The Perils and Pitfalls of Pay-per-click Advertising
Choosing which sites and search terms to allocate advertising dollars to can also be somewhat daunting. Rapid changes in per-click charges can also be challenging to manage well. If your bid is #1 and our competitors lower their bids, you may be left paying a higher price than necessary to maintain top positioning. This is the webmaster's equivalent of throwing money down the drain.
Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics
In this age of speed dialing, T1 lines and other forms of high-tech instant gratification, many webmasters find themselves tempted to engage in pay-per-click advertising. After all, if you've just designed a state-of-the-art website, there's nothing quite as gratifying as a steady stream of traffic right from the start. Webmasters with open wallets have found that pay-per-click can provide traffic within hours or even minutes of a website's launch.
Pay-per-click Pros
Before considering the perils and pitfalls of pay-per-click, it's worthwhile to remember that in some instances, pay-per-click is a good market strategy. A number of reputable SEO firms combine pay-per-click management with search engine optimization as a method of getting their clients the clicks they need. Pay-per-click can be an especially effective strategy for:
companies trying to beat a competitor to market with a new product who want to garner substantial traffic while waiting for their SEO efforts to kick in
webmasters with deep pockets who are more concerned about establishing a quick presence than long-term return on investment
webmasters who are reaping a return on investment high enough to justify expenditures on pay-per-click
Significant Drawbacks
Although there are valid reasons to engage in pay-per-click advertising campaigns, there are also enough drawbacks to give any webmaster pause.
Companies considering pay-per-click need to determine the primary purpose of their marketing campaignwhether it be immediate sales, building website value, or a combination of the two. If immediate sales is the goal and a worthwhile return on investment is being achieved, pay-per-click may be the strategy of choiceat least until good search engine positioning can be obtained.
Webmasters seeking to build a valuable web-based business should remember that whenever the money spigot for pay-per-click stops, so do the clicks. In contrast, clicks resulting from an investment in search engine optimization will continue for months and possibly years to come.
Monitoring ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is another key factor to monitor during the implementation of any pay-per-click marketing strategy. ROI can drop dramatically as market forces change. An increase in competition, when combined with rising costs-per-click and plummeting product prices, can quickly spell doom for a previously profitable ad campaign.
Computing ROI for pay-per-click can be a bit tricky. Since most sites receive free traffic resulting from SEO efforts, it's important to try and ferret out what percentage of sales are resulting from pay-per-click and what percentage are resulting from your other SEO efforts.
Choosing which sites and search terms to allocate advertising dollars to can also be somewhat daunting. Rapid changes in per-click charges can also be challenging to manage well. If your bid is #1 and our competitors lower their bids, you may be left paying a higher price than necessary to maintain top positioning. This is the webmaster's equivalent of throwing money down the drain. Unless you plan to sit by your computer watching per-click charges on an hourly basis, some type of pay-per-click management is, in my opinion, an absolute necessity.
In running a successful pay-per-click campaign, there are also questions to be answered about whether to try for top positioning or settle for some lesser spot, and which pay-per-click ads pull the best.
While I have learned never to say never, I am not presently using pay-per-click for any of my websites. Though I have used it in the past and may resort to it again, my website is doing better than ever without it. Pay-per-click is just one more thing to manage, and, if not managed well, can become a financial drain in a hurry. I'm a pretty busy person, and probably a tightwad as well. As a result, pay-per-click isn't part of my current marketing arsenal.
That doesn't mean, however, that it might not be right for your site. Do some testing, study it out, and consider the cons described in this article. In the words of an old adage, if something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. This is especially true for things that cost money. My advice is to keep that thought firmly in mind whenever you open your webmaster wallet.
------------------------------
Cari Haus has been successfully selling rustic log furniture and beds on the Internet since the late 1990's. Copyright 2005 by Cari Haus, website http://www.logcabinrustics.com/.
The Pay Per Click Mistakes Of A New Marketer
Copyright 2005 Ronald Gibson
My first real foray into Internet Marketing was a Pay Per Click ad campaign. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into and the results were predictable. I soon had a mountain of debt with little in the way of results to show for it.
