So my question is... Is pay per click advertising the best way to market. I have come to find out that pay per click advertising, has gotten extremely expensive for me; because of the fact, that the keywords I use, have been raised up to $5.00-$10.00/per keyword. It gets so expensive. So what are my other options, to get my website noticed, almost instantly... without spending buckoo bucks? I know that I could always use a traffic exchange, but I have found those to be less than satisfactory traffic. Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated.
That is a complex question to answer as it depends on a large number fo variables. The first thing you can try is buying some banner advertising and compare your effective cost per click through on the banners to the CPC you were paying on keywords. Of course, if you go this route you will have the added variable of the quality of your banner ad. Quality ad copy will make a tremendous difference in your click through rates.
Maybe try a PPC company that has fixed price clicks. That way you know what you are getting and you don't have to pay stupid dollars for keywords. We do exactly that at AdToll... our CPC network ads start from as little as 1c/click and are actually becoming quite popular. After some of our own testing as well they are working quite well especially with one of our gaming sites.
No, pay per click is not the best way to market. Free advertising is the best way to market as it is free, but then it takes a lot more work, which really means that if you can get a good ROI with PPC Advertising and don't want to do as much work when it comes to advertising, then PPC would be the best option for you. It's up to you to decide. Do it freely and slowly or spend some money and get some faster results from ppc.
Try researching different keywords. Longtail or really relevant specific keywords. Google asks you to bid this high because it doesnt think that your keywords, ads, and landing page are really relevant to what your targeting. PPC advertising takes some time and unfortunetly a lot of spending and testing to find your place.
This is a tough question. As kampbell411 advised, go after long tail. This will give you less results, but you can manage a successful ppc campaign this way. Also try the different engines. I find MSN as the best to manage a small budget and get a few buys each month. Eightperhour
adwords worst. i was banned at the first day - because my affilate progaramm not attract google staff
I have had great success with opt-in email advertising. I think most people avoid e-mail advertising because they are afraid of being accused of spaming but the site I use is 100% consensual and everyone not only agrees to receive your ad but also to read it. Its pretty cheap starting at $15 for 1,000 ads and you can target them by interest. See my sig. for the link. I know its a referral link but i doesn't affect the cost to you and I wouldn't tell you about it if I didn't really believe in it.