PPCs blowin money, whats wrong

[fruggy]

Ok...

Well I've had my hosting company for a few years now and everything has been going good, with word of mouth and mostly small clients.

No tragedies and good service, I'd like to say heh

So I decide to take $300 and throw it into PPC.

I bid at the most .30 and least .02 for different keywords that had to do with web hosting, since there aren't many, it was mainly different variations of "web hosting".

I signed up to Sprinks, Findwhat, Ah-ha, and Kanoodle, since overture's price on web hosting is outrageous ($7.25perclick).

Three days later all the cash is spent, and not one signup..:(

Findwhat has yet to put me live yet, but I'd say it was still quite a disaster.

Here was my campaign...

Web Hosting $10 - No Contract - 24/7 Support

Why not choose a web hosting company who cares? We offer 24/7 Support, Free Setup, First Month Free, PHP/MySQL, Control Panel, WebMail, Unix. We promise you won't be disappointed. No Contract!

What did I do wrong?

Trygge Toven
http://www.atomikvision.com

Any criticism is fine with me...bash it all you want :)

[qwerty]

Did you check your site logs to see who was clicking on your ads? I ask because a lot of people seem to lose their money on PPC due to bogus clicks.

You should check to see if the IP addresses of users hitting your tracking URL show a lot of repeats, or if users landed on the page and left immediately -- before all the images on the pages even had a chance to load.

Of course it's possible that your landing page just wasn't what people who clicked on your ad hoped to see. Did the ad send them to your home page, or some other one?

[fruggy]

Well I didn't check..but I believed that these companies were reputable enough that I wouldn't have to check.

I sent them to my homepage..

http://www.atomikvision.com

Maybe it's just my site, think there's something wrong there?

Trygge

[qwerty]

I don't see anything wrong with your home page as far as fulfilling the promises made in the ad is concerned.

I haven't run a lot of PPC campaigns myself, and I've only dealt with Overture and Google, but I'm not aware of any problems with the companies you've mentioned. I still think it's best to be cautious, however. If you used a tracking URL, it shouldn't be difficult to track the clicks and see if you notice anything non-kosher.

[fruggy]

From a hosting company perspective,
what do you think about the site?

I'm just rather depressed is all

Trygge

[qwerty]

From a hosting company perspective, I can't really give an opinion. I picked the company that hosts my sites based on someone's personal recommendation. I don't like their site at all.

From an SEO perspective, I do have one suggestion based on a quick look at your code: on your features page, you have headings in <b> tags formatted with the class "heading". Why not put them in heading tags formatted to look that way? Search engines give more weight to headings than bolded text, and based on the structure of the document, those are in fact headings.

As far as the depression that comes from an ad campaign that didn't work goes, you're definitely not alone. I worked for a small company that invested about $4000 in sponsoring a section of a web site targeted to our vertical. We got lots of traffic from it, but not one sale. It happens.

If you're not able to find out exactly why this campaign didn't work, I'd recommend spending some time learning about good PPC strategies (this is a great place for that) and trying again when you're ready.

[Webmaster T]

The Second tier PPC engines have more "problem affiliates" I'd at least look at the logs for some clues as to poor ROI which wouldn't be wasted time since you could be checking the referrer as well. Knowing what went wrong also helps in keywords research for organic SEO. IMO, figuring out what went wrong is always a good use of your time.

[fruggy]

Thanks alot, I will definitely do what both of you said.

I am actually quite proficient with the search engines normally as well, with my other site, www.nipponracing.com, where I have many top ten positions. But it is near impossible to do it with web hosting because of the major links they all have to their sites.

Thanks for your time.

[Bernard]

You might find this thread interesting:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10192&perpage=10&pagenumber=1

[french dread]

Personnaly I would run away from a company that shout "no contract". But perhaps it is common in america?

[ihelpyou]

Hi fruggy, Why would you waste your time with those ppc's?

And why do you think the term 'web hosting' is the only term you should bid one? Why not get "targeted" with that term and find the other hundreds of terms that have to do with web hosting? It's ridiculous to think a site would bid on that term when they could be doing Adwords for pennies on a term that is highly relevant as well. It's a bad excuse to say you did not want to do adwords or overture because the price is too high on a term. There are hundreds/thousands of terms to bid on.

You said to be critical. :D

[fruggy]

hehe well people don't like being stuck with a company...americans are afraid of contracts

maybe it's a bad move..

thx..

[french dread]

americans are afraid of contracts

Oh ok ...
for me no contract = no legal proof = no guarantee of anything = suspect

[fruggy]

Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree with you on this one. There aren't hundreds or thousands of keywords for web hosting. I'm only providing one service and theres only so many ways you can say it..

affordable web hosting, inexpensive web hosting, cheap web hosting, virtual hosting, shared hosting...

believe me I did them all..

I didn't just do the main keyword "web hosting"

I used word tracker as well...

Maybe I don't exactly get how adwords works, I guess I'll give it a try.

[fruggy]

well yikes..didn't think of it that way.

Maybe I'll just leave that part out then.

:)

Thanks..

P.S. Do you think as an american company I should try to get international clients? or are international clients looking to host in their home country?
Any opinions?

[ihelpyou]

There are certainly are hundreds of terms you could find. For any business out there are hundreds of terms. :)

[fruggy]

hmm...guess it's time to put on my thinking cap and dive into wordtracker again

[Bernard]

Off the top of my head...

internet site
internet website
internet server
server bandwidth
cgi host
perl script (ing)
web form host
e-commerce solution

They may not be very useful, but they may give you some ideas...

[french dread]

Target your key phrases to the max and also have a targetted ad copy for each one, dont use a generic ad.
Geographical targetting can be effective, why not try "tacoma web hosting"?

U may be interested by reading those articles:
http://www.stickysauce.com/articles/searchenginetips/googleadwords.htm
http://www.marketingwords.com/articles/articles_adwords.html

[fruggy]

dang..good call guys..

Thanks alot!

[fruggy]

i still don't think people use those words to look up web hosting services though

being more "targeted" shouldn't mean using words that don't pertain to my site...

this is frustrating :(

[fruggy]

My other site has thousands and thousands of different keywords..

just don't see it for web hosting

[Mel66]

I highly recommend AdWords as a starting point. You can set a budget as low as $5 to try it out (although if your keywords have a high CPC, you'll blow through $5 very quickly). But you don't have to bid high enough to be #1, either. Your ad will still appear on Google at the $0.05 minimum - but it might be at the bottom of a long list.

One trick I use on Google with great success is to combine 2 or more word phrases into one word, so for example "web hosting" becomes "webhosting". What about "web site hosting"? "Websitehosting"? Etc. Often I find I'm the only bidder on these combined words, and I get a lot of clicks. Also, you should make use of the phrase matching and negative keyword options they offer you. Go to the AdWords FAQ to find out more. Better yet, spend $49 and get Andrew Goodman's "21 Ways To Maximize ROI On Google AdWords Select." You will recoup your entire investment and more with the great tips he has. I'm not an affiliate of his, just a customer! You can get the report here:

http://www.page-zero.com

(Hope this is ok, Doug!)

Don't assume you can't afford to be on Google or Overture. You just have to be a bit creative.

HTH

Melissa

[fruggy]

right on...

Thanks