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View Full Version : What pay per click options have given you the best results?



vangogh
08-06-2008, 03:54 PM
AdWords is the most popular, but has anyone tried other pay per click engines? Yahoo? MSN? One of the smaller options?

orion_joel
08-07-2008, 01:54 AM
I have tried adwords, a couple of years back and it did give me reasonable results. It is maybe something that i should have continued with, however while i got some clicks initially it was getting to a point that the many of my keywords were getting disabled automatically because the views to clicks was to high i think.

It is something that i am hopeing to give another go in the near future, when i get something sorted out with the direction i want my business to go.

I would be interested to hear how others have gone with different networks, and maybe even if anyone can suggest something that is more geographically targeted then adwords.

vangogh
08-07-2008, 02:00 AM
I haven't used AdWords with my own site, but I do manage AdWords accounts for a couple of clients. One of my clients gets nearly all her traffic from AdWords and it leads to a good amount of money each month.

One of the things you might want to do is spend some time really digging deep on keyword phrases. You can probably find a lot of long tail phrases that don't cost much to bid on. You won't get a lot of clicks from any one, but if you bid on enough the traffic ads up, but still doesn't cost much per click.

In the past were you sending people to specific landing pages or did you direct them to your home page?

orion_joel
08-08-2008, 12:43 AM
It is something that i am going to have to look into again, as my business really needs a injection of get up and go.

Previously i was sending them to landing pages, which were part of the site, it had been a customer HTML site i built, which took many hours, however it was quite detailed information for a few ranges of products. I had about 5 main campaigns that each used a different ad, and subset of keywords, the most successful one was for laptops, which i end up selling about 4 or 5 units from adwords. The others at most gave me 1 or 2 sales, but mostly nothing.

What exactly do you mean by long tail phrases? Is this as in like a specific phrase, such as "Business Toner Supplies in Sometown"? or something different????

vangogh
08-08-2008, 12:54 AM
That's what I meant by long tail phrases. The phrases with more words. Each one won't get searched in great numbers but overall more than 50% of queries typed into a search engine are unique each month and are made up of those long tail phrases.

Laptops might get bid on by a lot of people and so the bid price goes up, but "Dell lattitude D800 2Gb ram" probably doesn't get searched for nearly as much. It shouldn't cost much to bid on and the person typing that is likely ready to buy.

I haven't used AdWords a lot myself since my site is a lead generation site and I can only take on so much work each month anyway. I'm planning on releasing a premium WordPress theme system in a month or two and once I have the sales page converting I'll drive traffic to the site with AdWords or any of the other contextual search ads.

Coach Morse
08-08-2008, 12:18 PM
I used pay per click with Yahoo for a year. Sadly, the results were nothing to cheer about. It might be my site, but after much tweaking I think the traffic I got from yahoo just wasn't my target.

I haven't tried google, but I might in the future.

yankeerudy
08-08-2008, 12:51 PM
I inherited a few ongoing campaigns that had been sort of cobbled together, and have had some interesting experiences. Generally, I'd say that you'll get more from Google than yahoo -- more traffic, more clicks, more revenue, and more tools.

The big google sinkhole is the content network. This one can kill a good campaign, so watch your content bids and monitor the reports to eliminate unrelated sites that can be soaking up impressions and killing your click through rates.

vangogh
08-08-2008, 05:05 PM
The general advice is usually to keep the search network and the content network advertising separate and for most people to not spend on the content network. Depends on your topic of course and your experience with contextual advertising.

Yahoo hasn't been able to compete with Google at all. They've tried, but don't seem to be able to build their search or content network to be as effective. It's odd since Yahoo bought Overture, which is the company that really got all the pay per click going. Yahoo had a head start, but let Google pass them by. Now they can't catch up.

