My Servers Got Overloaded?
I have been working on a mini series for Momscashblog about 2 different friends who are making money on-line or rather on the internet. It involves two different posts/stories on how they are making “money by using the internet”. We are all use to hearing or writing about how to make money online and although there is nothing new here, I thought of these friends and how they “used the internet to make money” and how any of us could do the same.
Before I publish Part 1 of my mini series, I felt that I had to write this post when unforeseen circumstances came to my attention. I’ve found myself dealing with these circumstances and knew that I had to vent and bring this new issue out in the open.
My Servers Got Overloaded?
In the last few months I’ve received 2 separate invitations from “The Adword team” that came in February as a Valentine card with a $100 redeemable coupon to put an ad up on Google Adwords. The card came to my home address via snail mail, a red card with a white heart on the front saying “$100 free Google Adwords(tm) offer for Adsense customers – Redeem your coupon code at www.google.com/ads/overload.” Then you are provided with a code that you enter after you have created your ad. At the end of the card was a “special” greeting “Happy Valentine’s Day. xoxo The Adwords team.” (Sweet isn’t it?)
It would be very sweet to use the $100. and put an ad up on Google, are you kidding me who wouldn’t enjoy getting an ad up for nothing? Especially right now with times being hard and some of us are noticing low traffic rates. But there are a lot of problems that have been happening with this Google Adword campaign as I was soon to find out. When you do get to the Adword page and start to put your ads together which isn’t an easy feat in itself. One has to think about what you want to say on your ad then there is the matter of what words are you going to use, remember some words are worth a lot and your ad price could go way up if people click on them leaving you paying a big ol’ bill to Google. Of course this all depends on what your budget is, if you are planning on using the $100 free coupon and maybe are willing to put in an extra one hundred dollars then you should pick your words with some trepidation. If you have a large budget along with the free coupon then you can really make your ad with the best keywords that you want to use.
Getting through most of the information that is required to be filled out will take most people maybe an hour. I suppose if you’ve put an ad on Google before you could skip right through this. At this point you are required to enter the redeemable code that Google had provided you with, it was at this point in the form that after I entered my “code” I get this pink warning strip across the top of the page, telling me “only one per customer”. I repeated this step at least 3 more times, before my blood pressure started to rise, and then I was saying words that I didn’t think I had in me. After stepping away from the computer for about a half hour I came back to it and tried the whole process again. I received the message again and that’s when I knew that I needed help. I’ve a friend that helps me out now and then with technical things and photoshop when needed, so I decided that maybe she would help me out. She and I worked on this again for another hour and finally we both gave up! I had had it with Google for the day. Later that night I checked out the forums that had to do with Google Adwords, and this is where I found out that I was NOT the only one having problems using this redeemable coupon.
I went back to the Adword site and looked at some of the forums and that is where I found many people having the same problem that I was having, with the message: “only one per customer.” There were even several different comments/complaints on whether or not this was a scam on behalf of Google. Some mentioned that they hoped they wouldn’t get a virus from using these coupons. I’m not convinced that I would go that far “conspiracy theories?” I think not. I do however question why so many people received this coupon to redeem at $100 and it seemed that not many people were able to get the coupon to work for them. Every single person on the support forum had complaints about how they really could of used the coupon, to give their business a boost. There were a lot of complaints about when they did try to enter the redeemable coupon their page would turn to either French, or Spanish and they obviously didn’t want that particular language & were asking how to get back to English. After reading that this was happening to other customers of Googles it made me feel a little bit better that it wasn’t just me. It does make one wonder why this is happening with Google’s Adwords ™ offer, it seems like a waste of money on their behalf and then for all of us who have been getting these coupons it’s one heck of pain in the neck and not only that it takes time away from something else that we could be doing.
I guess the reason for this post was not only to vent and to put Google on notice (let’s hope that Google won’t penalize me for this post) that there’s a lot of bloggers out here who could use that extra traffic and that they are giving us false hope by sending these coupons out. Then there is also the hope that maybe other people that have received these Valentine cards from Google might let us know if they got their coupon code to work for them. If you didn’t you can come here to vent and if you did get yours to work please tell us how.
So with the deadline of March 31, 2010 has come and gone and I was unable to get an ad up on Google for Momscashblog I’m wondering how many more coupon cards I will receive from them. As their card said,”Others will fill your heart this Valentine’s Day. We want to overload your servers.” Well my servers didn’t get overloaded and I never got an ad up on Google. Have you?
Comments
Hi JJ
Good to see your site back up and running. I also received one of these Google Adwords $100 vouchers here in Australia. I was going to use it for my new genealogy blog but I never got round to using them.
I suppose this time the tortoise wins… lol
Thanks Steve for stopping by,it’s good to be back and running. I wish you had tried using your voucher/coupon I’d like to have known if you got yours to work. You probably would have…you’re the man! Love your new genealogy blog btw. Hey everyone- you must check out this guys blog! Good stuff. Thanks again for stopping by and leaving a comment Steve. jj
Hi JJ!
Its a clever way for Google to get bloggers(etc) to think about using Adwords, or its that perhaps it was the wrong date to send them out. It should had been sent out in time for April Fools
Hey Laura, LOL That’s exactly when it should of been sent out! You’re onto something there. I wonder have you ever or recently received any coupons from Google Adwords, especially where you have a retail e-store I’m wondering if they (google) are singling out business’s to put up an ad?
Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving a comment,I always look forward to your words of wisdom. jj
Hi JJ,
I actually have a similar experience. After I received an email with the coupon code, I started the process of creating an ad. However, after some calculation $100 will translate to < 100 visitors, I decided to put it on hold. Guess that turns out to be a good decision.
