At some point, my philosophy is going to get me in trouble. After all, I am going to go out into no man's land, and directly contradict the leading "experts" in the web marketing world. But I can back up what I say, and logically justify it. Here is what will get me into trouble:

If you have a small business shoestring startup, Google AdWords is NOT a good marketing tool.

There, I said it! Now, I have to help you understand why I am taking a position so different than everyone else in the industry. First, let me say one other thing:

Google AdWords are effective for larger businesses with healthy advertising budgets, or small businesses with a high margin per item.

Now, I'll tell you why I think that Google AdWords can be a recipe for disaster for some businesses:

1. You pay for clicks that come to your site. You pay the same amount per click for window shoppers as you do for paying customers. That means that your cost per click, is NOT the same thing as your cost per customer. And sometimes people will click on your links just to cost you money - Google tries to reduce click fraud, but it still happens.

2. Clicks can cost as little as pennies apiece, or as much as many dollars apiece. Most clicks that actually get traffic have so much competition that the price is driven up very high. The more popular it is, the more it costs.

3. Using Google AdWords is a science - used wrong, they can cost you huge amounts without helping your business grow. In order to use them effectively, you must learn how to target the words that get you good results. This takes research, skills, and a lot of experimentation. If you don't have the funds to hire a pro, or the ability to sink some money in testing and to learn how to do it right, it will be a failure. You must also be able to learn which words return window shoppers and which ones return paying customers.

4. Because you will only get one paying customer for every 5-100 visitors, your cost per click has to be multiplied by the statistical average. This means you have to have a product with a high enough profit margin to absorb the cost of advertising to your customers and window shoppers. If you sell a lot of small items with low margins, AdWords will cost you more than you make.

5. AdWords are ALWAYS a losing proposition with an ad supported site. Do the math. I earn about $40 per month from 2000 hits on a site. I am getting paid HALF the amount per click that I would have to pay for traffic to come to my site. If only 2% of the traffic to a site returns ad revenue from clicking off the site, then I am deeply in the hole! You have to make sure you can make more money from your site visitors than they cost you.

6. You pay for every click to your site that comes in from AdWords. When you stop paying, the traffic stops. You only get customers as long as you pay, there is no residual effect. For a small business on a shoestring budget, there are better ways to spend money on advertising that gets you better results long term.

7. For some businesses, people are not looking for them on Google. Now, the truth is, that for many businesses, 90% of their traffic can come from Google. You'll have to use a little logic and statistical analysis to determine whether or not your site fits in this category.

8. If you are trying to break into a highly competitive arena, Google AdWords won't help you. There are already so many others out there who have a bigger budget than you, and who can hire better professionals, that you are going to have to go in a back door. You simply won't have the resources to try to batter in the fortified front door.

So what are your alternatives?

1. Market smart, not expensive. That means, do a variety of marketing tasks, and do all the ones that are free or extremely low cost, that apply to your business.

2. Links. Links. Links. Keep saying that in your head over and over. Get your links onto as many sites as you can. One reason AdWords do get traffic is because they appear in context. They are right in the place that people are looking for them in. You can exchange links with people who have sites with related content, place your links in free specialty directories (not the same thing as classifieds), and look for business organizations that you can join for little or nothing which will provide some advertising benefits.

3. Carefully selected targeted paid ads. Look for sites that get solid traffic, which have related content. Pay a small monthly or yearly rate to advertise on them. Watch your site stats to see if traffic is coming in from them. If not, do not renew the ad. If it gets good traffic, then you can place it again. The goal is to get your cost per paying customer down to a reasonable amount.

Even if you PAY someone else to find sites that you can market on, or to help you produce ad materials, place links for you, etc, it will generally be a better investment than Google AdWords for a shoestring startup. Again, do the math:

If you pay someone $10 to place a single link, and that link gets you just one customer per month, you won't pay more for the first year than you would have paid for the same amount of traffic from Google AdWords. If you focus on PERMANENT link placements, then they go on bringing you customers. If you place those links yourself, then over time you will have saved even more.

Ok, this can be very slow, and it can take some time to learn how to find the sites that work. But usually, once you find one, you find others - for each directory you list with, look IN the directory for other places to list. Over time, this builds a permanent customer base that grows and becomes self-sustaining. When your marketing efforts don't just bring you a single customer, but go on bringing you repeat customers, you have made the most of your marketing time and dollars.

Make sure you link to reputable sites, or it will hurt your reputation. And stay away from most "free classified" sites, unless they are a trusted source that won't SPAM you (small niche sites sometimes have usable classifieds).

This won't make me popular with the "experts". But then, I'm not selling you my book on how to use Google AdWords either! Most of the experts telling you that you should use them stand something to gain from you. I'm telling you how to do it free - no ulterior motive there!

I don't doubt that many of the experts do indeed know what they are talking about. But they also are used to dealing with clients that are in a different category than my clients. My clients start with nothing, and have to use workarounds. They have little or no marketing budget, and have to pull themselves up on work and determination. And the experts aren't used to dealing with people like that, so they don't know what works for them!

Google AdWords can and do work for many businesses. But they are not a magic recipe for success for all businesses.