It wasn't the Pay Per Click company's fault. They basically did what they pronised to do. They got people to my website. The blame was all mine. I had made a couple of serious mistakes during the planning of my campaign. I will share those mistakes so that you can avoid making those same errors yourself.
My first, and probably biggest, mistake was not "looking before I leaped". I did not take the time that I should have in researching Pay Per Click and learning just how much it could potentially cost. As a result, I was completely caught by surprise by how quickly my credit card was being charged over and over again. Take the time to do the proper amount of research before beginning a Pay Per Click campaign or any other business or advertising opportunity. You should always be aware of the cost or risks of any program before you invest money or time on it.
I made another major mistake when I did not set a daily budget for my campaign. That was a direct result of my ignorance about how much Pay Per Click could actually cost. I did learn an extremely valuable lesson though. Always set a budget. Determine beforehand exactly how much you can afford to spend per week or per month. Be disciplined and stick to it. You should always try to avoid going into debt unless it is absolutely necessary.
The final mistake that I regret was waiting too long to pull the plug on the campaign. I suppose that stubborness set in and I just did not want to admit defeat. However, admitting defeat is sometimes not so bad. If you sense that an opportunity is not working out, then cut your losses. No purpose whatsoever is served by throwing more good money after the bad. Always know "when to say when".
Learn from my mistakes. Alway do your research before pursuing Pay Per Click or any other new opportunity. Be sure to set a weekly or monthly budget and stick to it. And, finally, if an opportunity is not working out, then don't give in to stubborness. Cut your losses right away.
------------------------------
Ronald Gibson is a Web Designer and Web Marketer. He is the Webmaster of AffiliateUtopia.com, which offers information about some of the best money making opportunities on the Web. For more information, visit: http://www.affiliateutopia.com/
Google Has An Achiles Heal - Will Their Competitors Notice?
Even though Google Revenues continue to soar, the hidden problem that may stifle growth and may even allow Yahoo or MSN to overtake the paid search market in the future lies in two critical phrases: Customer Support, and Customer Training
Approximately 40% of the small businesses we have surveyed have tried Adwords in the past and failed, and some of them have tried multiple times. In some markets the percentage is closer to 60%. Why? because the program was designed by Google engineers, and heavily favors companies with the type of resources that most small businesses do not have. Unlike MSN and Yahoo who have programs that are much simpler in terms of use for small businesspeople, Google favors a technology driven solution that relies less on customer support, and expects users of their system to become more sophisticated.
The problem with this is that it is working quite well for professional internet marketers and search engine marketing companies employed by big corporations, but many small business people who are not web-savvy are by and large left out of the mix. This is unfortunate because this is a huge segment of potential income that is left "up for grabs" and may be scooped up by MSN and Yahoo who are developing simpler, easier systems with better customer support.
All the major search engines recognize this problem, and getting those "offline" advertisers online is a high priority for all of them, but so far there has not been great success. It is a knowledge and training gap, and neither Yahoo, MSN, or Google has so far been able to address it adequately.
Google's recent acquisition of urchin, a web analytics program illustrates the problem Google is trying to solve. Big Companies getting involved in paid search will still continue to drive big revenues, but the new internet is about verticals and niches, and Google simply isn't making the grade in terms of training their customers well enough.
Where do small business customers go after they "churn"? Many of them go back to what they were doing successfully before; email marketing, direct marketing, and call centers according to our study.
The next growth area will be hundreds of thousands of verticals, driven by small businesses exploiting areas and needs that the fortune 500 companies can not fill efficiently. The search engine company that gets the most advertisers on its side will win market share, and winning will require the ability to service everybody, not just the super sophisticated internet super geeks.
However, many private companies not sanctioned by Google, have sprung up in order to try to bridge the gap between the Google Adwords program and the ability to advertise efficiently on Google and achieve a high ROI. One such company is http://adwordstraining.org that offers free video training and free frequently updated information at http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org
Simple training videos are available on the site, as well as an advertiser self study course to get non-technical people up to speed with Google Adwords advertising.
