# Google Adwords makes NO sense - the numbers dont add up



## tshirtnoob

Firstly, Im an experienced google adwords users, but just now got into the tshirt biz.

So naturally I attempted to use google adwords to start a tshirt campaign.

But it seems to me, advertising your tshirts on google is a complete waste of money. The numbers simply dont add up.

Check out this scenario:

Lets assume you have a solid profit margin of $10 per shirt.
You create EXTREMELY targetted ad's which should lead to a high conversion rate.
Currently, clicks cost about 90 cents on google, even for the lower bid, tail end, keywords which bring low traffic. Dont even think about bidding for "womens tshirts" or whatever, you will pay a fortune per click.

So lets say you get 100 clicks.
You just spent $90 dollars.

You would have to sell 9 shirts just to break even. Or a 9% CONVERSION rate.
Most people here are having a hard time getting a 1% conversion rate.


So how the HELL do you have any chance of making money through advertising on google??? 

Seems to me if busteedtees and the other big boys are advertising on google like crazy, AND bidding for the top spots, they are spending well over $1 PER CLICK. Unless they have a 10% or higher conversion rate, they are losing money on every click.

What am I missing? Seems like you are just throwing away money advertising on google, the CPC is just too damn high.

You need 10 cents per click to have any chance of making a profit, and that simply doesnt exist on google.


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## odil1372

They arent buying clicks they are buying keywords. Google sells keywords for around $200 a month depending on the keyword.


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## tshirtnoob

You mean they are using CPM instead of CPC, or are you referring to something completely different?


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## odil1372

CPM. The fees are based on which keyword(s) you purchase. I've had several reps from Google contact me recently trying to get me to buy them for my demographic. It definitely makes more sense than purchasing by click.


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## tshirtnoob

Roger that. I started a CPM campaign today to see what it ends up costing per visit. I find it hard to imagine it would be that different though.
CPM would effectively have to be 10 times cheaper for it to make sense.


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## pbk!

Thanks for the post. Please keep us updated on your progress.


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## royster13

Going back 5+ years:

- my average cost per 1,000 views is 0.68...
- My average cost per click is 0.90...
- My average click through rate is 0.08%...
- My average position is 1.7...Obscure words come in highest but have little volume...

I am not selling shirts, but I have never been able to get a high enough conversion to make it worthwhile....The only ads I do now are the times when I get a coupon for 75.00 or 100.00 in free credit....And even when free, they are hardly worth it....


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## tshirtnoob

Along the lines of what I would expect these days as well.

It seems adwords only makes sense for much higher priced items that can absorb the advertising costs.


The other thing that would help is having a huuuuuge catalog, which would increase conversion rates enough to make it worth while.

But for any company starting out with less than, say 100+ items that cover a broad market, I just dont see adwords as being worth it.

Which brings up the question..... what are the superior channels for items with a less than $10 profit margin. Hmmm....


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## LisaCheesePizza

I have been using google ads for the past week, and i have spent so far over 150$ on clicks....none of them have led to purchases on my website. This sucks!!! Im thinking either im doing something wrong, but i dont think so cuz the person at google said on the phone that i just need to spend more, give a higher bid...buts there is still no garantee i get sales this way!!!

Its crazy, i think ill stop this google stuff!
I have google text ads, google image ads in 3 size formats...and nothing is working!!

Way too expensive.

p.s. Same for Facebook ads


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## TortugaTees

That sucks, how disappointing! Nothing works better than good old fashion elbow grease to make money.


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## PositiveDave

There's no point spending on advertising if your product is not up to expectations, maybe they get there, take a look and walk on? Do you measure your hits? Try StatCounter Free invisible Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats


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## Riderz Ready

It still amazes me that with all the dicsussion of links, getting Facebook fans, web hits etc. that the same people do not do even the obvious - add their web/facebook page to their signature on the forum.


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## TortugaTees

First of all I am pretty sure the creator of this post was confused with Twitter, because I get followers and spammers all the time on Twitter trying to sell me fans or followers but I have never heard of such a thing on facebook. I think due to the graphic nature and openness of facebook, it appeals to our senses pretty profoundly through an open graphic interface and text threads. Our basic commonsense determines its appeal and that is why you don't see a lot of erroneous stuff on Facebook. Buying fans on facebook??? WTF, it is almost an oxymoron.


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## tlpe548b

Way to throw that marketing in there Tortuga.




> It still amazes me that with all the dicsussion of links, getting Facebook fans, web hits etc. that the same people do not do even the obvious - add their web/facebook page to their signature on the forum.


^ This is what i have to say, it's the easiest, and one of the most effective way to get traffic to your site, while creating relevant black links!