I've heard that MSNs pay per click service is getting much better. I know they've been releasing a lot of tools that many search marketers really like.

orion_joel
08-09-2008, 02:20 AM
I think in any business the number one thing is if you have the lead don't let it go, which is where yahoo dropped the ball. It is a lot easier to keep a lead then to try and rebuild one that you lost. While it is possible, there is so much more work involved.

vangogh
08-09-2008, 02:43 AM
And Yahoo has lost quite a few leads over the years. To think that in the beginning Yahoo helped fund Google and look at the two now.

degadar
08-09-2008, 05:43 AM
As long as you turn off 'content search' (ie. Adsense) results in Google you can get reasonable VFM.

Adsense clicks are a waste of money - just clicked to buggery by owners of get-rich-quick blogs trying to boost their revenue.

If you do Adwords - turn this feature off and you will double your ROI. Especially if you have high-bid keywords.

Steve B
08-09-2008, 09:07 AM
I use both Yahoo and Google. The concept is perfect for me since many people think of my competitor as the generic term for this type of fencing.

Yahoo gets me nothing - Google gets me a lot. Adwords is the only advertising investment that I am SURE I am getting a positve return from every month.

"-if anyone can suggest something that is more geographically targeted then adwords." - Joel you can customize the geography with Google by zip code or even by connecting points and making a shape on a map. Perhaps this is a new feature since you've done it last.

billbenson
08-10-2008, 10:52 AM
I do quite well with adwords, but it's a lot of work and requires SEO just like anything else. In fact more, because your ads and campaign need to be optimized

vangogh
08-10-2008, 02:06 PM
I think a lot of people miss the idea that you still need to work on your pay per click campaigns. Much of the usual seo work applies to ppc like keyword research, working on landing pages, optimizing your overall campaign.

Too many people just bid on a few words that first come to mind and leave things alone after that.

billbenson
08-10-2008, 10:47 PM
Ya, there were posts on the old forum that "I tried it for a month, it didn't work and I lost a bunch of money" or something to that extent.

Even if you really know what your are doing, building a ppc campaign takes time and a lot of work. If you never have done it before, set low daily budgets. Some products / sites aren't really well suited for ppc either.

yankeerudy
08-11-2008, 11:39 AM
The general advice is usually to keep the search network and the content network advertising separate and for most people to not spend on the content network. Depends on your topic of course and your experience with contextual advertising.

Most definitely, keep search and content in separate campaigns (if you do content at all). I'd suggest trying content with a small budget, since you never know whether it will do well or not until you try. Also play with the timing -- some campaigns do well over the weekend, some during the wee hours, and so forth. See what your experience tells you about your market niche and make adjustments accordingly.

Don't spend a whole lot of time here, but don't set it and forget it either -- you run the risk of leaving alot of money on the table.

vangogh
08-11-2008, 02:32 PM
don't set it and forget it

I think that's one of the most important aspects of working with ppc. You have to do more than just set something up and leave it alone. You need to pay attention to how things are working, make changes based on your results, test those changes and then repeat the whole process.

You should also be looking for new phrases to bid on and removing phrases that deliver no results.

yankeerudy
08-20-2008, 10:18 AM
Here's another gem. If you do run adwords in the content network, be sure to periodically run a Placement Report using domains. This will tell you which domains sent you the most impressions, have the highest CTR, yield the most conversions, etc. This can be critical because you never know what Google considers to be an "appropriate" site for your campaign. (Case in point, had a personal finance campaign that was burning tons of impressions on anime sites. While not a direct financial cost since there were no clicks, it was bringing down my overall CTR which in turn affected my cost per click elsewhere in the network.)

Also, you can target those domains that have good CTR and conversions for link building or banner ad efforts.

vangogh
08-20-2008, 12:00 PM
That is good advice. It's only recently that Google started giving out that information too, but if you use AdWords on the content network you should definitely know who is and isn't sending good traffic and traffic of any kind.

For those who don't know your average cost per click (CPC) is somewhat dependent on your click through rate (CTR) If more people are clicking your ad per impression you end up paying less on average for each click. So removing your ad from sites that display it a lot, but don't get clicks should end up reducing the overall cost of the ads that are getting clicked on other sites.