Are you happy with your PPC rates

[surfmale]

Hi All,

[We don't allow self-promotion in here. If your purpose is to solicit business I suggest you find a forum that allows that. - moderator]

[mooper]

Looks like someone had spammed in here, but made me realize a relevant point to his title...

Higher prices for PPC are *not*inherently a bad thing. In fact, as someone who has spent millions on them, higher PPC prices generally represent a good thing because the pricing mechanism is self-adjusting for quality... when adverisers are paying more, they are getting more out of each visitor... a good thing. If I could wave a wand and instantly cut prices in half (back to where they were 3-4 years ago), I'd pass.

[IncrediBILL]

Higher prices for PPC are *not*inherently a bad thing.

Compared to free SE traffic, paying for any traffic is a bad thing.

[mooper]

Compared to free SE traffic, paying for any traffic is a bad thing.

If you can get the same quantity and quality from free SE traffic as you can from PPC and they are mutually exclusive substitutes - then absolutely!

In my experience, paying for traffic usually yields better conversions (quality) and always yields additional quantity (albeit with some undesirable cannibalization), especially when sourced from partners not providing free SE results.

It would be nice to receive hundreds of thousands of highly targeted daily clicks via free SE, but the volume simply isnt there when relying on it exclusively.

[IncrediBILL]

It would be nice to receive hundreds of thousands of highly targeted daily clicks via free SE, but the volume simply isnt there when relying on it exclusively.

If you knew SEO it wouldn't be a problem as I get 20K highly targeted visitors on a slow day and it's all 100% free courtesy Google, Yahoo and MSN. I then sell advertising on my site at prices below PPC rates for people that crave that traffic.

It's a win-win for everyone except those that pay top tier PPC rates for the same traffic ;)

[mooper]

If you knew SEO it wouldn't be a problem as I get 20K highly targeted visitors on a slow day and it's all 100% free courtesy Google, Yahoo and MSN. I then sell advertising on my site at prices below PPC rates for people that crave that traffic.

It's a win-win for everyone except those that pay top tier PPC rates for the same traffic ;)

By highly targeted, I meant for keywords that convert at significant rates for specific products and services. If you can get 20K completely free visitors that convert at 35 RPC (revenue per click) - the average for our traffic - then you are indeed a very rich man (20K * .35 = $7,000 pure profit daily, or $2MIL+ per year!). I suspect you are full of it if that is your claim... more likely, if you actually see 20K free visitors per day, you aren't able to convert them (via the traffic sales you mentioned) for any more than a few pennies RPC. (And, if the traffic is actually high-converting and targeted but you are selling it for little, then you are making a huge mistake.)

Also, note that I originally said hundreds of thousands per day, not 20K per day. If you can get hundreds of thousands of highly targeted and high-converting traffic free each day, then I would like a fleet of Lamborghinis please!

[IncrediBILL]

Mooper, you're making invalid assumptions about my business model and obviously overlooked the fact that I said I sell advertising and not products.

I have to have highly targeted traffic for my advertisers otherwise I wouldn't have any advertisers, understand now?

[mooper]

Mooper, you're making invalid assumptions about my business model and obviously overlooked the fact that I said I sell advertising and not products.

I have to have highly targeted traffic for my advertisers otherwise I wouldn't have any advertisers, understand now?

I did not make any assumptions at all - I asked you some questions.

To be absolutely clear, I will ask again and not assume a thing:

How much revenue are you able to get out of the 20K free visitors you get daily?

We are able to get roughly 200K daily visitors and convert them to roughly 35 cents revenue per click via PPC. Of course we have a very substantial cost to pay for that traffic, but margins are still there. If you can enlighten me to the ability of natural SEO to drive 20K daily visitors at no cost that convert at even one-half of the revenue per click we produce, maybe I should expand my business. Of course I'm not asking you to share any business secrets - after all, you wouldn't become a multi-millionaire by telling everyone else how to get the same 20K daily free visitors you do - but I'd love to hear a confirmation that itis possible.

[IncrediBILL]

How much revenue are you able to get out of the 20K free visitors you get daily?

I won't share what I make exactly because some people know my site and I sure as heck don't need any more competition.

However, I will share that the paid advertising ranges between 7%-10% CTR so my advertisers are well taken care of and some have been with me over 5 years.

My advertisers have included some major corporations in the past like HP, APPLE, etc. and we're not talking affiliate programs, we're talking direct ad campaigns, so you know I'm not making chump change.

Besides, 20K visitors is kind of the low end summer slump as it was cranking 1M visitors a month not too long ago.

