I'm an independent software vender (develop and sell my own commercial software) and I've never had any success using AdWords.  I had one highly successful product which I could never do better than break even when promoting with AdWords.  I even hired a highly respected AdWords expert to manage my AdWords campaigns and again I only broke even (and that was BEFORE paying the expert so it was actually quite a loss).  More recently (in the past year) I gave it another try with another software product and again had no success (both with my running the campaigns and with another person I know running them for me (a friend who swore by AdWords).

I'm wondering how many people are successful using AdWords vs. how many are unsuccessful.  I've hear many people say it's indespensible for their business but suspect that there are many more who lost money with it and quietly gave up...

Through Google Analytics you can see how individual ads and keywords are performing with respect to conversions. (e.g. track how many downloads)
But in our kind of business where sales can come months later, it is not anywhere near surefire way of determining effectiveness. However, personally, my sales drop if I stop using Adwords so for me, it's worth the money. However, it can be a little tricky to know exactly how much you should be willing to pay

Adwords can also serve anther purpose if you are targeting a new niche. To become #1 known product. In those case I think I would advertise even if it was with a small loss... Just to make sure all bloggers etc. would find my product when doing writeups etc.

Quote from: Webhelpforums on May 14, 2010, 09:44:28 AMAdwords can also serve anther purpose if you are targeting a new niche. To become #1 known product. In those case I think I would advertise even if it was with a small loss... Just to make sure all bloggers etc. would find my product when doing writeups etc.

Actually, I've had some success using Google Alerts to find relevant bloggers.  It has a "blog search" option that lets me set up a daily alert for blogs found that match on keywords that have to do with my product.  I contact bloggers directly offering them a free license and asking them to review and/or host a giveaway for my product.  I've gotten hundreds of reviews from bloggers over the past couple years that way.

That's a really good tip

I have done something similar, but not as effective. Also I find bloggers in general are more willing to review free products and not so much commercial stuff. But yes, it can definitely pay off to carefully finds blogs and niche sites and get them to post reviews, comments and links

Quote by Darren Power

It seems at the moment that everybody is telling you that the easiest and quickest way to make money online is with Google Adwords and affiliate programs.

It depends how you targeted that..

Internet marketing is bit difficult it is not Adword keywords do help to generate. There are many other techniques to be followed to generate backlink.

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner networks. The "search network" includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches, but do not affect quality score.