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## LisaCheesePizza

Ok so Google ads is telling i have gotten over 200 clicks...but then when i look at my webpage statistics, it says 16 clicks from Google!!! It doesnt make sence!! So either Google is charging me for fake clicks, or my server is no good, but everything else on the server works fine....

Also none of those clicks have led to sales, and i have to pay close to 300$ for those *clicks*

Anybody here with this problem???


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## Rodney

odil1372 said:


> They arent buying clicks they are buying keywords. Google sells keywords for around $200 a month depending on the keyword.


Are the CPM ads on Google search results or on their partner content pages about relevant topics (like the Wall Street Journal, etc)

I've never heard of CPM bidding for keywords on Google search results, but I may be out of the loop.

Some sites do have a better conversion ratio than 1%. I remember when I was promoting on of the top offensive t-shirt sellers through an affiliate program, the ratio from clicks on my link to sales on their site was always above 7%

For others that are just starting out with Adwords, a couple things to remember are: 1) you need to make sure your landing pages are specific and well done. Don't send them to your homepage. Send them to an add to cart page about a specific t-shirt that you're advertising. 2) You've gotta test, test, and test again to really get it working right with the right combination of keywords, landing page, and call to action text.


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## Rodney

> Ok so Google ads is telling i have gotten over 200 clicks...but then when i look at my webpage statistics, it says 16 clicks from Google


Are you also adverting on partner "content" pages? Those clicks might show from a different website referrer.

What are you using to track your webpage statistics? Analytics may help.


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## BE Imprinted

Do they say clicks or impressions? There is a difference. We advertise like crazy with google and have a very goo turn out. We do screen printing and just sell shirts though. I have gotten orders of 250 to 500 shirts like crazy from google. If I pay 2.50 on a PPC and i sell 250 shirts for 1200 in profit. It adds up. I spend 300 dollars a month on PPC. Try to set your keywords more local for example my key word is "Screen Printing Las Vegas'. Hope this helps!


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## LisaCheesePizza

OMG!! Ok I keep hearing all these success stories about google ads and facebook....I must be doing something wrong!! The web designer of my page told me, i only have 16 visits from google...yet my google account says i have over 200 clicks, that means 200 visits no? I know its not impressions, cuz ive had more than that impressions...i can tell the difference, i know that much!

There must be something wrong with my server. 
Either way, 200 visits or 16...im still not getting sales.

Maybe i need more discounts, or my prices are too high, or a better shipping fee...i dont know...

Ok ive only been in business for 3 weeks now...maybe its too soon....am I crazy? Is it really too soon to make a sale?


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## PositiveDave

three weeks is probably a little too short a timeframe to make decisions


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## tshirtnoob

Rodney said:


> Are you also adverting on partner "content" pages? Those clicks might show from a different website referrer.
> 
> What are you using to track your webpage statistics? Analytics may help.


As I pointed out earlier, this makes perfect sense because your profit margin in screen printing 200+ shirts easily covers the cost of the google advertising.

BUT, it absolutely does not cover the cost of selling a single shirt, its not even close.

The ROI just isnt there, even with a conversion rate of 7%, my simple math shows that you are losing money on every shirt, unless your typical sale on average is for several shirts at a time, which is not the case for most I think


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## tshirtnoob

Rodney said:


> I've never heard of CPM bidding for keywords on Google search results, but I may be out of the loop.
> 
> Some sites do have a better conversion ratio than 1%. I remember when I was promoting on of the top offensive t-shirt sellers through an affiliate program, the ratio from clicks on my link to sales on their site was always above 7%


At todays google ad prices you would have a negative ROI with a 7% conversion rates, thats the problem. CPM bidding is just like CPC bidding, but you are bidding $X for each 1000 impressions, instead of the actual clicks. It all ends up being about the same though.

I think the big tshirt companies are willing to eat the loss just to keep their name out there because they simply spend X% of their profits on marketing on google even though they have a negative ROI via google.



> For others that are just starting out with Adwords, a couple things to remember are: 1) you need to make sure your landing pages are specific and well done. Don't send them to your homepage. Send them to an add to cart page about a specific t-shirt that you're advertising. 2) You've gotta test, test, and test again to really get it working right with the right combination of keywords, landing page, and call to action text.


Did all of the above, im an advanced adwords user, have been using it for years.
I just finished running a CPC and a CPM campaign to see if there was much of a difference. There wasnt.

Even bidding on the cheapest keywords I could find, and placing on the cheapest websites I could find, which brings in a very low impressions volume, AND using ad's SO specifically targeted that ONLY people really interested in buying exactly XYZ will click on them, which leads them to a XYZ landing page, it still produced failure. We made the AD as specific as possible to keep the click through rate as low as possible. It was 0.05%, filtering everyone except perfectly targeted buyers. But the cost is just too damn high. 82 cents for a click. 

