Google Ads are a waste of money

I have tried Google Ads a number of times with absolutely zero sales. Granted I didn’t pour thousands and thousands of dollars into it, but I did spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars - again, with ZERO SALES! Why would I want to waste thousands of dollars just to lose it all and get nothing in return? Who can afford to do that???

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Hello Nobudgetleft, great question and sorry to hear you have wasted your investment.

Advertising is very difficult, and this is for everyone, there is no magic wand. So what you need to do depends on what you are selling.

For example if you are selling branded products, then setting up an advanced standard shopping campaign is a great start, have a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRIDzRrHno

You could also use this campaign if you are selling generic products, so you have more control, but it’s a lot of work to maintain this.

I recommend to also improve your data feed quality, as this will increase your ranking and lower your CPC, follow the requirements and recommendations here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112

It’s also very important what you sell. For example if you are selling something where thousands of other merchants are selling the same exact thing, then think about it logically. The first page has x amount of products that can be listed. If you have thousands of merchants, all competing for the first page, that is impossible to have all thousands of merchants to get listed. There is only space for so many.

Thanks for the reply and the tips. I’ll check those out. Part of the
reason Google Ads have been a waste of money for me is, although I’m not a
stupid person, I’m not an IT expert either. A lot of the analytics and
other features/tools are simply too hard to follow or make use of. Hiring
someone to do it for me is also not feasible when you have no sales yet,
thus no money to work with.

Your last point about all the competition online these days is the main
reason why Google Ads are a waste of money for most of us “little guys”. It
seems like you have to have a huge advertising budget to have any chance of
competing for the best keywords with the big dogs. Until Google makes it
fair for all budgets, I won’t waste another penny.

It’s indeed horible, the costs for Google shopping 15 years ago, was so cheap. Now you have to pay a lot.

I recommend you focus on organic side of things, but please note, this is a lot of hard work, and it take 2 years of effort to get any traction.

So that in itself is also costly.

I hope you succeed in the future.