[luxpir]

Based on the title, I wanted to offer some advice. You're in the UK, even closer to home and more intriguing. You mention some real figures too, great.

But now I look closer, you only seem involved to make a 'quick buck'. You haven't taken long enough to look at Adwords to turn off the 'Display network' ads, and then went on to blame Google and pester their staff rather than RTFM.

The problem you're solving isn't very interesting in itself, which is perhaps why I sense so much urgency to make money, not to solve people's problems. Maybe work on something you actually care about? £50 of free credit to market a whole startup isn't exactly pushing the boat out.

I might have more constructive things to say if you actually care :)

[johnmoore]

It is not a case of a quick buck it is to give me some income which will fund my proper start-up http://www.dashoot.com

Difference between a UK startup and a US startup.

A Uk startup tries to start small build revenue with business model sell at a high price.

A US startup builds small demo gets funding, hires staff build's it bigger sell's at a high price or then develops business model.

Google adwords is not user friendly and it is badly designed you shouldn't have to read a huge manual or read up on it. It should ask you how to configure it, not configure it yourself with its hidden menus. Plus when you put money into you account in adwords it doesn't acknowledges that the money is deposited until a few hours later so at first you think it didn't work. Which goes back to the bad design.

With 90 percent of the search market within the UK you have to use google. If google can't market your site properly on its display ad network with 50 quid there is no point giving it a couple of grand. You might as well piss the money up the wall.

I actual care about travelling for I went travelling around the world in 2008 to 2009 after finishing my computer science degree.

[luxpir]

You could have stopped after the first sentence, that was the useful part. Not sure many here need a lesson on the nature of startups, how Adwords works or how Google dominates the market.

You're right that if you can't get the £50 to show some promise it's not worth spending more - but you blame Google for not getting it to work, when they actually give you all the tools to sort out a cheap and efficient campaign yourself. It might not be 100% perfect, but if you consider why that is and the amount Google are doing behind the scenes, then go on to work around the constraints, you'd probably not need to blame them for your (generous) free credit running out with no profit.

So you're bootstrapping another startup; why use startup B to fund startup A? Especially when startup B is in a highly competitive market. The current best practice seems to be to do 'customer development' (look up Steve Blank) or to basically validate your market before launch, during launch and then get paying customers ASAP. So why not just ditch cutpricedhotels (which is a spelling mistake, btw, unless intentional - agree with other commenter on domain name for that reason - another sign of a lack of attention to detail) and focus on your main startup? Get it paying for you?

Perhaps to get that going you could try putting up some real cash (now you know how not to do it) and testing the market for a landing page on dashoot.com. I came across a decent roundup of things to do for a profitable Adwords campaign which I think you'd benefit from [1].

Otherwise just head back to the drawing board and try to get paying customers interested in dashoot.com - I couldn't quite figure out what it does from the site as it is.

All of the above of course meant in a 'good luck, but stay realistic' kind of way.

[1] http://blog.kissmetrics.com/profitable-google-adwords-campai...