AdWords will convert, but like any PPC campaign, it needs to be monitored regularly. From the get go, you should turn off the Search Network and Content Network on your campaigns, since both of these perform much poorer than just Google search results.
If you want to step into the content network, it's better to make a duplicate of your existing campaign(s) and enable them for Content only, then you can keep them seperate.
In addition, selecting keywords for the content network is different, in that you aren't bidding on individual words per say - google looks at your list of words and sees a "theme" that you are creating - then matches you up to sites on their network. In other words, campaigns geared toward the content network would generally only need a basic set of keyword phrases - not a huge list that you might typically use for ads on google.com
Depending on your budget, if you're working with a limited budget - don't jump in with high volume keywords in your account. Start with more tail terms that cost less. The high traffic words will cost you too much and you won't have enough data on their performance to make a judgement call on where to set your bids. If you could get a 100 clicks on a moderate volume keyword for $50 total spend it's easier to make a decision on what to set your bid at than only getting 10 clicks for $50 total spend.