A Comparison of Paid Search Advertising Models

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Bill Platt


As webmasters, we are all chasing customers. We are looking for human visitors to come to our websites and to buy what we are selling.

To serve our needs for targeted traffic --- potential customers --- the search companies have begun to offer us a share of their significant traffic through many paid advertising methods.

The most common advertising offer at the search engines is the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising model. There are also other search advertising models such as CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) and Featured Listings.

In this article, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising method.


PPC (PAY-PER-CLICK) ADVERTISING MODEL

By far, PPC is currently the most popular advertising model. From the buyer's perspective, it is usually the most expensive type of advertising and the one that generates the most fear of fraud. In fact, many experts suggest that click-fraud might be as high as 20 to 25% of all click-traffic.

Pay-Per-Click is exactly what it sounds like. The advertiser bids on keywords and tells the advertising company that they will pay X number of cents or dollars for every click that they receive to their website through the PPC-provider's website.

Advertisers compete for position within the search results with the highest bidder getting the best advertising spot at the top of the results. The second highest bidder gets the #2 spot, etc.

Generally, Pay-Per-Click providers serve three listings on the first page of search results. Only when there is strong competition for a particular keyword term and a number of advertisers vying for placement, will the PPC-provider show results with more than three advertisers.

If you bid the minimum five cents per click (the standard for most PPC systems), then it is possible that you might not see your listing on page one or page two of the search results. Let's face it; PPC providers are interested in making the most money they can from the traffic they send to people. So, if one advertiser is paying a dollar per click and you are only bidding five cents a click, who do you think will receive the best placement? Yep, the one-dollar per click advertiser will get the most attention and the best placement, even if it requires pushing your placement back to page three of the search results.

The top two PPC-providers are:

http://adwords.google.com/ http://www.content.overture.com/d/ - Now owned by Yahoo!

Other not-so-well-known providers of PPC traffic, in alphabetical order, include:

http://www.411web.com/ http://www.7search.com/ http://www.abcsearch.com/ http://www.adbrite.com/ http://www.ask.com/ http://www.brainfox.com/ http://www.enhance.com/ http://www.kanoodle.com/ http://search.looksmart.com/ http://www.lycos.com/ http://www.miva.com/ - Formerly FindWhat.com http://www.search123.com/ http://www.searchfeed.com/ http://turbo10.com/

The biggest advantage to these systems is that they serve large pools of consumers online, and they let you target specific search keywords.

The disadvantages are numerous. Those most often cited include: the high cost of bids for certain keywords, poor conversion rates on purchased clicks, and click fraud (generally regarded as people clicking your link just so they can get paid for it).

Personally, I have paid as high as a dollar per-click for a service that sells for $35, and $20 in volume. I have spoken to others who operate for-profit websites and have paid as much as $2.50 per click on an average keyword. In some really competitive markets, people pay as much as $30 per click.

If you use the Web-Professor bid tool to check keywords at Overture ( http://web-professor.net/tools/bidstats/ ) and you type in the keyword "mesothelioma", you'll find 30 bidders vying for that term and a maximum bid of $29.88 per click! If the maximum bidder converts traffic to sales at the national average of 3%, then he or she is paying an average of $900 to get one client! Insane, but true.


CPM (COST PER THOUSAND IMPRESSIONS) ADVERTISING MODEL

CPM advertising is most often associated with banner advertising, but can now be purchased for text ads as well. This type of advertising is available from many sources, including:

http://adwords.google.com/ http://www.realtechnetwork.com/ http://www.joetec.net/

CPM advertising can be cheaper than PPC, but it fails to address the effectiveness of your advertising copy. Before undertaking a large CPM campaign, you need to be confident your advertising copy will deliver results.

As with any other type of advertising, you need to track click- through and conversion rates to determine the advertising copy that is most effective for your business.

You also need to have a solid understanding of how many impressions it will take to generate a visitor, and how many visitors you will need to generate one sale. And, on the backside, you will need to know what the average earnings from your sales will be. With these stats in hand, you'll know how much you can afford to pay for CPM advertising or any other type of advertising.

Using Google Adwords, you can buy CPM advertising for as little as $2 per thousand impressions. The one time I went that route, thinking my advertising might be cheaper, I ended up dropping $180 in three days with only one sale to show for my investment - -- utilizing the exact same ad that generated a 4% click-through rate (CTR) in Google's PPC advertising system.

The major appeal of CPM advertising is its perceived low-cost, with rates ranging between $2 - $3 per thousand impressions.

The major disadvantage to this type of advertising is that you need a good handle on how well your advertising is performing. Your advertising copy can make or break you. Additionally, you need to keep an eye on your advertising budget. From first hand experience, I can tell you that although CPM advertising can appear inexpensive, it can in short order surpass the costs of PPC advertising.


FEATURED LISTING ADVERTISING MODEL

Featured listings differ from the other two advertising models in that you do not pay for "ad clicks" or "ad impressions". With featured listings, your advertisement appears in the purchased location for 30 days, 90 days, or one year.

Featured listings can be bought on individual websites and even on networks of websites. Below are a few examples of advertising networks that offer featured listings:


Geek Files ( http://www.geekfiles.com/advertising/ )

Geek Files offers various Featured Listing placement options with ad rates ranging from $19 to $179 per month. You get two months free if you buy advertising for a full year.