Between Google's extensive training program of Google Professionals and private training by private companies, this knowledge gap may be bridged, and in the process a whole new industry of Google Adwords Marketing companies may be created, to facilitate the knowledge gap between Google and the advertisers that want to take advantage of the enormous advertising reach afforded by paid search.
But, this might not be enough for Google to keep its lead, as advertisers often follow the path of least resistance in getting their messages out, and they are the ones funding the growth of the search engine industry.
Where those advertisers ultimately go will determine the ultimate victor in the ever growing search engine wars, and the winner is by no means secure at this point.
About The Author: Steve Blom is a founding partner of InTouch Media Group, a publicly traded company specializing in the online marketing field. http://www.intouchmediagroup.com
How To Use Pay Per Click Ads Without Ruin Yourself
Copyright 2005 Torgeir Sunnarvik
Pay Per Click Ads may seem to be a very expensive way of selling your products. But if it's done the right way, it can be a money making machine on auto-pilot.
Let's say that you have bought one of the many ebooks with reprint rights that you can find online. Then you use the tools that you receive with the ebook to set up your own web page on your own domain. It's very easy and often done in just one hour or two.
After your sales page is online and you have checked that everything is working fine, you should go to Overture and open an account. Then you start to make your keyword list. For that you can use Overture's own keyword tool. It's quite good because you can see how many times each keyword have been searched for the previous month. That gives you a clue of how popular the keyword is, and it predicts how many clicks you can get for that keyword.
When you search for keywords you should first look at your sales page, for words that are relevant for the product that you are promoting. Write all the words down or save them in a txt file. You can also put in spelling mistakes in these keywords. There are always a lot of searches with spelling mistakes. And these keywords have often no bids. This site offer a tool to find spelling mistakes.
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-typo-generator/
Now it's time to put all the words into Overture's keyword tool. If you use the tools that are available when signing up for an account, you should be able to see how high the bids are for each keyword.
The words that have the highest number of searches are most likely to have the highest bids, too. I have seen keywords that have bids for $40 and even higher for each click. What you want to find are the keywords that have high searches and low bids. If you are lucky you can find words that have no bids on them yet. Then you have the opportunity to have your ad on the first position for only $0,10 per click. This is the lowest bid on Overture. The minimum bid per click can vary among the company's that offer pay per click ads.
By the way, that amount is what you should bid on all your keywords. Try to find as many keywords as possible. It's better to have 5000 keywords that you have low bids on, than to have a few keywords with higher bids. That way, you will have a better chance to earn money.
Remember that you get 1000 visitors for $100 if you bid only $0,10 per click. So, if you are selling a product that costs $25, and you sell around one unit per 100 visitors, you will have earned $250 after getting 1000 visitors to your website. You will have earned $250 for every $100 spent on your keyword ad campaign.
You should also think about saving money when you write your ad. Don't try to lure people into click your ad by writing about free offers or any hype of that kind. You might get a lot of visitors that way, but they will leave your site when they see that they have to pay for your product. They are only using up your money without helping you to make a single sale.
Instead you should write exactly what you are offering, and what price you are asking for the product. That way you are getting targeted visitors that know they have to pay the price you set in the ad in order to get the product you are offering. To top it off, you can offer them a test drive. If it's an ebook you can put one chapter of it onto a auto responder in 5-7 emails. Then send the messages once a day to the people that sign up for the test drive.
Now you can sit back and see what results you get. Let the ad go for a month and see how many clicks it takes before anyone buys from you. If it's not bringing back enough money, you should try to figure out what's wrong. Is it the ad or is it your web page? Anyway, try to fix it and let the ad go for another month. When you have a reasonable return of investment(ROI), it's time to let the ad continue its run, without any more work on your part. Now, your ad is running on auto pilot. Just remember to check it once a month to see if the ROI is dropping. If it's not bringing in enough money, you can then find another product, and do the same thing all over again.
| 
