I used to always think that people were just picking the wrong keywords. I have a relatively large-scale AdWords campaign going, where I spend quite the hefty sum per day (for a site that relies solely on ad revenue, at least!). I keep my bid at 5 cents and my keywords all run just fine. I tried doing a test one day and upped my CPC to 10 cents! And whoa! What a difference! My ad views and clicks increased nearly five fold! - I had to quickly go right back to 5 cents when my daily charges accrued to nearly $500 after only a few hours. I was also a bit disappointed that the cost per conversion multiplied as well. At least I know it's possible should I ever be in dire need of an unlimited supply of somewhat costly traffic ... and I no longer think that everyone else just doesn't know how to pick the 5 cent keywords - apparently I don't know any better!

I say more is better! For ScubaBoard I use only a small amount of ppc advertising and not all the time but our most effective campaigns are always from less than major terms with low bids. Obviously a lower min bid is better for this and I prefer the speed of adwords. However, there is a lot of traffic on other sites and I'm not going to miss that. For some of my larger clients Overture and Google are the top of the line (aside from some special niche specific engines). In both cases the return is more related to the keyword than the engine although xyz on google does not always preform as well as it does on overture (or vise versa).

The key to all ppc/yellowpages/advertising efforts is tracking. No, you can't track 100% of the time but I'm always amazed how little effort many people do spend tracking and equally frightening, how little time people spend reading their reports after they implement a campaign. You can spend $0.10 per click or $10.00 per click and make money depending on your site/ model but in either case, if you don't track the campaigns you won't know if you really made anything or not.

Definitely AdSense is much better than Overture in most aspects.

- Conversion rates of leads coming from Overture are around 3 or 4 %, while conversion rates of customers coming from AdSense are usually around 15%.

- The minimum CPC is half the minimum CPC in AdSense. For relatively small sites this could represent thousands of dollars and the viability of the whole project at the end of the month.

- New keywords and changes to your existing ads are almost in real time with AdSense. But it can take almost a week to get your keywords and ads approved in Overture, especially when they are "experiencing a delay".

- But the best of all is that in Overture you have to pay top to stay on the top, but with AdSense you can pay low, and still be on the top, as positioning of your ads in AdSense doesn't depend solely on bid amount, but also on average click through rate. So even for highly demanded keywords, if you pay low, but have good ads, that catch the attention of the user and keep a decent CTR, you can stay at least on the first page. I have ads with words that average $7 or $8 for the top payers, and even though I pay $0.05 per click, my ad still shows on the first set of results (positions 1-6), as I have an average CTR of 5%.

Overture is a good source of traffic too, but if you put them one besides the other, AdSense rules without any question.

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Overture now being changed to Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions



But speaking of PPC's - how can one tell how many clicks are actually
Phoney malicious actions by competitors:evil:

Now there is Pay Per Call which basically provides a Micro-site with an 800 number - and you pay if only someone Calls your business via that toll free number

Hello,

I have read this entire thread and discern that adsense is the way to go. Is this what is called PPC?

Can any of you direct me to a good site to set up an account for either of the recommended i.e. adsense or PPC?

How much can I expect to put up which I assume is a bank of X amount of dollars and what is the time frame from setting up the account to actually getting hits to your site?

What would this forum advise is the best minimal amount for the bank?

Note: I have had this done for me by contract and I think I can do it better myself and save money at the same time.

Your help with this would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for so many questions.
Cliff

yeah... i dunno. overture is easy to use, and they answer my questions without hassle... but its so expensive sometimes. and I'm really not seeing any traffic from it. I"ll have to try some of these other sites...

>You are 100% right Dani, it usually does not make sense to pay $.10 per visitor for businesses that generate revenue via advertisements.

cost per conversion is all that matters. I pay over $3 a click for some ads.

the financial questions really are going to depend on market and business model

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ is a good spot to start learning the basics about Google AdWords. keep in mind they want to sell you stuff so they will be giving pro google biased data, but most of the concepts there are fairly solid.

also you probably want to start with content ads off.

Online yellowpages are great if you have location specific products or services like florists, movers, or dentists. Superpages, Citysearch, Yellowpages.com are some good ones.

The actual yellow page website for Yellow Book seems to be best because the product is best advertised/recognized. Yellow Book is a nation wide phone book and has national recognition - this in turn drives people to YellowBook.com all over the country resulting in large number of UNIQUE visitors to the site.

Superpages is too, no? We have Superpages in my house