally receive.
Dreamhost does the same.

Just because you see their name there continuously doesn't mean it's entirely working. If they weren't doing it their competitors would be there instead ;)

. . . If it didn't work then why do you think the same hosting companies have been at the top of the list of years? It is obviously working for them as they would not burn cash like that for years on end.
They're there because they're willing to pay the high costs of customer acquisition, and they have the marketing budgets to do so. It must be tough for them to keep justifying the increasing costs of customer acquisition, in a market where value is declining.

They're there because they're willing to pay the high costs of customer acquisition, and they have the marketing budgets to do so. It must be tough for them to keep justifying the increasing costs of customer acquisition, in a market where value is declining.

Yes that is the big problem. Smaller companies are not able to reach the top with their limited budget.

That is the problem with the hosting industry in general. How are you supposed to start a successful business without funding for customer acquisition??????

I started out on AdWords with a small £3/day budget. I have a very low click through, but around 75% of click-through's generate sales (may not be 100% correct). Could get more with a higher budget, but I find it okay - then again I'm only targeting the UK.