Even with the 7% conversion rate you have as an example earlier, 
100 clicks = $82 of advertising = 7 sales = $70 profit - $82 cost = $12 LOSS.

Cant even break even with google and the tail end of cheap keywords and cheap sites which bring no volume anyway.

If you bid high enough to get more than a mere 100 clicks a month, you would end up paying way over a $1 per click. The ROI is NEGATIVE with google for very small ticket items like a single tshirt.


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## Riderz Ready

tlpe548b said:


> Way to throw that marketing in there Tortuga.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^ This is what i have to say, it's the easiest, and one of the most effective way to get traffic to your site, while creating relevant black links!


 
You can lead Liasacheesepizza to water but you cannot make her drink. If one cannot do the very basic it is a complete waste of time and energy to suggest anything further.


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## Rodney

> Did all of the above, im an advanced adwords user, have been using it for years.


That's why I prefaced it with "for others that are just starting out"  To address those that may not be as advanced who are also reading this thread for Adwords tips.



> As I pointed out earlier, this makes perfect sense because your profit margin in screen printing 200+ shirts easily covers the cost of the google advertising.


Were you replying to me on this one? I don't screen print t-shirts. I'm a single t-shirt seller


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## tshirtnoob

I think someone else mentioned doing well with google ad's because they got shirt printing orders in batches of 250 or whatever.

So do you basically agree then, that for people selling one shirt at a time, google adwords is going to be extraordinarily difficult to make work?


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## tlpe548b

To the OP, can you please put your website in your signature? 

Second, almost any seo expert will tell you that adwords are a complete waste of money, so congrats on figuring this out. But it is fairly common knowledge if you spend any time working on seo, or pay someone to do it.

There is always an exception, adwords can work well if you have a "niche" product or one that is very likely to convert to sales. This boils down to knowing your democratic well, and how to target them. 

Let me give you an example, i have a call of duty shirt that i sell, and a Pokemon shirt. Each one is extremely well received among their respective fans, and coverts to a sale about a third of the time. I can go to a call of duty tournament and sell at least 20 shirts, if there is at least 50 people there. This is a very specific targeting on my part. This is similar to people selling football shirts outside of a football stadium on game day, they sell a lot. 

You are trying to recreate that environment on the internet, which is extremely hard. Now do i sell tons of call of duty shirts off my site, no, i sell more in person (my site has not been up that long either). But if i made a site dedicated to call of duty shirts and only target call of duty fans then i would have a fairly high conversion rate.

There are people that will say, "that's an awesome shirt" and there are people that will say "that's an awesome shirt, i have to have it, how much?" Your job is to target the buyers, and to do that you have to have a product that is special or niche enough to convert. But on average that same product will not sell well at all unless it receives it's special marketing, like taking it to a call of duty tournament, or release party.

I really hope did a good job explain my point, i am not saying you are doing a bad job on your ad words, simply that your campaigns and your products don't mesh well together, which is why Google makes a fortune. But to those out there that spend the time to create that "game day" environment it CAN be very rewarding. But 98% of the time it's a waste of money. If you hire an seo firm ad words is the LAST thing they will do, after reworking your site, your blog, your domains, your back links, and countless other things that go into seo. By this point you probably don't need ad words because your on the first page of Google anyway. I've seen 4 well made back links beat out 150.

Getting ranked locally is extremely easy, if your not in the top 3 websites locally, you need to learn the art of seo. But it's hard for any of us to give you information that MAY help you, since you have given us 0 info about your site, how your trying to market, what products you sell, etc.


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## tshirtnoob

This thread is about adwords for tshirts, not SEO.
I know seo very well and have done professional consulting in that domain.
My SEO work is not complete yet, and I dont need help in that area.
I own several websites that have the #1 spot on google for the #1 term, so thats not an issue for me.

I was simply sharing the fact that google adwords is pretty much not workable for things with a profit margin below $10, its just too expensive and was checking my results with others that have tried. 

SEO will obviously be 1000X more effective than any google ad campaign for my business, and that is in currently in progress. 

I prefer to stay incognito as far as the website.


Thanks for the feedback, makes perfect sense.


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## tlpe548b

Sorry i may have misunderstood your posts, it sounded to me like you wanted help converting sales, which is why i brought up seo.

But yes i agree adwords are a waste of money, especially with t-shirts, there is so much "competition" that the prices are absurd.

I think it totally depends on the product, if you were selling "orange hair dye" and making $5 off of it, it's probably doable. Since there is probably little competition for "orange hair dye", and someone searching for it is likely to convert. So paying .01c per click means your break even point is 1 sale out of 500, and it's likely to convert much higher then that. 

Anything "shirt" related is SO unspecific to any given "buyer" it's like the lottery. It's a crazy marriage between statistics and logistics.


