How much should I spend on Google Ads?

Start from the math, not a round number: your budget needs to buy enough clicks to produce enough conversions for the algorithm to learn — as a rule of thumb, enough spend for at least a few conversions per week at your industry's cost per click.

In practice that means competitive local services markets need meaningfully more than hobby budgets to function; spreading a small budget across many campaigns is the classic way to make Google Ads "not work."

Better one campaign funded properly than five starved. Concentrate spend on your highest-intent service and location, prove the unit economics, then scale what's proven.