Does anyone use Google AdWords, pay per click?

I am considering signing up, but was wondering who else uses it and what response you have gotten??

In my opinion it is overated and overpriced. I sometimes use it for customers that have new sites while they are waiting to move up in the search results, if they insist. However the goal is always to optain total organic traffic.

Make sure you set a daily limit and research your keywords carefully. If you were going after a keyword phrase such as "Florida Real Estate" you will pay thru the nose to get on the first or second page, and be recieving untargeted traffic. More targeted keywords can result in better rankings at lower costs with a more targeted potential customer. Such as "Orlando Florida Real Estate Agents", not highly searched but very targeted. Play around with it for a few days and you will get the hang of it. When you set your per click price, don't raise it if you do not see good rankings, wait ahwile as it works not only on bid price but the percentage of click thru traffic, as in democratic. Someone higher in the results may be paying less then you. Two things to keep in mind is if you want your ads to show up for the exact phrase or variations of, for exact put [ ] around your keywords. Also carefully review if you want your ads to show up on other websites.

Here is a good article on adwords
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/adwords-select-parts-1-4

I have been using it, but have found it to be kind of costly. In my area, the average CPC is over $1.00 per keyword.

In another post I reported on one particular keyword that cost almost $10 per click in Adwords. For that keyword Adwords was estimating that at $10 you could expect 1 to 2 visitors a day.

I just checked on another bunch of keywords for a different (small) market area and Adwords estimates only 1 visitor every 10 days with a per click cost of 8 cents a click. We set it up and he is now in the number one Adwords spot.

Funny thing is that we set this up because his site had disappeared from it's #1 position in Google's organic listings - and he was worried because 100% of his business comes from the internet. His site recovered the next day and is back at #1 - so now he is #1 in the organic listings and #1 in the paid listings.

What struck me about this situation is that - keeping in mind that he does ALL his business from the web and these keywords are his 'money' keywords that bring him his business from the organic search listings - Google says the Adwords can only deliver only one measly visitor every 10 days!

I know that some in SEO forums have reported studies that say organic search listings get far more activity than paid listings - and to me, this proved it!

In his case, spending money on SEO is better value than spending it on Adwords.