This blog is obviously geared to those interested in taking out an ad with Google and attempting to direct traffic to your website. Otherwise...just skip this blog. OH WAIT...like ALL MY OTHER BLOGS! I know noone is reading this...but hey...that's how I'm used to writing...For myself. If you have happened to stumble upon my prose/narrative...then feel free to tag-along.

I have spent quite a bit of money in trying to disseminate word about my novel. Many, have been more costly and a complete waste with no results at all.

One of the more "cost effective" ways is to utilize Googe AdWords. Like Facebook ads, they claim you can set a maximum budget per day and you won't exceed that. Well, I will be the first to say, as I have researched all of my advertising extensively before entering my credit card number, that this is complete BULLSHIT! Nowhere else have I read consumers saying...they go over budget. So I'll go ahead and tell you. It's true. You will go over budget somehow. How does that happen? I have no idea. I can't get an answer from Google. I will say FB is pretty good to holding to the budget you set.

I have Google Analytics linked to my site. So I saw I was getting a lot of traffic to my stie and seemed to be charged appropriately, however, I just wasn't getting any sales. So, yeah, I had ZERO conversion. I ran my ads at different times, and again it seemed I was getting traffic, but not even ONE sale. That seemed to be odd. Well, I guess my novel just sounds unappealing. SO NO SALES. In the meantime, it's costing me money.

So fast forward a few months, and I start to delve more into analytics and discover where you can find out the source of these "hits" and I discover GHOST SPAM. Okay...I still don't quite get it, but essentially these are not true hits to your website. Now, there are plenty of articles on the web about this crazy GHOST SPAM and how to filter it out of your Analytics, and that ultimately it does no harm to your site, but just messes up your Analytics i.e. makes it appear you are getting more traffic to your site than you really are.

I HAD A TON! Well, okay fine. Again fast forward, because of these articles I have been able to filter this GHOST SPAM out of my Analytics, so now I can see I really have practically zero traffic to my site (remember no one is reading this). So now, here's a MAJOR issue:

AM I BEING CHARGED BY GOOGLE ADWORDS FOR THESE GHOST CLICKS?

I can't find the answer anywhere. At the moment I have directly asked them (and I'm expecting an ambigious answer). I will let you know as soon (if ever) I get a response.

So yeah, I can now filter out GHOST SPAM on my end of Analytics, but does that mean GOOGLE will in turn filter them out from "ghost clicks." i.e...NOT CHARGE ME!

From what I spent on ADWORDS as it is, I definitley have to say that I was being charged for them, but I do not know if that means now that I have my filters in place if I will STILL get charged. I could see Google saying, "hey, how you choose to filter your report has nothing to do with the 'fact' that we recorded a 'click' and we're still going to charge you for it."

For now, I am going to hold off on doing any more ADWORD campaigns, as it has for certain been very costly and yielded ZERO TRAFFIC & SALES.