PPC has been known to be a lucrative method to generating traffic and making a profit online. However, Google Adwords has also cost a lot; in terms of money and loss, to many marketers who either lack the skill in PPC or the money necessary to invest.
Google Adwords would typically want advertisers to spend every dime on them, but by going this route you won’t generate much profit and will probably end up in more loss than gain. The reality is that there is a better way to get Google Adwords traffic.

#1- NICHES
The idea of saturation is essential to picking out the right market, and typically if a market is saturated the chances for profit and success are slim. By going into smaller niche markets that aren’t saturated with competition the chances for success are much greater. A mathematical example could be that if an advertiser aims for a smaller niche with dramatically less competition the clicks could easily fall into the range of 300-500 for under $0.10 a click. The reason for this again is that not a lot of people are going into these markets and so its easier to get the cheaper traffic and the tons of money.

#2 CONTENT NETWORK
The Content Network is an underrated traffic stream. The reason is that most people don’t know about it, and so its smarter to focus upon the Content Network when it comes to getting traffic from Adwords. However, the Content Network is not a magic stick and there have been many bad experiences by people who have gotten thousands of bad visitors from it and have never made a profit. The reality about the Content Network is that an advertiser should have the right approach, and with this approach the generation of profit and good cheap traffic is far beyond possible.

Overall, the Content Network is a better source for traffic because most advertisers are scared to advertise on it and so there’s a lot less competition. Another thing is that the quality of traffic is a lot better.

So, the possibility for cheap AND quality traffic from Adwords is there, it just takes changing your methodology and working smarter.

ive never made any $$ with adwords...stopped doing it when i saw that 60% of the traffic that hit was on the site for 0.00 time

Worldwide it might not be a good idea unless you invest each month a considerable amount but locally it's been cheap and the outcome has been enough for us to go on with.

Using Adwords without emptying your wallet can be quite a task. Using the content network and search partners will empty it quickly with little to no ROI.

Well, Google Adwords works and we've found nothing that competes with it favorably for ROI.

Adwords is a waste of money, Yes people may click that, and go to your site. But, I have had 10,000 Clicks with adwords, and 1 new client. Which is not bad but, it costed me $150.00 USD for the clicks, and the client is only paying $5.00 USD/ monthly. You loose your ass.

Imagine paying $5 - 10 a click for the good keywords like some of the larger hosts in the industry do.

Let me get this straight. You are paying $0.015 per click for what I am guessing is not targeted traffic (keywords you specifically would like people to actually search for) and expect to convert?

Having said that, I am still surprised with the low conversion rate you are getting. What are some of the keywords you are targeting? Is there a particular strategy you are following, or do you just use all "recommended" keywords generated by the keyword tool?

PS: Didn't know AdWords rates enable you to actually keep a listing live if the bid is so low.

Even for long tail hosting related keywords, it's really hard to not pay less than .75 per click, so I'm wondering if the keywords he was using were hosting related at all (which would explain the low conversion rate).

And if your bid is too low, your ads won't run

Can anyone explain what the Content Network is? Is this a google product or something, or getting traffic from posting content? Pretty confused.

Content Network is when Google displays your advertising through their network of publishers, or other websites than their search engine in other words. When you visit any web site and notice google ads on it - that's Google's Content Network.

If you're really looking to target searchers (remember, those searching are actually looking to BUY) - so if you're targeting searches, click the Content Network as OFF. All that will happen there is you'll get a ton of displays and very few clicks (or the clicks you get are people browsing).

For the adwords to really do their magic, make is show in the search results - pay the money for the better target keywords, and you'll get the traffic. you may pay more than you want for the traffic but that's going to be an issue with either the landing page for the visitor or the way the ad was structured.

For ideal conditions, you don't want your google adwords to point just to your home page - you want it to point to a page within your site which specifically relates to the adword that you used to get the visitors attention in the first place.

I agree, a good landing page designed specifically for your Adwords campaign is ideal and will convert much better than just using your home page.

Can you choose to go directly on to the content network, or will google always do the paid searches in their google results?

When setting up your campaign, you can choose where you want your ads displayed, the problem is, if you are not paying close attention while setting up your campaign, it's easy to overlook the settings.