Pay-Per-Click Experiences

[wolfjay]

Hi


I've just begun a pay-per-click campaign on Google and am quite new to this. I run a website selling an ebook on soccer betting.

It all seems very interesting and quite feasible at this point and I'm thinking of expanding my marketing efforts to more pay-per-click programs. Seems like it's the fastest way to draw traffic.

I hope some of you could tell me about your experiences with such programs; perhaps success stories and the ways you got there, bad experiences and how to avoid them.

Also, which are the best programs and which to avoid? Which are the essential search engines to get on for such programs.

I'm starting on a small budget and trying to work my way up so I would appreciate any help you can give.

Thanks.

[BigDoor]

I currently use google adwords for our art publishing company. When I first started out I set a daily budget of $5.00 and more to start and see how it went, with very little return I promptly quit. A few months ago I gave it another go, I set the budget to to the smallest dollar setting and CPC...funny thing is, I now get a better click through rate and have gained more sales at the lower rate. Now this may not work for you but it was interesting to find that it worked period.

I suggest using the multiple text ad option, create different wording for each ad and see what works better. Use as many keywords as you can think of and ones you may not think to use, delete them as time passes if they don't produce or they may disable your ad. Also set you URL link to the least amount of clicks to get to the order page or people will simply leave.


Hope that helps.

Good Luck.

[lighttech]

I currently use google adwords a lot for our website www.rlights.com. Set a low pay per click. I recommend the minimum 5 cents/click. Bid on all of the terms you can think of. You are looking at $60 for 1200 clicks. Don't use overture. Everything should go fine.

[wolfjay]

Thanks guys!

I have always set my max CPC to the min of 0.05. I've read somewhere that the lower positions usually give better click- through's which are also more likely to convert. (Those who click on the lower ads are more serious about looking for what you might offer.)

Since my last post, I have had some success, increasing my CTR to about 2.5% (Is that good? Anyone knows what is the approximate CTR to shoot for?) Basically, the increase can be attributed to making my ads and keywords as relevant to my website as possible.

I would like further advice, however.

Any tips on how to target those broad-based keywords which will bring a lot of traffic and yet still click through?

Any tricks for writing ad copy for higher CTRs?

[dcomiskey]

I've set up one site for Google's PPC. I've learned a few lessons from it. One, the costs can add up quick with little results. Two, don't use lingerie as a keyword! The site I built sells women's accessories, so I naturally listed all the items' keywords. Site got hammered with clickthroughs, but no sales.
I highly recommend using Google's keyword generator (inside AdWords). It will help you come up with more phrases that will help your listing come up and hopefully generate more sales.
They way I explained it to the site's owner is, if you aren't doing ANY other marketing (which she is not), what good is getting rid of Google? People aren't going to inadvertently stumble on your site when it's not being advertised as opposed to the ones that are, IMO.

[ka0osk]

I've had pretty good results overall with Addwords. My return is about $4 per click with an average of 6.5 cents payout!!! The trick seems to be to hit the right keywords that are the best searches done by the people how would realy want your product. Popping up an add to people who could care less is a waste of time. Its best to try NOT to make it look like an add, but a sale or special thing, maybe a closeout, or even real info about the search terms. I also have my competitors names as search words (heh heh) and get about $800+ a month from those clicks alone. I sell specialty tents, but the keyword "tent" is worthless to me, with a gazillion companies using it and paying 4 times as much as I want to spend per click.... now "medieval tents" gets me on the top, and hits up the gazoo that produce. mis-spellings get me about $300 a month and it dont cost more to add some mis-spelled keywords, so I have some of them as keywords too. Nobody seems to be able to spell "Medieval"

John (ka0osk)
www.midwesttent.com

[natureday]

I know someone that pays almost 6 dollars a click for weight loss.
He makes really good money, but you have to really bet on the people that click on your site to buy.

[Michael Howard]

Hello, how do you determine the Max CPC for your keywords? Do anyone knows what is the optimal Max CPC? Do you specify a percantage of your products' costs?

[natureday]

It doesn't matter so much, as long as you set it for 30 cents.
You don;t have to pay that much

[aethernet]

I think it depends heavily on the industry. In my industry repeat business is a huge part of sales so I can afford to spend more on ppc but I don't think this would apply to your industry. In any event you have to have a few hundred dollars to find out what works.

I sell technology related products and have found that Google is ok and yahoo is a waste of time. This seems to make sense, what geek uses yahoo or msn?? Theres a few other ppc's that I'm testing but its too early to tell any results.

The Adwords Learning Center is a GREAT resource:

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/

[IndieRetailer]

We actually use Google Adwords and Overture's (Yahoo!) for combined efforts. I would say that the best return for our money has come from Overture.

We also found a couple really fantastic tools relating to selecting appropriate and related keywords and web site traffic analysis.

The first one we just found a couple nights ago, but apparently is quite popular and is spoken about almost as a standard tool that every webmaster should have. It's called WordTracker. Click on the link to check it out. http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/a/15460

The other tool is simply incredible! Visitor Ville is a web site traffic analysis tool that turns your traffic analysis into a 3Dimensional city. Each building, or house, represents a page on your site. People and cars (visitors) move around this virtual city as they navigate your site. The best description I've heard is web site traffic analysis that DNA spliced with the SIMS. Click here to check out Visitor Ville http://www.visitorville.com/?id=514

[MerchantAdv]

Everything I have read here seems pretty on point.

The two main things I would emphasize is:

1. Test Market: Don't throw everything out at once. Pick one strategy at a time and spend preferably a few weeks going through different scenarios. It will take some trial and error finding what works best for your product but remember to be patient and set up a schedule.

2. Be Creative: Pick as many related words as you can think of, or that are recommended by a good keyword generation program. Usually the most effective campaigns are the campaigns containing only a few high cost generic keywords. Try to find the keywords that will still pull in traffic but are not as popular as the mainstream ones. It is usually better to have 10 creative $.05 keywords than one $.50 keyword that is too generic to pull in the traffic you are looking for and will result in a sale.

Good luck!

[john238]

I think Overture and Adwords are the main two ppc programs. There is also goclick and searchfeed, which are not quite as good, but are cheaper to advertise in.

I would not bother advertising in 3rd tier ppc programs as you will just get lots and lots of clicks but no sales. This is because alot of people are paying people to just click on the listings so that they can earn money.

It is fraud in a big way in the 3rd tier ppc search engines.

[sean]

Hello, how do you determine the Max CPC for your keywords? Do anyone knows what is the optimal Max CPC? Do you specify a percantage of your products' costs?

It all depends on how much profit you are making on each product. Say you get a profit of 5 dollars on each product purchased by your customer and assuming that one of ten clicks convert in to purchase, then make your total cost for adwords to approximately 3 doll...means 30cents as maxCPC on your major keywords. you can spend more to get your ad placed in the front page at the expense of profits. hope It helps.

[thedude]

We have been using many PPC networks in our marketing efforts, but the best that worked for us was Google Adwords. Overture was good but not that efficient.
Stay away from Clicksor, Looksmart, Adbrite , they are filled with bots and it seems that the only way they get money from is click fraud.
Regards