# How many Adwords clicks does it take you to make a sale?



## JustinDavid86 (Nov 11, 2009)

On average, obviously.

I started just the other day. The first day I had 1 click with a budget of $5.00. I upped it to $25 today and had 16 clicks. No sales yet. Is that normal?

I'm obviously a rookie with all of this, and really just trying to figure out what it all means. I have $100 credit, so I have room to play before I need to make sales with it.

I only have one ad. Should I make more?


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## offensivefun (Nov 1, 2009)

First of all you need to chose your keywords carefully. Some of them are cheaper, some ar expensive. Search-based keyword tool is a powerfull tool that can help you chose the right keywords based on volume of searches and ppc of each one.

It is normal not to sell anything with only 16 clicks, it's possible not to sell anything with 50 clicks too. You need to chose keywords to the topic of your website, long tail keywords would do best. 

Sorry for my bad english.


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## JustinDavid86 (Nov 11, 2009)

Your English is fine! Better than most from America! lol.

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate it. 29 clicks today, no purchases. I just worry about spending too much than a sale is worth, you know?


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## in2infinity (Dec 8, 2009)

Justin,

Sales are a function of exposure. There are impulse buys .. people click, see your stuff and buy right away. After many years of doing this, I think thats can be a small percentage. When we see a surge in PPC to our CD site, we see a surge in sales about 2 weeks later. People visit, browse, bookmark, tell friends, come back and maybe eventually buy. T-shirts are probably a little different then CDs though.

Keep in mind you are looking for return on investment which can be very hard to track. If you say, I spent $200 on Google and got one clickthrough that led to a sale for a $20.00 shirt then it sounds like you lost out big time. But suppose that customer then posts on a message board somewhere three months later about your great product and that leads to 200 sales. Now you've made out and you didn't even know it. This has happened to me and it shows the power of what you're really doing here. Point is ... you need to get the word out and over time traffic will build .. as the traffic builds so will sales - and thats what you're really paying for. There are other ways to build traffic too so don't put all your eggs in Google's basket. I agree completely with the above posters that you have to pick your keywords carefully. You only want visitors that you essentially pre-qualify with specific terms. 

Additionally, you should have a comprehensive plan to build traffic. Executed properly, such a plan will give you better organic search placement and will allow you to adjust your pay per click budget accordingly.


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## JustinDavid86 (Nov 11, 2009)

That's a breath of fresh air - thank you. I'm thinking to myself... I have $100 free in Adwords, and I'm spending about $20 a day. Once that runs out I won't be able to afford keeping up that rate, but I guess it's worth the exposure.

I had 40 clicks yesterday and 2 hours into today it's at 10 already. I'm at about 1.5% click through. My niche is indie clothing with inspiring messages, whether that be music, eco-friendly, etc. I'm just hoping my keywords aren't getting me clicks that are pointless. And I'm just hoping this pays off in the future.

Thanks, again!


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## Dennis Graves (Apr 27, 2009)

What was your normal "sales to visitors" ratio before Adwords?

If you were selling 2 shirts for every 100 visitors before adwords then I would think you might get a little higher conversion with adwords since the traffic should be more targeted.

But I completely agree with the comments above, it all depends on the keywords you are bidding on the ad you are using. The common belief in advertising is to always have 2 ads running and find a way to compare the results of each one. After you get enough data, cancel the lower performing ad and write a new one to put against the winning ad and start over again. Keep going until you get one ad that converts really well, and then keep testing other ads against that one.

This is just my personal opinion: You want to give a person a reason NOT to click on your ad. With adwords you pay for EVERY click, and obviously not every click is going to buy. Try to determine why people click on your ad, but don't buy anything. What information was on your site that stopped them from buying? Was it the price? Color of shirts? I have the Brother GT-541, and I can't print on black shirts. I used to get a lot of clicks, then a lot of emails asking if I can print on black shirts. So to stop paying for those clicks I add "White Shirts Only" in my ads. This stops a lot of the visitors that are looking for black shirts from clicking on my ads and costing me money.

Your mileage may vary,

Dennis Graves


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## JustinDavid86 (Nov 11, 2009)

Very informative, thank you. I'm learning as I go along here.

