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marketing newsletter - issue #12 - July 2004Pay Per Click Advertising Tips and Quick Tips for Finding Hot Niches
Dear Friend,
Pay Per Click Advertising TipsWhy is it a great way to get targeted web site traffic and how can you find out which pay per click search engine delivers the best traffic for you ?Among the numerous possibilities to advertise my web sites, pay per click advertising is one that I learned to use effectively during the past months. The main reasons why I like it are: 1) After the launch of a new web site, it usually takes some months to get free search engine traffic due to Google´s sandbox effect. During that time I can use ppc advertising to send visitors to the new web site and see if it converts the way I want. If not, I´d make some changes to my web pages in order to improve their performances. 2) When I want to target competitive keywords that I know will cost some time, effort and maybe even money to achieve good rankings, I want to know how much (money) I can expect with a good ranking for these particular keyphrases before I spend my precious time into the search engine optimization work. So I´d simply purchase pay per click traffic from Google and Overture for the exact keyphrases, see how much money I earn and decide then how much effort it´s worth putting into the search engine promotion of that web site. 3) Getting traffic from other people´s web sites. You can choose to have your ads not only displayed on regular search results but also on the ppc search engines´ partner web sites (f.ex. Google´s AdSense program). Of course, having to pay for advertising reduces your net profits, but if you find profitable keyphrases then it´s definitely worth paying for the traffic. Let´s use one of my latest affiliate sites as an example: http://www.cheap-posters-and-prints.com I know it´s dangerous to reveal URLs and how much income is made from them, because certain people are likely to copy it. But the posters niche is already so overcrowded and the profit margin respectively low, so it won´t make much sense to You trying to compete. That´s why I´m going to use my poster site to test a couple of things related to affiliate marketing. However - If you have a web site of general interest or related to gifts, shopping, art, etc.., then you could add an extra revenue to it as posters are very popular and AllPosters.com´s affiliate program pays high commissions (25-30 %). Visit AllPosters.com As most of you know, I´ve built the site in the beginning of june and it´s still suffering Google´s sandbox effect. I´ve got some links from search engine friendly directories and am now waiting that the site gets some PR before I go out to find link partners. During June and July, I´ve been using Google AdWords and Overture to send traffic for the exact search term "posters" to the homepage. In june I´ve spent about 250$ in clicks for 380$ in return. This month, 145$ in clicks returned 365$ in commissions. What caused the difference ? You´ll find out in a moment. How to find out which pay per click search engine delivers the best traffic for You and which ad position is best. Remember that I said in a past issue that I´d make a test to see which ppc search engine delivers the best traffic ? Well - I´ve encountered a big problem: it mainly depends on your competition and your market niche, so I cannot generalize results obtained from one web site in one particular niche. For my poster site, the competition for the term "posters" is this: On Google, the merchant (AllPosters.com) holds position #1 of the regular search results and 6 (of 8) ads are from AllPoster´s affiliates. On Overture, AllPosters.com is the top bidder and two other affiliate sites are on position 3 and 4. To be on the first page, I´d pay Google 20 cents per click and 35 cents at Overture. Inspite of the obviously higher competition at Google (6 affiliate ads), I´ve achieved a higher sales convertion than with Overture´s traffic. But just because the traffic I´ve got from Google resulted in more poster sales than traffic from Overture doesn´t mean that AdWords is better for Your web site, too. The main reason for the better convertion is that I´m the only one at Google who offers discount coupon codes, so people are more likely to buy from my links instead of other affiliates´ links who send visitors directly to the merchant (without discount). Whereas at Overture, the two competing affiliates are shopping coupon sites, offering the same poster discounts like me - tough competition. The position of your ad also plays an important role in terms of getting clicks and getting sales. The higher your ad is placed, the more clicks you get and the more you pay. However - a high position can dramatically reduce your convertion ratio, because shoppers are usually clicking through many of the search results and ads in order to compare the prices and then click again on the link which offered the best deal. So I found that the best position for my ad was on the lower spots (6-8) on Google, because after a shopper had already clicked through most of the results and noticed that there wasn´t a better deal than to buy from AllPosters, s/he then will be very open to buy through my link because of the additional discount s/he gets. Same thing at Overture: when I put my ad above the two other competing affiliates, my convertion ratio was very low - I´ve even lost money ! But when I reduced my bid to drop my ad a few spots below my competitors, I´ve noticed an increase in sales and finally achieved some profits. I believe it´s because the behaviour of most shoppers is like described above: They check out a few links to see what the best deal is and when they come further down the results and notice that there´s no better deals left, they finally make the buying decision and the last affiliate whose link they clicked gets the credit. Note that this is the case for competitive keyphrases, where several merchants and affiliates are offering the exact same or very similar products. Of course there´s no problem in getting a top 1 ad spot for keyphrases which have no competition at all. And even when you bid on keyphrases with many competing ads, you can still make a good profit with high ad positions when the product you are promoting is different from your competitors´ offers. Tracking the Convertion of PPC Advertising: It´s easy when you are advertising your own web site with your own product / service and when you have a straight sales letter or lead generation page. Simply place the tracking code provided by Google or Overture on your order / subscription confirmation page and check the results. If you are promoting products as an affiliate, then you should be able to set up individual tracking tags for every traffic source. A good affiliate program gives you this option. Using the example of my poster site, I´ve set up 4 identical copies of a home page, linking to 4 identical copies of the coupon page. http://www.cheap-posters-and-prints.com/index2.html index3/4/5.html http://www.cheap-posters-and-prints.com/discount2.html discount3/4/5.html All other links on these pages point directly to the merchant and have different tracking tags (for each different traffic source: Google, FindWhat, Kanoodle, Overture) included. The next step would be to run campaigns on all 4 search engines simultaneously to see how much traffic I´d get from each in the same time frame and how well the traffic converts. However, I won´t be able to draw general conclusions from the results I´ll get because of the reason mentioned above, but if you want to find out which pay per click search engine delivers the best traffic for your market niche, then you´d simply proceed in the same way. If you´ve never tried ppc advertising before, I recommend you start with Google and Findwhat, as these don´t require a minimum monthly spend. Once you are more familiar with ppc advertising you can expand using Overture (20$ monthly minimum) and Kanoodle (10$ monthly minimum, very low competition !). Find more details about Google, FindWhat, Overture & Kanoodle as well as up to 60$ in free ppc traffic at my pay per performance search engine review. Quick Tips for finding profitable niches - are You the one who can satisfy these markets ?
When people are conducting searches on the internet, they
are basically looking for three things:
Disclaimer I accept no responsibility whatsoever for the content, profitability or legality of any published articles or advertisements contained within articles published on my web pages. And, although all of the guest articles have been selected for
their content, the publishing of such articles on this website
does NOT constitute a recommendation of the products or services
mentioned or advertised within those articles. If you found some information to be out-of-date, please contact
me and let me know it. Sincerely Yours, |
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