Welcome to the second issue of PayPerClick Journal, the official newsletter of Pay Per Click Universe, your source for free, unbiased, pay-per-click (PPC) information. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions for the newsletter. Recent Pay-Per-Click News and Announcements FindWhat.com Launches Automated Partner Program – AdRevenue Xpress (September 30, 2004)If you are considering entering a partnership program with one of the PPC search engines, there’s a new kid on the block – FindWhat has just announced their new product, AdRevenue Xpress, which specifically is designed for small to mid-sized businesses. Using a wizard-driven interface, website owners can add search box or directory capability to their websites without having to redesign or change operations functioning on their website. FindWhat also offers access to online help on a 24/7 basis. Unfortunately, the program is currently only available to FindWhat PPC advertisers, but those who choose to use the program will enjoy a 10% bonus (in addition to the revenue earned through the partner program) if the advertiser reinvests his or her partnership revenue back into their FindWhat PPC ad accounts.
FindWhat.com Introduces New Advertising Program (September 14, 2004)FindWhat has certainly been busy this past month, first with its new partnership product, and now with an entirely different direction for paid advertising called FindWhat.com PPC2™, which offers the user the option of using traditional pay per click or a new option of pay per call, depending upon their perceived needs. The pay-per-call mechanism does not require a business to have a website, since the paid ad that appears includes a toll-free telephone number that automatically routes the call to the business’s own phone number. Telephone support is provided for users. The key differences between this and PPC is that bids are placed on categories rather than keywords and the user chooses which level of geographic coverage they wish (local, regional, national, etc.). As the name suggests, the advertiser only pays when someone actually calls them after viewing their ad on FindWhat (using tracking technology developed by Ingenio, Inc. for this unique service).
Google Launches Local Canadian SearchIn mid-September, Google launched a Canadian version of its local search function. Clearly identified as a Beta version on the screen, the tool does need some tweaking, with users posting examples of inaccurate results. In one particular case, a search for “plumber Hamilton, on” returned a result of the closest plumber being 56 kilometers NE of Hamilton, while in fact Canada411 comes up with 87 plumbers in Hamilton proper.
There is also a local United Kingdom version of Google in currently on the internet, but apparently not even in beta yet. Although one can reach the URL, Google is still behind here as well, in that they display the standard local search box with no indication that it is UK-related. We will keep an eye on the local match versions of Google as they become available. PPC Journal will soon be posting an update to our PPC for Local Businesses section, given the explosion of this type of marketing in the last few months. We would like to take this opportunity to thank one of our current sponsors – SearchFeed – for their support: - Thousands of leading web properties integrate Searchfeed.com's content - Searchfeed.com's network generates hundreds of millions of searches monthly - Millions of unique keywords ensure relevancy and coverage of sponsored results - Concentration on the personal touch with an emphasis on personal assistance Special Offers Available for Pay Per Click Universe Users
Please take a moment to visit our Special Offers page to view all our current specials, but here's one that we think you really should consider trying. PPC Search Engine – Overture is offering Pay Per Click Universe subscribers a $100 bonus with a $50 deposit. Click here for more information.
Blog Feature on Pay Per Click Universe Pay Per Click Universe's homepage features a blog written by Chris Hickman, a PPC analyst with over 4 years experience in the industry. Chris discusses various topics and shares his specialized knowledge learned through his own experiences in using PPC.
Here is a link to Chris' latest blog entry, as well as a link to the blog archive that contains his previous entries.
Hire Someone Or Do It Yourself? (October 3, 2004)
Latest Reviews From September 2004 PPC Search Engine Review of the Month
All of the above makes it a little difficult to take Xuppa seriously in the PPC search engine business. Xuppa seems to offer so many different things for its visitors to do and see that it is hard to realize that it has supposed to be a search engine. When we ran a number of examples of simple searches that typically bring up 100s of relevant listings in a PPC search engine, we found with Xuppa that you always received the same three results (all leading to another directory type listing, with any emphasis on your search term being rare).
If you click on the directory listings on the Xuppa homepage themselves, you tend to get listings that are related to the term (e.g., “health”) that you clicked on, but sometimes the listings are relatively few in number in a given directory.
There was some publicized concern about a year ago about Xuppa’s performance, when clients and affiliates had difficulty contacting the search engine and receiving replies or payments. The management people at Xuppa finally surfaced after a few weeks to report that they were under new management, hiring new and additional staff, and working on integrating other search properties, so asked for patience while they adjusted.
Since that time, Xuppa still appears to be a PPC search engine that is undergoing rocky moments. Users report that although they sometimes get a decent amount of traffic, their ROI is much lower than it should be for that amount of traffic on comparable PPCSEs.
Xuppa offers some different types of paid ad campaigns using the pay-per-click technique with banner ads and pop-up types of advertising, in additional to the more traditional affiliate programs. In particular, with the popup product, the website that the popup comes up on is paid each time the popup appears (when the user leaves the site) whether or not the user visits the site in the popup at all.
It appears that Xuppa is concentrating on their alternative means of working with other businesses (including website design, hosting and SEO), instead of the traditional pay-per-click advertising route. Thus, it is difficult to even compare it to other PPC search engines reviewed here at PayPerClick Universe in its current configuration. It certainly does not provide great search results when used by someone browsing for information and, as such, is probably not the best place to put traditional PPC ad campaign funds right now. Some of the less traditional options in the banner and pop-up advertising areas might yield better results for your marketing dollars if you decide you would like to try them with Xuppa.