Hi Plin, Glad to see you back here and I think you are right, it could of been a very good thing for you. But I wonder had you ever thought of putting up an ad in Adwords? It does cost money especially without the coupon, but I wonder how many would put up an ad in the first place. You mention that $100 will translate to 100 visitors… do you feel that the 100 visitors is not worth it or what are you insinuating? Would love to know your thoughts on this. Thanks so much for coming back to my blog and leaving a comment always enjoy your insights. Thanks again Plin, jj
When you use adwords you are essentially bidding for advertising keywords. The 100 unique visitors is based on an assumption that you will bid $1 keyword. One issue I see is that the money will be exhausted rapidly unless you are selling a service/product where immediate traffic conversion translates into revenue.
Personally, I enjoy blog networks such as Entrecard, CMFAds or Adgitize. They provide a decent number of visitors at a much cheaper cost. Although the visitors might not as relevant, the number of visitors and the advertising cost makes them a much more viable option.
Hey Plin, Thanks for coming back and giving me/us your thoughts, arguments and perspective. I truly enjoy the feedback . As I had mentioned in my post I was treading lightly picking out words that didn’t cost an arm & a leg. You are so right when you say that the money will be exhausted quickly, in fact that was one issue that came up in several of the forums. Many people had been hit with bills that exceeded the $100 of course and some were even shocked at this,the ones that were able to get an ad up that is. Thanks for giving your view, always good to hear what others think. jj
I used Adwords years ago when I put up my first website. It was the only way I knew to advertise at the time. Since then, with all the other ad networks I use, I kinda forgot about good old Adwords. Might be a good time to get back on that train. With all that I know about SEO now, I could probably put up much better ads than I used to, and it would be more worth it!
I got free RM100 from Adwords too. But still don’t know how to spend it. Which keyword should I target since I already got most of the traffic from search engine?
Hi FitnessDiva, Thanks for your comment regarding putting an ad up on Google, yes I agree with you knowing what we know about SEO it would be easier now to put a good ad up on Google Adwords. The problem is the redeemable coupons that they are sending out are NOT working for all of the people. Some of us are getting strange commands like “only one per customer” or “you have entered the wrong code”, when we are doing everything that they are telling us to do according to their coupon. I love your blog/website and am very glad that you have taken the time to visit and comment over here at momscashblog. I appreciate your visit. Can you make me a “fitness diva”? Now that’s a challenge. lol jj
We got one of those at work, too, but we’ve never used Google adwords so I didn’t know how much that sort of thing cost in the first place. I started to do some research but then got sidetracked and never got back to it. It’s still something I’ll be looking into (while waiting for the next coupon?)to see if it would be worth the investment.
Hi Lili, Thanks so much for visiting my blog AND leaving a comment it is greatly appreciated. Isn’t it fun being on the internet trying to do research and you get sidetracked? I can’t count the number of times this has happened to me, such is life on the internet. You mentioned that you received a Google coupon? If you have, it would tell you what the coupon is worth say maybe $100.00 then you are encouraged or rather it would only make sense to add to your ad campaign. The problem is that it doesn’t seem to be working for everyone that is receiving these coupons in the mail. But please come back and let me know how it worked out for you, would love to hear anything you can report back to momscashblog regarding your Google Adword Redeemable Coupon experience. Just visited your new blog, and I think you have a hit there. Thanks again for coming over and please return anytime. jj
Me too received $100 Adwords Voucher. But i have already an account, so no use of that. Really i am sad about it.
I actually got one of these too. It wasn’t a Valentine’s Day card but it just came in the mail with a brochure about AdWords and a coupon code. The address on it was http://www.google.com/ads/offer and the code worked when I tried it. I disagree with the person who said it translates to less than 100 visitors – it really depends on the keywords you’re targeting. The minimum bid is something like 10 cents, so you could actually get closer to 1000 visitors if you go for non-competitive keywords. Either way, it’s worth it since it’s basically free.
@Josh, thanks so much for your input and I’m so glad that you had good results with your coupon. Did you actually get 1000 visitors from your ads? Maybe the next time if I get another coupon, I’ll get some help from you. lol Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and leaving a comment I really do appreciate it and hope to see you back here again, and like to hear your point of views.
Hi JJ! First, thanks for the visit over at OIMS
And, the url I used with my name (above) this time will take you to an expert’s opinion and usage of google adwords. In a nutshell though, and this guy knows of what he speaks, $500 seems to be the magic “starting number” when delving into adwords. A large bank account, the willingness to do a ton of homework ahead of time, and re-investing any profits over and over until you are solidly in the black and can afford to pull out any profits (leaving most of it to continue work for you) is the short version. However, the average person or novice, in my opinion, should steer clear until they are fully educated on how exactly to use google adwords correctly.
@Diane: thanks so much for your comment on “My Servers Got Overloaded?”, I looked into the site you sent along with comment. I thank you for the site that has tons of information that can only be considered a “gold mine” regarding PPC. I would like to know/or really learn more about this site. Thanks again for the info. I really appreciate it and intend on using the information to the good. Please come back again,jj
JJ, to respond to your question, no I didn’t actually get that many clicks but that’s because the keywords I was bidding on cost me about $1.30/click. It all depends on your niche/business and the competitiveness of the keywords you want to bid on. I know that for some keywords you can only get 2 clicks for $100, while for others you could get a few hundred.
Hm, I got my coupon last week and just put it on the back burner of my to-do list (probably never to be seen again, if I know myself). The best thing about Adwords is the keyword finder anyway. Lol.
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