Is Yahoo PPC even worth the time and effort?

I've been doing ppc on an off for years mostly with adwords.
I tried MSN with dismal results and now I'm wondering if I should try Yahoo as they keep trying to entice me with a $50 credit in my email.

I like to ride the wave of a sure thing and for me, Google is far more reliable in terms of traffic.

Is it really worth the time setting up the campaigns,tweaking, sales page split testing, etc etc with Yahoo? I've read in the past you had to wait days before you could even have your account setup if you chose not to pay the $199 fee they charged (Hmmm..I wonder if they still charge that fee?)

I really would appreciate your feedback about your success, blunders and anything in between.

Thanks

 

I was using both Yahoo and Google at the same time and found it difficult to manage both. Because they work differently, I was losing my mind making a change at Google and trying to replicate the change at Yahoo. I found myself spending so much time tweaking every ad group and bid that I went nuts.

I found that on Google I'd get more clicks on the content network than on search. On Yahoo it was reversed - more on sponsored search and less on content (makes sense, nobody uses Yahoo ads on their site!) But Yahoo's lowest bid on the content network is 10 cents which would drive up costs super quickly on the clicks I did get from it. On Google you can bid 1 cent if you want. 10 cents is high for a chance that someone is just clicking links to make money!

Another problem I ran into was displaying to countries. In Google, you can change a campaign at any time and open it to new countries. For example, if you started with US/Canada and decided to open it to the UK, you can. It's a two second job. In Yahoo, your account is locked under a certain continent/zone forever (US/Canada). I wanted to open the campaign in the UK and was told that my account didn't include Europe. I would have to open a new account and re-create the campaign just to display the ads in the UK. That is ridiculous. And if you're in the zone of US/Canada as we were, and you only want a certain campaign to display to Canada, you have to manually un-check each US state. It's either 'entire zone', or 'specific provinces/states'.

Another annoyance for me is that they charge your credit card as soon as your campaign budget is reached. Then when it's reached again, they charge you again. I wish they did it more like Google and charged once each month so that there is one charge from Yahoo on your statement.

All in all, I find Yahoo's interface clunky and non-intuitive. I find myself going, "how the heck do I do that?" when it should be a two second job. I have problems with Google as well but you asked about Yahoo so I'll stick with that! For me, the extra effort required with Yahoo just wasn't worth it. Google has a bigger network and more users so I stick with that for now.

Of course, this is just my thoughts. Others might say the complete opposite!

 

Greetings,

I am not sure about Yahoo Advertising Program but Yahoo Answers is definitely one of the BEST ways to market your product & the best part is it's 100% FREE.

I have been extremely HAPPY with the targeted traffic I receive from yahoo answers.

Best Regards,
handsomeabhi

 

How could you market products in yahoo answers? its only for asking questions.

 

asking questions about the product i would imagine?

 

Hi braver55,

YSM is definetly an option you should look at when promoting your product and or service. The trick is to set-up your account properly so you don't loose your shirt and you don't have to micro manage. This is what you do. Take your best campaigns in Google adwords and port them over to YSM. Make sure you research for a lot of negative keywords and turn off content advertising. If you have any other questions or need help with anything let me know, just PM me. I have been doing this for a few years with a well known adwords guru.

Cheers,
Zigzagzigalar

 

Hey Digitalpointers,

Thanks alot for all the tips, I'm blown away and will definitely take all the advice to heart

 

You should definitely test it. Anything you can do to scale up profits.

Test with adwords, then scale with YSM... and don't stop there : - )

There are a LOT of other ppc engines, such as MSN and others worth testing.

 

I have always had good success with yahoo, now msn and ask are another story

 

This is indeed a nice way to target your desired market. But you must know how to make a credible reputation in the discussions you are participating in. Once you earn a good reputation, the site that you are representing would also have that reputation. You just need to know what and where to participate in the discussion boards

 

Yea if you are a big big site lolz or not worth the time & effort