PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING
Pay per click
advertising. When this first came out, the prices were insane. Then the
prices dropped like a rock and Google was just the best place to
advertise. Then, Google got too big for its own shoes and we're back to
where we started. Keywords that used to cost 7 cents per click are now
going for 40 cents to $1 or more.
Okay, maybe for those of you
who don't know what pay per click advertising is, I should give a brief,
but by no means a complete definition as pay per click can get very
complicated.
Pay per click advertising is the method by which
advertisers pay a particular search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, etc.,
a certain amount of money for each visitor that is sent to the
advertiser's website.
Please believe me, this is a VERY complicated process and the above "definition" doesn't even scratch the surface.
The truth is, pay per click advertising is so involved that books have
been written on the subject. Some of them are best selling books too.
Unfortunately, all of those books are worthless when it comes to trying
to explain how to use pay per click advertising. And trust me, if this
book tried to do the same, it would be JUST as worthless.
Pay
per click advertising rules change so often that there is just no way to
keep up with the changes. A book written tomorrow is outdated in a
month.
So, we're going to take a different approach to pay per
click advertising. Instead of trying to teach you every little thing
about it, we're going to give you a guideline of rules to follow that
must NEVER be broken. If you do JUST this much, then the rest of it
won't matter. Why? Because regardless of what anyone tells you, pay per
click advertising is very hard to make profitable these days. There are
too many problems with it.
Here are the main problems.
1. Cost per click costs are unpredictable from one day to the next
2. Because of the problem of click fraud, too much of your costs are basically thrown in the trash.
3. Each search engine has a different setup which makes trying to teach you HOW to set up a campaign totally futile.
4. Most search engines have very little control options as far as WHO
you want your ad to be seen by, such as ONLY English speaking people.
5. Most search engines require you to pay up front even before you get
the clicks, at least for the first month or for so many clicks. For
example, Miva makes you deposit $50 up front, so you better make sure
you get enough clicks to use it up or the money is thrown away. There
are NO refunds.
These are the main problems. Believe me, there
are more. My point is this. If you see any book teaching you HOW to beat
pay per click, run for the hills because ultimately, very little of
what's in those books is going to make much difference…Not today.
But like I said, there are certain things you need to know that will at the very least save you money.
The most important thing is to take the selling price of your product,
whatever it is, and figure out how much it is going to cost you to make 1
sale.
How do you do that? Simple.
If you're selling a tested affiliate product (not your own product) then the industry average is 1 sale for every 100 clicks.
So, if your product sells for $49 and you get a 50% commission on that $49 sale, then your earning per sale is $24.50.
If it costs you 10 cents per click and you make 1 sale for every 100
clicks, then 100 clicks will cost you $10.00. That means your profit is
$14.50.
However, if it costs you 30 cents per click to sell
your product, then 100 clicks will cost you $30 and you'll actually LOSE
$5.50 for every sale. So in that case, pay per click advertising
doesn't pay well enough to use it to promote your product.
So, the key to all this is to figure out what it's going to cost you per click to advertise your product.
That is where this gets VERY involved.
Here are the basic things you need to know.
When selling ANY product using pay per click advertising, your results
are all going to be based on the keywords you use. All bidding for
position (where you land on the search engine page) is done by keywords.
For example. Let's say you are selling a natural cure for acne. If
it's a product being sold that is made by another company in which you
are an affiliate for, email the company and ask them what keywords you
should be bidding on to sell their product. If you can't get a hold of
the company, don't panic. The keywords will be listed in the source code
of their HTML on their sales page. Just view this source code and see
what keywords they're using. These are the keywords you want to use when
setting up your pay per click campaign.
To find out how much these keywords are going to cost you, you
first want to decide what positions you want to land in on the search
engine results page. And no, you DON'T want to be in position 1. Why?
Because the freebie seekers will eat you alive. You want to fall between
positions 7 and 12. Those are the BEST positions to fall in between to
make the most sales for the least amount of money.
After you
decide on the positions you want to fall in, you then have to figure out
how much you're going to have to spend per click to achieve those
positions. This is trial and error.
What you do is go to the
pay per click site's cost estimator, if they have one, and start putting
in some amounts for the keywords you want. Start with 10 cents per
click. If 10 cents per click only lands you between positions 12 and 20,
then you're going to have to raise it up a bit until you fall between
positions 7 and 12. Let's for argument's sake say it costs you 15 cents
per click to get between positions 7 and 12. That means, 100 clicks is
going to cost you $15.00. That means you have to be making at least
$15.01 per sale or it doesn't pay to do this.
But…
Making a penny a sale is a joke. You want to make at least 100% over the
cost of the sale. So if it's going to cost you $15 to make 1 sale, then
you need to be paid a commission of at least $30 for that sale. If
you're not, then selling that product using pay per click is not worth
it.
There you go. I have just taken the most complicated advertising system in the world and simplified it down to this.
Here are the steps.
1. Pick a product to sell.
2. Pick a pay per click search engine to use.
3. Get the keywords needed for the product.
4. Figure out how much it will cost PER CLICK to promote that product, shooting for a position of 7 through 12.
5. Figure out how much profit you will make based on 1 sale per 100 clicks.
6. If the profit is less than 100% then do NOT use pay per click to promote this product.
I just saved you about $49 on useless pay per click books.
If you need a list of pay per click sites, here are the best ones
according to their Alexa rank. There are plenty more, but they get such
little traffic that it's not worth using them. The number to the right
of the pay per click site name is their current Alexa rank as of this
printing. These do change daily, but shouldn't change too much.
MIVA - 923
http://www.miva.com/
SEARCHFEED - 2,414
http://www.searchfeed.com/
7SEARCH - 4,538
http://7search.com/
LOOKSMART - 4,545
http://search.looksmart.com/
GOCLICK - 5,543
http://www.goclick.com/
EHANCE - 5,737
http://www.enhance.com/
KANOODLE - 7,178
http://www.kanoodle.com/
EPILOT - 8,289
http://www.epilot.com/ePilot4/AdvertiseWithUs/landing.asp
Remember though, this is the most unpredictable form of advertising on
the Internet. And please understand, this is in NO way meant to be a
COMPLETE tutorial on pay per click advertising. There would be no point
to it. Each search engine has a help section on setting up your ads so
there is no need to cover that here, especially since each one is
different. Generalizing about how to word ads and what keywords to
choose is also useless because these things change as well. Besides, an
ad that you ran yesterday may not work today, depending on changes in
the Internet environment.
Yes, you want your ads to stand out.
Rich Jerk did a great job on this but now that so many people are using
his "method" customers are becoming immune to his theatrics and all the
copy cats he's spawned.
So here is the best advice I can give
you as far as pay per click. If you get to step 6 and the product is
worth selling, come up with a good 3 line ad (that's all you get) and
test it out for 100 clicks. If it doesn't get you 1 sale by click 200,
chuck it and take the loss. You don't want to throw good money after
bad. There's a chance that product will never sell because the sales
page is garbage.
Don't let anybody tell you it's the ad because
if they liked the ad enough to go to the site then there's nothing
wrong with it. If the ad stunk, people would have never clicked on it.
There's only so much you can do with 3 lines, so don't get sucked into
the "It's your ad" argument. A lousy ad doesn't get clicked on. A lousy
sales page, that's different. It won't convert.