Recently, we decided to try Google Adwords.  What an unbelievable disaster.

We started a campaign on June 11, 2013. Since then we have spent well over $1,000, which we really can not afford given what google's panda/penguin update did to us. The adwords campaign produced 5 sales - I think.

It has become obvious to me that google adwords is severely, I mean really - really badly,  biased toward large companies, who have been around for a long time and have a large advertising budget.  In fact, they boast that the placement of the ads is mostly defendant upon your 'Click Through Rate'.  If you have no adwords experience, your click through rate is zero - nada - ziltch - nothing.   That means that unless you are willing to pay an unbelievably exorbitant amount of money per click, your ad will never be seen.  And don't even get me started on their 'relevancy' tests.

If you are a small company, with a small advertising budget (because you are a small business - of course), run away from google adwords as fast as you can.

If you insist on trying adwords, work with folks like Wordstream.  The guy I worked with, Chris Linnehan, was knowledgeable and honest.