Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising Results

A revealing report on my latest advertising experiences with two high-profile pay per click search engines, overture.com and findwhat.com...

About FindWhat.com (now Miva.com) and Overture.com (now YahooSearch):
These two pay per click search engines were two of the busiest PPC search engines on the web at the time of testing, with more traffic than any other PPC search engines.

My ads:
Primary FindWhat.com ad:
Free Step-by-step Guide To Making a Living Online
Wanna use the Internet to make money? Discover how in this free step-by-step guide to making a living online. (From someone who's already doing it!)
Result: Fair

Primary Overture.com ad:
Starting a High Income Business Online
Free expert assistance from a guy who makes his living online. A no-hype guide to making your living from the Internet.
Result: Poor

The cost:
Since I can choose how much I want to pay per click with these search engines, I decided to really put these engines to the test over the last couple months. So I increased my spending over a two month period and pumped (or should I say dumped) a full $1100.00 on some great keyword buys. The keywords I bid on included heavily searched terms such as "start a business", "start a home business", "web business" and "starting a business online", just to name a few. Most of these higher profile keywords averaged 30 to 50 cents per click. About 80% of the keyword buys were at overture.com.

The results:
The traffic was exactly as predicted. Both search engines delivered on that. I received a total of approximately 2500 targeted visitors (I know they were targeted because they clicked on keywords I bid on) so as I mentioned above, my cost per visitor was less than 50 cents. Cost per visitor is one aspect anyone can control easily on the PPC engines. You simply bid the amount you want on each keyword you submit.

However one thing you can never control is the conversion rate. And my visitor to sale conversion rate was much, much lower than expected with these campaigns. While the campaigns yielded 2500 visitors, only a total of three sales were made. Two of the three where from the FindWhat search engine. Net PPC campaign loss: $703

That was quite surprising since sales overall had been strong during the same period. That total of one sale in every 800+ visitors is simply the worst I've experienced to date using paid advertising.

So why were my results so poor with these PPC engines? Here's my take on it...

Search engines are a great way to get traffic to a site. But... search engine traffic overall, yields lower conversion results than traffic generated from more direct strategies, such as email marketing. That's a trend I have noticed the last few years online.

When readers of an opt-in email message or email newsletter see my ad and click to the site, they do so from a somewhat trusted source, the email message they opted into. So they are more apt to purchase when they get to the site.

Yet when a web surfer comes in from a search they performed, they are going on blind faith more than anything else. They may opt into my free newsletter and purchase eventually, but the likelihood of them buying on first contact is slimmer than the scenario above. And many surfers are just that, surfing through site after site without taking any actions at all. No opt-in, no buying, just a lot of searching!

So, why use Pay Per Click advertising at all? Well, it is a good way to drive traffic to a new site that has fewer traffic sources established. in fact, if you are promoting products or services in an extremely tight niche you should get better conversion rates since you'll pay FAR less than what folks like me pay for targeted keywords. And with the targeted traffic you can at least start to grow an opt-in list and establish other contacts.

But if you're looking to just make sales, keep a close watch on your conversion rates when advertising in PPC engines. As I have shown above, it is easy to overspend and get lousy results. You'll probably find, just as I have, that you're better served by using direct email marketing strategies such as top sponsorship advertising in ezines targeted to your niche. That's still what works best for me!

If you want to try PPC search engine advertising, I recommend you start with Google Adwords, as they have the largest search audience in the world.

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