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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Using YouTube To Illustrate And Introduce PPC Services

I've spent the last few months changing my focus as a webmaster. I had thought my future earnings as a self-employed web content producer lay with AdSense. Sensing it was not going to happen, I now consider my self more into, and enjoying getting to grips with affiliate and search marketing. As a result I've had to invest a lot of time with pay per click advertising, or PPC as we henceforth shall call it, to give an impression of expertise.

Basically, PPC means you pay for every visitor you get - the idea being you only pay for interested visitors. It's fair to say you can quickly and easily lose your shirt if you do it wrong, and if you can get it right, you'll be making money with various degrees of success.

It's become an important tool in my arsenal and aid to my quest to be a self-sufficient webmaster. I've been spending a lot of time trying different services and advertising models the last 6 months. I've made a few boo-boos along the way, and done some good stuff as well. The pleasure of launching a finely tuned and spending-optimized campaign and watching the visits and money role in is sublime.

Or so I'm told, I hope one day I'll find that feeling. In the meantime I'll continue bumbling along and at least thinking my campaigns will perform like finely tuned engines, as my budget quickly drains away on an ill conceived broadmatch or badly implemented landing page.

Tip to all: Andrew Goodman's awesome book Winning Results With Adwords - life changing, your wallet will thank you.

Gratuitous YouTube Embedding Alert

Most of my focus has been on using Google's Adwords, but I've been using a few other models also. With my recent exposure in mind, I thought I would try to sum up my experiences and feelings about the PPC services through the medium of YouTube. I spent literally hours minutes scouring everyone's favourite video site to find that one clip that epitomised the services I've used. I was considering the whole experience, user interface, performance, niggles etc.

There are a few big services I haven't gotten around too yet - notably Yahoo's Search Marketing service and some others, but for your entertainment, here's the one's I have had a lot of time with recently.

Google Adwords - Gimme Gimme Gimme

There was another clip I was going to use of a crackhead chained to a lamp post, desperately clawing the ground to get to his crack just inches from his fingers. Instead I went for this - common sense goes out the window and nothing else matters. Gimme my AdWords hit, now!

MSN AdCenter - Shudder, Bump, Arrrgh!

I don't care how well it converts. Do some usability testing, infringe some patents, make it shiny. In the meantime, Red Dwarf sums up the feeling I get when I log on to AdCenter.

AdBrite - Get It Down You My Son

First your like a kid in a sweet shop, you gulp down the cheap treats. 100s of 30 cent recurring ads on targeted sites, then recoil in horror when you come to figure out that none of it converts and you now have hours of paper work unravelling all those fifteen pence recurring charges in you accounts. OK, so that's the direct advertising model, but the PPC is little better.

7Search - Hello! Is Anybody There?

No governor, I'm not doing arbitrage, really! Ok, so you set it all up and fire them off in hope of lots of cheap conversions. Then you wait, and you wait and wait until an old tramp unexpectedly appears in one of the frames and passes through without a care to the epic tones of Godspeed You Black Emperor.

Miva - Robotical Fun

Ok, so I've not tried them, but everywhere I've heard them mentioned it's been along the lines of you'll be fighting off the robots and not converting dick, allegedly.

And Finally...

So there we have it, my thoughts on some of the services I've tried out in recent times. But don't just take my jaded words for it - discover the joys of PPC for yourself, if you haven't already. If you already have, chances are you're too rich to be reading this blog anyway. If you've tried it and been unsuccessful, chances are that's you in the crackhead video, in which case, take the five dollars and put it into ringtones at AdWords.

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Posted by Dio Bach at 10:10 PM

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