[mooper]

I won't share what I make exactly...However, I will share that the paid advertising ranges between 7%-10% CTR so my advertisers are well taken care of and some have been with me over 5 years...it was cranking 1M visitors a month not too long ago.

30K+ visitors per day, cost-free, is what you claim to have. If you convert these visitors by *any* means (selling a product or service to small or large clients who are happy or not happy with low or high CTRs, etc.) into 10 cents of revenue per click, then you are making $3,000 pure profit daily - or $1 MIL+ per year. Given that even poor and untargeted traffic can be converted around 5 cents RPC and half-decent traffic above 10, either A) you are a multi-millionaire (if so, good for you... I haven't heard of anyone becoming rich from "natural SEO" since the substantial value of the practice died in the 90s, except for some foreign porn spammers who continued to milk it into this decade), or B) you are misrepresenting your situation by claiming more free visitors than you actually receive, exaggerating the quality of your traffic, or both.

Regardless of the above realities, PPC provides the opportunity to get *additional* traffic far beyond the levels you claim to see, in a predictable and measurable and controllable fashion. 200K visitors at a 10% profit margin is just as good as 20K visitors at a 100% profit margin (or better, if more stable), so I see no reason to shun it. Properly orchestrated, there is no need for cannibalization.

[IncrediBILL]

Mooper, not all visitors convert and I've been involved with many ecommerce sites, some made upwards of $240K/month, and none of them converted with the twisted statistics you keep quoting.

[mooper]

Mooper, not all visitors convert and I've been involved with many ecommerce sites, some made upwards of $240K/month, and none of them converted with the twisted statistics you keep quoting.

Of course not all visitors convert... anyone in the business knows that it is a game of averages. Absolutely nothing is twisted about my statistics. If you feel otherwise, please cite the details and I will attempt to clarify.

I ask again: What is the average revenue per visitor you see from your 20K-30K daily free visitors? No need to provide any detail on how you convert them to revenue, what their demographics are, or anything else. All I'm looking for - because perhaps you could enlighten me to a business model I thought was dead and have bypassed - is how much profit *you* are able to make from those visitors (which, in your case with no substantial cost of aquiring the traffic, is virtually equivilent to you revenue figure).

[WebSavvy]

I ask again: What is the average revenue per visitor you see from your 20K-30K daily free visitors?
Didn't he already answer this for you when he said this:

I won't share what I make exactly because some people know my site and I sure as heck don't need any more competition.

Pretty much cleared it up as far as I can tell. BTW, I happen to know which site Bill's talking about ... and he's not exaggerating.

BTW, Bill. Sending you a PM -- I spoke to the Lycos guy and it's a go. Sending you details.

[mooper]

Didn't he already answer this for you when he said this:



Pretty much cleared it up as far as I can tell. BTW, I happen to know which site Bill's talking about ... and he's not exaggerating.

BTW, Bill. Sending you a PM -- I spoke to the Lycos guy and it's a go. Sending you details.

I respect an honest privacy concern, but I happen to know that 20K to 30K free completely visitors from natural SEO only *that convert to revenue at a comparable rate to PPC visitors* is not reality. I am asking him tongue-in-cheek. If he sees that quantity of visitors, then he makes pennies from each, at best, on average. If he makes a substantial RPC, then he doesn't see nearly 20K to 30K free visitors per day. If I am wrong on both counts, then he is a multi-millionaire and I am unaware of the potential that natural SEO holds for making people multi-millionaires post-1999.

Also, he did nothing to clarify why even *if* his fantasy world where natural SEO is an extremely lucrative business exists, why buying trafific in quantities that far exceed natual SEO levels (assuming it is not cannibalizing and that its cost is lower than the revenue it produces) would not be a wildly desirable complement.

[WebSavvy]

If I am wrong on both counts, then he is a multi-millionaire and I am unaware of the potential that natural SEO holds for making people multi-millionaires post-1999.
I'd go with that one. :D

[chongzivalve08089]

spam removed

[marston10]

I think PPC costs are quite expensive, it is good in a way coz you only pay when someone clicks on you but the price of each click is really high, I think SEO is much better and more cost effective

[Removed Multiple URLs]

[Connie]

I removed your link. Read the forum guidelines (http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18677).

[LocalGuru]

In my experience, paying for traffic usually yields better conversions (quality) and always yields additional quantity (albeit with some undesirable cannibalization), especially when sourced from partners not providing free SE results.



Ok... I'll bite
what is meant by or what did you mean by "undesirable cannibalization"?

Note:
I've not done PPC since Perry Marshall's ebook in 2005, much has changed I'm guessing and I joined here (and several dozen other forums) to learn about PPC before I spend money learning the hard way what to NOT do.

