Managing PPC is not a get rich quick scheme, You’re spending real local businesses money, and given the general account size a lot of newbies take on that money really matters to that small business.

[codebeanjava8]

Yes i agree, i have seen too many of these newbies wanna call themselves PPC without even understanding what online advertising/search advertising is all about.

[f_reddit_commun1sts]

PPC is a winner take all game. If you know how to make $10 a day, you know how to make $10000 a day.

but knowing how to make $10 a day is almost impossible, 99.99% of people don’t get any positive return on adspend.

ie, it’s not made for small players

[TheTalentedMrTorres]

Far too many “gurus” & sleazy agencies operating on a cookiecutter churn & burn model, or general incompetent folks out there – no wonder the industry has such a bad reputation.

[theytakemydragons]

I agree but at the same time lots of these mom and pop stores are expecting 100% conversion rates and call you a newbie if you don’t achieve that

[Badiha]

It’s not just people with 0 exp that will burn your ad spend. A lot of agencies/freelancers also do that. They simply let the campaigns run and they usually charge you 4 to 5 figures a month on top of the ad spend! Nothing new here. Lots of industries experience the exact same thing. Lots of experts don’t want to touch small ad spend accounts because we know that clients will be freaking out if we are unable to make them money. The thing is: nothing is ever guaranteed in PPC and that’s what most mom and pop companies don’t get. Lots of companies expect to get rich from day 1. If that was the case, we would all be millionaires by now.

[Historical-Reach-231]

I have 2 years or so of SEO and PPC experience from when I worked with a small moving company. In the second year they grew 32%. I had a great time. I enjoyed watching the numbers and trends and seeing what worked and what didn’t.

I’ve been thinking about getting back into it for dirt cheap with a small account to re-familiarize myself.

Thoughts?

[gorchitza]

I am reminded of [this image](https://i.redd.it/dr4bibp8gwf61.jpg) when I worked as a consultant with smaller businesses.

Agree with what you are saying, many lemons in the lower budgets, both PPCers and small businesses.

Now I work in-house, have a salary, benefits, pension and reasonable work hours.

[floatdigitalppc]

We’ve taken on clients who have been using broad match on their highest spending campaigns on really broad single word terms like ‘university’ or ‘shop’.

It’s absolutely horrific some of the stories we’ve heard over the years of how clients have been treated by previous agencies, and it’s sad that it still isn’t stopping. Especially with the ‘Do it all’ agencies who likely just outsource everything they get, but advertise that they can do social, PPC, SEO, CRO, web design, printing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, copywriting, all with a team of 5.

That’s one reason why we set up our business, to try and have a transparent, client-first specialist approach to search engine marketing and nothing else. It’s done us well as a business but we certainly aren’t “getting rich quick”!

[JVMV]

I started an e-commerce site with some savings I had, literally a couple thousand. I spent months learning a lot from blogs and from past mistakes before I even thought about raising adspend budgets past $100. I eventually had enough floating funds to outsource ppc to an agency willing to help me. They ended up spending nearly 10k with something like a .97 ROAS over the next 2 months. It irritated me when they said it takes a lot of time for performance to get better. I don’t doubt it takes time but if it continued, I would’ve gone bankrupt. I got away from them and got my profits back up.

Point is, if I could do a better job than them with no book smarts, how did they even open up an agency in the first place?

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[ccarrngt]

I work for a branding and marketing agency as a project manager. I love this post. This is some brutal honesty right here. OP is absolutely right. The balance of a sufficient budget to achieve results and internal profit are a fine line. Like, man on wire thin. If you’re doing the proper due diligence, you’ll find budget is a major factor and google has no reason to offer intelligence that isn’t going to make momentum for the client. But budget alone is not a sufficient factor. Campaign creation, and all that entails, takes a forensic level amount of creativity and detective work along with constant management. Experimenting with client money, especially small local businesses, is a cardinal sin.

[IdahoGrown]

I’m a PPC ninja and I have my certification. I also have one year experience working with budgets up to $500/mo.

[festive_napkins]

Very funny you write this I just got a position at a firm that advertises PPC service and SEO to local businesses. 2nd day in and I realized it’s basically a lie. Mom and pop don’t have a clue what actual SEO is and what PPC quality is being given (low hanging fruit vs high volume keywords). I have a big ethical hang up with this I will be addressing with the leadership team on the future

[Viper2014]

I have seen PPC agencies act worse than SEO snake oil people when it comes to small businesses’ money and it does irritate me.

[LuxIsMyBitch]

You were too once shit at PPC, just because you work at some fancy agency now and you were given the tools to learn does not mean others cant learn by managing small accounts. Get off your high horse..

Small accounts sometimes work really nice, sometimes not, but it dosent mean only experienced PPC guys can manage them.