My advice to anyone starting out in advertising their website or product through PPC, is DON'T USE ADWORDS!! If you're only bidding 5 or 10 cents, I guess it won't make much difference, but I had 30 campaigns where the average price per click I paid was around $1, and let me tell you the results: I used Overture (yahoo) and Adwords simultaneously, and bid for the same keywods, same position, and Overture cost me 20% of what I paid in Adwords for the same amount of traffic!!!! To be more precise: for every 100 people I got from adwords, I would pay around $100...and that same 100 from Overture would cost me $20 !! Adwords is total waste of money no doubt....
These are your results, but others will have many different results, the services offered by both G & O are far too complex to say results can be generalized
All that writing Bob and not a single mention of what's most important, conversions. My advice would be regardless of what PPC platform you decide to start with to walk before you run. Get a feel for what's going on before you open the floodgates.
I agree with the others, and would add that the 'Google' searchers are a different crowd to the 'Yahoo' searchers ... it's a different market. (which is why *sometimes* (not always) it's a better strategy to use Google's keyword suggestion tool for Google traffic and YSM's suggestion tool for the Yahoo! advertising) Same with MSN AdCenter, a different customer base with different experiences and preferences. For example MSN has a web-population that is 'less jaded' to Internet Marketing traffic than Google which makes it an ideal medium for advertising Internet Marketing based goods and services ... ... oops, did I just now let out another PPC/SEM secret? <giggle> H
Perhaps you have not learned how to properly use Adwords. Of all the PPC engines out there, Adwords is probably the most complex and difficult to master. This can be both good and bad. If you don't understand how to properly use adwords you can blow a lot of money. That is not really suprising at all.
You should never have to lose a dime on adwords. That's why they have max bids, budgets, and targeting, etc... You will only lose as much as you want to lose.
as had been said further up, cheaper doesnt mean better. its all about cost vs conversion comparison. Theres still money to be made throughout the cost spectrum of ad programs.
Well if you say so, I better stop all my campaigns then. And all the other millions of users must be retarded without a doubt. What an idiots.
Find out the price you are willing to buy visitors for and then bid that as the maximum keyword bid. You can't go wrong.
Or alternatively (and better IMO): Find out the price you are willing to buy a paying customer for, find out the conversion rate of the landing page, know your average order value, and set your budget accordingly.
I think overture might give better traffic than google. It also cost less than google. But, I would still use both of them.
I share your thoughts about Adwords, even though accepting adult/gambling advertisers is contradictory to Google's AdSense policies, and everyday is more evident they are taking such advertising.
well,i have a few thoughts on adwords... I had a campaign i started 3 years ago and the minimum was .05 per click for 100% of my keywords and i was making about .10 a click conversion,then this last dec. they changed alot of things and now the words that were .05 a click are now $10.00 a click!What?Not only has this impacted my bottom line,as i would lose $9.90 per click,but im also paying GG about $400 a month less because of this.They said instead of ctr determining my bid for my ad to show,its now ctr+sites quality=min bid Hmm..my site doesnt look that bad..
How can you say one is cheaper than the other? You decide what you pay per click. Sure Google gives more traffic but thats pretty much a given.
It is easy to spend a lot of money on adwords, although not so much when using vouchers, or credited accounts
If you don't know what you are doing you can blow a lot of money on adwords...I did..before I read some books...optimized my landing page.....set budgets.....changed sales copy.......not only did I convert more but I cost per click went way down.....I'm paying less than others bidding on my keyword and my ad is almost always placed higher than them...