Aardvark Travel ( http://www.aardvarktravel.net/featured/ )

Aardvark Travel is a travel search engine. Featured listings appear in a colored box between the top five listings and the bottom five listings in the travel-related search results. There is a $50 setup fee for each Featured Listing and a $10 per month recurring charge for as long as you keep your listing active. Aardvark claims featured listings generate 40 times more clicks than any other listings on their pages.


The Independent Search Engine and Directory Network ( http://www.isedn.org/ )

The ISEDN offers a program that allows you to purchase Top Ten exposure for your website(s) across their network of 200 plus member websites.

The network is comprised of specialized search engines, search directories, and article directories. Featured Listing placements for specific keywords are displayed across the entire ISEDN system.

The cost of a keyword term (the word or phrase associated with the listing) is $12 for three months or $36 for 12 months. The price drops for each additional 5 listings you purchase. If you are buying in volume, discounts can be significant. For example, the cost for 16 to 100 listings is $6 per listing for 3 months and $18 per listing for 12 months.

The main drawback to the ISEDN program is that the network, although large, does not yet have the traffic volume of the major engines.

The major benefit, of course, is that you can buy a lot more bang for your advertising dollars. Additionally, you can see your ads appearing on pages in a position that will attract more attention and click-through traffic to your website.


WHICH ADVERTISING MODEL IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

It really depends on your business model. More so, it depends on your absolute click-through averages and your website conversion rates.

Your advertising needs to cost you no more than what it earns for you. Ideally, your advertising will cost less than it earns for you.

Some businesses trade on the lifetime value of customers and are willing to pay more to get customers than what they earn on their first sale, but not all of us can afford to build a customer base in the same way that Amazon built theirs.

If your advertising budget is small, your goal should be to make every advertising dollar count. Grow your business to the point where you might be able to afford some of the more expensive advertising solutions. But then, if the lower-cost solutions generate sales for you, why would you want to pay more?


About the Author:

The Quickest Way To Get Cheap Sustained Website Traffic

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Willie Crawford


During a recent radio interview, one of the callers asked for several ways to get fast, cheap, sustained website traffic. She added on top of that "tall order" that she didn't want to use pay-per-clicks!

Digging deeply into my toolkit of traffic generation techniques that had actually work beautifully for me, I suggested joint ventures and article marketing. Then I had to admit that article marketing often doesn't produce an immediate flood of traffic but that it can be sustained and highly targeted.

Joint ventures get you fast and cheap traffic because you're arranging for those who already have the attention of your ideal customers to send them to you. You're convincing those who already have the trust and respect of your ideal customers to point out to them that you can help to solve their pressing problems.

My "answer" to the question of the quickest way to generate sustained, inexpensive website traffic still is joint ventures. As a joint venture broker, and Executive Director of The International Association of Joint Venture Brokers, I've seen first-hand how large, successful joint ventures with just the right partners can deliver 7-figure days.

However, the joint ventures that so typify product launches in the Internet marketing niche often miss delivering real "sustained" traffic. They are mostly "flash in the pan" launches where the traffic flow dies-off even faster than it builds up.

A better option for generating inexpensive, sustained, targeted website traffic is an affiliate program, or strategic partnerships. The strategic partnerships can even BE an affiliate program, where the partners have agreed to promote certain products within that affiliate program contributed by various members of the alliance.

In ultra-competitive niches, such as Internet marketing, where you often see dozens of new product launches per week, strategic alliances are almost a "requirement." It's sometimes so difficult just to get noticed that the secret to breaking through the clutter is TEAMWORK.

You often need to find a group of likeminded individuals, and then work to jointly develop, launch and promote group products and projects.

An example of a product launched using this model is the ebook "20 Ways To Make $100 Per Day Online." This ebook was written by members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle (http://TIMIC.ORG), then group members created the buzz that got the product noticed and eventually started other affiliates promoting it.

The "20 Ways" ebook had a viral twist to it too though, and that's what created and will sustain it's growth. That viral aspect is the customer-only affiliate program. A customer is eligible to register as an affiliate, and then use their affiliate link to sell the ebook at 100% commission. The 20 Ways Ebook was indeed launched via a strategic alliance, an affiliate program, and viral marketing. It's a launch formula that you could easily model, and use to generate a steady stream of quick, inexpensive traffic.

Some would look at the "20 Ways" ebook though and ask "What's the point - if you then give away 100% commission?" The answer is that you need to build-in backend sales. Add links to your product that drive repeat customer back to you, or offer additional products to those customers on your download pages.

When I further contemplate the question of the fastest, easiest, cheapest ways to generate sustained website traffic, I would still have to say joint ventures... and an affiliate program. An affiliate program fits the "inexpensive" criteria because you only pay for performance. If the traffic doesn't convert to sales, it costs you absolutely nothing. Any costs involved in an affiliate program comes from revenue that you wouldn't otherwise have anyway.

The only twist missing from the "20 Ways" model that I would incorporate in hindsight... is to perhaps make some part of the ebook rebrandable. Perhaps use software such as Viral Document Toolkit to allow customer who buy resale rights (as an upsell) to change links within the ebook. No kind of resale rights are offered for the 20 Ways ebook, but it is a twist that you might want to consider for one of your products.

Anyway... joint ventures, an affiliate program, and releasing viral rebrandable products are all proven methods of quickly, easily, and cheaply setting in motion a sustainable flow of traffic!


About the Author:
Willie Crawford is an Internet marketer with over 11 years of experience at generating massive website traffic, and sales using viral marketing techniques. Viral Document Toolkit is his favorite tool for creating rebranded PDF ebooks in minutes. Checkout the demo video at: http://ViralDocumentToolkits.com