Advertising On Google Adwords

This is the second in a very occasional series that follows my experiences of advertising my books on various web platforms. The first, Advertising on Goodreads can be found somewhere else in the blog.

The reasons why I was drawn toward advertising my novels on Google, were, errr, it's Google. Everyone knows it. Plus, if I spent something like 30 quid in the first month, I'd get 75 quid of free advertising. That's, like, 75 quid of free advertising.

The writing of the ads was a bit of a challenge, and that's saying something, seeing as I do the writing of ads for a living. The word count is strict, and it's on a line by line basis. You basically get three lines to work with, one's your title, the other two explanation, and there's a final fourth one that's your link.

There's never enough room to say what you want to say. But the big question is do they work? Well, Google likes a stat and they can give you plenty. Like how many times your ad is clicked.  But crucially a clicked ad does not equal a sale. And despite attracting plenty of clicks which is what you pay for, I've not experienced much of a spike in sales since I kicked off my various campaigns.

But, if Google is still doing some kind of introductory deal like the one I experienced, then it's got to be worth it as some kind of advertising is always better than no kind of advertising.

Just don't expect amazing results. As I said in my last advertising related post, ads on the Internet are not very effective, whether you're an unknown writer or an unbelievably huge and wealthy multi-national.