Hi Guys - Thanks for the replies! I responded in place below with some comments...
Seth Rosen said, in part, "......costs $1.24 per click - so the gentlemen who reported over 220 click in the last 30 days is doing quite well!"
It's sort of like looking at comparable house sales to figure out what your house is worth. If someone was trying to figure out "how much is a click worth", the quickest and easiest way to do that is to look at what Google charges for a click. In the case of buying clicks for the search term "custom furniture" they currently charge $1.24 per click. So, based upon that logic, the guy that got 220 clicks at $1.24 per click received $273 worth of traffic in a month. I know he didn't pay us that much, because our lowest plan is around $12 per month and our highest plan is less than $60 per month.
That being said, I am NOT advocating that someone goes out and buys clicks to their website by advertising with Google - I'm simply responding to the notion that our $12 to $60 per month is over-priced, which we don't think is true based on the numbers.
He spent over $270.00 in one month to get "clicks". What were his sales and net profits after paying for "clicks"?
Now this is a different issue, and I agree with your skepticism here for a lot of reasons
You have to be very cautious about how you spend your marketing dollars. You are talking about what we call "conversion rate" - or the number of "clicks" that one needs to purchase in order to generate a sale (or in our case, a commission to make something custom for a customer). Conversion rates in the custom woodworking space are low - it's a high-priced service, the economy is certainly not ideal, and many clicks are not from properly targeted traffic. The conclusion is, you would need to buy a lot of clicks in Google to generate a sale, meaning your cost to acquire a customer using that marketing medium is comparatively very high. We think (actually, we know) that ours is a lot lower. But the question is really how to spend each dollar as effectively as possible. I'm not saying Google is a bad choice, and I'm not saying we are a perfect choice either. For a guy who does large millwork jobs at an average size of $200,000 per job, he should be using Google and our website and many others. For a guy that makes custom end tables with hand-cut English dovetails for $300, well, he shouldn't be using Google.
Sorry, but having ones own web site still seems to be the most effective way to go. If I have missed something, I'm open to correction.
Respectfully Frank, I have to disagree here. If one already has a website, it certainly won't hurt you! But if you only have a few hundred dollars to spend or even a thousand dollars to spend, I don't think spending it improving your website or building one from scratch is the best way to go. I know a website can be built for cheap, and can be hosted for cheap. The expensive part is getting the people you want to see your work to go to it. I think one is better off spending that money taking better pictures of their work and posting them on our site, on Facebook, etc. The pictures are what sell.
A website is just one way to get customers to see your work. Our website is another way. Facebook is yet another way... I think the answer is to get GOOD pictures of your work in front of as many relevant eyes as possible for the cheapest possible price. I think it's more about how you spend your "next" marketing dollar to get the most bang for your buck. It is VERY challenging to drive "new customer" traffic to an individual woodworker's website. It's not impossible to do... but it's a lot more labor-intensive and expensive than other mediums for showcasing your work. I think you go for the lowest hanging fruit first.
Most consumers aren't concerned about a woodworker's ability to build a great website - they are concerned about being able to evaluate his/her skills as a woodworker. They do that by seeing pictures, reading about the woodworker's experience, and generally making a connection. A search for "custom furniture" in google yields 24.6 million results - we don't think the customer who is buying something custom has the patience or time to find and go through so many individual woodworker websites. They want everything in one place.
What I want to do is make it SO easy for the consumer to find and engage with a custom woodworker that they stop buying the crappy table at the big retail store with a 300% markup made in China and they realize that there's a guy down the street who can make something 10 times better for only a little bit more money.
P.S. Frank; your blog title suggests that you are a veteran? If this is so, thank you.