Google Adwords is too expensive to advertise on, is there a trick im missing?

[trafficman2589]

Seem to be able to get the same traffic on other sources much cheaper...google has the most traffic so what am I doing wrong?

[selfrob]

My suggestion to you would be to consider dropping it. Google Adwords are great when you first start out your website to generate traffic.
Once the website is generating traffic on its own such as through target keyword(s), then there is no need to continue it, especially if you have decent rankings in the search engines for your keyword(s).

Another thing to consider is the amount of visitors to your site, compared to the amount of purchases of your products/services offered. If you have alot of visitors, but very little sales compared to the amount of visitors, I would recommend a website analysis to find out why users are visiting your site, but not purchasing your goods being offered.

Remember, you can have a high ranking with search engines with lots of visitors to your site, but if no sales are being made then the high rankings and high visitor count means nothing.

[Matt]

"Cheaper" is a relative term. You need to compare apples to apples. The objective of most site owners is not to "generate traffic" but to generate sales and revenue. Your comparison of Google as being too expensive compared to other sources of traffic would be fine if all you wanted was visitors. But if you want them to DO something once they get to your site, do not compare the cost of traffic. Use new metrics like Cost Per Order, Cost Per Sale and Cost Per Lead. If it takes five visitors from Source A before one buys from your site and takes 250 visitors from Source B before one buys, the fact that there is a difference in cost between source A and Source B is irrelevant. Focus on the end objective. Additionally, if traffic is not converting to sales/revenue such that it is profitable for you, consider reworking your site design and presentation or re-examining your business model. With most online businesses it is the web site. People invest too much in advertising when they should be investing in their site. Ultimately it is the site itself that determines what your Cost Per Sale (and ultimately the advertising) will be. Good luck.