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Advertising1 min read

My first $10,000 spent on Google Ads: what I learned

Google is more stable than Yandex, fraud is everywhere, and US ads don't cost a fortune. Four takeaways after my first $10,000 in ad spend.

My first $10,000 spent on Google Ads: what I learned

It's been a while since my last work update. This year I spent my first $10,000+ on Google Ads across client projects, and I'm thrilled: it's all new to me.

Four out of five accounts got off to a good start, but a photographer's website in New York is still expensive. Yes, a $10 search click in New York is real. I'm not sure yet how to make it profitable, but I'm working on it.

My takeaways

  1. Google is hard to learn at first. Three tools at once: Tag Manager, Analytics and Ads. But the analytics possibilities are out of this world.
  2. Google is more stable than Yandex. Steady, precise, predictable. In six months not a single campaign just stopped working after some update. Around holidays the cost per lead jumped about 1.5x, but by the end of the month it settled on its own.
  3. Fraud is everywhere, in Yandex and in Google. You can't get rid of it completely. More complex enquiry forms and properly configured conversions help.
  4. "Advertising in the US costs a fortune" is a myth. Even with $500-1,000 a month you can run a solid campaign.

Next I plan to master YouTube: it's potentially a very powerful traffic source. Once I have more experience and case studies, I may run a short workshop.

Happy to answer any questions about advertising websites on Google.

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318+ form leads, 305 phone clicks and 24,000 visits in one season. What worked, what didn't, and how I kept lead quality in check.

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