For those thinking of using adwords, read this.

[Ascendant78]

I had heard very mixed reviews on using Google's adwords for personal training. After looking into it and having Google offer me $100 credit to start out, I figured I may as well take advantage of it. After using up almost all of the $100 credit on ads, I have realized it is 100% pointless, at least in my area.

For starters, the keywords are EXTREMELY pricey. You will find yourself having to pay upwards of $3.50-5 for some of the top keywords for personal training, boot camps, etc. My average for the keywords I am using is $3.80 currently. Yes, you are paying almost $4 on average just to have someone click on a link to your page! The sad thing is, despite having about 20 clicks on my ads, not one single person who has contacted me found me through adwords. So if I actually paid, that would've been $100 wasted. Also, those 20 clicks haven't done anything for helping me top local searches on my website. You just don't get enough volume to have any real impact.

Secondly, there is the issue of competitors clicking your pages just to eat up your investment and eliminate you from their competition. I found out through a friend recently that one particular nationwide corporation actually has a specific department in many of their regional administrative offices where they have staff who spend hours clicking on other ads just to burn them through their daily spending and to keep their own add topped off at cheaper prices. They bid very high to up your cost, and then burn you out, lowering their own costs on actual customers clicking their ads. It's extremely underhanded, but Google currently has no way to safeguard against this. Though multiple rapid clicks will not count multiple times, they could click on your ad once every minute or so until you use up your daily allotment. This is a huge design flaw currently with adwords.

To fill you in on some additional information, the median household income in my current location is just under $40k/year, so it's not that impressive. Also, before you ask, I have over a decade of experience in the industry, but I have moved recently, and want to focus on freelance work as opposed to the personal training and management positions I have held in health clubs in the past. Anyway, just wanted to put my personal situation in perspective for all those considering trying to use adwords to help their website out. Maybe in a higher income area, you'd have better luck. For an area like mine, however, you'd be far better off investing your time and money into other ways to promote. Hoping I can save others from wasting their time through my own personal experience.

[Nate R.]

yup that's why you gotta rank your site organically, adwords is tricky

[itsagoodday]

The sad thing is, despite having about 20 clicks on my ads, not one single person who has contacted me found me through adwords.

It's not unusual for a good conversion rate (click through to sale) on AdWords to be around 2%, and that assumes you're running a tight ship with your keywords and campaign. That's a general figure though, I don't know about the PT industry specifically. But really, I wouldn't have expected 20 clicks to get you much of anything. With 100 or 1000 clicks you might have seen some results. But at what cost? That is indeed the tricky bit.

[ankitasharma]

Hey!
Nyc share!
Before using adword you can get adword training from moreclicks.in they provide adword training and many other web services

[bigballin6161]

yup that's why you gotta rank your site organically, adwords is tricky

SEO is pretty tricky nowadays too. Try using FB ads. In rank pretty high and get about 300 clicks a month orgainically and the conversion is still really bad. Cant see adwords as a viable way for trainers, but I could be wrong.

[Phil_Jr]

Completely agree. I got a few free $100 cards from adwords and was not impressed.

Here's what I did, some of you may want to do this also:

- get an account at needanarticle.com
- contact one of their writers about doing some SEO work (I used Macbeth I believe)
- let them do their thing
- watch your page shoot to the top of the first page of google

I paid them about $200 and they re-wrote a lot of my website to really SEO it. I'm consistently in the #2 position on Google. Hope this helps

[bigballin6161]

Completely agree. I got a few free $100 cards from adwords and was not impressed.

Here's what I did, some of you may want to do this also:

- get an account at needanarticle.com
- contact one of their writers about doing some SEO work (I used Macbeth I believe)
- let them do their thing
- watch your page shoot to the top of the first page of google

I paid them about $200 and they re-wrote a lot of my website to really SEO it. I'm consistently in the #2 position on Google. Hope this helps

If only it were this easy. Your competition must be very low if you can rank well like this. But on the flip side Google is becoming more eratic with their rankings of late. Either way good for you, nothing like like ranking in the top spots for sure. Top 3 is where its at. Most of my business came from when I was #1 for various keywords because people assume the top position is the best.