September 2004 Welcome to the inaugural issue of the PayPerClick Journal! Bloggers Can Now Feature AdSense Ads In Their Blogs The Google product “Blogger” announced on August 23, 2004 that bloggers could now post Google’s AdSense ads on their blogs, thereby actually making money from Google. The capability is not being limited to Google users of the Blogger product, but can be incorporated into any blog by easily cutting and pasting code provided by Goggle to a blogger for that purpose. Click here for more information.
Enhance Interactive Launches New Application Program Interface
The PPC search engine Enhance Interactive announced on August 30, 2004 a new Application Program Interface (API) for users to access their keyword listings. The new API is reportedly much more user-friendly than the previous version, whether you are a small business customer or one of their larger clients. The new API apparently also has built-in capabilities to add future improvements in service as they are developed. LookSmart Joins With HighBeam™ Research On August 31, 2004, HighBeam™ Research, LLC announced a partnership with the PPC search engine LookSmart. Under the terms of the agreement, LookSmart’s FindArticles service will now have access to abstracts of more than 1 million of the estimated 32 million articles and graphics within the research company’s collection, which is mostly composed of business-related newspapers and journals from approximately the last 25 years. Special Offers Available for Pay-Per-Click Universe Users This month we have a couple of great deals we have worked out with some of the leading PPC search engines and monitoring tools. Visit the Special Deals page on our website to view all our current specials, but here are a couple of pretty spectacular offers we currently have running:
PPC Tool/Service – From our monitoring tools section, we have an offer from AdWatcher for a charge of only $1 for the first month of service. You won’t find a better deal on the Internet for a trial of a product to keep track of all your ad campaigns! Weekly Blog Feature On PPC Universe Each week, Pay Per Click Universe will feature a new blog entry discussing various topics and sharing specialized knowledge in a way we hope to be of interest to both the novice and expert PPC user.
Here are the current blog entries in our archive for you to read, if you did not catch them since the launch of our website in the middle of August.
IIn this section of the PPC Journal we will feature one review from each of our two major review sections on our website: Reviews of PPC Search Engines and reviews of PPC Management and Monitoring Tools. These reviews were conducted during the previous month. To access all our reviews and user responses to them, visit our website or click PPCSearch Engine Reviews and/or PPC Management and Monitoring Tools to be taken directly to those sections of our website.
FindWhat - (BeFirst until the middle of 1999) is headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida and began primarily as a PPC search engine through its early acquisition of the trademarked Pay For Position product of a New-York-based firm.
Highlights of its development include a 2001 agreement to have its search results featured on Excite.com. Find What’s main strength lies in its various arrangements with other search properties, the addition of auto bidding to its services, and perhaps in its most significant move, the recent acquisition of a European presence through a merger with the Espotting PPC search engine. The effect of this merger on both properties will be interesting to watch as the two move closer together.
A FindWhat account is fairly easy and intuitive to create and follows the classic PPC process. They do offer two main tools to assist users – AutoBid™ and BidOptimizer™. Manual bidding is also allowed.
Pros
- Appeals to smaller businesses not quite ready to commit as large a budget as needed to use Google or Overture.
- BidOptimizer™ tool allows you to bid for a specified ranking, instead of just the first ranking. The tool will automatically adjust your bids to enable you to keep your keywords in the second or third rank, or whichever you have chosen.
- Package called Business Builder which offers consultation on a one-on-one basis with a FindWhat consultant, resulting in 2 titles and 50 keywords. Personal editing of your ad. You PPC ad is not activated until you confirm you are ready to begin your campaign.
- Nice wizard setup of your account with plenty of help provided along the way
Cons
- Set up of a PPC campaign can take up to two days.
- Minimum deposit of $25.
- Contact hours to reach a live person are not 24/7 and do not include any time on Sundays.
- Even more than a month after the merger, you can still only open an account at either FindWhat or Espotting, not in both at the same time.
Although sold through Apex Pacific Pty Ltd., Dynamic Bid Maximizer is a PPC management tool that offers autobidding management of Overture, covering all of Overture's foreign properties. Therefore, if you are a die-hard Overture client, this product is well worth investigating as an adjunct to Overture's own offering. There also is a non-Overture version that covers Google's AdWords and other PPC search engines - look for a review of that product in an update on PPC Universe.
As for Dynamic Bid Optimizer Overture, the product not only manages your campaign once it has begun, but offers assistance in building a campaign and picking your keywords. Its strong points include automatic monitoring either once per hour or just once per day, but on a 365 days, 24 hours a day basis.
Focusing on the number-three position as its basis point, Dynamic Bid Maximizer works to keep you in that position or moving you up if possible (of course keeping in mind the budget you have set) and being sure to keep the bid gap between the top three positions as small as possible.
This is really not that different from Overture's own built-in product, but the offer of a free download of a demo version and a 30-day money-back guarantee make it hard to resist giving this tool a trial run if your marketing dollars are all placed on Overture.
Key features also include ROI tracking, continuing keyword help, monitoring of URLs' rankings, customized reports, the ability to export data to an Excel database, among many others. Of course, as with any bid management tool, the major advantage is the time saved in not having to personally supervise your PPC campaign as closely as you might otherwise have to.
Good customer support and attention paid to irresponsible bidding that unnecessarily drives up keyword bids (the infamous "competition killer mode") plus advance notice when one of the supported PPC search engines is anticipating an outage also can help save money for the user.
With six levels of programs to purchase (starting at just under $100 for the first level), this product fits the needs of the small business owner with less than 100 keywords all the way up to the user who wants the flexibility of unlimited numbers of keywords and accounts.
The interface could be simplified somewhat without losing any degree of usability, and the ability to categorize keywords would be a welcome addition to this tool. However, for the Overture fan, this management tool is a must-try for the 30-day trial period as long as you are prepared to spend the time to ascertain if it is worth the extra cost over and above what you are already receiving as an Overture customer.
Featured Article Of The Month From Our Website Each month in this newsletter, we will feature one of the articles that has been posted to our website. All of the articles available on our website can be found in the article archive. IIn our next monthly issue, which will arrive in your mailboxes on the first Sunday of October 2004, some of the highlights you can expect to see are:
Additional Reviews of PPC Search Engines and Tools:
- A review of xuppa.com
- A review of the Google Adwords Handbook
- A New Hint Of The Month Section |