I do pretty good on SEO and am getting the "sinking feeling" that I may be leaving money on the table by not using PPC to augment my SEO efforts
thanks

[Connie]

I do pretty good on SEO and am getting the "sinking feeling" that I may be leaving money on the table by not using PPC to augment my SEO efforts
thanks
PPC can be a good companion to the SERPS. Whether that is true for you will require that you spend a little money and experiment.

[mooper]

Ok... I'll bite
what is meant by or what did you mean by "undesirable cannibalization"?

Note:
I've not done PPC since Perry Marshall's ebook in 2005, much has changed I'm guessing and I joined here (and several dozen other forums) to learn about PPC before I spend money learning the hard way what to NOT do.

I do pretty good on SEO and am getting the "sinking feeling" that I may be leaving money on the table by not using PPC to augment my SEO efforts
thanks

By "undesirable cannibalization" I mean acquiring traffic through a paid ad that appears alongside your free listing, thereby taking away (cannibalizing) some clicks that would have been free had you not been running the ad. This phenomena is usually not something to worry about, as having both will yield more overall traffic and the cannibalization rate usually isn't high enough to offset this benefit (when present in the first place).

PPC is extremely powerful for any business that is "best of breed" and therefore able to sustain competitive bids. If you sell CDs or web design services, do not think of trying it... you will get crushed by competition. However, if you are the best chimney sweep in your town, you might give it a shot. Google is, by far, the best place to start (and really the only one you need, as it controls the vast majority of the market for good reason... it is the most efficient platform).

[ihelpyou]

:hi: mooper!

[SEFL]

I'm going to add something to what mooper said. I don't have any experience with Google PPC (no need), but one of my clients recently spent $200 on Yahoo! Shopping (PPC).

Bigtime, BIGTIME disappointment. Within 2 days, 254 clicks had been "tracked" on the Yahoo! Shopping portal. We could verify 29 of them within the stats program included in the site. When I called Yahoo! about this, they said that the stats programs that track this sort of thing are all crap and never count "all of Yahoo!'s partners". It threw them for a loop when I mentioned that this was a Yahoo! store and therefore the stats program was actually their own that they just dissed.

They then tried to mention some of their "partners", not realizing that the referrals that came from the "partner" sites had to do with my client submitting products there independently and therefore had nothing to do with Yahoo! After about 10 minutes of pointing out that there was no way that it was possible that they sent 254 referrals, the Yahoo! rep said, "DO YOU KNOW ALL OF YAHOO!'S PARTNERS? I DON'T THINK SO!"
"I don't have to know them. I can look at referrals and when the most major one that I can't directly attribute to non-Yahoo! PPC efforts sends 29 referrals, there's something wrong. Why don't you show reports indicating where the clicks came from?"
"You're not entitled to that, sir."
"Fine, send them to (site owner). She would be. She's paying for it."
"No, she's not."
"She's not paying for it?"
"No, she's not entitled to that information. We can run a clickthrough investigation if you want and present you with summary results, but that's about it."

Needless to say, the PPC funds got cut off that night. Moral of the story: stay away from the raging, clueless corporate dinosaur known as Yah-HOOOOooooooh!

[mooper]

SEFL,

Your friend made a few mistakes. Trying content and partners before search-only is a mistake, as the search traffic is higher quality and easily traced. Using Yahoo instead of Google is also a mistake, as Yahoo and MSN are essentially second-tier at this point with Google being the crown jewel of the industry. (Btw, Yahoo and MSN, if they ever combine, won't catch up... combining two inferior products might boost market share temporarily, but doesn't make for a better product). With any PPC effort, the key is starting out safely, setting goal to ensure that revenue received exceeds money spent, and expanding in a measured manner. If you don't have any experience with PPC, it is usually better to have someone with experience do it for you (using Analytics, for example is critical and not something a layman can do), and never try PPC unless you are competitive in your niche.

[SEFL]

Oh, I know all this, mooper. The problem was that I didn't find out about it until after the 254 clicks had already gone through. Not much you can do when you're not told in advance and then have to fix the mess later.

[SEFL]

One other thing...I don't blame my friend, either. She was talked into it by a Yahoo! sales pitch promising her a 20% discount on each click, and "given" a decent PPC number. And you have to be willing to risk and try something sometime. I get that.

The only thing I ever blamed her for was committing as much as she did to start, but she also recognizes her error as well. And if we learn something from a mistake, that's good enough for me. Like mooper said, try a small amount and reinvest it from there (I recommended that if she try PPC at all, start with about $20 and see how it goes.)

[Seomul]

Normally people dont promote there self.