We just opened our "doors" on the 19th. So there is no trend and no other way to track, really. It's been mostly friends and family. This is really our first advertising experience.

Today, thus far, I'm at 35 clicks (and it's 11 am). I'm sure I'll go way over 50 or 60 for the day, possibly 70 or 80. I'm at a few over 90 clicks in the 4 days that I've been doing it and have no purchases - however, I'm only paying an average of $.25 to $.35 per click and I'm in the number one position for on of my (popular) keywords. However, I'm not 100% sure if it's the _best_ keyword. Everything else that we've thought of might be less vague, or when used the estimator for has given back nearly 0 results. No searches either. I don't want pointless clicks, but I feel like it's the category we want to be in.


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## bikerxl (Jul 1, 2009)

Dennis Graves said:


> What was your normal "sales to visitors" ratio before Adwords?
> 
> If you were selling 2 shirts for every 100 visitors before adwords then I would think you might get a little higher conversion with adwords since the traffic should be more targeted.
> 
> ...


It is very important that you use the different match types for the keywords you use.

[heat press vinyl] = exact match, your add will only show for exact search queries that match your key word.

"heat press vinyl" = phrase match, any search that has these words in it will trigger your ad.

heat press vinyl = broad mach your ad will be trigger for any search that is remotely similar to your key word.

You can use all match types on the same keyword in the same ad group, usually you bid higher for the exact match, since it's more likely the searcher is looking for what you offer.

Keep your adgroups relevant, the ad has to match the key words that trigger the ad. in general don't use more than 18-20 keywords per adgroup.


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## Dennis Graves (Apr 27, 2009)

Actually, 35 cents per click is more expensive than it sounds.

That means 100 visitors will cost you $35. If only 1 of them buy you need to make a profit of over $35 on that purchase. If 2 of them buy you need to make over $17.50 profit per sale. Even a 3% purchase rate (which is pretty high) would cost almost $13.00 per sale.

You can see that if your item is under $25 there is not much room left for product cost, PayPal/Merchant fees and all the other little costs that come up.

You might be selling a $100 package so you don't have to worry about this, if you are selling single shirts it's a lot tougher.

But since you are working on your $100 free Adwords coupon this doesn't really matter anyway, just something to think about in the future.

Good Luck,

Dennis Graves


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## JustinDavid86 (Nov 11, 2009)

That makes perfect sense, thanks. If I lower my bid now, will it drop me from first? I'm sure it would.


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## Dennis Graves (Apr 27, 2009)

This might be a little beyond the scope of this forum, but it might not drop you from first. It all depends on how good your ad is.

Google is only there to make money for Google. If your bid is only 15 cents, but you get 3x more clicks than somebody bidding 35 cents, your ad will probably be in position 1 because Google will make more money showing your ad to 100 people.

You just need to write an ad that gets a lot of clicks. But then you have to keep in mind that it has to draw targeted traffic.

It's all part of the Adwords game, and there are a lot of $197 courses that will try to teach it to you.

Also, just because you are bidding 35 cents doesn't mean they are charging you 35 cents. They may charge you less if you are getting a good amount of clicks. I was bidding 12 cents for 1 keyword and ad and I was only getting charged 7 cents per click.

This whole post is just my opinion based on what I have read and my personal experiences with Adwords.

Dennis Graves


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## Steph (Jan 26, 2008)

I agree with the above posters; you really need to determine which keywords/phrases are going to get you appropriate clicks. While you may have to bid high to even show up for a term like "funny shirts" or even "indie shirts", you might not have any competition at all using a very specific phrase (like if you had a shirt about monkeys, [funny yellow monkey shirt]. The person specifically searching for a funny yellow monkey shirt is very likely to not only click through, but also convert.

The closer you can 'exact match' what a buyer is looking for, the higher your conversions!

We learned this a very hard way during Halloween last year (not for a shirt site, but for costumes). We set up an ad for Halloween Costumes and blew through our $200/day budget in 10 minutes, with not a single conversion. When we switched to "plus sized nurse halloween costume" (just an example) our clicks went way down, but so did our costs, and our conversions were much much higher because we didn't have every looky loo on the internet clicking.


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## SHIROINEKO (Mar 31, 2010)

Adword is good when you have chosen one good keyword.


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