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Home::ECommerce
Are You PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Prejudiced?
Author : Bonnie Kotch
Copyright 2006 Bonnie Kotch
I was reading an article one day, that ironically I found while
searching through Google for subject matter to write about. I
wish I had bookmarked the page, but I didn't. I do remember the
content of the article:
Pay-Per-Click Fraud.
Now, being in and out of PPC advertising off and on as the mood
strikes me, the title of the article hit me in the forehead like
the snap of a strategically aimed wet towel. I believe I still
sport the welt.
The article led you to believe that PPC was not only fraught
with fraud, but the fraud was growing at an alarming rate with
no controls to keep it in check! I read about instances of
Competitors for keywords setting up "farms" of clickers to run
out the PPC budgets of smaller businesses, ad copying, hackers
using "click bots", and link spamming. The two giants (Google
and Yahoo), who also offer a way for people to earn by placing
those same PPC ads on their sites to get paid for each click and
cheating abounds! There is no way to stop it or track it! Well,
there are ways to track it, but little is being done to stop it.
And it will only get worse before it gets better.
The article definitely gave the impression that pay-per-click
search engines not only had no effective way to stop
click-fraud, but had no INCENTIVE to stop it. It's money in the
bank for them and unless you as the advertiser, are vigilant in
closely monitoring and analyzing your traffic (looking for too
many clicks from the same domain, for example), you are high and
dry with as much as 35%-50% of your traffic possibly being
fraudulent! I don't have time to baby-sit their business, do you?
After reading this article, I went searching for others (after
pulling my PPC campaigns) and found the same consensus . . . PPC
providers, especially the big guys, really did not, and will not
care unless they start losing MANY advertising dollars. One site
even estimated as much as $1 billion in click fraud across all
search providers combined! Bill Gates could probably afford to
lose that much but Google and Yahoo won't refund that to
advertiser/victims.
It was also popular belief that PPC fraud-eliminating technology
(if the search engines had any incentive to research it) is way
behind the brilliant, bored and malevolent hackers and their
motivation to "stick it" to the "man".
Will Pay-Per-Click die in the throes of key word competition and
click bots? Not anytime soon. I can tell you that I, as an
advertiser, just can't wrap my mind around the need to use a
marketing method that is that rife with fraud. That's MY money!
There ARE better and more effective ways to make it work for me.
PPC is not the only means to accomplish the desired end!
Do not despair. Although the popular and quickly visual
advertising method that it is, there is still the good old
fashioned site submission. You remember! The FREE ones! Google
still takes free listings and many of the popular directories
still take free listings and guess what? If you bone-up on
keyword phrases and place them strategically on your web site,
get some good back links with other web sites with similar
keyword concentration, you can STILL get on the first page of
the search results! It takes time and there is an art to it, but
given some patience, you can benefit two ways . . . Traffic from
those sites, and link popularity ranking in the search engines.
I've also noticed a few interesting alternatives popping up on
the internet that should make some smaller businesses very
happy. Let's take a look at some of those:
1. Articles, if you write them, can still bring in traffic. I
watched a brand new site of mine practically dominate 8 pages of
Google search results for my chosen keywords within days. And
every one of those articles had a link to my web site in my
byline.
2. Affiliating your site. Do you sell a product or a service?
Set yourself up as an affiliate manager. There are many sources
out there to get affiliate manager software, or set it up
through an affiliate network like CJ.com or Commission Source.
Have hundreds or thousands of other people with a link on your
site and pay only per sale or per lead. You will have much
better ROI and it's faster than writing web site owners asking
them to exchange links to build up link popularity.
3. CPA advertising - There are tons of list owners, e-zine
owners, newsletters, membership websites and the like that offer
CPA (cost-per-action). Some of the most profitable campaigns
I've ever run were through a list owner. Pay a deposit to get
the campaign started, then a percentage of each sale.
4. Ad Swapping - Many think this is limited to e-zine
advertising . . . it is not. It's along the same lines as link
exchanging. Dating sites and Horoscope sites do it all the time.
Endorsement swapping is another way. Find a complimenting web
site or business and agree to endorse each other. No money
spent, and a lot of possible profit!
5. Something I'd like to see more of, like Snap.com's approach.
They have pay-per-click, but they have also implemented a CPA
alternative to search engine advertising that currently does not
cost you anything to start your campaign. You are charged only
when you have a sale or a lead and they don't bill you until you
reach your first $100 dollars in campaign cost. (This may change
and they may require a deposit as Snap has new owners, but
currently, you can start your CPA campaign free).
6. Press Releases are a lot more cost effective than PPC
advertising. It could also help you with link popularity.
7. RSS Feed is currently free to submit to most search engines
and web sites picking it up will help you in search engine
ranking.
8. Leads - Many of the big marketers buy leads and import them
into auto responders. I personally don't like the spam
ramifications of doing this, but many lead promoters now offer
to send them to a landing page, where the interested parties opt
themselves in. Many top earners I know ONLY market this way.
I can remember as little as six years ago, PPC search engine
advertising was just getting started. In six short years it has
grown into a revenue monster for the search engines. There are
currently over 500 of these "pay-per-click" search engines and
amazingly, except for the top tier search engines, most of them
have very little of their own traffic.
I have also talked to people who LOVE PPC search advertising and
swear by it. However, if more noise is not made about PPC fraud,
less is going to be done about it. It is your advertising
dollars at stake. It is getting harder and harder to get good
key word ranking and it is getting more costly. The millions
they generate from it should be invested in better security. As
it stands now, they will not even admit there is a sizable
problem. Just my opinion, but I'd rather go with an advertising
source that has better regard for it's customers money. Until
they do, consider me PPC prejudiced.
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