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## LisaCheesePizza

Love your post about SEO,
My site is very new, so i havnt worked much on that yet, but im on it now...also, i cut Google off for good!!


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## WikiThreads

Lisa, Not sure and I'm far from the expert. BUT, are you sure this is apples to apples? Is Google CPC telling you clicks while the web site indicator is telling you conversions? Could that be the issue?


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## LisaCheesePizza

NAh, google is telling me clicks, one click leads directly to my website. My website stats is telling me how many visits...if i have 200 clicks from google ads, i should have 200 visits in my stats....but thats not the case...so somewhere something isnt right. But im sure its not conversions.


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## tager01

I did used Google adwords and my conclusion is waste of time and money.


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## PositiveDave

If you are relying on an online tracker like statcounter, it will not count browsers with Javascript disabled.
Google is counting clicks on your ads, your counter will be counting download events. If your website is unavailable for any reason or the clicker hits another link before the page is downloaded then the visit will not happen.
I use Google Adwords and although it is less important to me now, when I started up I calculated that I earned 50p for every 1p that I spent. Niche markets, cheap keywords.
The nice thing about online advertising is that you can monitor it, if it doesn't work you can cancel or change it, something that wasn't possible with traditional ads.


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## gruntstyle

I agree with having a niche in the market helps a lot. We sell one shirt at a time but serve the military and patriotic community. This niche helps us to convert sales. We actually about break even on the first sale, but know that 70% of our customers return, this is where we make our profit, on the back end sales. 

Also, for Facebook, I read an article a while back saying that advertising to your facebook page is much more effective (4 times more) than just sending them to your website. 

I am also guilty of sending google-adwords ads to my homepage instead of a specific link. I should change it.


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## dottavig

nice site Daniel i like it! I'm in the works of making a site for military (Air Force specifically to start) where people can get apparel with there squadron and units logos, really niche stuff that Adwords and FB ads are gonna work great.


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## TeeBug

quite frankly, I stay away from adwords... The targeted demographics offered by facebook (and lack of any "Facebook slaps") makes that avenue way more attractive.


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## Basikboy

Can anyone confirm "buying" keywords? I have yet to hear about Google offering this. Thanks!


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## LisaCheesePizza

Hey guys,
I just want to say that i tried advertising with google ads in two separate occasions, and both turned out to be really bad. I spent in total 700$ in a 2 months period of time on ads, and i have gotten zero sales from it!!

So what i did was make a nice package of my products and sent them to magazine editors and they loved it and wrote articles about my brand. 

So my advise to you is, look up the mags where u want to be, check out their web site and look for the editors and send them your products, or a introduction letter or both. 

Offer their readers coupons, gift certificates, rebates or even offer to partner with them for a contest...this is way more affordable and a lot more successful and profitable.

It doesnt have to be magazines, it can be blogs or forums. If you contact a blogger that gets loads of traffic, you wanna drive that traffic to u, so offer this blogger something in return for putting up a banner ad or writting a article about you...

Hope this helps guys 
Dont give up, 

peace


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## pbk!

Sounds like a great plan! Have you noticed a boost in sales?


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## LisaCheesePizza

I dont know if the last post was directed at me, but just in case you were wondering...yes, the sales came instantly. The article was published on thursday and i was getting orders the next day and more came on the weekend, im still getting them, so this is a good way to go


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## Basikboy

Yes, this is a good way to go. Especially if the site doing the review has a Page Rank of 3 or higher.


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## Basikboy

On a side note, anyone else noticed the ads that are popping up on blogs, forums, etc. that read "adchoices" on the very tops or bottoms of the banners? Is this Google? Seems to be targeted as T-Shirt sites always come up when I see them.


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## ReggieTees

In my experience, Adwords is a big waste of money if you're a small time operation. Alternate forms of advertising are almost always a better bet financially.


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## RheathaF

I tend to agree that without a large profit margin, the CPC model tends to make more money for Google, than it does for the small vendor. It's probably just best to think of it as dollars spent to give your company more of a web presence.


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## gruntstyle

Adwords is fine but you have to understand your market and niche. If you dont make it as narrow as possible you will loose your shirt. We currently brake even on our worst month with adwords.


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## TeeShirtPalace

Google adwords is a tough cookie to conquer it only seems to work during the busy times of the year when your conversion rates are higher such as Christmas or any holidays. Check out our website Funny T-Shirts, Unique Gifts, Geek Apparel, & Personalize T Shirts.


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## Corpus10

I just started using adwords and I am not getting any conversions either. According to Google all I need to do is increase my budget. But it doesn't appear to be worth it.


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## decipherdev

Google ads is incredible hard to repay what it costs. especially in a competitive market like selling t shirts, because every man and his dog are doing it unfortunately. I'm a supplier and it's even hard for me to compete on a B2B level.


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