Pros:
- Easy-to-use interface for advertisers
- Probably easy to get first-page placement on many of the directory listings
- Reports issued daily
- Bidding starts as low as 1/10 of one cent
- If you open an account and deposit $50 in it, Xuppa will currently match that up to $100
Cons:
- Homepage is very busy and disorganized
- Emphasis does not appear to be on the relevancy or usability of search results, so hard to recommend as a good search engine, much less a good PPC search engine
- Non-professional appearance and concentration on contests, lottos, ecards, etc., tend to lend a non-professional feel to the search engine itself
*Note: Be sure to check out our just-released review of the PPC search engine Espotting on our website.
PPC Management and Monitoring Tool Review of the Month This tool, officially entitled “21 Pay-Per-Click Campaign Secrets Your Competition Doesn’t Know” was first written by Andrew Goodman in March 2002, soon after the pay-per-click program AdWords was released by Google. The publication has gone through a number of versions and updates, with the latest rewrite dated September 2004. Given the longevity of Goodman’s study of AdWords and Google itself, one would expect this publication to be thorough and up-to-date. The tips themselves have changed over time, to reflect the changes in Google’s program from its small beginnings to the complex product it now is. This latest version, for example, introduces information on ROI, currently a hot topic in the marketplace of pay per click.
Goodman’s background in working with search engines, search engine optimization, and now pay per click (mostly working with Page Zero) all have come together in this publication to provide some advice, specific formulas to follow, and tips to improve your click-through rates and reduce your cost-per-click bids.
Currently, Goodman is offering two extras for no additional cost if you order by October 8, 2004. The first is subscriber-only updates (free until January 2006), which appear to be mostly excerpts from Goodman’s “Page Zero Advisor” newsletter, published every other month. The second is a 12-page PDF entitled “Top 7 PPC Pain Points”, which talks about more recent changes in Google’s AdWords and how to deal with them. This booklet was written in July 2004 and seems to be a good addition to his base product.
It is rare to find anyone who says anything but good things about Andrew Goodman’s “21 Pay-Per-Click Campaign Secrets Your Competition Doesn’t Know.” Goodman himself offers a plethora of testimonials about his product and you can find plenty of good things said about the publication all over relevant forums on the Internet.
Looking carefully at those who make testimonials and post positive reviews of the book, however, they are mostly small-to-medium sized businesses, many of whom admit not having a lot of experience with pay per click before reading Goodman’s book. This makes Goodman’s work a good match with Pay Per Click Universe’s primary audience – smaller businesses and those just entering the pay-per-click market. For those companies who run large campaigns and already spend a great deal of time and money on finessing their projects, they probably already know most of the “secrets” that Goodman has to offer in his publication, and it may prove less useful to them.
Goodman has used a masterful advertising campaign to market his publication and the strong use of affiliates to sell his book has served to “spread the word” about his publication far and wide. He has also chosen an excellent price point of only $69, which makes the book appealing, as it is not too cheap (therefore giving the impression that it must have valuable advice). In addition, it is not too expensive (therefore giving the impression the author is not just interested in making a lot of money, but wants to give quality at a reasonable cost).
Whatever his motivation, the book is a standard in the industry and with continuing updates, should continue to be so. The major challenge that Goodman faces is keeping up with the extremely quickly changing pace of the pay-per-click industry itself – it was far easier to provide winning tips when the players in the market were few in number and the programs available were simpler. Now, with Google and Overture fighting head-to-head to keep their top positions and to provide their users with advice similar to that which Goodman provides, and other pay-per-click search engines quickly moving to try to duplicate their success, Goodman’s book may lose some of its usefulness for businesses with even a small amount of experience in the market already.
Overall, at such a low price point, this book would be a good investment for anyone just entering the pay-per-click market and those who have tried a couple of times to produce a winning ad campaign and failed. Goodman also claims to provide methods of “beating the AdWords system”, so even more experienced users may want to take advantage of this low-cost item to see if there are any tips in it that they have overlooked as well.
Moreover, who can resist a book that claims its latest version has “28% more lame jokes than last year’s edition”?
- ePilot’s latest venture, its Local Direct products, offers advertiser an ability to target local prospects. - Has a partnership list that includes more than 200 search engines and websites, including large properties, and more than 300,000 advertisers, for a relatively large market reach. Featured Article of the Month From Our Website ABCs of ROI by Dmitri Eroshenko
You can track the history of online advertising by the alphabetical soup and the buzzwords of the day.
Along with the first banners, in came fashionable-sounding CPM and "eyeballs". For some weird reason, "eyeballs" failed to produce sales, and the attention shifted to CTR. Then Amazon.com introduced affiliates and CPA. A short while later, Goto.com introduced CPC, or PPC, and the world of online advertising has pretty much acquired its present shape. Not much has changed until the very recent advent of good old ROI in the vocabulary of every self-respecting e-marketer. ROI means "return on investment". ROI is where the money is.
Read the rest of this extremely informative article on the basics of ROI.
In our next issue, which will arrive in your mailboxes on the first Sunday of November 2004, some of the highlights you can expect to see are:
Additional Reviews of PPC Search Engines and Tools:
A review of GenieKnows
A review of KeywordMax
And finally,
Hint of the Month In addition to subscribing to online newsletters, be certain to visit the forums on the internet that have PPC sections in their search engine areas. Forums are arguably the best place to pick up free advice and to see current complaints and kudos for different PPC search engines/tools. Reading about others’ experiences may provide you with the most current information of all to help you decide if you have put your advertising dollars in the right place or if it time to jump ship to another provider.
Thanks for reading this edition of the Pay Per Click Journal. We value your comments and hope you will look forward to receiving our next edition at the beginning of November 2004.
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- Pay Per Click Journal Editor Frances Krug © 2004 PayPerClickUniverse.com. All rights reserved.
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